I have already expressed my thoughts on Shenmue, which can be found here:
http://www.christiananime.net/showthread.php?t=5441 Did anyone else see the episode of "Filter" that listed Shenmue as the second worst game of all time? I would tend to agree with that: the game is a technical achievement, but it is ultimately not
fun to play.
I prefer games with a lot of action, such as Soul Calibur 2 (or fighting games in general), The Suffering, Champions of Norrath, etc. For that reason alone, I found Shemue to be very boring. There were a lot of things to do, but the vast majority of them were simply novelties that did not produce actual progress in the game.
The game would have been a lot more interesting if you were given more freedom. Specifically, the freedom to beat up the random people in the street.
![Evil Smilie :evil:](./images/smilies/icon_twisted.gif)
Then you could run from the police, and distract them with your impressive collection of vending machine toys.