One Game, One Day, One Year - 43 (MD:StW)
Cute, challenging, and wacky it may be, but make no mistake; this game does not love you.
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for the DS, developed and published by ChunSoft.
In a long series of games featuring randomly generated levels, MD:StW revolves around Shiren and his friend, the talking ferret named Koppa, as they seek to find the home of the Golden Condor. It is said that the condor lives atop a mountain along with the city of gold, El Dorado, but no one has ever reached those dizzying heights.
It should tip you off immediately that the randomly generated levels can be both boon and bane for the player, as wonderous items can be found amongst the wandering monsters.
The lower screen offers navigation through the labyrinth either by D-Pad or Stylus (D-Pad is way easier) along with a superimposed updating map. Yeah, the floating map is a bit of an eyesore, but under certain conditions it can show enemies, items, and hidden traps, which means you'll really want to see the details. The upper sceen shows the overall progress through the game you've made.
Along the way, you'll find people exploring the same levels, and just like in real life, some of them are jerks. This guy? He's recalling a tale of helping a gal who lost her sight. It's generally good to help people, right? Well, no, as I quickly discover when this horrid, horrid woman walks up to me and blinds me! I stumble along the labyrinth, fall into a trap which causes me to drop items out of my inventory. That would be bad enough, but apparently there was a monster right next to me which started to claw my face off. After a few wild swings, I kill the critter, level up, and my suddenly my eyesight is restored. The woman, naturally, is nowhere to be seen. All in all, I got really lucky.
Monsters aren't the only thing you'll have to contend with. Your inventory is limited to two pages of ten items each. Since you'll have a weapon, shield, armlet, riceball, and an herb on hand as basic essential equipment, that's one quarter of your total inventory used. Furthermore, items you find in the levels aren't immediately identified for you. See how the Polearm in in yellow text? That means I have no idea whether or not it has bonuses, is cursed, or whatever, and only by visiting a town will I know what the exact traits are. This becomes highly problematic when I find an unknown staff; it could be a Knockback Staff, a Sleep Staff, or a Transformation Staff. A risky venture, sure, but these can also save your life.
Take the image above for example; the white thing is a Chintala, a low level critter, while the snake thing is a Snaky, a serious threat at my level. The game takes 'turns' in that after I move, swing a sword, eat an herb, or some other sort of action, the enemies then move, attack, or whatnot. This means that you can sort of plan out how each turn will go. Here, I swing my sword to let them approach one square, which is the range of my polearm. I kill the Chintala, but the Snaky hits me quite hard. I swing an unknown staff at the monster, which turns it from a strong snake-man to a Fire Tank, which is a tank made out of wood that shoots fire. You'd think this was a self-resolving issue, but no. I quickly became a smoldering pile of ash, and was returned to the first town as a first level character without ANY equipment. Ouch.
The game does offer the ability to send out a 'call for help' wirelessly to your friends which would save your character from such a harse fate, but they must own a copy of the gameand be able to connect to your DS to do so. As I had no such back-up, I frequently faced infuriatingly zany deaths by monsters.
I'm aware that I'm making this game sound really unbearable, and it sort of is, but it's not to say that it doesn't have its charms. The music is good, the writing and dialogue is okay, and the allies you can acquire certainly make things easier. Just accept that you'll die a lot and play along. You'll get a good laugh out of it.
Is it worth playing now? Yes, but don't take it too seriously. Events beyond your control can greatly impact your progress, so just roll with the punches.
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for the DS, developed and published by ChunSoft.
In a long series of games featuring randomly generated levels, MD:StW revolves around Shiren and his friend, the talking ferret named Koppa, as they seek to find the home of the Golden Condor. It is said that the condor lives atop a mountain along with the city of gold, El Dorado, but no one has ever reached those dizzying heights.
It should tip you off immediately that the randomly generated levels can be both boon and bane for the player, as wonderous items can be found amongst the wandering monsters.
The lower screen offers navigation through the labyrinth either by D-Pad or Stylus (D-Pad is way easier) along with a superimposed updating map. Yeah, the floating map is a bit of an eyesore, but under certain conditions it can show enemies, items, and hidden traps, which means you'll really want to see the details. The upper sceen shows the overall progress through the game you've made.
Along the way, you'll find people exploring the same levels, and just like in real life, some of them are jerks. This guy? He's recalling a tale of helping a gal who lost her sight. It's generally good to help people, right? Well, no, as I quickly discover when this horrid, horrid woman walks up to me and blinds me! I stumble along the labyrinth, fall into a trap which causes me to drop items out of my inventory. That would be bad enough, but apparently there was a monster right next to me which started to claw my face off. After a few wild swings, I kill the critter, level up, and my suddenly my eyesight is restored. The woman, naturally, is nowhere to be seen. All in all, I got really lucky.
Monsters aren't the only thing you'll have to contend with. Your inventory is limited to two pages of ten items each. Since you'll have a weapon, shield, armlet, riceball, and an herb on hand as basic essential equipment, that's one quarter of your total inventory used. Furthermore, items you find in the levels aren't immediately identified for you. See how the Polearm in in yellow text? That means I have no idea whether or not it has bonuses, is cursed, or whatever, and only by visiting a town will I know what the exact traits are. This becomes highly problematic when I find an unknown staff; it could be a Knockback Staff, a Sleep Staff, or a Transformation Staff. A risky venture, sure, but these can also save your life.
Take the image above for example; the white thing is a Chintala, a low level critter, while the snake thing is a Snaky, a serious threat at my level. The game takes 'turns' in that after I move, swing a sword, eat an herb, or some other sort of action, the enemies then move, attack, or whatnot. This means that you can sort of plan out how each turn will go. Here, I swing my sword to let them approach one square, which is the range of my polearm. I kill the Chintala, but the Snaky hits me quite hard. I swing an unknown staff at the monster, which turns it from a strong snake-man to a Fire Tank, which is a tank made out of wood that shoots fire. You'd think this was a self-resolving issue, but no. I quickly became a smoldering pile of ash, and was returned to the first town as a first level character without ANY equipment. Ouch.
The game does offer the ability to send out a 'call for help' wirelessly to your friends which would save your character from such a harse fate, but they must own a copy of the gameand be able to connect to your DS to do so. As I had no such back-up, I frequently faced infuriatingly zany deaths by monsters.
I'm aware that I'm making this game sound really unbearable, and it sort of is, but it's not to say that it doesn't have its charms. The music is good, the writing and dialogue is okay, and the allies you can acquire certainly make things easier. Just accept that you'll die a lot and play along. You'll get a good laugh out of it.
Is it worth playing now? Yes, but don't take it too seriously. Events beyond your control can greatly impact your progress, so just roll with the punches.