Teknoman said:
I have one question: How is the music?
The music is by
KOICHI SUGIYAMA, who you may know for his work on Dragon Quest. However, where you mostly hear orchestral-style, very cinematic music in that series, the Shiren series focuses on simple and catchy melodies with a very charming selection of eastern instrumentation and melodies. Unfortunately, no "proper" original soundtrack was ever released for the game, but I hope to have some recordings of the music up within the next few days.
gimz said:
The length is one of the secret strengths that many people will wrongly see as a weakness.
The could
technically be completed in an hour to an hour and a half on a first play through, but in reality, this is absurdly unlikely.
When I said "arcade-like", I meant it - this game is meant to be played and replayed until you master it.
That's not to say you're going to do the same thing over and over - far from it. The randomized elements are there so that you keep running into new, different scenarios each time you reattempt the game. And while the game resets your inventory and level when you die (like a regular roguelike),
you will always make progress. At first, the progress you make will simply be learning what to do when faced with different situations, but as you get further in the game, you'll be able to start storing and moving items between rest spots in the main dungeon, allowing you to build up reserves for your "serious" runs. You will also start gaining other advantages from story events...
Think of it like Diablo....when was the last time you played a Diablo II act from start to finish without dying once? But unlike the somewhat mindless (if addictive) combat of Blizzard's game, the battles in Shiren are almost like those of a strategy game - even if things seem helpless, you likely have
many options available to you, and the whole point of the death-and-rebirth process is so that you learn when these options are available and when to use them.
Death is a natural and important part of the Shiren gameplay experience. Death is never the end of the game. Death is never a point of no return. The game never puts you into an unwinnable situation. You will always return to the start, wiser and more wary for the mistakes (and, rarely, bad luck) which led to your demise.
I estimate that the main dungeon will take you anywhere from four to ten hours to finish, and there are a handful of interesting secret dungeons that take advantage of the game's gameplay mechanics. One, for example, is completely centered around
transforming into monsters and using their special skills. Another is based completely on
finding traps and luring monsters into them (in this dungeon, it's the only way to level up!). And of course, there's the obligatory final dungeon that will
test your very soul.
So, yeah - I'd say that this is
at least a game worth ten hours of gameplay, and if you want to master it,
many more.
man, I think I'm running out of bold...