For Your Consideration: Shiren The Wanderer
January is always a bit of a tough month.
“New year, new me” has us all performing a sort of global reset, and it kills all momentum I have when it comes to finishing any given project- be it a game, a model kit, a book, etc. It wasn’t until last week that I finally got my groove back, so to speak.
Enter: Shiren The Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon Of Serpentcoil Island.
The term “Mystery Dungeon” might evoke memories of Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, or even Etrian Odyssey. Chunsoft may have started the series with DQ4’s portly merchant Torneko, but soon after they realized that they have something good cooking in the kitchen. In lieu of a Dragon Quest sequel they opted for their own original character Shiren, and his weasel friend Koppa.
Chunsoft (later combined with developer Spike in 2012, becoming Spike Chunsoft) would pump out Mystery Dungeon games based on various IPs, but Shiren was always there in the background selling moderately well. Things took a turn in the early 2010s and Shiren 5 became the last title in the series for nearly 14 years. Thanks to high sales of the various ports of Shiren 5 over the years, Spike Chunsoft were finally able to secure enough funding for a new sixth entry in the series. That’s the title I’ll be talking about today. Don’t worry about playing the games in order, you can start at the newest game and make your way backwards or pick and choose which ones to play. Hell, some games aren’t even in English at the time of writing.
Shiren is about as pure of a rogue-like as it can be. You start each run without money, gear, or experience (in the tangible sense) and you go about the titular island, making your way to the top of it’s mountain to slay a mythical beast rumored to hoard endless treasures, and maybe a kidnapped damsel or two. Each new run might have some new story bits to look at, but be prepared at the end of the day to play the same stages over and over again. That’s where the mystery comes in. While you’ll be in the same locales, the layout will always be different. Items, paths, and obstacles in one run will be shuffled around or outright removed or replaced in the next. It’s fun!
Exploration is the next delicious ingredient in Shiren’s stew. Each action you perform, whether it’s equipping a piece of gear, eating a rice ball, or even so much as taking a step, has an immediate reaction from an NPC or enemy. When engaged in combat you need to make every action count. Let’s say a monster smacks the shit out of you, leaving your HP in the single digits. Do you use an action by eating a healing herb? do you attack? Do you try to run? Each option is viable in various contexts, and in most cases none will be fruitful. Let’s say you heal. Well the next action from the monster is to hit you again, leaving you wounded yet again. Now you’re desperate so you attempt to run away. Each step you take heals you for 1 HP, so maybe if you get the drop on them you can heal up enough to go for a rematch. You end up miscalculating your steps and get stuck against a wall. You gotta double back, which is three more actions than you initially needed.
The monster attacks. You die. Back to square one.
That’s the gameplay of Shiren The Wanderer, and it’s some of the best gameplay I’ve ever experienced.
It takes approximately 1–2 hours to “beat” the game, but you’ll be spending dozens upon dozens of hours trying. You’ll likely have a few runs where you’ll get killed in the first floor of the dungeon, the 10th, or even the final floor, and while you won’t be jazzed about it, you’ll take the knowledge with you. That’s where the intangible experience comes in. Each run you learn a little bit more. You learn how to properly use a particular item in one run, and how to use the targeting system efficiently in the next. That’s the core of the game’s design.
Knowledge is power.
Getting past that one spot that’s been tormenting you run after run, getting a good weapon early on, or going ten floors without finding any weapon at all. That’s what makes this series great. I’m elated to finally experience the true bliss that is Shiren The Wanderer, and I hope you can find that bliss too.
-PA
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