Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island Review (Switch)

It’s nearly guaranteed that during any online discussion about a game of the ‘rogue’ genre, at least one sweaty person will eagerly emerge from the woodwork to say, “Well, ackshually, this game is a roguelite, not a roguelike.” Eyerolls aside, the distinction isn’t without merit, though ‘pure’ roguelikes are relatively rare these days despite the popularity of many of their mechanics in modern games. Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island—the latest mainline release in the long-running Mystery Dungeon franchise—is a roguelike, and it unashamedly features all the thrilling randomization and savage brutality that you could expect of one. We’re happy to report that it executes on its unflinching design brilliantly, providing a tough, engaging, and addictive experience that you won’t want to miss (if you like roguelikes).

The narrative of Shiren '6' follows the titular wanderer and Koppa, a talking ferret who accompanies him on his adventures. The two of them both received visions in a dream about a mysterious treasure lying in the stomach of a powerful beast on Serpentcoil Island, so they head there to see if the legends are true. In a rather interesting twist, we then jump forward to the very end of their adventure, right in the middle of their climactic battle with the monster. Shiren takes a blow to the head during the fight that gives him amnesia and though he and Koppa fight bravely, they’re eventually overwhelmed by the creature and awaken in a nearby village. Eager for another crack at the beast, and in an attempt to jog his foggy memory, Shiren and Koppa set out again to retrace their steps and, hopefully, succeed.

The narrative clearly isn’t the strong suit here, but we enjoyed how bits and pieces are trickled to you over many runs to keep you invested. Just about every time you visit a village or lookout point along your path to the top you’ll get another cutscene advancing the arc of whatever characters are local to that region, giving you something to look forward to on return trips. Plus, eventually you can have several of these characters join you as optional party members once you progress their subplots far enough, which helps to keep the storytelling feeling relevant to the gameplay. Shiren 6 is, of course, very much a gameplay-first experience, but there are plenty of charming interactions along the way to help keep subsequent runs from getting too dry.

Gameplay in Shiren 6 follows the familiar Mystery Dungeon template that’s remained largely unchanged for nearly 30 years. You start every run at level one with no items or money, and have to trawl through floor after floor of randomly generated, grid-based dungeons in search of the stairs or exit that’ll take you to the next one. Along the way, you’ll fight hordes of enemies, pick up money and consumable loot you find on the ground, and try not to step on any traps as you work your way down. In the very likely chance that you die, Shiren will lose all levels, money, and loot he gained and get sent back to the starting village to start it all over.

Combat is handled via a simple turn-based system where time only steps forward one tick every time you either take an action or move forward one tile. Despite the simplicity, there’s a lot of strategy that goes into fighting foes, as you’re constantly having to evaluate risk in how you approach a fight. It may make more sense to run into a hallway so you can fight a group of enemies one at a time, but then what if another group of enemies comes at you from the other side and boxes you in? You may be able to destroy this tough foe instantly by using a magic scroll in your inventory, but then you won’t have any other offensive items left in your inventory for handling other enemies on this floor.

This careful evaluation of your options is part of the charm of Shiren 6, as there’s a lot of complexity to navigate with all its various interlocking systems. This is the kind of game that you make more progress in not because of advancing metaprogression systems (there really aren’t any here), but by building a deeper understanding of things like advantageous item interactions and how to exploit enemy weaknesses. Shiren 6 may be uncompromising, but it is consistent, and your failures paired with a decent amount of trial and error will generally teach you how to turn situations to your advantage.

Despite the somewhat off-putting difficulty, there’s an impressively addictive quality to the gameplay of Shiren 6 that keeps you coming back. No two runs will ever be the same, and the punishment can often be overcome by a stroke of luck. For example, we had a run where we discovered a sword and shield early on that synergized with each other and gained several levels when they were both equipped, which allowed Shiren to steamroll the first dozen floors of the main dungeon. On the other hand, your luck can turn against you just as easily and effectively end your run. Sometimes, you’ll step on an invisible trap that destroys your equipment or otherwise cripples you in some critical way.

One would think that having such unfair, random bouts of bad luck would be discouraging, and it partially is, but you have the potential of being ‘rescued’ by online players if you request help, although you have to wait for them to come through for you if you do. Still, this lifeline at least helps to soften the blow of suddenly losing a run, plus you can always choose to later pay it forward and go rescue someone yourself in exchange for some helpful goodies to improve your future rescue runs. Even if a savior doesn’t show up for you and you’re forced to start over, subsequent runs still feel worthwhile because of the story events you unlock each time through, not to mention access to shortcuts which shorten the length of your trip back to where you were. Like in many other roguelikes, then, death in Shiren 6 certainly stings, but there are some welcome ways to lessen how much it does so.

The only real complaint that we have against Shiren 6 is that it falls into the same repetitive cycles that are typical of games in this franchise. Though dungeons are visually distinct from each other, it doesn’t take long before it starts to feel like floors are indistinguishable from each other due to using the same recycled enemies and assets. That said, this issue is a little less noticeable in Shiren 6 due to its tendency to introduce a small village or lookout point every few floors where you can freely roam, talk to NPCs, and stock up on supplies. These can provide a refreshing break from too much dungeon crawling, and their relative frequency means that one usually pops up just about at that point that you’d like to start seeing something different.

As for its presentation, Shiren 6 trades the previous sprite-based art style for 3D visuals that reminded us vaguely of those in Bravely Default II. Characters and enemy designs are represented by a squat, almost chibi-like design, while villages tend to look like little toy dioramas. Meanwhile, the dungeons keep up some nice visual diversity for all the biomes, as you visit various caves, forests, and beaches that all stick to distinct color palettes. It all looks quite nice, if a little basic, with the only real disappointment being that animations are rather stiff.

To pair with this, the soundtrack employs a very earthy, winds-based style that feels like it fits well with the mysterious and adventurous tone. Admittedly, the music tends to be a little forgettable—there weren’t very many tracks that jumped out to us as being noticeably strong—but we were overall pleased with the result here and felt it continued well from the work present in Shiren 5.