Recent reviews by adam_odell

It's great that this was free. Not 100% sure it should've been free, though. Imagining what they could've done with it with a bigger budget and an expectation of profit.

The title and marketing are hilarious, but it's more than the joke itself. Characterization is strong without being flanderized, which is better than some actual Sonic games out there. Gameplay is pretty basic and mainly a vehicle for the story itself (a mild point & click adventure in VN format), but it's a good candy game to play with a friend near to bounce opinions off of with. Arriving to each new cabin is generally a treat due to each character getting more screen time after the opening!

Anyway, no free game is truly free- time is an expense, but I can think of far worse ways to spend your time as a Sonic Fan™ in current year.

If there's any game that's an argument to break Steam's "Recommended" binary for something with a middle-ground, it'd be this game.

The graphics are inconsistent- and yet, ultimately convey the Shenmue look with all its warts. Environments legitimately have a lot of charm and good color palettes. Interactive NPCs all have names and there's less of a focus on the "generic NPC" like Shenmue and especially Shenmue II. However, you can't talk to everyone like you could in the originals. That, and the stamina system turns the game into a slog at times.

The locations are larger than I had assumed they'd be (but not large at all by modern open world standards), but one modernization I would've liked would be the ability to backtrack to Bailu after getting to Niaowu. The game has a looser plot with less tying Ryo down so it would've worked fine.

The fighting system is confusing at first and is more like a command-queue system. There are some improvements over the original fighting system (like targeting) but almost no one is going to find it an improvement over the original games. It almost feels like they were going for a simpler, beat-'em-up style of gameplay, and if that's what they were going for, they should've made it more visceral and immediate. As it is, it feels sloppy at first and the ragdoll sometimes results in unintentionally hilarious posing. Snake Power is basically "I hate this fighting system" juice. Throws are absent, too.

All-in-all it's a slow, sleepy title and not a whole lot happens until everything happens. I think this was always the intent, but the execution and budget rush hurt it more. The final events in the game happen so quick and unexpectedly that it completely ruins the narrative weight of the actually-quite-large developments that happened. It feels like it's all brushed under the rug by the time it's said and done. It's over in minutes.

Even with all this, I still really liked this game. If you can still play the old Shenmues to this day and enjoy them, there's still a lot here to enjoy. Just keep your expectations tempered.

One last criticism that comes to mind has to do with the way backers and Shenmue-fanservice were integrated into the game. It's immersion-breaking and disrespects all the work done on the game. It turns it into a "product". You shouldn't be able to buy capsule toys of people Ryo knows (or of himself!) and see super-deformed Chai hanging around in the arcades. That and that dang building right there in Niaowu! They should've integrated this content out-of-universe somehow (for example, maybe provide the Shenmue-themed capsule toys as gifts for progress, that can only be viewed in the game's menu, and Ryo is never seen physically handling it or retrieving it). There's also a fight near the end of the game where it's a bunch of very-not-Asian looking people and you just have that realization "I bet this was a backer tier".

The game is what it is. You know what you're getting into at this point in time- this game is by no means new. You've heard everyone's takes on the plot, the dub, the character design, you name it. I don't think it's quite as bad as some say in those regards, but it's not tri-Ace's best work by a longshot. Gameplay's pretty fun though. I never did like how Edge felt on map though (out of battle), a little too twitchy for my taste.

All in all, this is a pretty solid port. If there's any way to play this game, it's this. A few nagging issues bother, but nothing major. The fullscreen/window handling is a bit dodgy- so alt-tab won't work great unless you get that Special-K patch for it.

There are GPU performance discrepancies on my GTX 670 at 1080p. Purgatorium's whirlpool animation is the most egregious so far, dropping my framerate for a bit of time to as low as 4 frames per second. I have confirmed this with multiple people on Discord that it is a problem area for them, too. However, outside of some slight framedrops on Sahariel's rocket explosions and a few loading hiccups, I haven't noticed much in the way of performance issues in the vast majority of scenarios. I am currently up to Nox Obscurus.

While I find the pricing model a bit curious (separating voice as extra) I thought it was worth it.
I'm usually one to play through more lighthearted fare, but this one kept my interest quite well with its setting and characters. Protagonist may not be the most likeable, but that's kind of the point. There's definitely a few parts that left me feeling satisfyingly tense and uneasy to go around.

The music is also a highlight, with some very memorable takes on various classical pieces.

Note that this version has CGs cropped to fit the new 16:9 aspect. I think it was a valid decision and most CGs didn't lose an unacceptable amount, but perhaps the ability to run in 4:3 like the original build would've been a nice option for those less worried about widescreen utilization.

All-in-all, this is one of those visual novels I would recommend to basically anyone. As the h-scenes were not important to the plot of this story, it's no real loss that this is an all-ages version. This might make it less embarrassing to recommend to people outside of the usual VN loop and its stigmas.