And it only took 2 years, 3 months and 17 days from the day I first quit. Congratulations, me! ^_^ Everybody stop round for champagne and cookies later, on the house.
Actually story mode in Fuurai no Shiren 2 was really easy… Actually I should be calling it Shiren DS 2
To clarify: there’s a main series of Shiren games, Shiren 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Then there are at least four Shiren gaiden games, including ones called Shiren GB and Shiren GB2 (named thus because they were first released on the Gameboy and Gameboy Color). When Chunsoft and Sega released DS remakes, they made Shiren 1 (SNES original) into Shiren DS 1 (remake). But instead of making Shiren 2 (N64 original) into Shiren DS 2 (remake), they skipped over it and chose Shiren GB2 to be remade as Shiren DS 2. There is no remake of the original N64 Shiren 2 yet. All clear now?
Maybe the fact that Fuurai no Shiren DS 2 was originally a gaiden and not part of the main series explains why even I was able to finish the main story. Story mode is really easy once you know your way around roguelikes and know how to take advantage of various items and scrolls and stuff.
That said, the whole ordeal did took 10:22 hours and 21 adventures, most of which involved me running around the dungeons trying to get good stuff and then warping home with a Take Home scroll when things got too hairy. Thanks to that and some lucky Melding Jar finds, I had a katana and iron shield that were both around +15 by the time I faced the last boss.
The real star of the show in my getting to that point were several lucky finds of Sanctuary Scrolls. They don’t work against the last boss, but they work just fine on the bosses of the first and second stages, who only use physical attacks and are thus reduced to complete helplessness in the face of one little scroll.
When it came to the last boss where my little trick wouldn’t work… I got lucky. And luck is 50% of roguelike success, so there. See, I had taken Oryu along with me, and she seems to have leveled up a lot between the last game and this one because she actually survived all the way till the end. When the boss first killed me, I revived with the Herb of Revival. Then just when I seemed doomed to be killed again, she managed to blind him. Yippee! That bought me about 6 or 7 free hits. By the time he shook off the blindness he was almost dead.
Then the ‘true’ bad guy showed up, a giant monstrosity that was revived before it regained its full power and just required repeated whacking to put it away for good. Go Team Shiren! Once I did the bosses in and saved the village, I got a very nice ending where everyone treats me like the hero I am and I walk off into the sunset surrounded by my adoring companions. And I left a princess behind who totally has the hots for Shiren, just in case he ever decides to give up the wanderer life. What a happy ending.
Somehow the sheer sense of accomplishment I got from reaching the end (and from actually finishing a Shiren game, o_o) prompted me to load up the clear data and see what happened next. What happens is that a wind blows Shiren and co. back to the village – right after their grand farewell, no less – and then they encounter a strange creature who wants to go adventuring in some dungeon under the local inn/restaurant. Well I wanted to try my hand at some of the bonus dungeons that make up 90% of any Shiren game anyway, so I decided to tag along and welp, here we are.
And here I’ll probably be for a while because in true Shiren fashion something always goes wrong and leads to me getting killed somehow. This dungeon, Tonfan no Ana, is a ‘meat’ dungeon so Shiren is armed with a Bufu’s cleaver and nothing else. He has to start at level 1 with no items, which is fun enough, but more importantly his success depends on the survival of his companion, the cute critter in the screenshot. Most of the deaths I’ve experienced in Tonfan no Ana have been due to Nfuu wandering off somewhere and getting killed, which means an instant fail for Shiren. Ick. It sucks doubly because the dungeon is only 20 levels long but I keep getting wiped out around levels 17 and 18. So close, yet so far. But Nfuu’s really cute, so I forgive him.
I don’t think I’ll do any other dungeons after this one……. okay, maybe just one more. But only one. Then I’m definitely done with Shiren DS 2!
“having learned that Shiren DS 2 is a remake of a Shiren gaiden game and not part of the main series, meaning the real Shiren 2 is a different game altogether.”
Well that’s confusing…
Sorry. I reworded it and added an explanation so hopefully it’s a bit clearer now. Thanks for pointing that out.
Speaking of dungeon crawlers, have you ever played any games made by Experience Inc? They specialize in Wizardry type game and has gotten the formula down pretty well; basically Etrian Odyssey without hand-drawn map and FOE. They mostly release game on PC and PSVita now but I remember seeing Student of the Round for PSP on your might-play list somewhere and that’s a pretty good place to start if you’re interested. There’s also The Stranger of the Village of the Sword for PC that’s an indirect sequel.
“basically Etrian Odyssey without hand-drawn map and FOE” -> Sign me up. I remember hearing of Experience Inc. before, and TBH Students of the Round Table is only on my list because I liked the art (^^;) but I’ll bump them way up on the schedule now. Thanks for bringing it to mind!
so… someone on the internet finished a shiren game after i told it to keep going? this, this is the happiest moment in my life :'(
with that said, i suggest you to skip shiren 3 if you ever intend to play it, there is a new gimmick which is more confusing than anything, the number of new monster is really small, the game is divided in small dungeons which really force you to go in with +equipment and won’t give you a chance to actualy run it naked, and every dungeon has bosses that can’t be fucked up with so a lot of the game boils down to just having high stat and as many healing items as possible… it’s so badly done there is an “easy” mode that let you keep your inventory upon dying
“Most of the deaths I’ve experienced in Tonfan no Ana have been due to Nfuu wandering off somewhere and getting killed”
also in shiren 3 you are forced to have a companion ALWAYS and if he dies it’s game over, if an emergency happen you can take control of your companion so that he doesn’t go get himself killed but it adds another annoyance to what feels like a really weak followup
Thank you~ I was really happy when I saw those credits roll.
But you must see that there’s no way I can skip Shiren 3, not when my roguelike itch has flared up to such epic proportions. It’s only $6.99 used on Amazon, or I could always *ahem* obtain it by alternate means. If it sucks I’ll quit, just like I’ve quit most other roguelikes before it.
Shiren DS 2 is really fun though. You should try it, even if you don’t speak Japanese.
i actualy finished shiren DS 2 too, there is a barebone translation patch that helps with managing items and the like which helped a lot
https://gbatemp.net/threads/shiren-the-wanderer-2-translation.169426/
anyway if you decide to play shiren 3 i really suggest to play on easy, doing an equipmentless run in previous shiren game is doable but in shiren 3, your equipment is required and losing it just turns into an aggravating chore as you have to farm it back
if you are into final fantasy and want to play a roguelike on the wii you might also want to look at chocobo fables
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4TqA8lgQic
and since you can read japanese there is a plethora of other “mysterious dungeon games” that are dragon quest related… most of them feature torneko, the merchant from DQ4 but the last one they released before going back to shiren features a young yangus from DQ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khu19jCCVwU
Thanks for the suggestions. I already downloaded the GBA Torneko games. I’m not all that into FF, but I know the characters enough that I might try the Chocobo Mystery Dungeon series of games. I’m not into Pokemon either, but I might try whichever of their roguelike games is on the DS. In addition to all that, I recently tried Pixel Dungeon on the Android. I like the medieval dungeon setting, but the controls are rather poor. I might need a stylus or something. Roguelikes are so much fun ^_^