Growing up, all of my family's computers ran Linux from about 1994 through the mid-2000s, so while I missed out on a whole lot of the cultural touchstones of computer gaming, I had a lot of time to try to make sense of what few games came bundled with Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE, and so on. Nethack was the one game they all had in common, and until the Quake games got ported to Linux, it always stood out as the only real video game you could play on Linux; an oasis in a desert of XBill and Tux-themed ripoff garbage. It stuck with me in a way none of the other built-in games did -- I had to google "linux game bill gates borg" to remember what the hell XBill was called, for example -- but since I was a child, I didn't have the attention span to quite put together what was going on with the randomization or permadeath, so I'd be shocked if I ever got to the fourth floor.

That was the full extent of my experience with "true" Berlin-Interpretation-compliant roguelikes for many many years, unless you count Desktop Dungeons, which technically flunks a few of the dumber criteria like ASCII graphics if memory serves. I got really into Spelunky HD and Spelunky 2, but obviously those are completely different games; not only do they feature realtime combat, but they're both essentially deterministic, since you can plan on getting a shotgun in every single Spelunky HD run and on Vlad's cape and the clone gun in every single Spelunky 2 run and both of these are strong enough that every run is viable as long as you're good enough at the game.

All of this is to say that Mystery Dungeon 2: Shiren the Wanderer was my first real experience with roguelikes. I feel like when a genre's totally new to you, they benefit from a kind of honeymoon effect: you get all the exhilaration that comes with learning a whole new set of skills and exploring novel gameplay systems, plus you don't have enough familiarity with genre conventions to really know what to expect. I love most of the Souls games, for example, but I played Dark Souls 1 first, and that particular playthrough was the most magical because I never quite knew what was coming next. The first time I beat Ornstein and Smough, I almost died because as soon as the fog gate dissipated, one of the silver knights re-aggroed, which is incidentally a behavior I've never seen since, and started pelting me with arrows from so far away that I didn't even see what was hitting me. I thought I was being attacked by an invisible force in a last-ditch effort to keep me away from the Lordvessel and just ran up the elevator without ever figuring out why I was taking damage. I also thought I was pretty close to the end of the game. Obviously that's what they want you to think, but I can't imagine the twist really came as a surprise to anyone who'd already played Demon's Souls.

Shiren the Wanderer is full of little moments like this. If, like me, you've never really played roguelikes before and you think you have any interest at all, please read until I tell you to stop, then go grab the fan translation and get started. I know many people don't care about spoilers these days, but there is a lot of room for surprise in Shiren the Wanderer and I think the game loses something if you go in with a ton of foreknowledge. A few things you should know, though:

That's it! If you have any interest in playing Shiren the Wanderer yourself, please stop reading now. This game was a highlight of my year and permanently changed my taste in video games; if I'd gone in with everything spoiled ahead of time, it still would have been good, but it wouldn't have been the genuinely life-changing experience that it was. I'll get into the review proper, and thus the spoilers, after this rice ball.


Dot as Shiren and Gomi Procione as Koppa by the wonderful Hatano Kiyoshi

So here's the thing: I really hate storytelling in games. It's not that I think games can't or shouldn't tell stories, and I think there have been a few games that really nailed it (Dark Souls 1, Valkyrie Profile and Dragon Quest 4 come to mind). It's that I think most games have way, way too much dialogue and too many god damn words. I know this sounds like a silly or petty complaint, but after working in the comics industry for almost a decade, you really start to notice just how little importance game developers seem to place on economy of dialogue. Scenes with ten minutes of voice acting and/or a dozen windows of back-and-forth conversation to mash through manage to accomplish half what a great manga can do with two panels and a single line of dialogue; movies regularly communicate with one knowing glance what game developers struggle to pull off with entire cutscenes.

I think the fundamental problem here is that game stories tend to be excessively compartmentalized; all of the storytelling, characterization included, is contained within cutscenes or exposition dumps that interrupt the gameplay, and never the twain shall meet. The basic structure itself often works beautifully -- Valkyrie Profile and Metal Gear Solid, two of the best video game stories out there, reward you with long, long cutscenes for progressing in the game -- but so many games get bogged down in dialogue retreading character and even plot details we could have inferred from the actual gameplay. We know Kashell is cocksure because of his idle stance and portrait; there's no need to reiterate it in his death scene or any of the subsequent cutscenes that follow the friends who survived him. We know Claire Redfield is a badass because her animations exude confidence and competence; we know Harry Mason isn't because his animations are unwieldy and awkward.

I think Chun Soft, possibly because of their deep connections to the manga industry, understood this before anyone else. I wrote about Dragon Warrior 4's storytelling and characterization back in April, but I really think Pekeji and Oryuu are two of the best video game characters ever written. I don't want to build up your expectations too much, so I feel it would behoove me to stress that Shiren's story is simple. The story in and of itself will not change your life; Pekeji and Oryuu are masterful cartoon characters in the exact same way that Jake from Adventure Time and Fujiko from Lupin are. Gaibara doesn't work for me all that well, but to be honest, if he were in a lesser game, he'd probably be in the running for my favorite character too; he's just unlucky enough to share the spotlight with pitch-perfect comic relief characters written by one of the best developers of all time at the top of their game.

As I was writing this, I kept thinking back on this excerpt from Etrian Odyssey director Niinou Kazuya's development diary. You can read it in its entirety at the link, but it's this specific excerpt, "How to use your imagination," that stands out to me:

When your party stays at the Inn overnight, what do they eat?

If you ever catch yourself wondering that, then you know you've formed an attachment to your characters.

With Etrian Odyssey's characters, you only give them a name and a portrait, so no matter how you think of the character, it's technically just your imagination. But even in that case, without your imagination, the character is nothing.

For example, a landsknecht who uses an axe might eat his meat with his bare hands and no utensils, but one who wields a sword might prefer a knife and fork at dinner. You might think differently, but... If you can imagine small details like that, you might find that you enjoy this kind of RPG even more.

The essence is an RPG is using numbers to make calculated decisions, but if you invest those "numbers" with your own feelings, you can spice up the game a little. Think about this:

In your party of five, three characters are dead. Two of them are alive, but they only have a couple of HP left, and no TP. They're certain to die in their next turn, giving you a game over. Number-wise, those characters are useless, but how do you imagine they feel about that? What kind of people are those 2 characters who are about to die? Try to imagine things like that in the brief time before your game ends.

Are they a landsknecht and a ronin, who'll die facing the enemy and laughing? Is it a protector, ordering the weak medic to run with his last breath?

The game over screen looks the same every time, but in your imagination, it could play out very differently.

Even though Etrian Odyssey is one of my favorite video games, I have to confess I never quite had the imagination it takes for this to land in EO itself. Still, this is really the essence of this style of storytelling. If there's intent and care in the small details you've hidden in the exposition and encoded in the character design and animation, that can do more to create resonant, unforgettable characters than reams of conventional "lore." I can imagine how Pekeji would conduct himself at the dinner table. Same with Oryuu, Gaibara, Koppa, and Shiren himself.

It's funny, because I get the impression that when most people sit down to play a roguelike, they're not really looking for a great story, but that's absolutely what you get from Shiren. I've heard this is one of Caves of Qud's many strengths, too, although I haven't taken the plunge on that game yet. I could easily imagine any of Shiren's story beats, which are so similar to the Souls series' questlines that I wonder if this game was their original inspiration, standing on their own as manga chapters, anime episodes, maybe even entire arcs or seasons. But they're just humorous stops along the way; little light-hearted moments that make Shiren's journey feel a little less arduous and Shiren himself a little less alone. You're just another of the misfits setting off from the Valley Inn over and over again in hopes of freeing the Golden Condor and having their wish granted. The world of Shiren the Wanderer is bigger than your quest, and in fact, this isn't even the beginning of Shiren's story; the very first thing we learn upon his arrival at the Valley Inn is that his rain hat is a memento from a friend who's passed on. It's not hard to imagine what he would wish for.

It's especially perfect because every run is a story in and of itself. The Mystery Dungeon series was directly inspired by Nethack, and just like in Nethack, when things go wrong, they go catastrophically wrong. Everyone remembers the first time they missed a Gedoro over and over again, watching in horror as it split into four copies of itself and turned your Iron Shield +3 into an Iron Shield -4. Everyone remembers the first time an Old Man Tank leveled all the way up to an Obstinate Tank after killing the lost little girl in the Cave of Mountain Spirits. Everyone remembers the first time they stumbled into a Monster House and, surrounded on all sides, wrote "Airslarh" on a blank scroll without noticing, read it and instantly died. On the other side of the coin, everyone remembers the many times they thought of a strange fringe use of the meat system, the Swap Staff, the Bigroom Scroll or any of the dozens of game-changing tools left hiding in plain sight on every single run. Everyone remembers the first time they inferred what an unidentified staff was and used it to save themselves from certain death a floor later.

Put simply, Shiren has an unparalleled sense of adventure and danger. There's no single solution to the main dungeon; even if you're lucky enough to pull a Gouken Manji Kabura and a Fuuma Shield out of a Transform Pot in Table Mountain (a real thing that's actually happened to me!), you need more than shield and sword strength to survive. You might be lucky enough to stumble onto two Blank Scrolls on the very first floor only to be forced to use both of them early, abandoning whatever plan you'd hatched to secure your win on floor 30. I can beat Table Mountain well in excess of 90% of the time, but it always feels like it could end at any moment, and I feel like I've never really done the same run twice. Some runs, you can grind up to your target level as soon as you reach floor 17. Some runs, you have to race to the stairs over and over again and just hope it works out. Some runs, you run out of food completely and have to eat a rotten onigiri off the floor just to hold out until the next inn.

And man, is the ending worth it. If you've only ever watched people played this game and haven't gone through it yourself, stopping to advance the questlines at every opportunity and learning the hard way every way a run can end in an instant, I'm not sure you can fully appreciate how triumphant it feels when you finally beat Table Mountain for the first time. I don't have a ton to say about this because it really is something you need to experience for yourself, and a lot of it is just the pixel art and (though I'm loath to admit this) music are absolutely top notch and I can't really articulate what makes them so good in writing.

I've since played a few of the other Mystery Dungeon games and they're sort of a mixed bag. The first Torneko is absolutely not designed to be beaten in one run, Shiren 2 is a great game locked behind an incredibly frustrating, grindy unlock system, and Shiren 6, which is finally available on PC, is almost as good as the first game and much more feature-rich. For my money, Shiren 1 is a masterpiece and you should really start there before you try any of the later games. I think it's one of the very best games Chun Soft ever made, which is really saying something when you consider they made Portopia, the first five Dragon Quests, Kamaitachi no Yoru and Otogirisou.

I usually try to do a little writeup on every game I beat for the first time in these things, but Shiren absolutely took over my life in May and if I played anything else at all I promptly forgot all about it. I'm sure I played some platformers or something.

One last thing I couldn't really fit in anywhere else, but I want to brag a little bit: I beat the bonus dungeons, too. The 99-floor dungeon is a ton of fun, but after beating it twice I found it a little frustrating to revisit; most of the fun is in figuring out how the hell you're even supposed to beat a dungeon that long, with that many abrupt difficulty spikes, but once you understand what you have to do, repeating the feat really isn't a ton of fun. The other dungeons are still incredible, but the main dungeon really is the draw.