The Gamer's Quarter

[Six]

dess' summary pretty much reflects what I think about Izuna so far. I got a neat little shock near the beginning, when one of the enemies laid an egg upon dying. Upon giving it a few whacks, it hatched into another (much more powerful) monster that promptly laid the smackdown on me. Lesson learned. Other enemies in that dungeon don't try to hatch the eggs, though I wonder if they'll make an appearance later. Besides that, though, monsters have been mostly bland. In fact, everything's been kind of bland.

After a couple of false starts, I've haven't actually run into much trouble, either - and if I have, all it really takes is another run, since I'm only going into the dungeon more buffed (and usually not at a loss for equipment, since there's a talisman that can recall your weapon upon death.)

[Nana Komatsu]

[LordGek]

MOE = More of Everything?

I still can't claim it the neatest thing since sliced bread but I think, so far, I'm seeing even MORE creatures with special attacks than I did in the ALL MIGHTY Shiren!

The dungeons layouts are pretty damned boring in themselves but then again I like the several loops and roundabouts they include for folk to play "ring around the posey" with some persuing baddies.

I'm hoping there is a way to detect traps, as they are pretty annoying but at the same time I think they're damn original. I'm guessing they're undetectable so as to balance out the fact that this game doesn't have any sort of unidentified/cursed items to mess with you at random as most of the better roguelikes. Also you folk realize that the Excite trap is like the ultimate powerup pill that appears to last the entire level (lets you do double damage and might have other benefits).

[dessgeega]

[LordGek]

Well I figure I'm at least 3/4th of the way through the whole game but its hard to accurately evaluate since this final story dungeon is twice as long as the last boss dungeon and I hear pretty insane!

Overall I think I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. While the dungeon layouts are nothing that clever (usually 2-4 rooms attached by strange winding passages), I have to disagree with Dees on the monsters. I think they're pretty clever and full of character. Egg laying toads, weird wooly things that shoot bad talismans onto your objects, a strange platypus like guy who spits sticky crap on you forcing you to temporarily take off all of your equipment, etc.

Great animations but admittedly things do appear a little two dimensional at times...like how even fire elementals don't appear to have any sort of resistance to fire based attacks, or how you can easily poison a mushroom or stone golem.

Some interesting mechanics in the game. The creatures fark with you and your equipemnt but will never outright destroy (well at least not your weapons or armor) or steal stuff (at least from what I've seen so far). This game is based on buffing up your equipemnt by sticking on talimans (kind of like gems from Diablo 2), but its these buffs that seem extra suseptible to harrassment. One line of creatures, some fire based folk, love to attack you in such a way that will occassionally cause these paper talismans to simply burn off the equipment to be lost forever and another line of bastages will cause the talisman to fall off (you can just stick them back on after the fight and sometimes this is actually kind of handy since there is no easy way to take taliman off yourself in the dungeon if you wanted to now take them off to put them on a new item or otherwise shuffle stuff around). Oh, and weapons and armor do have durability issues and will eventually crack/break/shatter if not maintained back in town (very expensive with the bigger ticket items).

Also the game's interface at times is a little weak, especially in town where you can't buy or sell multiple items at a time (you need to select sell, choose the item, confirm, and repeat for each item you want to sell). Also you can't equip items or stick on talismans in town (probably some semi intentional limit on things since you only have 20 inventory slots).

More rambliongs when I can recall them...

[Mister Toups]

I think I will enjoy this game isn't that neat ^__^
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[LordGek]

I think you will too.

I'm not going to claim its a CLASSIC like some of the better Mysterious Dungeon games (like Shiren the Wanderer) but its still pretty amusing and does a number of things differently from the now pretty recycled Mysterious Dungeon line of games.

I also think its safe to say this game can get a lot more frustrating on average, than Shiren the Wanderer, but that tension is what makes these games fun.

[Fred]

I'm still playing through it, but I can echo what everyone else said.

Izuna cleaves closely to the design methodology that DS games should be easy to pick up and play, for just a few minutes here and there, and it's interesting to see that concept expressed in a dungeon crawler. Izuna is much simpler than any of the Fushigi no Dungeon games, but because you don't need to take notes or memorize names of things, you can easily break out your DS and play a floor or two on the bus, or wherever. (There's not much incentive to stay in levels longer, really, because there are a fixed number of monsters running around for you to kill unless the level has a certain kind of trap hidden there.) Besides that, the lack of "advanced mechanics"--as LordGek I think put it--makes the game run very quickly! So between those points and the fixed level size, it's hard to spend more than five or ten minutes on a level unless you're really fiddling with your inventory or grinding experience.

Likewise, if you die you can go back one dungeon and gather up new equipment and stuff, which takes about an hour for a quick run, instead of going all the way back to the beginning. You spend the same amount of time playing, in the end, and learn the same dungeon-crawling skills which will be useful for the Serious Dungeon. I think it's much better suited to the DS than Shiren, a game in which I imagine I will spend every Monday morning bus ride for a few months in that first swamp level on a new play-through, should it ever actually be released here.

Anyway, it has personality and that's okay for me, for now. (It also doesn't spend as much time ogling teenage girls as you might expect from the ads, which is fine with me!) I don't think I have time enough these days to really get into really deep video games, anyway--egad, my Nanostray high scores have been stuck at the same place for three months now at least. So I say to you, dear friends, there is a market for these watered-down crawlers and I am it. Please take up the hardcore games in my stead.

And before you do, any experiences with Izuna's Kaishin/Mikiri talismans would be most helpful! They seem like a waste of SP, compared to some of the other talismans like Hayate.

[Mister Toups]

I think the term "roguelight" is appropriate and it's exactly why I'm enjoying this game so much so far.

The game has nowhere near the depth of shiren, nor the difficulty, but it does have the basic elements which make a roguelike appealing. It's still difficult -- I've died many times -- and you still have to spend some time learning how all the talismans work, and because of the talismans and occasionally interesting enemy designs, there's a good deal of variety in how your adventures play out, forcing you to adopt different strategies depending on what sort of items you've found on that playthrough. It's still far more interesting than a traditional dungeon crawling RPG and I've found myself in several sticky situations so far. Though I doubt there will be any amazing "death stories", the game is still pretty compelling, especially thanks to the charming characters and the "uncurse the villagers" mechanic which actually does a decent job motivating you to move on. It's not the most original shtick in the world (it's been around as long as Soul Blazer and probably earlier) but it's particularly well-used here, I think.

For someone who cut their teeth on Shiren the Wanderer this game may not be too enjoyable, but for someone like me who found that game too intimidating and overwhelming, this game is a good way to get familiarized with the genre and still be exposed to all the basic elements of it. I figure after playing this game through I'll be ready for a more "serious" roguelike like shiren.

It's worth noting that leveling up only permanently increases your HP, so it basically just gives you some extra cushion time to formulate a strategy once you get stuck in a tight spot.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[Shapermc]

Hey, so how long does it take to get to the "reset level to level 1 at death" dungeon?

If it's less than 10 hours, I'm getting this.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[LordGek]

I think most folk are at least getting to the big final story dungeon in a couple of days of play, but I think this one dungeon might be a day of play or so to finally get through (not sure though). I personally am in the midst of the final story dungeon after maybe 30 hours of play, but am sure I could have gone through quicker if I was trying to be all efficient.

Leveling increases your damage dealing, hps, and sp.

[Shapermc]

Yeah, I gave up on Pokemon MD around the 35 hour point because I still hadn't reached a level resetting dungeon. I think I'll hold out on Izuna for a while. P:MD still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[LordGek]

While the main story might not last long, it moves quickly and keeps you on edge whereas PMD just dragged on and on. Not even really ramping up in difficulty that much but just stretched out artificially in many ways, I feel.

I think the heart of all of these games is the classic balance of items vs. the empty handed character. In PMD the equipemnt was pretty meaningless as you primarily relied on your poke abilities to get you through. In this game, like Shiren the Wanderer, you have no intrinsic abilities and need to rely almost entirely on your equipment...although even entering this final story dungeon empty handed isn't immediate doom if high enough leveled since the latest dungeon will always have the greatest variety of stuff.

[LordGek]

The "new game smell" has finally worn off a game I so much WANTED to like.

I finally beat the story mode, unlocked the TRUE roguelike dungeon I'd waited so long to see and now get that this can never be a true classic in the same way as the better Mysterious Dungeon games were, at least to me, for two kind of weird but still meaningful reasons:

1) No Scoreboard!
I don't mind having an impossible dungeon I might never complete ahead of me...but without some sort of scoreboard to gloat over the times I made it all the way to the 25th level once, it just feels so empty and pointless to me.

2) No Metagame Left Anymore!
While I far prefer these "Going in with Nothing" dungeons in my Roguelikes, I also kind of liked in games like Shiren and Torneko that there were dungeons I could actually use all of this stuff I somehow snuck out of the big end dungeon. So after a zillion futile runs in the "Going in with Nothing" dungeon I could assemble a set of some of the better equipemnt and make a stab at one of the "No Chance Unless Fully Equipped" dungeons and see how far I could get. This alone gave my normally futile runs a little more purpose...like sure I died on the tenth level but I was able to send back to base some pretty cool loot right before I died. In Izuna I was already 99th level nad had already beat its biggest equipped dungeon. I could still try to beat the Gods but there won't be any scoreboard to gloat over if I do and I'll still have to wade through 5-40 levels of completely meaniningless cake walk shit to get to these interesting parts. Bah.

[Nana Komatsu]

One of my coworkers posted a link to a roguelike he's working on in his spare time. You can check it out here, but I'm pretty sure it will only work in Firefox 1.5 or higher for now:

http://andrewwooldridge.com/canvas/canvasquest/canvasquest.html

This probably looks really simple, but the exciting part is that this is done completely in Javascript and using the <canvas> tag. It's not flash or a Java applet or anything like that, and so while you might think it's boring, I find it really exciting.
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[Bulkor]

So, uh, it's OK to talk about the old Shiren still, right? I finally beat the main dungeon. Mostly by being lucky; I started out in the same room as the stairs for the last three floors and had a blank scroll on me for the boss. I'd honestly thought that run was just going to be a wash and had sent most of my good items home via warehouse pot. Hooray for beating the game with a club+2 and an iron shield-2, both cursed.

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

Would it be impossible to play the Japanese DS version, with perhaps an English FAQ? I ask because I hate playing ROMs on my laptop, and I don't feel like horning over $80 to TOTOTEK for a flash card.

Also, hi everybody.

[Shapermc]

It depends on how dedicated you are. You could probably memorize the majority of things by the look of the kanji alone, but you'll probably need the FAQ at arms reach anyways.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

I figure that if I tape a thing with all the status effects and common words translated to the bottom of my DS, I'll be OK.

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

Wow, that avatar is way huger than I thought.

[dessgeega]

there's a new mobile shiren. it has a spectator mode (i.e. watch other people play shiren through the magic of cellular communications).
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[LordGek]

Any clue if there is an English version in the works? There already have been a few Mysterious Dungeon games for Cell Phones. Shiren, Yangus, maybe even a Torneko (but not super sure on the last one).

[dessgeega]

[dessgeega]

hello.
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[Shapermc]

OH GOD FINALLY! YES!!!!

This will finally get me back into the game, and thank god. I felt terrible about leaving the game, but I just can't play game on my PC.

EDIT: That's a brilliant post right after the one before it.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dessgeega]

to be fair, the question was about the cell phone version.

so bleah.
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[extrabastardformula]

and now the ebgames page is down, and I preordered yesterday in my excitement
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[LordGek]

Just found this for a bit more info on this upcoming Shiren 3 on the Wii.
http://wii.ign.com/articles/817/817907p1.html

A quick sum up (courtesy of Go Nintendo):

- release in 2008 (in Japan, no clue if we'll ever see it)
- main char is Shiren. Coppa and Asuka included as well
- Shiren’s Sensei will be a character
- new monsters (30 new types!)
- items can change in a new system called “equipment development system”
- place items in certain areas of dungeons, and they will change in a number of turns
- roughly 30 types of dungeons

It sounds to me like they may be taking a lot from the Asuka Shiren games (on Dreamcast and PC) for this one which would be VERY cool! Many neat new dungeon types and a lot more items then in Shiren DS.

[dessgeega]

i don't know how i feel about vaguely realistic-looking character models in a roguelike. it'd be awkward to see these huge polygon models running around a tiny grid, and if they decide to make animations fluid instead of punchy, that could seriously slow the pace of the game.
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[LordGek]

[Fred]

[dessgeega]

footage of shiren 3. the characters animate more smoothly than i expected, but i still don't think the more "realistic" look is as strong as the cartoony sprites of the original game. the background looks bland.
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[Swimmy]

What's the news on Shiren DS localization? Gamestop and EB have off-and-on pages for it, citing February or Q1 of 2008 as a release. IGN maintains that it's Japan-only. I can't find any official announcements anywhere.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

[Swimmy]

Kinda speechless!

. . . So awesome! Only four or five years ago this couldn't have happened. I don't know what happened, but somewhere down the road, all those awesome Japanese games I frowned at and said, "That'll never get ported to the states" started getting ported to the states.
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[LordGek]

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

[getter77]

I still keep hope alive that the N64 and Dreamcast Shiren games will one day have an English release of some sort or another.

Best I made it awhile back, franticly over the corpses of all 3 of my NPC buddies(they made it all possible when they'd gang up on stuff), was the cave past the 3rd town. MInotaurs.....are not to be trifled with.

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

Reserved this game today! I had to explain to the cashier what the game was about, so I said "look up Nethack," but that's probably a poor explanation. Closest explanation I can geive without looking like as much of a dork as he is, though he'd probably like that (?).

[Shapermc]

Huh! I didn't know you could reserve it in stores. They sometimes don't get those smaller releases.

Anyways, yeah, don't bother explaining niche titles with other niche titles. You should have said it's like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Then it might have actually gotten a few more sales, and it wouldn't have been a lie.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

Man, "Pokemon Mystery Dungeon" sounds even worse than Nethack.

[Shapermc]

Yeah, but the kidz love the pokeymans
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[jjsimpso]

The official US site for Shiren the Wanderer DS is now open! It looks like this is really going to happen!

http://www.sega.com/games/game_temp.php?game=mysterydungeon&lid=gp_mysterydungeon&lpos=hp_gamelist

[dessgeega]

an overview of the tweaks to the ds version of the game, courtesy broco at selectbutton.
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[LordGek]

Hey Gang,

The same month Shiren DS finally hits us we will also see Baroque for the PS2/Wii!

While not Chunsoft, its a real-time futuristic/horror themed roguelike with some KEY Mysterious Dungeon like aspects:

1) Character's level resets to 1 every timer you re-enter the tower.
2) Death means you lose all of your carried items.
3) Game has a high score board.
4) Your character can't just warp back to town to heal up...your are in it for the long haul until you beat the tower or die trying.
5) Your character is continuously losing vitality and monsters will respawn slower and slower on a given level which, in turn, kind of like food in an MD game, keeps you moving ever onward and not simply grinding experience safely on some early tower level.
6) In a blatant tip of the hat to Shiren, some aspects are only unlocked AFTER you have died a few times.

[squidlarkin]

Oh shit, that's getting localized? The psx version was fascinating but full of scary kanji.

[LordGek]

[daphaknee]

hey i recently realized that there are more game genres than music genres and roguelikes are one of those genres

im playign adom
im addicted
omg dying is awesome


why is this genre of games so hidden>?

[Scratchmonkey]

Probably because most of the people who play roguelikes are best described by the term "Scandinavian sysadmin". Or at least there were an unreal number of those in the hardcore Angband community, all rocking the fedora and black reeboks.

Seriously, the answer is probably: graphics. They're also unusually punitive as games go.