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.
Then you could run from the police, and distract them with your impressive collection of vending machine toys.