I doubt this will come out in America - as I'm pretty sure it wouldn't appeal to American audiences. Nonetheless, interesting choice given Sega's library of intellectual property. I for one would rather a proper Phantasy Star (the current iteration of PSO is just shit). Anyway, figured at least 1 person on f13 would be interested.
Of course, I could be wrong, in fact I'm probably wrong.
Wow, imagine all the fun of hanging around waiting for the right time to talk to NPCs or buying cheap Japanese trinkets from vending machines with your friends online. Unless they've got an arcade in this one that has Planet Harriers and Golden Axe that I can play wither other people than I'm going to have to pass.
I really liked Shenmue 2, the evolution of a fighting game into an rpg is a great concept. Learning that one punch by trying to hit the tree hard enough to shake off leaves? Classic.
The crappy minigames and stupid collectables I could definitely live without.
I liked both Shenmue games. I think the first one was probably the better of the two. The translation to Xbox didn't go so well for the second one, and the second one had that fucking awful move the box mingame/job that just pissed me off. "I Pressed left you fucker!" is all I remember from that.
The first one's job was loading palletes with a forklift and it was actually really fun to drive that thing around. The forklift races were kind of silly, but moving the boxes from warehouse to warehouse with the forklift was neat IMO. Also, the huge 40 man battle in the first one was just awesome. Unlocking it as a menu challenge after doing it the first time was a great idea. Some really good fighting in there going for your best time. I never actually finished the second one... some game distracted me and I pretty much forgot where I was in it. (the second city is all I remember). I keep wanting to start it up again, but keep getting more and more distracted. Damn you ESPN 2k5, doom3, ninja gaiden uber patch, City of Heroes.
I thought they were very good games if you knew what you were getting before you signed up. A slowish paced virtual world attempt interspersed with combat.
I really don't see how you would turn it into a MMOG though. I would be a challenge to say the least. And not something that would really appeal to US markets I don't think.
Not sure if Shenmue will translate well to MMORPG.
I mean, it's a great SP RPG but will we see "catching a leaf" type deals... ...then again, crafting in the many of the current offerings isn't much more refined than that...
OTOH, the pattern of how you train into your character is a good model...
"Should the batman kill Joker because it would save more lives?" is a fundamentally different question from "should the batman have a bunch of machineguns that go BATBATBATBATBAT because its totally cool?". ~Goumindong
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