So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
I'm more baffled that the game was complete and reviews were published and yet it got pulled from release. You'd think they'd just release it anyway since all the work and had already gone into it including advertising.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
Finished the kitchen god dungeon of shiren's post game. Very interesting dungeon. You start with a knife that will randomly turn an enemy into a piece of meat. Eating this meat is the only way to replenish hunger in these dungeons and will also turn you into the enemies whose flesh it is.
It's a neat survival twist on the main gameplay where you have to really keep your hunger topped up but also exploit the enemy abilities. My tactic for the final few levels was to use one of the pumpkin enemies who can attack from walls and not suffer any retaliation and can also clip through any barrier. Made the final few floors trivial.
Then I almost screwed myself over. Found the npc that would give me an item and end the dungeon. My inventory was full so I ate the first enemy meat I had. Unfortunately when you eat enemy meat your character will attack automatically with their special attack on that turn. So I had eaten tank meat and sent an artillery shell at this npc who then aggroed. Luckily they respawned on the next floor and forgot about the artillery shell to the face.
Post edited by Retr0gamer on
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
So I've 4 dungeons left of Shiren. One is a 99 floor nightmare where nothing is identified. Got to floor 10 on that, it's nasty.
The other 3 you can bring your levels and weapons into them and I get wiped by the second floor. To beat them you have to grind and make weapons to even last on them and even at that theres no guarantee you will not get screwed over by nastiness and bad luck and lose those weapons.
So I decided to bring my good weapons to the second storehouse to make a start on weapon grinding and got ganked on the beginning stages and lost everything...
I'll see how weapon grinding goes but I might put the game down if it's a chore.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
Me two days ago: think I'm done here if grinding up a better weapon and shield is how to progress in Shiren.
Me yesterday: grinding up a better weapon and shield in this game is so much fun!
There's actually a lot to grinding up weapons but the most fun is abusing the shop that sells pots.
Pots in the game are used for many things, mostly for storing items and increasing your inventory space, but some have special properties. The one you really need is the super rare and expensive melding pot.
There's shop that sells pots and you can really abuse it to make money, putting junk in jars that changes them to more valuable items. But if you play your cards right, you can steal melding jars from the shop. Of course when you exit the shop you will be set upon by police and their dogs and have no way or beating them. But you can stun them and hit them with status effects and once you return to the town your crime is forgotten.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
Well in fairness I didn't give Isaac that much time. I kind of found the twin stick combat lacked some audio visual feedback. Like the attacks were weak.
I have played some rogue-lites like Isaac and have enjoyed them but they do play a little differently from an actual rogue-like such Shiren. There's a whole lot of narrative built into Shiren just from the interactions of the gameplay systems which makes it a lot of fun.
I would like to go back to Isaac but the insane amount of hours people put into it scares me off. Saying that I thought Shiren would be a short game and I'm just north of 40 hours into it.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
I constructed a pretty bad ass sword and shield in Shiren. Didn't get all the special abilities on them but got enough and a few of them aren't even available other than the far reaches of some of the tougher dungeons. I went into the 30 floor Ceremonial cave dungeon and absolutely bodied it. The final boss was fun but couldn't keep up with my damage output.
I then decided to take on the Tainted Path dungeon. This is continues on the main quest dungeon from its final floor of 30 and extends it to 99.
Started off relatively easy. Then around the 40 hour mark it gets a lot hairier. I can wipe most enemies out in one hit and they can only do 1 HP damage but the enemy designs are such that you can't be too confident.
The gaze enemies are still present that can hypnotise you to carry out a random action and can trap you in a long loop of this. You could end up throwing your equipment and losing it so these guys are very dangerous.
There's also these little Mandrake looking plant guys. These just poison you in the base game which reduces you strength stat permanently unless you have an antidote handy in the next few turns. In the later dungeons they will put you to sleep and then try to confuse and poison you multiple times. I got caught a few times by these. One poisoned me 6 times which lowered my strength to less than half but I had an antidote handy. Sleep is a minor inconvenience but in these later dungeons it can be a death sentence. There's also mage enemies that are annoying at low levels up at high levels they can also put you to sleep. They also have the ability to drain levels from you. Even worse is they can turn you into a riceball. This means you can't use items and bonuses from equipped weapons and armour are negated for 10 turns. This is absolutely lethal if any other enemies are around and you are asleep and have basically my Defense buff from a shield.
There's also the danger of enemies that can slap your sword or shield straight out of your hands. These only appeared on one floor near the end of the main game but are common here. At least it means you are scrambling after your sword or shield you put hours into levelling up. At worst they can slap it into an abyss and it's gone forever.
So far I've been lucky and gotten all the was to floor 74 before taking a break. However things have gotten very dicey size the 60th floor. These floors introduce high level dragons that can breath fire at you from anywhere as long as you are in the same room as them. Their fire breath does fire damage which ignores a lot of your shield Defensive buffs and it's therefore one of the few attacks that can trouble my Defense and does about 10% of my health in one hit. Now this is perfectly manageable in the usual small areas the game takes place in but some levels are giant rooms while every 10th floor is a boss fight in a massive roo. With no walls. If there's multiple dragons you will take multiple hits before you can even get to them. Your best bet is to get the hell out of there. These guys are giving me massive trouble and I've only survived by using a scroll to confuse every enemy in the room and running for the exit.
I looked at what other nightmares are ahead and it seems that the final 10 floors have the maximum level dragons that can hot you from anywhere on the floor.... Even through walls. So I guess I've 14 floors to prepare for these guys and come up with a strategy to get past them.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
Think I'm done with Shiren. 67 hours in, Ive beaten all the dungeons other than the true rogue like dungeon Fay's final puzzle. Had a few goes of it last night and only got as far as floor 6 of 99 at best. I see that a full run takes over 5 hours. Absolutely adore the game and could play that rogue dungeon forever but time to move on.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
I try to do that but sometimes I really love getting into the meta post game of RPGs and doing post game megabosses so often doesn't work out that way.
Shiren is kind of different though. I heard it say that the Mystery Dungeon games don't really begin until the post game and it was very true here. There's a massive amounts of content in the post game and it's all a huge amount of fun and honestly makes the game so much better. The new mechanics, enemies and items add are a real game changer. I'm glad I finished it all and I gave that rogue dungeon an honest go but it takes serious dedication to get through it.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
Oh trophies and achievements have no interest for me. They were relevant to me for precisely two games, dead rising and geometry wars 2 nd in both games they were suggestions about how the player could have fun with games systems.
Shiren though is different. I would say that the main quest is a teaser for the post game content which is where the real game is. It just gets you ready for all the post game content. You're really missing out on not playing it and it's what turns a great game into one of the best games I've played.
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Join Date:Posts: 50935
I find those games have lost a bit of their charm. The soundtracks still sound great through the SNES but it has that weird US jank game design where you kind of have to tank hits and it's made up for by health being so generous. It is however one of the best US jank games. Some stages are waaaaaay too long and a bit airplane hangar design wise.
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