This game’s predecessor, "Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer" on the DS suggested that very old-school RPGs can still work on modern systems, and the next game in the series is due for a western release in just a few months. For those unfamiliar, Shiren the Wanderer is a sort of dungeon crawl RPG where the main goal is to go into various locations, map them out, kill the monsters within, and take whatever treasure you find. These sort of games are typically light on plot, but Shiren the Wanderer makes significant efforts to tell a story as you go and takes many cues from Japanese mythology.

Played through an isometric overhead view, Shiren the Wanderer at first looks like a real-time game like Diablo but is actually turn-based and uses a tactical grid for movement within each dungeon. Each dungeon is randomly generated, with a strong emphasis placed on finding various items and weapons within that suit you in killing various enemies. As you make your way through the game, you’ll be joined by up to two AI companions who can provide quite a lot of help, and their behavior is very customizable; you can tell them what range to fight at, how aggressive to be, whether they should use certain items or not (after all, you don’t want them accidentally using up rare loot on a weak enemy), and more. And if you’d rather fully control them, that’s also possible.

Some of you are probably thinking this is a ’Rogue-like’ game based on that information, but Atlus strongly and repeatedly rejected that label. While the core mechanics are similar, Atlus made sure to point out that Shiren the Wanderer is not as cruel to the player as most Rogue-likes. Death only causes you to revert to your last save, rather than being dumped back to being a level 1 character with no items like many games in the genre do. At the same time, they also rejected the idea that this was a dumbed-down ’Wii casual game’, stating they feel it’s a reasonably challenging game without being overly brutal or too easy. There was a strong emphasis on the game being an accessible part of the Shiren series, and they seemed to have a healthy attitude about wanting to appeal to more than just a super-hardcore audience.

That said, plenty of parts of the genre do carry over. You’ll find tons of weapons and items as you explore, and much of the fun lies in finding out which ones really suit you. This can be done by trial and error which will reveal what a new weapon does, though it’s probably best to get them formally inspected and identified; randomly trying weapons can result in discovering you have a cursed weapon that is very hard to un-equip and is probably not an optimal piece of gear to use. Despite such old-school RPG aspects being present, the game does present a lot of story and flavor; plenty of atmospheric music can be heard as you play, accompanied by fairly well developed graphics and a number of plot segments or cutscenes. This could help Shiren the Wanderer to have a feel all its own, rather than being just another generic dungeon crawl.

For those wondering, the wi-fi features available in Mystery Dungeon and the Japanese release of this game are unfortunately not carrying over to the western version. Atlus cited numerous technical difficulties, and pointed out these features were along the lines of item-trading and so forth, rather than online multiplayer. On the other hand, extra features the Japanese got as downloadable content will be included on the game disc for the version we’re getting, so that may soften the blow. Regardless, the notion that this is a strong single-player game came up several times and hopefully that will be the case.

Atlus also mentioned that the game doesn’t end when the main quest does. Beating the game opens up several new events, and combined with most of the dungeons being randomly generated it would seem there could be some real replay value to this. There are also various ’achievements’ to go for, as the game tracks your activity in some detail; these achievements might include mundane things like killing certain enemies, but can also commend the player for getting the party killed in creative ways. While it’s too early to have a final opinion of Shiren the Wanderer, what was on display shows real promise and we’ll definitely carry a full review upon the game’s release. As for when it’s coming out, Atlus plans to release Shiren the Wanderer on Feb. 9, 2010 at a retail price around $40.