Shenmue I & II's Shameful PC Port

I would rather have the stuttering but no bloom. Why is bloom even a thing? It makes absolutely everything in every game look worse.

I did not know of the game's performance issues. I do know that its frametimes aren't evenly paced, as I do sometimes play with MSI afterburner overlayed, but I can't recall seeing things be this bad or the frametime overlay go to shit. PC gaming moment
Though I started the game, and I'm really loving the experience. I haven't gotten too far in yet though, I'm currently looking for Charlie in the game

That's because no PC is as powerful as my beloved Dreamcast!

Joke aside, the performance of the PC port is indeed terrible, which is unforgiveable for a game that isn't exactly UE5-material. That said, I recall the original game not always being silky-smooth either.

This video came out 3 years ago. Did they ever fix this?

I was wondering buying all the set from shenmue 1 - 2 to 3 on steam. Well i will only buy the 3 on steam and start a new savegame on my good old dreamcast for shenmue 1 and 2 that i've baught when i was younger :D Good memories for cheap. Thank you for this very comprehensive video.

"Shenmue is not just an important game, it's an important piece of digital media history."

I have been saying that since 1999.

Thank you.

Thank you! You did the great job!

Crazy how I played through the whole 1 and 2 without noticing this issue. Mostly played on Steam Deck capping the frame rate manually to 30 but I suspect it would've worked similar to the Rivia Tuner results.

Also now when trying to test this on my PC all the alpha effects and textures were broken and not properly clipped. Like Ryo's hair would have a green rectangle surrounding it so seems like this isn't the only issue

Saved me the money. I was 2 seconds from buying this on Steam. I just installed an RTX3060 in my homemade rigg and wanted to see what this looked like, Considering it was stunning upon its original release but i never had a Dreamcast as a kid. Been waiting for years to play this. Guess ill dust off my PS4 and see what happens.

Fck, I’m just starting the game on Steam (Big Picture mode with a PS4 controller) and I already noticed the game frame limit is up to 30fps. Worth mentioning I play csgo at high frames, and I noticed these constant dropping frames in Shenmue 1.
I’ve wished to play this saga time ago but now I have that bad feeling this will be a painful experience to play.

I’m thinking in getting a handheld console and emulate it. I’ve watched many videos playing Dreamcast games and so far they seem to play well.

Thanks for the effort in making the video, and sorry for my English just as broken as the game.

This is why people are still emulating Dreamcast

Its really you thats the problem homes, my game runs at a clean 30 and doesnt drop frames like your game does, also keep in mind this is a dreamcast game ported to pc 20 years later so even if there was any issues with the game, i feel like this would be a key factor along with your pc specs.

the fact that the PC gaming wiki article has like a billion fucking mods listed to fix it should be the prime indicator of the quality of this version.

is there any way to fix this port I wonder... Or should I just emulate it on dreamcast?

works fine for me, seems somebody is mad that they have a shitbox

I pirated the PC version of I and II and 3. Deleted 3 after an hour of play because it is boring trash but happily played through I and II. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Dang, and during the cutscenes, too? That's a shame. Especially since you bought merchandise.

If only Shenmue 2 released for the Dreamcast in Canada. I never got to pick it up. And a European copy is very expensive!

My absolute favorite game of all time.
I thought it was wild to play with REAL Weather from the time.

get rivatuner statistics server and set the framerate cap to 30. there problem solved

Thank you very much, i will play the Xbox version then.

Oh man, this does look terrible, even if it's something minor like this.

I got Shenmue on PC following watching this video, a load of nonsense.

I think you should be confirming your specs (including the hz your monitor runs at) in the video before you start slamming the port for frames.

Honestly, its an older game, typically older games have glitches if you run the frames run above what was intended at the time, and this was never intended as a remaster rather as a re-release.

Your expectations are way too high I think


I used to be Chinese...

THANK YOU!! I was a bit worried when i read on steam partial controller support, so i checked on my ps4 and bought Shenmue 3 there at a HUGE Discount! Will wait to buy 1&2 before playing 3, only recently found this thanks to the Anime release!

I never had any of these issues, no stutter or anything and I am running an amd 3700x, 32 gigs of ddr4 ram, m.2 ssd, an rtx 2070. Microstutters drive me crazy so I would have noticed it, I have vsync off using a gsync monitor so maybe I got lucky? It looks smooth to me.

Low FPS has to be the dumbest reason not to play a game

Sad, even to this day its bad. Problems go beyond dropped frames sadly. Fantastic job! And not just a over-simplication Digital Foundry did.

Crashes galore. Cutscenes, getting stuck on the wrong camera angle. 'I've a video when you first see chai.'

Reduced voice quality too. Now the english voices have always been bad. The japanese dreamcast ones aren't perfect. But they sound a heck of a lot better than this pc port does. Granted, even on emulation? They still sound rough. Only a native dreamcast do they sound right.

Great video, appreciate the information. Will probably go the route of emulation for these games.

Looks fine to me

The one thing you can be happy about....is that you can mod the shit out of this game, since its on PC

Why did you do this!?

What's seen cannot be unseen!

it has been more than 1 year, do you know if this was fixed?

Played through the game just fine. I don't know if the framerate issue was happening or not, I didn't notice it at all. I won't say that it wasn't happening because I wasn't looking for it. I also played it on PS4. Slight framerate issues (yes, slight) do not render a game 'broken'. If we were dipping below 24 frames per second I would then say it's broken, but anything above that is pretty normal even if relatively inconsistent.

Pc port looks like the dreamcast version of shenmue the graphics ain't 1080p that's why I'm so glad I'm not a pc gamer

It's great on ps4 pro

I disagree with your review, although I am shenmue fan since dreamcast. I bought the game from steam, my laptop has low end spec (i3 10th generation + intel UHD G1 + 12Gb Ram) and the game run so smoothly at 30fps at all time, Never drop. The game is great and I don't find any different between it and ps4 version.

Don't know if it was mentioned earlier but I was able to fix it by setting 1/2 vsync through nvidia inspector, with 60 hz resolution enabled. Lack of mipmapping and proper msaa antialiasing on the other hand is another can of worms entirely

Hi, the frametime maybe can be solved with msi afternurner to set it at 33.3 ms, or by disabling game v-sync and activating it from the video card panel, saludos!

I figured out how to use the cheat program it was stuff missing from that forum page

this is the exact way click add address put the code it will bring up a box full of a list of codes that can be added right click one and then paste another code then it will show on the bottom

right click that and click act like a code and then click the exe open file at the top left to pick from a list of programs and click shenmue 2 and then to the right of the screen will show a value box type in 1

the problem is that whole process have to be done everytime the program is clicked off

it's not a big difference to me but its probably cause I run gsync and my ram is separated in 2 slots so my stutter is not bad at all

I thought could help me get rid of all the stutter but no the only way is to use emu or get a ps4 or xbox ver

do u know a fix

i notice it stutters to which makes no sense its not graphic heavy why wasnt all the problems fixed before it came out lots of games on consoles can run the same 30 frames as pc but its smooth on the console

Was all this patched in the future? 1&2 played perfectly for me on PC.

Thanks i was gonna buy it for PC but i'll just play them on the Dreamcast.

Quality means something different on PC. Lots of stuff is released half-@$$ed and only fixed later via patches.

The problem with the console versions is you can't mod it for start off and there is some mods that are really good in my opinion and second off the cutscenes on the console version cannot be modded to become 16:9 either and that takes some of the immersion away as the black borders can be annoying especially if you are playing in 16:9 mode for the gameplay itself. I think maybe the Demul emulator on the PC can run these games almost perfect so that would be another way to play them on PC assuming you have a powerful enough PC. Oh and I think Special K used to fix this problem but it doesn't seem to anymore after the final patch they released for the game broke it which sucks.

Game has definitely some frame-pacing issues, it's just so sad that what we got was a broken unplayable mess at launch and a barely serviceable barebone port after about seven or eight patch. Just blame cheap-ass Sega not giving a damn.

Fucking D3T.

This is such a great remaster on the consoles, it's such a shame they'd botch it on the most permanent platform

I dunno this doesn't seem like a huge issue that makes the game unplayable?