Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island review

The decades-old Shiren the Wanderer series is famous for being bluntly unforgiving, and The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island is no exception to that intimidating rule. I'm dumped into a randomised dungeon and expected to fend for myself using nothing more than whatever I find lying around on the floor, the stairs to the next level only promising more of the same pain. A monster strolls into the room, one tile at a time, and I freeze, carefully considering every step and sword swing I can make before I act.

It's tense and unpredictable. Learning how to improvise is a necessity, especially as I can't guarantee when, where, or even if vital equipment will turn up. Spells rarely do something as simple as hurt the enemy ahead, and deadly traps could be hiding under any and every inch of the floor. Any mistake or careless slip could (will) quickly spiral into an unrecoverable disaster, and that would mean I'd lose everything, every item, weapon, and even my stats, and have to start over from the first floor. Again.

The odd thing is Shiren doesn't feel merciless in practice. It's more like trying to juggle chainsaws on horseback. If—if—everything goes my way and I don't blink, or sneeze, or breathe at the wrong time, then I'll have pulled off the greatest trick ever.

Labbing the labyrinth

The first few floors cover simple concepts like attacking and diagonal movement in concise popups, keywords can be clicked on at any time (making it easy to find the answer to questions like "What the heck is the 'empathetic' status and do I want it?"), and the Monster Dojo back in the first village is a training ground and safe experimental sandbox all rolled into one. I love being able to pop in there and use the premade puzzles to not just read about but play through the fundamentals of successful Shiren-ing, or customise an empty room to test out some status effect or just observe an enemy's behaviour. How long, exactly, can I send a room full of monsters to sleep for? Just how much damage is reflected back at my opponent when I've got a Counter Shield equipped?

Everything I learn here I can apply to my exploration of the island, giving me a sneakier, smarter option when faced with a battle I'd definitely lose if I faced it head-on—like the sudden appearance of a buff muscular tiger, a monster that had tossed me around like a basketball on a previous run. This time was different. I'd taken a minute to experiment with magical staves back in the dojo, and remembered I had one on me now that could paralyse anything its magical bullets touched. In one move that tiger became about as dangerous as a fluffy kitten, literally unable to get its paws on me while I chipped away at its health from a safe distance.

It was the perfect reminder of Shiren's most important lesson. Everything from simple bracelets to shining swords are stuffed with conditional effects and unique properties (and can often be enhanced with even more), and I really do need to use them all. Mindlessly rushing up to a monster to hit it in the face—even if I can hit it really hard—is rarely the right answer unless I'm after a quick, inglorious death.

I can't be certain what will show up and try to kill me while I'm making the long trek from sandy beach to rocky summit, but as Serpentcoil draws monsters from predetermined pools I can get a sixth sense for when archers and samurai grasshoppers could start appearing, and with some time and practice I can at least prepare myself for them.

I was eventually so well prepared—in personal experience, not shiny items laden with special effects—that I decided to test my skills against the game's epic cold open, where I'm plunged into a do-or-die battle against the final boss with nothing more than a few semi-randomised pieces of standard equipment to help. The game expects me to lose here. I'm supposed to watch Shiren pass out and then wake up on the beach, ready to start his first full dungeon run. Instead, I won. No, I did more than just win: I comfortably cleared the entire adventure on a fresh save in less than five minutes.

To put that in modern roguelike terms: it's like I rode an elevator directly to Hades and beat him without a single upgrade or godly boon.

Break everything

After spending hours and hours learning and trying and failing and trying and failing again just so I could hope I'd reach the final battle, it felt like I'd reached a new stage of enlightenment. This game is so eager to accommodate absolutely any wild idea I have, to run with whatever crackers strategy I can imagine, it'll even let me win unwinnable battles. It makes all the hardship along the way feel collaborative—every enemy attack is a fresh clue, every sneaky trick something I can use myself. Shiren wants me to learn the rules so I can not just break them, but throw every last one of them back at it. Strategy and knowledge beat everything, even a backpack full of really sharp swords and shiny shields.

And the best part? When it's confident I've mastered the basics, Serpentcoil explodes into a wildly creative version of itself. As in Hades, beating it once is essentially just the beginning.

Clearing the story at any speed unlocks an avalanche of further tales. Challenges and new features await anyone brave enough to continue the adventure. The new labyrinths are often based on a particular concept or special item, such as clearing a dungeon in the shortest number of steps or stuffing Shiren so full of delicious onigiri he temporarily becomes a sumo-sized whirlwind of destruction. I'm tested in a dozen new ways I hadn't even imagined, encouraged to not just use everything I already know, but invent brand new strategies to counter problems that didn't exist an hour or two earlier.

This is an incredible roguelike. Newcomers will find it has all the information they need to learn the basics at their own pace, and a charming, well-paced story filled with memorable characters, from food-loving samurai to awkward pirates. Longtime wanderers can use their skills to break through to the NG+ features in mere minutes, and the game is happy to instantly raise its own bar to match.

At any and every level, this is a flexible and layered adventure packed with rewards, happy to give players a toolbox filled with absurd abilities and let them invent their own path through the game.