Since every time I try to start a Shiren thread it dies a slow and painful death...

Since every time I try to start a Shiren thread it dies a slow and painful death, lets talk about mystery dungeon games in general.

What I want to know:

Stop tempting me to get Shiren the Wanderer.

You should user, it's really fun.

My only complaint is that the storyline isn't all that long and the dungeons don't ever get above 20 floors and there is only two bosses in it. But I've already found like 10 or so side dungeons that go 50+ already.

The item synthesizing is fun too and I just discovered how runes work so I'm playing with them while trying to fill out my item book.

Huh, I didn't know there was a remake or whatever of One Way Heroics.
I got the original (and a couple other games) for $1 from Humble Bundle ages ago. It was pretty good, as I recall.

Yeah, I wanted to get the physical edition but they only made 5K copies worldwide in an extremely limited run.

The original Shiren and remakes are superb. But I don't feel the same way about most of the other Mystery Dungeon games. I like roguelikes and love Shiren for that reason, the later games expanded on aspects that I was not interested in and restricted the things I liked.

Somewhat ironically, my favourite thing about Shiren is the fact that the towns and NPCs evolve or have different events going on each time you return. It was extremely charming and, along with new items being unlocked, prevents the game from feeling like a continual series of failures.

I got the latest Shiren for Vita because of Holla Forums and I have not been disappointed. Need to put some more time into it. Been dinking with the PSP one as well.

I thought the PSP one was jap only?

bump

One Way Shiren is poor as shit compared to the original. Traps in a game about going perpetually right doesn't work out well, it turns out.

Also there were some bad changes to how the Dimensional Vault worked, and the PC port is a raw port with really horrid framerate issues that the devs wouldn't acknowledge for some time. You can skip it.

good to know.

I love how beautifully cluttered everything is in this game

What's the difference between the handheld and the original version?

indie sprites will never look that good

The Vita version adds a new dungeon or two, I can't remember exactly. The DS version is jap only.

If you can get past the frequent translation errors you you're golden.

"You shouldn't drink revival grass. Save it for later."

why would they add landmines and shit to this game? im just waiting for the time im walking by a pool of lava running from the demon lord and get thrown into lava by an ewok log. so far i havent died to trap but thats probably only because im not carrying bombs.
even in the old game i would hesitate to carry around explosives because i never knew when a fire breathing crow was going to show up and ruin my day.

I dunno if you're talking about tower of Fortune but In Tower of Fortune they have landmines but you can usually carry around perception grass, trap detector, or a trap destroying weapon. There is also anti-explosives ability for shields that makes it minor damage. By the time they start appearing you have near 100 health.

So is there a list of these online yet? Because I've been doing this by hand for a day or two now because I can't find one.

Looking up the series history makes me a bit intimidated. All the games only loosely connect to each other, right?

...

No.

It's about a guy who wanders around. The stories are self contained.

mystery chronicle: one way heroics
chunsofts take on a very good indie game called one way heroics. the original had traps, but they werent trapped tiles.
i dont believe theres a way to reveal traps in this game other than attacking the empty tile in front of you, which can be a huge hassle if youre using a ranged weapon since youll fire them and drain durability as well as ammo, whereas a miss with a melee weapon wont cost you anything but the turn.

I still can't believe I got into the dungeon crawling genre if mystery dungeon is enough to quality.
But most of the time I just get bored/uninterested/irritated in actually exploring so finding the stairs is like a breath of freshair. FUCK THOSE FUCKING MONSTER HOUSES. CAN'T BELIEVE JAPAN ALLOWS GANG RAPE.

Don't know haven't played it. Better not be as shit as sky.

explorers of darkness


my heart hurts. I don't know why.

...

How can one man have so shit taste?

Anyone with Shiren Tower of Fortune in a position to rescue someone?

If you lose while you have a partner in the SNES Shiren, will you ever be able to get the partner back or are you fucked?

tanooki a cute

I mean tanuki, fuck

I started to play that a month or two ago, I should get back into it.

Too late user, now everyone knows you think tanooki's are cute

I bet you'd even admit to enjoying Dungeons of Dredmor without commiting ritual suicide to escape the humiliation, faggot.

Quality post user 10/10 would read again.

Is that the Kamehameha kid?

It is.

sage for off topic

Bumping a dead thread. p-please talk.

OK

Chocobo Dungeon looks really fucking kawaii and nice. Anyone play it?

No u babe.

I did. It's really basic, easily the baby's first mystery dungeon game.

It's got a basic inventory system and you can swap classes and each has their own abilities and stuff and stat growths, but the game is a little short, I never beat it so I dunno if it has a shitton of bonus dungeons like Shiren does.

I have played the Etrian dungeon and Pokemon rescue team games and both of them were disgustingly oversimplified versions of roguelikes. Is there any merit to this genre (specifically Shiren, that looks interesting) or is it doomed to be objectively inferior to roguelikes?

Pic related, it's POWDER for the god damn GBA.

Which one?
There was an updated rerelease of the first Shiren game on DS and a remake of the Gameboy game but that was only released in Japanese.
The first one is top tier and the second one is objectively better simply by the virtue of having more buttons.

They are essentially console roguelikes. Much more arcadey in nature than story "focused". Most enemies have gimmicks rather than just doing more damage and having more health and levelling up is not that big of an advantage making them more gear focused.
Most of the time the main campaign is actually baby shit and you don't unlock a fully featured dungeon until after you beat it.

Forgot to add that, yes, it is fun. Pretty comfy too.

That sounds cool. I'll try it out. What platforms is it on?

This is what you are looking for. It takes the best things about roguelikes and mystery dungeons, adds the best characters ever with a protag you actually root for, and holy fuck is it hard. You die so much that it is a mechanic to getting stronger. The story effortlessly flows from side splitting hilarious to "holy shit thats heavy" constantly and Pirohiko's between mission "Hero Lessons" are one of my favorite things I have ever seen in a videogame. This game is as close to perfection as a videogame can be, I honestly believe that. I'm not joking.

wut
The game practically hands out the best shit to you and the final stage bosses are just damage sponges with no gimmick immune to your abilities despite every other boss being a gimmick fight.
Its alright I guess but the voice acting and writing can get cringeworthy at times.

PS1, DS and Wii. I thiiiink the PS1 version is the first game, Wii is the loose sequel and the DS is an updated port of the Wii game, but don't quote me on that. I only own the wii game.

I did a little bit of research and it seems the ds version is jap only.

Yep. Thats why I bought it on Wii.

I had to drop that game because the localization was so god damn cringe inducing. But then again, it was a NISA localization. I should have really seen it coming.

The entire point of the game was progression, by the time you reached Darkdeath Evilman for the last time you became a badass motherfucker which is how you manage the hotblooded ending I won't ruin. I wouldn't want to ruin that feeling with extra "gimmicks" as you call them and neither did the devs I'm sure. I won't defend this game anymore because it can defend itself just fine, but all the other anons reading this need to know you're full of shit.

By the way, do you call pits you have to jump over in SMB or puzzles you have to solve in LoZ "gimmicks?" You must, with such a loose definition.

No because they are an elementary part of the gameplay unlike the gimmick bosses in case of ZHP which even the game drops during the final level.
Its a very bad roguelike because of how heavily you must grind to actually take the final boss up front. If you play it like a roguelike you would be fucking gimped as the boss will one shot you and is arbitrarily immune to every one of your abilities. Its a classic case of bad boss design as nothing you have learned or acquired can actually help you with it beyond straight up grinding.

...

Oh okay, you never played it. Gotcha.

Nice kneejerk response. What makes you think that I didn't play it? That I actually acknowledge its flaws instead of hyping it up for disappointment?

Is this intended? Did RNG just fuck me with the quest there? If it was intended, who in the world thought it was a good idea in the first place? Even though I got through it on my second attempt, getting a fucking level 55 salamence seems insane for this point in the game. Although maybe it isn't considering for some reason, it only has 30 fucking more hp than I do at level 15.

afdaf

30 HP in a game like this is a lot. In shiren you barely get around 200 total around level 30 or so, that is if you don't use special life extending stuff. It's been a while since I played pokemon but what tends to fuck you more than on on one fights is gangbanging which can kill most things.

But yeah, it sounds like you got blessed by RNG gods with that mission.

The first Shiren is absolutely worth playing if you like rougelikes. It's certainly streamlined, but that isn't a bad thing, the interesting situations are all still there.
The later games sort of became their own thing and the relationship to rougelikes made more of a historical note.