Two Hours Hands-on with Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island

The Shiren the Wanderer series, itself a subseries of the popular Mystery Dungeon franchise, has been on hiatus with no new games being released since 2010s The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate on the Nintendo DS. However, thanks to the success of that game’s Nintendo Switch/PC port in 2020, a new game is finally on the horizon. And so, late last month at a special press event in Tokyo, I got about two hours of hands-on time with Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island.

The plot of the game is simple: the titular samurai, Shiren, and his furry ferret companion, Koppa, end up traveling to Serpentcoil Island. This island is plagued by monsters, pirates, and ninjas—the island itself is an ever-changing dungeon of different environments. Yet, stranger still, anyone who is killed on the island awakens back at its seaside port town—with all their gear, treasure, and even gained experience mysteriously missing. As Shiren, you venture into the dungeon, die, and start again. However, time doesn’t reset. Reaching new locations causes new characters to appear and new paths to open—allowing the story to develop and continue.

Regarding the basic gameplay, each randomly generated floor map of the dungeon is laid out on a grid filled with treasure, monsters, and the exit to the next floor. Each time you take an action—like moving, attacking, or using a magic scroll—the enemies can do the same. This means they only move if you move—so you always have time to stop and think about your next action.

And as you move, you also heal. So many fights (especially those involving several enemies) involve a mixture of attacking, running away (naturally healing as you do so), and then attacking again. However, any action you take also decreases “fullness” (i.e., stamina bar)—meaning you need to keep finding food in the dungeon or risk death from starvation. Ultimately, you’re left with a balancing act of fighting monsters for gear and items or heading right to the exit so as not to waste your limited food supplies.

To be clear, the game quickly becomes far more complex than this. There are dozens of enemies that act differently, random traps that debuff you in horrible ways, and tons of magic scrolls and other consumables (that quickly fill up your surprisingly limited inventory space—even if you find jars to expand it) to play around with. Each run through the dungeon will likely be massively different from the last due to item RNG alone.

But perhaps the most important thing to note about The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island is that it’s far more “roguelike” than “roguelite.” That means each time you head into the dungeon, you start from zero: no gear, no items, no cash, no levels, no lasting power-ups.

The only exceptions to this come in the form of warehouses found in the various towns on the island that break up the dungeon and the Porter, whom you can randomly encounter. At these warehouses, you can drop any items or gear you want; if you reach the same town on a subsequent run, you can pick them up and put them to use. (Of course, once you die while holding these items, they will, like all other items you’re carrying, disappear for good). On the other hand, the Porter will take a single item you are carrying back to the warehouse at the starting village, allowing you a leg up on your next run.

In my limited experience, a mere four runs (two that made it past floor 10 of the dungeon and two that ended only a few floors in), I found the warehouse to be largely meaningless. If I didn’t randomly find a weapon, accessory, and shield early on, my chances of even making it to the second warehouse (the first I could offload items in personally) were nearly zero. And as for the Porter, I had no extra weapons or accessories to spare the only time I encountered him—making him a complete waste.

However, I can see how, in the long run, both the warehouse and Porter will be useful. The warehouse will add a bit more consistency—potentially saving runs that were doomed for early failure due to bad RNG, where you were missing an appropriately strong weapon, shield, or accessory for the upcoming area. And as for the Porter, assuming you have an amazing run and can get an extra weapon, shield, and accessory—along with a pot to store them all in—you could send that single pot back with the Porter and guarantee that you destroy the first dozen or so floors of your next run with no effort at all.

These two systems are critical because The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island cares little about things like being “fair” or “balanced.” It is quite possible to have a run die simply because you never find a weapon—and eventually, the enemies out-scale what your fist alone can do. There are also times when you start a floor surrounded by enemies and get stuck in a corner—and if you don’t have a randomly dropped magic scroll that does AOE damage on hand, it’s the end of your run.

In the end, based on my time with Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island, I can say two things about this game: 1) It’s unabashedly the kind of “Nintendo hard” throwback it purports to be and 2) it’s not the game for me. While I am no stranger to roguelite like Hades, Returnal, and Crypt of the Necrodancer, all of these have systems that give lasting progress, which make subsequent runs easier—and make you feel like even your worst runs weren’t entirely meaningless.

There is no such hand-holding for The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island. It’s all down to personal skill, luck, and the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of hours needed for both to line up perfectly. And I’m not going to lie; I felt bad after nearly an hour of careful dungeonering to suddenly be back to zero thanks to a spawn ambush or new powerful enemy that out-scaled my randomly acquired gear. If this kind of unforgiving game is the type you like, I have no problem recommending this one—and if you’re on the fence after reading this, I would at least encourage you to try it for yourself if you get the chance.

Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island is scheduled for release on February 27, 2024, in North America and Europe for the Nintendo Switch.