Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

If you love grinding for hours in dungeon crawlers after doing a three-hour long tutorial, this is the game for you.

It’s a game you can play for 20 hours and feel like you didn’t make any progress at all. That’s a type of punishment some gamers just can’t handle. For me, it’s a type of punishment I can’t get enough of.

Not as many people will play Shiren the Wanderer as should play it. It’s a niche franchise that is presented in such a way that will only ever appeal to a niche… and for whatever reason it’s exclusive to the PlayStation Vita, which is an intensely niche console in its own right these days. But it is also a fundamentally worthy game that boils the roguelike genre down to its most appealing gameplay loops, and is a good, pure, no frills take on an enormously addictive formula.

At its heart, this is a game for the masochist players who, like me, keep trying to reach just one level further. Sure, we’ll be slaughtered, and there’s little we can do to fully prepare for every enemy that finds our soon-to-be-rotting corpses on the battlefield. But there’s something still cute about how dangerous an overpowered shadowy beast can be.

When taken as a whole, Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower Of Fortune And The Dice Of Fate delivers a carefully crafted, carefully considered experience that captures the best of what makes a good roguelike, while also mitigating the pain points that give the genre its hardcore reputation.

Those who put in the time will be rewarded with deeply strategic gameplay, beautiful environments and a surprisingly insightful story.

You'll get the most out of it, of course, if you're the type who likes tough dungeon crawlers with a retro feel, but even if you're only mildly interested in the genre, this game has enough to get you hooked.

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is an old school roguelike JRPG with a ton of replayability and a great visual style. With its randomized levels, densely related mechanics, and deceptively simple combat, it’s a game that still manages to be fun even twenty hours in.

Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is one of the best roguelikes available on any platform and it happens to have some of the best pixel art I’ve seen in a long time.

Being the fifth entry to this offshoot of the larger Mystery Dungeon series means that existing fans will know what to expect going in and those players should know that this is arguably the best entry to the series. For new folks interested in seeing what some of the more obtuse genre entries are all about, this is the perfect place to start.

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is a good “old style” dungeon crawler with some rougue-like elements, a good level of challenge and a nice colorful graphics, as in the era of 16-bit.

Been yearning for something a little more challenging and unforgiving than usual? Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate might just satisfy your craving.

Some will bounce off it within the first half-hour; those prepared to persevere and adapt will find an astonishingly deep and rewarding game of almost limitless longevity. [Oct 2016, p.81]

Shiren wandered into my life ready to take me on a grand adventure, but instead all we did was go camping in his backyard.

It's certainly an acquired taste, but I can't think of a better experience I've had with a handheld in a long time. Shiren the Wanderer is an early contender for my overall game of the year, and it's going to take a lot to pull me out of the dungeon.

All in all, Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is an exceptional and mechanically dense roguelike filled with many small pieces that fit together especially well.

A fun and entertaining roguelike with a few troublesome stumbles along the way. Fans of 16-bit style adventures will certainly enjoy its audio and visual style, and a number of post-game dungeons and challenges will keep players entertained for a long time beyond the game's initial running time.

The Vita version of this episode of the Mystery Dungeon Saga is a satisfying and demanding roguelike, in which the sense of progression is much noticeable than many similar dungeon crawlers. Recommended even for the ones that never got a chance to try a similar game.

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is a beautiful game with solid combat and a myriad of items and features to find along the way. It's too bad that its punishing nature makes it less enjoyable the longer you play it.

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is an excellent starting point for players looking to get into rogue-likes. Its grueling difficulty combined with the satisfying gameplay hook loop of failing and getting up to fail again is addicting (oddly enough).

This may be an entry in a highly specialized and generally unfriendly genre, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a better example of the type. Heartless, demanding, infuriating, yet seemingly boundless in the depth of its content and mechanics, the latest Shiren the Wanderer adventure wraps taxing game design in just-one-more replay appeal. Think of it as the Wolverine of console roguelikes: It's the best there is at what it does, and what it does isn't very nice.

For those willing to put their life on the line and set foot in the mysterious dungeons, Shiren the Wanderer marks one of the finest entries to date.

Shiren's latest adventure is a rewarding one. It offers up an enjoyable dungeon crawl, one that is not only challenging but also surprisingly inviting. Just don't expect it to feature constant progression, as players will fail far more times than they succeed.