GameCentral reviews the very opposite of a roguelite, with an endearingly old school dungeon crawler that makes constant defeat seem fun.
We seem to have reviewed an awful lot of roguelike games recently, but that’s okay because they’ve all been interestingly different. Pacific Drive combined the idea of randomised levels and losing everything you have when you die with a spooky automotive survival game. At the same time, Splatoon 3 DLC Side Order mixed the roguelike concept with Nintendo’s popular third person shooter series.
Both games play fast and loose with the concept of a punishingly hard dungeon crawler, especially in terms of you not having to start from scratch each time. Shiren The Wanderer, however, presents the original idea in its raw, but not necessarily unrefined, form.
The Mystery Dungeon series this is a part of only stretches back to 1993 (Rogue itself dates back all the way to 1980) but it feels older and, over the decades, has fiercely resisted change, even despite the current fashion for the genre. It’s unapologetically old school and that’s going to put a lot of people off, but at the same time you can’t help but admire its commitment to tradition… and the fact that despite the inherent frustrations it remains fiercely addictive and a lot of fun.
The history of Mystery Dungeon is long and very complicated but, to state things briefly, it started life as a Dragon Quest spin-off on the SNES, with the first Shiren The Wanderer actually being Mystery Dungeon 2. Things only get more complicated from there, with several more spin-offs and crossovers, the most successful of which have been the multiple Pokèmon Mystery Dungeon games.
There is a loose chronology to the Shiren games (this one counts as the sixth mainline entry but takes place before the events of Shiren the Wanderer 4) but you don’t need to worry about all that as this is very much a standalone adventure. You play the titular wandering rōnin, who is accompanied by a talking ferret called Koppa. The pair travel across medieval Japan, doing good deeds, and in this case trying to save a girl who’s been eaten by a giant monster.
You start the game off facing against the final boss but, in true roguelike tradition, you’re defeated and wake up with no memory of what happened and, crucially, none of the items or stat upgrades you had acquired up to that point. Koppa knows what happened but that doesn’t really matter because the only thing you can do is just try again and plunge yourself into the various dungeons of the titular island, until you’re strong enough to take on the big bad again.
Once you’re in a dungeon movement and combat are essentially turn-based, as you move around the grid-based, top-down environment. Every time you take a step or perform an action so do all the monsters, so you can stay where you are and none of them will ever move but the second you step forward they take their turn as well.
Combat is as simple as stepping up to a monster and attacking it with a melee weapon, although there are ranged weapons with limited ammo and a variety of spells that do everything from disorientate a monster to set it on fire. You’ll pick up an awful lot of items as you explore but your inventory space is very limited, so you have to make difficult decisions to optimise your loadout.
The game is difficult but it’s not quite as heartless as you might imagine, primarily because you regain health surprisingly quickly just by walking. That doesn’t make things quite as easy as it sounds as monsters will chase after you, or just randomly bump into you if you’re walking on the spot, but if you can get away while the getting is good it is possible to survive a fight that isn’t going your way.
Despite this, the game can often seem unfair, especially the hidden traps and the randomised maps with unfavourable layouts. You can get a spell to detect traps but there’s nothing you can do except leave and come back if the map is a nightmare.
As you explore the island you unlock a central map and the occasional shortcut, plus you can store unused items in a warehouse but other than that you are almost entirely starting from nothing each run, at least in terms of stats and equipment.
However, the storyline of the game progresses regardless, and sometimes because of, your many deaths. Your initial amnesia lessens over the course of the game and as you meet the various characters and learn about their backstories you can recruit them to become allies that follow you around, potentially for the whole of a run.
On top of this is an online option where you can ask real human players to rescue you, although playing the game before release we weren’t able to test this out. It seems you can offer to help others as well, although we assume you die like usual if things don’t work out.
Instead of a roguelite like Dead Cells, where you’re constantly unlocking things that you can use on your next run, what you gain after each death in Shiren is the skill and strategic experience needed to do better. The game seems almost laughably simple at first but there’s far more to it than you’d initially imagine, as you use the layout of maps to shepherd enemies around or ensure only one can attack you at once.
At first the vast range of spells and items seems unnecessarily confusing but over time you learn the nuance of each one and when and where to use it. And while Lady Luck may be against you in some instances she’ll also sometimes smile in your favour or… a Behemoth Gate will randomly appear in a dungeon, which spawns giant-sized monsters. In Shiren The Wanderer nothing is certain.
The only thing we really don’t like about the game is the graphics, which unlike all the previous entries are 3D. It is extremely basic 3D though, that looks more like a high-res PlayStation 2 game. It gets the job done, and some of the monster designs are cute, but we much preferred the sprite-based visuals of the previous games. Given the high asking price it’s not unreasonable to expect better presentation than this, especially as the music is also disappointingly forgettable.
Shiren The Wanderer isn’t trying to be cutting edge, or anything close to it, but sometimes there’s value in going back to basics. As roguelike elements are added to more and more games, many of which are not role-players, it’s fun to see what the concept started out as. And besides, within its own tiny niche, this entry does have some neat innovations, that make the process of dying and losing everything surprisingly entertaining.
Shiren The Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon Of Serpentcoil Island review summary
In Short: A hardcore roguelike that has none of the niceties of most modern equivalents and yet its old school charm and small innovations make it enjoyable despite itself.
Pros: The core gameplay loop is highly addictive, with a great sense of ‘one more go’. The persistent story elements and ally recruitment are a neat idea and there’s far more depth to the game than it first seems.
Cons: Very basic graphics and not very different from any of the previous games. The random elements, including the dungeon layouts, can sometimes throw up unfair situations. Expensive.
Score: 8/10
Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £54.99
Publisher: Spike Chunsoft US
Developer: Spike Chunsoft
Release Date: 26th February 2024
Age Rating: 12
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
MORE : Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon review – going rogue
MORE : Etrian Mystery Dungeon review – role-playing mash-up
MORE : Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates To Infinity review – it’s not very effective
Follow Metro Gaming on Twitter and email us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
![GameCentral Newsletter](https://usercontent.one/wp/www.newsgroove.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Hitman-4-is-not-going-to-happen-any-time-soon.png?media=1711065099)
Sign up to all the exclusive gaming content, latest releases before they’re seen on the site.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.