I know what I’m doing this weekend!
I launched it to see. I spent two hours on it, while usually I fall asleep after 30 minutes of anything.
Game still as amazing as ever.
Profoundly ignorant question: I know Shiren has quite a reputation, but what recommends it over other roguelikes?
Playable with a pad without issue is a huge one for me.
Tons of different flavour (do you want headaches or relaxed? progression or pure roguelike? long session or short goal? extra mechanics or not?) is what makes you stick with it.
The esthetics are wonderful on top of it. The soundtrack in particular.
It seems they added a bunch of extra stuff, be it dungeons, puzzles, new stuff to grind if you feel like it…
The variety of modes is appealing, but what about the mechanics? Roguelikes live and die by their skill and loot systems IMO.
The Steam description is completely unhelpful, since it seems to think I should already know all about these games.
I have not played this new one, but the classic DS Shiren is tightly designed. Every item and trap and monster ability matters, and there are clever uses for them. It’s much sharper than one would expect from a commercial console roguelike.
Mechanically it’s similar to Brogue and One Way Heroics in the focus on leveraging your resources and game knowledge and situational play. For example, this monster type interacts with the food system, providing a unique threat, a special way to defeat it, and multiple risk/reward tradeoffs.
It’s not quite a Japanese NetHack, but it’s kind of in that ballpark and IMO more enjoyable for its playability and focus.
This @Play column: The Delights Of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer DS is rather clunky, but part 2 gets into mechanics and strategy if you want some details and spoilers.
Huh.
Not getting overconfident I can get behind, but telling the player not to get bored is something else. I thought it was the devs’ job that I don’t get bored. I’m pretty sure the devs of Hades never told me not to get bored.
That’s like my number one gripe with many “classic” roguelikes: they’re, well uh, boring. Cheap graphics, no personality, no story, no dialogue, no sense of permanent progression. Some of them also take very long to complete, but leave you with no interesting decisions to make for hours.
I can appreciate some good old rogueliking as much as anyone else, but the constant drip drip of high stakes and low payoff quickly wears down my patience. I’ve thrown away many runs (and games) because of that. I call it the “boredom suicide spiral”, that’s why the message above got my attention.
Yeah, it really is. The game is just so well designed and implemented. The level designs are really well done and there’s so many interesting things to find for loot in them. And the levels are really large as well. I’m enjoying playing a roguelike where the dungeon is more wide than tall.
I have finally got a really good run going and my character is level 14 on only level 6 of the dungeon. It’s taken many, many hours to get this far. The more I play, the more new stuff I find out about the game. It just gets better and better the more I play. For example, I just found a magic lamp that summons a djinn merchant to trade with.
As far as the message goes, yeah. I had another character that was breezing along at level 9. He had some great equipment and spells and I thought he was going on a long run. Wrong. He went down fast to the Ratqueen in her lair. In retrospect, she started friendly so I shouldn’t has pissed her off by refusing to leave when she asked. (I love that there are different types of lairs, throne rooms with bosses and secrets to find).
Bottom line is Zorbus is a great game. Better than 99% of the traditional roguelikes out there. It’s so well done that I think it’s almost a certainty that the developer is going to start selling it at some point.
I think that’s in the tips manual you find on the floor in the starting room. I think probably the word he should have used there is complacent instead of bored. Complacency has probably killed more of my characters than anything else.
Quick question and this is starting to feel like a dedicated thread, but I understand that once you clear a level you can autoloot the level. If I’m right it isn’t clear to me how to autoloot.
Yep, that’s where I got it. The developer has a sense of humor, and it is fairly self-deprecating.
I hear you, @Woodlance and roguelikes are not my cup of tea for reasons you stated. Maybe this one will wear thin, but it doesn’t feel like it will to me at least not yet but I haven’t played much.
My experience is that timing is everything whether I click with a game or not. And the time for a game like this for me is now.
Your inventory is your skills, basically.
Ah that’s cool, that was just my two cents.
In other news, the Shiren PC port seems kinda buggy. Worse, it only work on Windows 10, so no game for dirty Windows 7 cavepeople. Boo!
I don’t get it. The Curry roguelike is also a Vita game and it works fine, plus its graphics are in THREE DIMENSIONS! o_O
Press the space bar and it will bring up a list of all the loot you’ve discovered on the level to scroll though. Simply click on an item on the list you’d like to pick up and you will automatically travel there instantly and pick it up. It’s a really slick feature and has saved me many times from missing some really good loot.
You can also left click a location on the mini-map and instantly travel there. There are some really nice UI features in this game. The UI is really slick.
Very nice. I took on a couple companions prior to delving into the second level. Hope I’m not crippling myself XP wise.
You only get 50% XP from companion (either summoned or recruited) kills. However, if you take the ‘Natural Leader’ talent (only available at level 1) then you can take another follow-up talent later that gives 100% XP from companion kills.
I took the ‘Lone Wolf’ talent at level 1. It gave me +2 to all attributes but I can’t recruit companions. I can summon pets with spells just fine, though. But, I’ve avoided summoning anything and have gotten a massive leveling boost from getting all the XP for myself. I also found a potion of XP and that gave me a free level up.
Winston would be proud.
Bravo.
I can’t get passed level 2.
Yeah, this was like my 30th attempt. I tried a lot of different things. It’s key to start with 16 magic so that you get a new talent at every level up. I went with a gnome and picked Lone Wolf, Energy Bolt and Blink as my level 1 talents (gnomes and humans get 3 talents at level 1). I went with a heavy emphasis on spells. Once I got poison cloud at level 3 or 4 and fireball shortly thereafter, I was on my way. As a magic user I also did everything I could to boost spirit. Also, the Banshee Wail spell is a game changer if you have enough spirit to afford the spell cost. A few casts of that clears entire rooms.