First thing's first: send us a question for the podcast -- mailbag AT trigames DOT net. Or you can use this form. I dunno what topic we'll be discussing, but I did interview Yosuke Hayashi -- the Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword director -- on Wednesday. I've posted a video of it, too.
Right now I'm trudging through Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for review. Trudging is pretty much accurate -- obviously, since I'm reviewing it, I'm playing it nearly non-stop. Yet, it's not one of those games that's well-suited to the player going at it non-stop. It's a slow, slow burn. Here's why.
Ever play Rogue or any of its spawn, known as Roguelikes? How about Pokemon Mystery Dungeon? They're all based on a similar concept. In Rogue's case, since it's the very beginning of this RPG sub-genre, it was a game created completely with ASCII characters. It was a no-frills dungeon crawler, with completely randomized rooms and monsters. There was little story to speak of, at least as far as I can remember; the goal was to collect loot and survive as long as possible. When you died, you got sent to the beginning with no loot and none of the experience levels you gained. Think of it like Diablo, except without the ability to save. The silver lining was that any loot you had on you got scattered throughout the dungeon so you could re-acquire it on subsequent playthroughs. Regardless, it wasn't what you'd call today's popular role-playing game. Whoever heard of an RPG where you couldn't save your progress, right?
Well, Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer is pretty much like that, only with a SNES-quality graphical sheen (makes sense, since this was originally a SNES game that never made it Stateside), soothing music, and enough mechanics-tweaking to make it completely unfriendly. You basically advance from area to area -- analogous to the "floors" in the older Rogue and its Roguelikes -- collecting as many items as you can see before scrambling to find the exit. Each of these areas are randomized so you'll rarely, if ever, see the same map twice.
Towns lie between every few areas, and I think this is where it starts to get exasperating. I believe in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, it had a centralized town you could return to every time. Diablo (or at least, the first one) had the town up top you could return to whenever you had teleport scrolls or the motivation to climb all of the floors back up. In Shiren, not only are the towns spread out; they also don't always have the same amenities available. You can leave items in warehouses that exist in some towns, which store the items so that when you die, you can come back to pick them up. The problem is that not every town has a warehouse, so you can easily get overloaded between towns. Not every town has a friggin' shop either, so if you need to buy an absolutely necessary item -- a healing herb or a riceball (the latter manages your hunger, which is another annoyance I'll get to) -- you won't be able to guarantee yourself the opportunity in every town. Hell, since the shopkeepers' stock is random anyway, I guess that's a moot point.
The hunger thing -- now that's an old-school tenet that really doesn't jive with me these days. You have a hunger meter that counts down as you move, which basically means you're on a freaking timer of sorts. You have to eat riceballs for sustenance, but they just end up being an annoyance that takes up inventory space. It's just something in this day and age that I don't want to manage. I don't care if it's "the way old school is" or whatnot -- it's just annoying.
I really dig how the world is persistent, though. Like in Rogue, you can find old possessions -- which you've lost by dying before -- scattered throughout areas. So if you've upgraded this sword to a +10 level, and then die, there's a small chance that you'll see it again at some point. People also remember you and the things that happen around you. For example, I got blinded by some stone-cold hussy... twice. The first time, I was promised that I'd be made to see "amazing things." The second time, she said, "Oh that was my sister. I apologize. Let me make it up to you," and BAM! I was blind again (pwnt). I ran across two villagers who said the same thing happened to them. The next time I died and went to one of the villages, I saw them cornering her, shouting, "She's the girl who blinded us! Get her!" So, it's not as if everything resets when you die -- just you.
Aside from the annoying hunger thing, I really like this game so far, but I just don't know that it's for everyone. Scratch that -- I know it's not for everyone, and I'd be willing to say that it's not for most people. But I think there's a small contingent of people who enjoy the Rogue-esque gameplay -- I call them masochists -- who will really dig this, because it does what it sets out to do really well. There are lots of cool spells and items you can pick up; you can speed up your movement so it feels less grindy; the music is gentle and soothing; and there's that sense of "Aha, I'm learning" the more and more you play the game as you start to understand how enemies behave and what tricks you have at your disposal. Sometimes it's too random for its own good, but it's also what keeps you guessing, "I wonder what cool loot I'll find today."
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