Mystery Dungeon – Shiren the Wanderer

Game Diary / April 6, 2008 / John / 2

This is probably the best game I’ve played on the DS to date, but it would have worked just as well on the GBA. In fact, given that I’ve been happily playing this game in rogue/hack/nethack/angband/zangband form for near enough twenty years, I’m pretty sure it would work just as well on any platform you care to mention.

Simply put, Mystery Dungeon is a roguelike. This means it’s a completely turn based (and by that, I mean everything is turn based, not just the combat) dungeon crawler where the dungeons are randomly generated. It also features the permanent death (with a few exceptions) system that appears in all other roguelikes. The exceptions are that you have the facility to store items in various warehouses throughout the dungeons so those items are available for future incarnations of yourself. You can also request a rescue from someone on your friends list, so they can go on an adventure to recover your stuff and then send you a revive scroll. Other than that, though – if your HP falls to zero, it’s back to level one with no items. And that’s the way it should be.

This type of playstyle leads to the careful planning that other roguelikes involve, such as levelling up a weapon over many sessions but not carrying it with you (keeping it in the warehouse), but instead keeping it for a future uberrun. It also encourages some defensive planning – last night I wandered into a room where there was an enemy on every tile. I didn’t have any sleep or AoE scrolls, and so died very quickly. I’ll make sure I have a scroll in future.

Reading reviews of this game don’t give you an idea of what it’s like – the reviews I’ve read are conclusive proof that the reviewers just don’t get the genre (IGN 6.5/10, GameSpot 6/10) and their repeated moans about the “lack of save function” reveals that they think the point is to get to the end of the story, not to master the dungeon. It’s telling that the reader reviews for both those sites are 8/10 and 8.5/10 respectively.

One reviewer in particular came out with the following:

ChunSoft certainly has managed to get the randomization thing down, but that just makes the entire dungeon experience hit-or-miss. Random does not equal good. Far too often the dungeon’s exit would appear in the same room we started (or even in the very next space), thus negating any need to explore that floor.

This is, I think, all the evidence needed that the reviewer is either 12 years old, has never played anything except Final Fantasy, or has completely missed the point of Mystery Dungeon.

Anyway, as roguelikes go, it sacrifices the complexity of Zangband for the action of Nethack. It’s awesomely good. So far, my character has reached level 8 before the aforemention roomful of monsters. Another humiliating death was caused on Pegasus Ridge – don’t let the spirit of the evil bloke get into a Rice Changer. It turns the Rice Changer into a Rice Boss who, in turn, turns you into a Rice Cake and kills you. Not pretty.

John

UNIX geek, wannabe cook, musician, book-lover, and all round good-guy.