Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate
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Critic Reviews for Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate
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.
Though I wouldn't consider it the best entry in the series, I absolutely enjoyed my time with Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate. It's a beautiful, challenging quest with a pleasing soundtrack I wouldn't mind having in my iTunes. With all the love I have for it in mind, I don’t know if I can recommend the game to anyone who isn’t already familiar with the series. Even if you’ve played the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spin-offs, this is another beast entirely. 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.
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. I literally cheered when I survived my first night cycle (and was immediately slain in the daytime), but then I started back up again from the beginning, no progress having been made. This genre is almost a fetish for certain players, and this game presents as fervent an example as any can be. And that’s honestly its downfall, because it’s otherwise a good kind of challenging. I just wish it could feel like there was no way to get “good” at the game itself. You know, make it more "fun" instead of an instrument of pain tolerance.
Although Shiren the Wanderer isn't a long title, it's hard to stop going back in and taking on the next challenge that's offered.
Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is one of those games that has a built-in audience.
A thoughtful and rewarding classic Roguelike, Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is incredibly satisfying if you put the time into it.
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.
Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is one of those releases that could really go either way. If you don't mind repetition and you're not afraid of some tough difficulty spikes, there's a lot of depth and content here to keep you busy for quite some time. If those caveats do raise concerns for you, there are a couple of other Mystery Dungeon titles on Switch that may offer a more palatable experience. Wherever you may fall, Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is certainly worth your time, and we'd encourage you to give it a look.
