Shenmue 1 & 2 HD

[Yakumo]

Can any fluent Japanese speaker fill me in on whether the original voices acting is of a good standard? Or do I just not hear any bad acting because I don’t understand Japanese?

The original Japanese voices are excelent. It's the only way to play the game IMO. The English voices, even Ryo are crap. Also even on the Dreamcast the audio quality of the Japanese voices is so much better.
Actually, even modern games have far higher quality voice acting in Japanese. Started both Shining Resonance and Nier Automata in English then swiftly changed both to Japanese voices. They English ones always sound forced and cringe worthy.

[Supergoal]

Agree with above comment about Japanese VO. I've never play a shenmue game with English but the Japanese side is pretty good and charming. Listening to some of the English version It's pure cringe and a bit lacking. Switch that language over.

[DeathAdder]

I like the voice acting of the adults in Japanese, but the voices of little girls are awful.

[randombs]

I find myself switching between languages quite frequently in Shenmue. Some English voices are decent, some Japanese voices are crap. For example, they get Japanese people to do non-Japanese voices which is quite jarring(and, frankly, takes the piss).

Japanese VO is definitely better overall, but my Shenmue memories are from the English version as I didn't play the Japanese one until around ten years ago.

[dataDave]

That's what I remember most about the English dub, the absolutly horrendous audio quality compared to the Japanese voices. I wanted to go through it just the once so that I could go through the storyline without a guide but couldn't force myself in the end.

[Supergoal]

I find myself switching between languages quite frequently in Shenmue. Some English voices are decent, some Japanese voices are crap. For example, they get Japanese people to do non-Japanese voices which is quite jarring(and, frankly, takes the piss).

Japanese VO is definitely better overall, but my Shenmue memories are from the English version as I didn't play the Japanese one until around ten years ago.

You thinking of people Tom? And some of the sailors.

[Yakumo]

Playing this now on the Xbox One X and I can say for certain that even the Japanese audio is ****ed. Clicks are present and the compression is worse than the Dreamcast original. Also ever god dame ****ing cut scene is broken! Every one either gives a blank coloured screen or has the camera actually outside of the playing area. WTF! This is a real piss poor port and I had to install a 3GB patch!


WTF is that?!

[Adam]

I found if you had the glitched cutscenes, you'd just get loads more of them if you keep playing. Soon as you get one, save it or reload an older save and it should stop them happening for a little bit.

[randombs]

Some people found that changing the aspect ratio sorted them out for a while.

Luckily, I’ve only had the initial Ine-san cutscene mess up so far.

[Yakumo]

That's what I remember most about the English dub, the absolutly horrendous audio quality compared to the Japanese voices. I wanted to go through it just the once so that I could go through the storyline without a guide but couldn't force myself in the end.

I found if you had the glitched cutscenes, you'd just get loads more of them if you keep playing. Soon as you get one, save it or reload an older save and it should stop them happening for a little bit.

Thanks for the info, Adam. It's a disgrace how this has been released with such poor quality. Im sure the lighting is messed up too. Dark areas seem too dark. Tomorrow I'm going to do a side by side comparison with the Dreamcast version running via HDMI.

[randombs]

Turning off bloom apparently helps with the darkness.

[Atticus]

I think turning off the game might help.

Sounds appalling.

[cutmymilk]

Anyone know if there a patch in the works?

[Decider-VT]

Let's hope so. With the current state of things it sounds like I'd be better off installing a GDEMU in one of my spare Dreamcasts instead.

[Lyris]

Thanks for the info, Adam. It's a disgrace how this has been released with such poor quality. Im sure the lighting is messed up too. Dark areas seem too dark. Tomorrow I'm going to do a side by side comparison with the Dreamcast version running via HDMI.

First thing I noticed was how crushed the shadow details are. Also, the Bloom effect introduces this weird auto contrast like behavior where the display will start out really dark every time after a camera angle change, before slowly fading up to a more visible level.

The easiest way to see it is to open the notebook in a dark area then close it again. It makes some of the details in the opening cutscene in the dojo unintelligible. Turning off Bloom does fix the sliding brightness issue but I still think some of the low end shadow details are crushed.