After my initial post about fighting games, I started to lose interest and motivation right away (lol surprise /sarcasm) and instead of talking about fighting games when I wish I could be playing them, I found other things to waste my time on. So since a couple of my friends have been streaming on NicoNico, I decided to stream as well so I could practice my Japanese and play Shiren 5 at the same time. If you want to watch, you can join my community here. Due to the time difference between America and Japan. I generally play really late at night or really early in the morning. If there’s enough interest or if I have feel motivated enough, I’ll start writing about Shiren 5 instead.
I will briefly introduce Shiren and roguelikes and try to go over anything that’s super important. Since this is probably going to be pretty long as the game is very different now, I’ll just write about the two new biggest features which are the Day/Night system and Point Shop system and save the other new features and my criticism and comments for another time. Since I plunged straight in without doing any research whatsoever, it took me about 12 hours of playtime and talking with people on NicoNico to learn everything that was needed to properly play the game. If you don’t get something, just ask in the comments.
For those of you who don’t know what Shiren is, it’s “Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer,” which is Japan’s roguelike series, and its most well-known incarnation is probably Shiren 2 which came out on the SNES in ‘95 and was ported to the DS in ‘06. There’s also Shiren 3 for the Wii and both the games I just mentioned have English localizations. And for those of you who don’t know what a roguelike is, it’s a turn-based RPG where the dungeons are mostly randomly generated and you typically lose all your levels and items when you die. The enjoyment comes from the sense of adventure since no run is ever the same as another one and there’s always something new to learn.
Now the first and most important feature I want to talk about is the Point Card system which was ironically the last feature I found out about. The Point Card system is a system that allows you to accumulate currency that cannot be lost upon death and is separate from the usual currency which are Gitans. You can accumulate points by stepping on Point Traps which aren’t actually traps since they don’t do anything bad to you but they will appear as traps on the map and unlike real traps, they are completely visible right off the bat. To accumulate points, you must be in possession of a Point Card and it must not be in a pot. If you lose your Point Card, it will cost 1000 gitans to replace it.
You can exchange your points through the Point Shop for useful key items such as the “Once Again Herb”, “Holding Pot [5]”, and the “Melding Pot.” The “Once Again Herb” is a herb that, upon death, allows you to revive with full HP or escape back to town with everything you’re holding. For those who don’t know what a “Holding Pot [5]” is, it’s a pot that can carry up to five items which is key as inventory space in Shiren is extremely limited. If you don’t have pots, you won’t be able to hold very much. The “Melding Pot” is a pot that allows you to combine similar items into one item which lets you stack upgrades or abilities on your armor or you can combine magic wands to combine all their charges together. So by using points, you can effectively keep all your items upon death and keep making your weapon and shield stronger until your equipment is strong enough to handle the more difficult dungeons.
Next is the day and night system which was was introduced in Shiren 4 and was part of the game right from the start but in Shiren 5, you have to clear three mini-dungeons before you will get to encounter it. If you’ve played any other Shirens before, then that’s the daytime experience, and the gameplay is mostly the same. But when it becomes nighttime, the game completely changes. For starters, you practically can’t see anything without a torch and if you don’t have a torch, you are probably screwed because you won’t be able to find the staircase to the next floor unless you stand right next to it and you won’t even be able to read a scroll.
But you will mostly be screwed because all the monsters become incredibly strong at night and from my experience, they will most likely kill you in just one hit or maybe cast some incredibly obnoxious spell and you’ll die anyways. However, just like you, they won’t be able to see very well either! Unfortunately that also means monster will start attacking other monsters and whenever a monster kills anything in Shiren, it WILL level up, even if it only killed a little girl. When a monster levels up in Shiren, it doesn’t just level up in stats but also in appearance which pretty means it just evolved into a stronger monster like a Pikachu becoming a Raichu so it really just gained like 10 levels and it’s usual ability got even more stupid.
Also not only will the monsters literally evolve off of killing each other and will do rather fatal amounts of damage to you, but your physical attacks will do practically nothing to them. However what you can do is cast spells! Shiren can learn spells now! However he can only have up to like ten spells and once you use one, you can't use it agaun until the next floor. I haven’t advanced far enough to know if you’ll be able to hold more spells later on, but for the hard part of the story adventure, it seems that you’re limited to ten spells per floor.
All of this means that unlike daytime, you won’t want to farm and go around killing every monster for exp and searching every nook and cranny for items. Instead, you will want to advance through the dungeon as quickly as possible. You may also run into the problem of possibly advancing through the dungeon too quickly and finding yourself underleveled or undergeared as the monsters will gradually get stronger and harder...
I will briefly introduce Shiren and roguelikes and try to go over anything that’s super important. Since this is probably going to be pretty long as the game is very different now, I’ll just write about the two new biggest features which are the Day/Night system and Point Shop system and save the other new features and my criticism and comments for another time. Since I plunged straight in without doing any research whatsoever, it took me about 12 hours of playtime and talking with people on NicoNico to learn everything that was needed to properly play the game. If you don’t get something, just ask in the comments.
For those of you who don’t know what Shiren is, it’s “Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer,” which is Japan’s roguelike series, and its most well-known incarnation is probably Shiren 2 which came out on the SNES in ‘95 and was ported to the DS in ‘06. There’s also Shiren 3 for the Wii and both the games I just mentioned have English localizations. And for those of you who don’t know what a roguelike is, it’s a turn-based RPG where the dungeons are mostly randomly generated and you typically lose all your levels and items when you die. The enjoyment comes from the sense of adventure since no run is ever the same as another one and there’s always something new to learn.
Now the first and most important feature I want to talk about is the Point Card system which was ironically the last feature I found out about. The Point Card system is a system that allows you to accumulate currency that cannot be lost upon death and is separate from the usual currency which are Gitans. You can accumulate points by stepping on Point Traps which aren’t actually traps since they don’t do anything bad to you but they will appear as traps on the map and unlike real traps, they are completely visible right off the bat. To accumulate points, you must be in possession of a Point Card and it must not be in a pot. If you lose your Point Card, it will cost 1000 gitans to replace it.
You can exchange your points through the Point Shop for useful key items such as the “Once Again Herb”, “Holding Pot [5]”, and the “Melding Pot.” The “Once Again Herb” is a herb that, upon death, allows you to revive with full HP or escape back to town with everything you’re holding. For those who don’t know what a “Holding Pot [5]” is, it’s a pot that can carry up to five items which is key as inventory space in Shiren is extremely limited. If you don’t have pots, you won’t be able to hold very much. The “Melding Pot” is a pot that allows you to combine similar items into one item which lets you stack upgrades or abilities on your armor or you can combine magic wands to combine all their charges together. So by using points, you can effectively keep all your items upon death and keep making your weapon and shield stronger until your equipment is strong enough to handle the more difficult dungeons.
Next is the day and night system which was was introduced in Shiren 4 and was part of the game right from the start but in Shiren 5, you have to clear three mini-dungeons before you will get to encounter it. If you’ve played any other Shirens before, then that’s the daytime experience, and the gameplay is mostly the same. But when it becomes nighttime, the game completely changes. For starters, you practically can’t see anything without a torch and if you don’t have a torch, you are probably screwed because you won’t be able to find the staircase to the next floor unless you stand right next to it and you won’t even be able to read a scroll.
But you will mostly be screwed because all the monsters become incredibly strong at night and from my experience, they will most likely kill you in just one hit or maybe cast some incredibly obnoxious spell and you’ll die anyways. However, just like you, they won’t be able to see very well either! Unfortunately that also means monster will start attacking other monsters and whenever a monster kills anything in Shiren, it WILL level up, even if it only killed a little girl. When a monster levels up in Shiren, it doesn’t just level up in stats but also in appearance which pretty means it just evolved into a stronger monster like a Pikachu becoming a Raichu so it really just gained like 10 levels and it’s usual ability got even more stupid.
Also not only will the monsters literally evolve off of killing each other and will do rather fatal amounts of damage to you, but your physical attacks will do practically nothing to them. However what you can do is cast spells! Shiren can learn spells now! However he can only have up to like ten spells and once you use one, you can't use it agaun until the next floor. I haven’t advanced far enough to know if you’ll be able to hold more spells later on, but for the hard part of the story adventure, it seems that you’re limited to ten spells per floor.
All of this means that unlike daytime, you won’t want to farm and go around killing every monster for exp and searching every nook and cranny for items. Instead, you will want to advance through the dungeon as quickly as possible. You may also run into the problem of possibly advancing through the dungeon too quickly and finding yourself underleveled or undergeared as the monsters will gradually get stronger and harder...
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