Shiren the Wanderer
May. 7th, 2012 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroShiren is a, um, wanderer looking for the legendary City of the Sun in this Mysterious Dungeon roguelike. The game was made by Chun Soft, the same people as Taloon's Great Adventure, with most of the same graphics and systems. And it was fan-translated by the good folks at Aeon Genesis, who did a professional-level job.
Just to be clear on the roguelike thing: Top-down view, single-character, turn-based everything, randomly-generated levels, restart at level 1 with no items when you die.
The game involves more travel and variety than its predecessor, though you still can't backtrack (except by dying), as far as I can see. The thirty "levels" of the dungeon are a variety of different areas, such as forests, cliffs and mines. There are towns in between levels where you can store items, get your weapon tempered by a blacksmith (which seems to have mostly replaced scrolls of tempering, as those are apparently rare), or visit a store. There seem to be events that you trigger by passing through areas repeatedly--meeting an NPC in a later area will unlock something for your next trip through an earlier one. (This adds some variety and "replay value", at least.)
There are non-hostile NPCs you can meet in the dungeons, and "companions" you can recruit. Companions will fight mosters for you, but you get the XP for their kills. They seem to eventually get lost (or perhaps I just lost mine), but they can be damn handy.
If a monster kills another monster (accidentally or deliberately), it will level up into a stronger variety of monster. One of my many deaths was when a monster leveled up twice and killed me in a single blow.
Another common source of my deaths were the ghost pumpkins, which start showing up in the mines. They can move through walls, where you can't hit them but they can hit you. (Death monsters later on have the same ability, but also move at double-speed.) The programmers got creative with the Master Chicken monsters that appear in Table Mountain, which are heavy hitters until you damage them, at which point they turn into Chickens and do nothing but flee, but give a bit XP payout if you kill them. There are also several varieties of super-fast monsters that don't attack, but drop food if you manage to kill them. I think that overall the monster powers were less "cheap" than Taloon had to deal with--fewer sleep and confuse effects that I saw, at least until the last few levels. There seemed to be fewer level down and weapon rusting effects, too.
Windslash scrolls (deal damage to everything in the room) are awesome in single-room "monster lair" levels. Dark Owls--monsters that make the room they're in dark until you kill them--are significantly less awesome in monster lairs.
The "kindness" aspect from Taloon's Great Adventure returns, in that there are ways to put items into the warehouse (such as certain pots and messengers you might meet) from inside the dungeon, which will then be on hand when you get killed and are sent back to the beginning. For a roguelike, this is practically saving your progress! I wasn't able to find any "return" scrolls that would allow you to leave and keep everything, though, so that seems to be the tradeoff in gameplay style.
It's interesting, actually, to compare a game like this to Let's Plays I've read of NetHack and ADOM. The "true" roguelikes seem to become totally winnable in a single run if you know what you're doing (and/or once you get past some of the early challenges). I suspect this comes from the ability to stay in a given area or to go both up and down stairs. The fact that Mysterious Dungeon games force you to keep moving forward actually makes you more dependent on luck and forces you to make multiple runs, insuring you eventually collect enough of the best equipment (under circumstances where you can keep it) to make it to the end of the game.
I think the programmers also picked up some of their new equipment ideas from the classic roguelikes: This game adds things like scrolls of genocide (remove a monster completely from the current session) and blank scrolls (scribe them with any spell).
The interim areas before the last stage add most of the plot and a new goal, kinda out of nowhere, that apparently you've found the City of the Sun, and are now trying to rescue the Golden Condor from a monster that eats gold. Then, in the last stage (Floor 30) you fight that monster. (It's disgustingly strong, but throwing a scroll of genocide at it does wonders.)
Overall: I was effectively playing this in "explorer mode" using cheats and save-states, which means it only took me a few hours to try most of the features and see most of the game. Playing it "right"--if roguelikes are your cup of tea--it could easily take months of collecting enough equipment and building enough knowledge of the game, along with a fair bit of luck, to reach the end.
Just to be clear on the roguelike thing: Top-down view, single-character, turn-based everything, randomly-generated levels, restart at level 1 with no items when you die.
The game involves more travel and variety than its predecessor, though you still can't backtrack (except by dying), as far as I can see. The thirty "levels" of the dungeon are a variety of different areas, such as forests, cliffs and mines. There are towns in between levels where you can store items, get your weapon tempered by a blacksmith (which seems to have mostly replaced scrolls of tempering, as those are apparently rare), or visit a store. There seem to be events that you trigger by passing through areas repeatedly--meeting an NPC in a later area will unlock something for your next trip through an earlier one. (This adds some variety and "replay value", at least.)
There are non-hostile NPCs you can meet in the dungeons, and "companions" you can recruit. Companions will fight mosters for you, but you get the XP for their kills. They seem to eventually get lost (or perhaps I just lost mine), but they can be damn handy.
If a monster kills another monster (accidentally or deliberately), it will level up into a stronger variety of monster. One of my many deaths was when a monster leveled up twice and killed me in a single blow.
Another common source of my deaths were the ghost pumpkins, which start showing up in the mines. They can move through walls, where you can't hit them but they can hit you. (Death monsters later on have the same ability, but also move at double-speed.) The programmers got creative with the Master Chicken monsters that appear in Table Mountain, which are heavy hitters until you damage them, at which point they turn into Chickens and do nothing but flee, but give a bit XP payout if you kill them. There are also several varieties of super-fast monsters that don't attack, but drop food if you manage to kill them. I think that overall the monster powers were less "cheap" than Taloon had to deal with--fewer sleep and confuse effects that I saw, at least until the last few levels. There seemed to be fewer level down and weapon rusting effects, too.
Windslash scrolls (deal damage to everything in the room) are awesome in single-room "monster lair" levels. Dark Owls--monsters that make the room they're in dark until you kill them--are significantly less awesome in monster lairs.
The "kindness" aspect from Taloon's Great Adventure returns, in that there are ways to put items into the warehouse (such as certain pots and messengers you might meet) from inside the dungeon, which will then be on hand when you get killed and are sent back to the beginning. For a roguelike, this is practically saving your progress! I wasn't able to find any "return" scrolls that would allow you to leave and keep everything, though, so that seems to be the tradeoff in gameplay style.
It's interesting, actually, to compare a game like this to Let's Plays I've read of NetHack and ADOM. The "true" roguelikes seem to become totally winnable in a single run if you know what you're doing (and/or once you get past some of the early challenges). I suspect this comes from the ability to stay in a given area or to go both up and down stairs. The fact that Mysterious Dungeon games force you to keep moving forward actually makes you more dependent on luck and forces you to make multiple runs, insuring you eventually collect enough of the best equipment (under circumstances where you can keep it) to make it to the end of the game.
I think the programmers also picked up some of their new equipment ideas from the classic roguelikes: This game adds things like scrolls of genocide (remove a monster completely from the current session) and blank scrolls (scribe them with any spell).
The interim areas before the last stage add most of the plot and a new goal, kinda out of nowhere, that apparently you've found the City of the Sun, and are now trying to rescue the Golden Condor from a monster that eats gold. Then, in the last stage (Floor 30) you fight that monster. (It's disgustingly strong, but throwing a scroll of genocide at it does wonders.)
Overall: I was effectively playing this in "explorer mode" using cheats and save-states, which means it only took me a few hours to try most of the features and see most of the game. Playing it "right"--if roguelikes are your cup of tea--it could easily take months of collecting enough equipment and building enough knowledge of the game, along with a fair bit of luck, to reach the end.
