If you never played one of Chunsoft’s rouge-likes before Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 3 is not the game to start with. After thirty seconds on an introduction you’re thrown into the dungeon with two characters in your party. After you make a move, Asuka takes her turn and then Sensei, Shiren’s master, makes an action. The other two characters were controlled by the computer, but they were smart enough to help Shiren finish off enemies before attacking on their own. However, Asuka and Sensei weren’t aware when they were blocking Shiren’s escape when he was surrounded. Both characters essentially acted as a wall, forcing Shiren to fight with nowhere to run. Since Shiren isn’t alone Chunsoft packed on the monsters and it’s easy to get cornered.
During my playtime I was scouting around for one of the weapon growth pedestals where you leave behind a weapon to power it up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one before time ran out. I ended up spending more of my time fighting since there were so many hostile creatures in the dungeon. Thankfully, Sensei’s two hit katana combo cleared most of them without much of a problem.
One thing that was unusual about Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 3 was the control scheme. Instead of using a nunchuck/remote combo, Sega only had the demo stations set up with the retro controller. So for all you old school Shiren fans, you can look forward to using the classic pad. However, I wanted to see how Sega was gong to rearrange the buttons to fit a standard Wii setup. I guess that will have to wait until next time to test it out.
Here’s the final Shiren the Wander 3 tantalizing tidbit from Sega’s fact sheet, “The largest amount of mysterious and surprising scenarios in the series, numerous dungeons, and fulfilled network features has made this game more addictive than ever.”
