I have to admit, I'm a newb to the roguelike genre. My first roguelike was "The Nightmare of Druaga" for the PS2. After that I dabbled a little in the pokemon games for DS, which never really grabbed my attention, and I also played nethack a few times. Fuurai no shiren is another in the line of "Fushigi no Dungeon" titles to be released on the DS, and it's a lot more Nethack than it is Pokemon. The game has PC roguelike staples like fast movement, multiple multiple death screens, and random everything. New to this game (I'm probably totally wrong, I can't remember if druaga had this) is diagonal movement. When you die in this game you lose all your equipment and money and your character goes back to level 1, which is apparently standard for the genre. The death screens can be really funny as the game gives you a bit of freedom. For instance, the last time I died, I was throwing items at the owner of an item store, then I walked up to him and started punching him, he was not pleased so he beat the shit out of me and I died. Thus I got the "Tried to rob the item shop but got his ass kicked." game over screen, followed by my stats for that particular instance. It's a horrible feeling to have to give up some of the badass items you got because you got a little randy and started beating up merchants. Eventually though, I aim to kill that ****er and steal all the items for myself! Eat it!
From what I understand most PC roguelikes are similar to pen and paper rpgs because of their robust classes. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, theres only 1 character class in Fuurai no Shiren. but there are magic items and "range" items like bows scattered throughout the game. The nice thing is that you can equip a sword shield and bow all at the same time. You can't equip magic wands though, I don't think. You may be able to assign them to the L button but I haven't checked. Level ups come fairly often as you start every dungeon at level 1, which makes playing the game quite rewarding.
As for typical game stuff, the graphics are okay I guess, it's 2D. The colors are rather subdued and give it almost a genesis look because of the use of brown. The cutscene direction is actually pretty good, but there was only one cutscene at the beginning so i dunno how much of a factor that will be. As for the sound, BGM is pretty standard "Japanese" music with Japanese instruments playing some sort of forgetable but not irritating tune in the background. Other sound effects are pretty much unspectacular, but the level up chime is pretty rad.
The game has a few cool things like online monthly leaderboards and a "legendary" board which I assume just collects the best scores out there. There are a lot of fun stat tracking things. The game even has achievments! 68 of them to be exact! You don't get gamer points though, and they don't tell you what they are before hand, but it's fun to see your milestones. There's also a wifi mode, but you need friend codes to use it and I'm pretty sure it's just for item sharing or something goofy like that.
Anyway, I don't know if this is coming to america, it might because its being published by sega, but if it does buy it. It's a fun game thats good for marathons and for short plays.
From what I understand most PC roguelikes are similar to pen and paper rpgs because of their robust classes. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, theres only 1 character class in Fuurai no Shiren. but there are magic items and "range" items like bows scattered throughout the game. The nice thing is that you can equip a sword shield and bow all at the same time. You can't equip magic wands though, I don't think. You may be able to assign them to the L button but I haven't checked. Level ups come fairly often as you start every dungeon at level 1, which makes playing the game quite rewarding.
As for typical game stuff, the graphics are okay I guess, it's 2D. The colors are rather subdued and give it almost a genesis look because of the use of brown. The cutscene direction is actually pretty good, but there was only one cutscene at the beginning so i dunno how much of a factor that will be. As for the sound, BGM is pretty standard "Japanese" music with Japanese instruments playing some sort of forgetable but not irritating tune in the background. Other sound effects are pretty much unspectacular, but the level up chime is pretty rad.
The game has a few cool things like online monthly leaderboards and a "legendary" board which I assume just collects the best scores out there. There are a lot of fun stat tracking things. The game even has achievments! 68 of them to be exact! You don't get gamer points though, and they don't tell you what they are before hand, but it's fun to see your milestones. There's also a wifi mode, but you need friend codes to use it and I'm pretty sure it's just for item sharing or something goofy like that.
Anyway, I don't know if this is coming to america, it might because its being published by sega, but if it does buy it. It's a fun game thats good for marathons and for short plays.
