Post by Falcom Director of Fanservice on Apr 10, 2008 2:27:57 GMT -5
The Mystery Dungeon series is probably best known to most folks via Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. For the most part, the producers (Chunsoft, which I keep wanting to call CHUDsoft) tend to work making roguelikes for various licenses, such as Pokemon and Final Fantasy via the original Chocobo Mystery Dungeon. However, Shiren the Wanderer is their own deal, and arguably their best.
The basic plot of Shiren the Wanderer is very simple. You start in a small town at the foot of a mountain range. Past that range is the legendary Table Mountain, atop which is rumored to be the City of Gold. Living there is an equally legendary beast called the Golden Condor, who is supposed to be able to grant wishes. Many have tried to reach that city, and none have succeeded. You are to be the first.
Shiren the Wanderer is a Roguelike. That means it has a lot in common with Rogue, which is pretty much the first RPG ever. What this means that it is a dungeon crawl, straight up. Plot is more or less tertiary. Death is permanent; once you die, you go back to the first town and have to build up all your levels and equipment again. The equipment you find or can find to buy is completely random. Many items are not identified until you try them, and may be cursed, meaning they give some kind of penalty and cannot be unequipped by normal means. Also, there are randomly placed traps, and (semi-)randomly generated floors to the "dungeon" itself.
What this means is that every time you play it, you're going to find mostly different stuff. You'll have different tools, different scenarios, and have to react to things in different ways. Each of your runs will be very different, and hanging over all of that is the fact that if you die, you have to schlep your way back from the beginning. On top of all that, you have to keep yourself fed, or risk death by starvation.
In short, there is a lot of gameplay, and you really can't memorize your way past things or powerlevel over them.
The monsters along the way are not your friends. All of them are willing to bite, stab, claw, or what have you upon your adventuring booty. However, many are more insidious than this. Take the field bandit, for instance. When you aren't in his sights, the field bandit wanders the maps, looking for the various treasures that the game randomly generates for you and turns them into useless weeds. Or take the death reaper you find later in, who can phase through walls and snipe you.
So what can you do against all of this? Shiren the Wanderer is not completely without mercy! Well, aside from getting some nice weapons and cutting them to ribbons, there are a variety of items you can find to help you out. There are staves that can paralyze enemies, switch places with them, knock them back, or turn them into meat. There are scrolls that can do a one-shot effect, such as damaging everything in a room, putting everything to sleep, giving you a temporary power boost, or permanently enhancing your equipment. There are herbs to heal you, or to be tossed at enemies and harm them. And there is the aforementioned meat, which you can eat to turn into that monster and use its powers. Or you can throw it at a monster and turn them into another monster.
There is no such thing as boss immunity, you can do this stuff to any monster, including the final boss.
Combat is turn based; each step you take is a turn. Because of this, you are never rushed, and have as long as you want to ponder your way out of a situation.
Also, There are other things you can do to make your life a little easier. Along the way are a few towns where you can stop, buy things, and rest at the inn. Many of these towns also have little sidequests you can follow, often over subsequent journeys, that can open up new stores, win you allies that will follow you into the dungeon levels and help you fight, and so on. Most importantly, there are warehouses where you can leave items, so that if you die they will still be there, waiting for you to pass through again.
Shiren the Wanderer was originally released for SNES back in '95. However, recently it was ported to DS and released in the US. With the DS version comes a few new things. Firstly, there are a couple of new bonus dungeons to challenge you once you've twinked yourself out, in addition to several that were already in the game. However, and more interestingly, there is the rescue system.
As I mentioned, when you die, you lost all your progress and all your stuff. BUT! It need not be that way if you have a friend with the game: you have the option to await rescue. What happens is that game saves your data up til that point, and transmits it to whomever is going to save you. This can be done over a local connection or WiFi, or via a 54 character password if neither of those are an option; so no one is exempt from being rescued! Your rescuer will then trek through the exact same dungeon layout that you did, making his way to where you died and saving you from the many monsters preparing to chomp on your bits. In reward for this, the rescuer is given a random item by the game (and there are some very tasty Rescue-Only items), and you have the option to send him a thank you letter with another item in it; if you're doing it via local connection or WiFi, you can give him one of your items.
To summarize, Shiren the Wanderer is hard but fair. It's designed so it is fairly difficult to brute force your way through situations. Instead, you have to be attentive and you have to think your way through things. The game is highly randomized, so you can't win by rote memorization either. It is challenging, and a bit daunting at first. But as you progress into it, learning what the various items and monsters do, you'll become comfortable with how things work, and learn what works when you hit a bad situation. Soon, you'll be getting far enough that the end is in sight, and you'll start having the feeling if you had just done this things a little different, it would have all turned out better, and be ready for next time. There's a very arcade game feel to it, despite it being the antithesis of arcade gameplay in many ways, with how quickly you can start and go.
In short, I recommend the shit out of this game. Go get it so I can make you rescue me. And vice versa.
The basic plot of Shiren the Wanderer is very simple. You start in a small town at the foot of a mountain range. Past that range is the legendary Table Mountain, atop which is rumored to be the City of Gold. Living there is an equally legendary beast called the Golden Condor, who is supposed to be able to grant wishes. Many have tried to reach that city, and none have succeeded. You are to be the first.
Shiren the Wanderer is a Roguelike. That means it has a lot in common with Rogue, which is pretty much the first RPG ever. What this means that it is a dungeon crawl, straight up. Plot is more or less tertiary. Death is permanent; once you die, you go back to the first town and have to build up all your levels and equipment again. The equipment you find or can find to buy is completely random. Many items are not identified until you try them, and may be cursed, meaning they give some kind of penalty and cannot be unequipped by normal means. Also, there are randomly placed traps, and (semi-)randomly generated floors to the "dungeon" itself.
What this means is that every time you play it, you're going to find mostly different stuff. You'll have different tools, different scenarios, and have to react to things in different ways. Each of your runs will be very different, and hanging over all of that is the fact that if you die, you have to schlep your way back from the beginning. On top of all that, you have to keep yourself fed, or risk death by starvation.
In short, there is a lot of gameplay, and you really can't memorize your way past things or powerlevel over them.
The monsters along the way are not your friends. All of them are willing to bite, stab, claw, or what have you upon your adventuring booty. However, many are more insidious than this. Take the field bandit, for instance. When you aren't in his sights, the field bandit wanders the maps, looking for the various treasures that the game randomly generates for you and turns them into useless weeds. Or take the death reaper you find later in, who can phase through walls and snipe you.
So what can you do against all of this? Shiren the Wanderer is not completely without mercy! Well, aside from getting some nice weapons and cutting them to ribbons, there are a variety of items you can find to help you out. There are staves that can paralyze enemies, switch places with them, knock them back, or turn them into meat. There are scrolls that can do a one-shot effect, such as damaging everything in a room, putting everything to sleep, giving you a temporary power boost, or permanently enhancing your equipment. There are herbs to heal you, or to be tossed at enemies and harm them. And there is the aforementioned meat, which you can eat to turn into that monster and use its powers. Or you can throw it at a monster and turn them into another monster.
There is no such thing as boss immunity, you can do this stuff to any monster, including the final boss.
Combat is turn based; each step you take is a turn. Because of this, you are never rushed, and have as long as you want to ponder your way out of a situation.
Also, There are other things you can do to make your life a little easier. Along the way are a few towns where you can stop, buy things, and rest at the inn. Many of these towns also have little sidequests you can follow, often over subsequent journeys, that can open up new stores, win you allies that will follow you into the dungeon levels and help you fight, and so on. Most importantly, there are warehouses where you can leave items, so that if you die they will still be there, waiting for you to pass through again.
Shiren the Wanderer was originally released for SNES back in '95. However, recently it was ported to DS and released in the US. With the DS version comes a few new things. Firstly, there are a couple of new bonus dungeons to challenge you once you've twinked yourself out, in addition to several that were already in the game. However, and more interestingly, there is the rescue system.
As I mentioned, when you die, you lost all your progress and all your stuff. BUT! It need not be that way if you have a friend with the game: you have the option to await rescue. What happens is that game saves your data up til that point, and transmits it to whomever is going to save you. This can be done over a local connection or WiFi, or via a 54 character password if neither of those are an option; so no one is exempt from being rescued! Your rescuer will then trek through the exact same dungeon layout that you did, making his way to where you died and saving you from the many monsters preparing to chomp on your bits. In reward for this, the rescuer is given a random item by the game (and there are some very tasty Rescue-Only items), and you have the option to send him a thank you letter with another item in it; if you're doing it via local connection or WiFi, you can give him one of your items.
To summarize, Shiren the Wanderer is hard but fair. It's designed so it is fairly difficult to brute force your way through situations. Instead, you have to be attentive and you have to think your way through things. The game is highly randomized, so you can't win by rote memorization either. It is challenging, and a bit daunting at first. But as you progress into it, learning what the various items and monsters do, you'll become comfortable with how things work, and learn what works when you hit a bad situation. Soon, you'll be getting far enough that the end is in sight, and you'll start having the feeling if you had just done this things a little different, it would have all turned out better, and be ready for next time. There's a very arcade game feel to it, despite it being the antithesis of arcade gameplay in many ways, with how quickly you can start and go.
In short, I recommend the shit out of this game. Go get it so I can make you rescue me. And vice versa.
