The Gamer's Quarter

[Lackey]

Doesn't Dungeon Hack have permadeath?
_________________
| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[LordGek]

Yes, the Ironman Mode, Okay, touche.

I personally, however, already have a lot of issues with the Rogulikes with the WAY TOO HANDY TOWNS, like in Diablo. When the going gets tough just warp out instantly and buy and endless supply of health potions. Bah! What I loved about Nethack and Shiren the Wanderer, is that you REALLY had to rely on what you could scavenge, for the most part, and while there amy be somke stores on the way, you never knew what you'd find and their stocks were very limited.

[LordGek]

[Sushi d]

i am loving how dangerous some of the new enemies are.

in my last run i was pwned by 2 of the new enemies around the 9th or 10th floor.

the first being an exploding land-sea-urchin-thing that after dying explodes like a mine. and then i was quickly dispatched about 15-20 turns later by powerful man-tiger-thing.

it adds a bit of variety.

but yeah.. is it just me or are the floors the towns are on are lesser than the ones in shiren? maybe they might of added a few levels or something.
_________________
X_X

[LordGek]

Seen any new items yet?

So what are you thinking of the unlimited Fei's Puzzle rounds? Are you able to get your initial character incredibly equipped from the get go or have they toned down the potential rewards?

[Shapermc]

Izuna:Legend of the Unemployed Ninja
Release Date: Q1 2007
Publisher: Atlus USA
Developer: Ninja Studio

Just got the most recent issue of Play with a review of this roguelike. The magazine only gave it a 6.5 but who cares, I'm pretty sure this thread wants to know one thing:

"It is here that the separation between those who will enjoy this game and those who will absolutely hit it begins, all thanks to what happens when you die. Upon death, everything you were carrying with you is lost, unless special precautions were taken beforehand. This means that, one bad turn of luck when dealing with a particular dungeon's creatures, and everything you've worked so hard to collect could all be gone in the blink of an eye."

SO, my initial excitement upon reading this has me now reading it a little better and it says nothing about your level getting reset. Either way, this is enough for me to move from "wait and see" to "pre-order because its an Atlus game"
_________________
“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]

[Shapermc]

OH
_________________
“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]

so, i recently discovered that there's a shiren monsters football/soccer game for the gameboy advance. it seems totally inexplicable, since shiren isn't pokemon, which makes its existance all the more amazing.

it's essentially three-on-three football with enemies from shiren. it's played out on a rather small 3d field with a rotating camera. you control one character directly, the others play by themselves - pressing select will swap which character you control.

my team, the bean bandits*, just celebrated a victory over japan. my forward is a debuta, who charges through enemies and does a little huffy puffy victory dance when it scores a goal, and my goalkeeper is a daikon who poisons the enemy players with herbs. japan's team is composed entirely of possessed drawers.

* okay, i couldn't actually fit the whole name within the space they give you.

there's actually a lot of robust team management stuff which means nothing to me since i don't know anything about the sport. and there's some captain tsubasa-esque graphic novel stuff between the matches for good measure. it's some kind of something and i should probably spend some more time with it.

BONUS: box scan.


_________________

[LordGek]

Yep, came out at the same time as Torneko 3 GBA. Was almost curious but couldn't find enough decent FAQs to make it a viable purchase for me.

[dessgeega]

also jeff garneau has posted impressions of shiren ds over at selectbutton.
_________________

[LordGek]

Cool to finally see a review and I'm liking some of these new creatures...but the ability to go back up stairs....owwww. This means you can just regenerate any given level ENDLESSLY w/o any need to proceed onward to nasty depth as you desperately search for food. I hope the game has built in some way to limit the abuse this could open up.

Actually, there are some stair disguised folk (if I translated some captions from teh webpage right way back), I think, sort of like stair mimics that might balance this a bit.

[Shapermc]

[LordGek]

[Shapermc]

That's a fair worry. I see you're point! Touche!
_________________
“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!"

[Harveyjames]

I like something about that artwork. It's all colourful and happy and shiny and yet somehow doesn't make me want to throw up. That's a hard act to pull off!

[LordGek]

Perhaps once you get to THE TRUE POINT OF THE GAME, Fei's Ultimate Puzzle, they'll cut out all of that ability to re-vist a previous level.

[SpooN]

I suddenly got an idea. An idea big enough to make me register! Though I didn't think it would deserve it's own thread..

The time has come for A ROGUELIKE MMO!!!1!!1!!

Ok, the basic idea is that you still force your way through random dungeons but besides normal monsters you have to fight other players as well.
There would be a timer that determines when you go to the next stage (where go means INSTANT FORCED TELEPORT). If you get a level up that time decreases, if you pick up a strong item that time decreases, too. There are also occasions where that time increases, for example when your health drops (minor increasement) or special items.
Of course could you team up with the other players and kill only critter, but: they don't give as much exp and you have to become strong in time or otherwise you will die pretty fast later on and you also don't know if your "buddy" is with you once you reach the next stage (random teleportation).
In this concept is enough space for all the random/unfair goodness of regular roguelikes, though it would have to be real time because I don't see how it could work otherwise.

I could talk about all the (ingenious) possible features I have in mind right now but I feel I already wrote too much.

[EDIT]: Mmmh, some features are worth to be mentioned: You can quit and continue at the same point with the same stats etc. later on when you are ported but once you die you lose all your levels/items.
Some things should be permanently but they would give you only little advantage (reach lvl 99 -> 5% faster walk permanently but only once).

Right now I think that somebody will steal my idea and will get the richest man in the world with it!11!!

Please excuse my english etc.

[LordGek]

[Shapermc]

Is this the same SpooN who use to post at TNL?
_________________
“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!"

[ApM]

So I finally got around to playing Shiren DS for about an hour last night. Jeff Garneau is better qualified to talk about the little gameplay tweaks than me.

However, one thing that really struck me was how faithful it is to the SNES game, in terms of setting. If it weren't for all the little tweaks, you could say it was a straight-up port. Same characters in the same places in the same towns, with the same music playing in the background. It's wonderful. It makes Impasse Valley feel like a place that I'm just coming back to visit again.

Sure wish I could read Japanese, though, since so much of the game's charm is found in your changing relationships with NPCs between deaths.

[LordGek]

[LordGek]

Hey Gang,

It finally showed up just a couple of days ago!

Using this FAQ for the original (made well before the release of the English patch):
http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/file/fuurai_no_shiren.txt

and having made it thorugh most of Asuka Shiren, Torneko 3, and PMD in Japanese, this is clear enough.

So far, while neat to have THE POWER OF SHIREN THE WANDERER handheld, I did quickly notice the two MAJOR wussifications (I think both already mentioned here):

1) Ability to take on as many of Fei's Puzzles as you want at a time in any order, even ones you have already completed, to get random prizes. So pick an early simple puzzle and replay it ad-nauseum to get an endless supply of FREE LOOT. I can only hope you never actually can get real rare items, so far they've just been pretty minor bits.

2) New option to take the level exits UP OR DOWN. So very easy to simply jump back and forth between safe levels, even more painful I saw you could use it to re-visit that store between levels 4 and 5 to see it all re-stocked with a new array of random stuff (although you can't advance the Pei story by revisiting like this, so those characters storyline deals will still take multiple lives).

Oh, and now a question for the TRUE Shiren Veterans here, trying to figure out if these things are new:

1) Man-Tigers: Burly brutes that toss folk around (you into other monsters, other monsters into you, and if like Shiren Asuka, you into exposed traps).

2) Mobile Blacksmith: Mr. town blacksmith now wnaders the dungeon and can enchant stuff for the busy adventurer on the go for 1,000 gitan.

[Nana Komatsu]

It seems that Izuna for the DS is a roguelike as well. This is exciting news!

[dessgeega]

i hear it's going to be easy-type though. no experience reset at death. boo!

any word on how relevent girl-girl groping is to the plot?



yuck.
_________________

[Pijaibros]

As much as I don't want to, I'm still going to buy Izuna anyway

[Harveyjames]

I didn't think they advertised games like that any more. That is some shit.

[LordGek]

If we're to believe that interview with the developer, by the end its more about your equipment than level. I also had it from some guy who's RPG skills I respect that it DOES get nasty by the end complete with baddies that can steal or destroy your precious equipment (something you know they'd never dare in Diablo or most of its clones).

[Pijaibros]

Diablo II had Ethereal stuff which was always a heartbreaker for when you end up with what you originally perceived to finally be a stroke of luck.

If going up in Level is very minimal like +1 to a random stat then yeah I can see it still being hard.

Still, pocket roguelike is always welcome and if I keep buying them and spreading the word eventually more will be brought over. At least that is the hope I keep with my "voting with my dollars" mentality.

[LordGek]

Yeah, anybody have a clue if PMD sold that well here in the US? Nintendo ACTUALLY promoted/hyped it and everything. While not even close to a favorite of the Roguelike cosole games out so far, if it sold decently we MIGHT see many more of these.

[Shapermc]

Yes, combined (DS and GBA) they had sold nearly 1mil before Xmas.
_________________
“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]

jeremy parish words thing about izuna. no experience reset = bad. "possible sapphic overtones" = maybe good, probably bad. though it does make me want to see how it turns out. that ad doesn't encourage me. though i might be getting a ds flash device, which means it'll have to compete with dungeon crawl. and what can?

though it also means i'll be able to try to game before spending money on it. so i guess i'm going to be playing this then.
_________________

[Pijaibros]

[Six]

[CamusSirius]

Thank you LordGek for all the info before.
Sorry, I too thought this was closed.


After reading a few of the messages posted, I see that some people might be looking for some real challenge on these FND games.

I come from an old Japanese ranking website where Fushigino Dungeon players discuss their tactics.
Some of the challenges that the residents in that site have made are really crazy.
I am sure they may interest some of you who feel that Fei's last dungeon is easy.

Just to give you a couple examples in the Super Family Computer version of
Shiren the Wanderer Game:
Try surviving from the 99th floor of the Bufu (food god) Dungeon. (difficulty level B)
This is the dungeon with all the meat.
Try surviving from the 99th floor of the Kakejikuura (trap) Dungeon (difficulty level A-)

Everything gets extremely difficult from the 36th floor where any of the
monsters can kill you with one strike, that is, if you do not have any
shield on. Even with a regular shield, 2 strikes usually are enough to give you over 250 damage.

Note that the disposable shield does not get weaker when it is used while Shiren has eaten some meat.

Let me know if anyone is interested in more difficult challenges!

[LordGek]

[CamusSirius]

[LordGek]

[Shapermc]

I'm starting to get really angry that these games aren't in english in the US.
_________________
“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]

[CamusSirius]

[LordGek]

[CamusSirius]

[LordGek]

[dessgeega]

so i don't know if anyone's seen this, but there's apparently a remake of the original rogue for the ps2 in development.

the woman character uses magic and bows and arrows and the boy hits things with swords! oh boy!

so yeah, they have the rogue license (and the original japanese translator, apparently), but they're clearly adding stuff to the point where it seems more roguelike than rogue. judging from the screenshots the dungeon levels are enormous compared to the original's nine-room floors. so how will it compare to more contemporary console roguelikes like chunsoft's titles?
_________________

[Mister Toups]

[dessgeega]

they got the license!

and the translator!

and there's a page on the official website devoted to the original rogue.
_________________

[dessgeega]

okay, actually i think i made up the part about the license. i'm not even sure how that would work.
_________________

[LordGek]

[CamusSirius]