An odd combination of entertaining and downright frustrating, Shiren the Wanderer is an interesting and challenging role-playing game. Shiren, a wandering swordsman, and his sidekick Koppa, a talking white ferret, meet up with Shiren’s old teacher. Aptly named, Shiren’s teacher, Sensei, becomes another primary player in the story, as he reveals to you the key to the legendary Karakuri Mansion. Fabled to hold great riches, the mansion draws many adventurers. The people of the local Otsutsuki Village have told tales of seeing monsters at night, and rumors circulate about the mansion. Shiren and company decide to investigate. And so begins a story of a 1,000-year-old prophecy and a princess.

Shiren the Wanderer starts with Shiren and company arriving at Otsutsuki Village, giving you the opportunity to look around, learn the controls and talk to the locals. The game doesn’t give you the luxury of tutorials or tips, so you have to read up on the flow of the game yourself, but you can find written tutorials from the pause menu or use the game booklet. Once you’ve gotten the hang of things — and spent some time around the town — you get to head to the world map. From here, you can select a location to go to. To unlock new locations, you must battle through dungeons. These dungeons are where all the fighting and most of the gameplay happens.

Each dungeon is randomly generated, so every time you enter it, it’s a whole new challenge. This means that if you die, you can’t just retrace your steps until you arrive at the place of your death. Instead, you just have to fight your way through a brand new dungeon. The items and their locations are also randomly generated, meaning that you need to explore every room to find them all. This is one place where the game becomes very frustrating. The in-dungeon map layout does not help. The map appears in the center of the screen, semi-transparent and overlaid on top of the gameplay. This can be rather distracting, having a light blue map in your way every time you enter a dungeon. Despite these few hang-ups, the dungeons are fun to play through.

The combat system is efficient and well-designed. Every step you take, every item you use or equip, and every attack you make counts as a turn. Then, each enemy near you will take a turn. When no enemies are about, you can move and use items freely. If one is close enough to appear on your map, you will switch to having each action count as a turn. This means you must make every move count and be wary about what you choose to do. This is one of my favorite aspects of Shiren the Wanderer; it forces an interesting kind of creativity into the game’s design. However, being an impulsive sort in these kind of games, I often found myself pushing the A button a few too many times and wasting a turn. Nonetheless, the combat is fun and flows very nicely.

Now, a word about difficulty levels. The game has two. If you choose Easy, your character dies and you have to start the dungeon again. No big deal. If you choose Normal, your character dies and you lose everything. That’s right. All your items, all your money. You keep your levels and your stats, but you have to get everything else back. On the bright side, Shiren the Wanderer does have bank and storage systems, so you can set aside money and items to get back if you need them later, and they won’t disappear when you die. However, the game tends to get you stuck in a cycle of losing everything, having nothing in storage, and having to fight through the low-level dungeons over and over in hopes of getting some items and money to help you take down the harder levels. The tough thing about this is that it is time-consuming. Without weapons, you are forced to sit and punch enemies repeatedly. And since items appear randomly, there’s no guarantee you are going to find a weapon or that you will get enough money to buy one. To make matters worse, the stores in the game constantly change their wares, meaning that you sometimes cannot even find the item you want once you have the money.

Although Shiren the Wanderer does have its frustrations, it is a whimsical and lighthearted adventure. The music has a very period traditional Japanese sound, bringing to mind the soundtracks of a kung fu film. The visuals, bright and simply designed, look nice and are fluid. The characters themselves are witty and provide a laugh or two throughout the story. However, this game is only single player, having no multiplayer modes.

Overall, I would recommend Shiren the Wanderer to any RPG fan and, really, to anyone with a bit of extra patience. This game is not for the faint of heart or for those who need the instant gratification of a few frags or headshots. If Shiren the Wanderer seems up your alley, you’re sure to enjoy its humor and its attention to difficulty and detail.