Shiren The Wonder
HIGH Rich, flexible mechanics. A boatload of meaningful content.
LOW Some unavoidable clunky menu shuffling.
WTF A pot full of human backs?
What a pleasure it is to see a new Shiren the Wanderer release — and what a pleasure it is to report that it’s an absolute stunner.
Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island first released in 2024 on the Nintendo Switch — a console I haven’t touched since 2023, so I didn’t know a new Shiren had dropped until this new PC release came across my desk. However, I’ve been a Shiren aficionado since getting the DS remake of the Super Famicom original in 2008. As a younger, happier, and less capable man, I beat my head against Table Mountain on and off for years before finally clearing it, in what is still one of my most cherished gaming memories from that period.
I’d wager most people know the Mystery Dungeon series through the Pokemon spin-offs, but the core franchise is a venerable series, as august in its way as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest — both of which have factored into the Mystery Dungeon lineage themselves. In the grand tradition of major Japanese role-playing games, the Mystery Dungeon family tree is a complicated one. Suffice it to say that Shiren himself is the series’ first original character, and the titles in which he appears represent the choicest, purest Mystery Dungeon experiences, Pikachus, Chocobos and Tornekos be damned.
In Serpentcoil, as in all Shiren titles, the wanderer and his talking ferret companion Koppa (don’t worry about it) drift into a new locale and find themselves embroiled in a major local disaster. In this case, it’s a mysterious maiden trapped inside the belly of a monster called Jakaku, who resides on the 31st floor of Mt. Jatou. These 31 floors comprise the first — but nowhere near the last — of the Mystery Dungeons players are tasked with conquering.
The Mystery Dungeon games are full-blooded, overhead perspective, turn-based roguelikes, and I use “roguelike” very pointedly here, as it’s a term that has been criminally misused by games writing over the last 20 years and can mean virtually anything at this point. With that noted, this is the real deal – a console-oriented answer to the beautiful complexities of the true roguelikes such as Nethack, ADOM, or Dungeon Crawl.
These titles and others like them are long-lived PC masterworks, renowned for marvelous complexity and correspondingly intimidating interfaces. Really, prior to Mystery Dungeon, the genre was perceived as too arcane and baroque to be successfully implemented on anything whose sole input device is a controller. Then in 1993, with Torneko’s Big Adventure, Spike Chunsoft figured out how to square this ornery circle, and the Mystery Dungeon series was born.
They did this by a design trick so brilliant and so clear-eyed it seems effortless in retrospect — hardly even noticeable if the player isn’t paying attention, but it must have taken some serious cogitation on behalf of the Spike Chunsoft crew to execute. They took all of the complexities roguelikes were known for, removed them from control-side inputs, and put them into the interactions between the various game elements — player character, monsters, items, terrain. Thus they could keep the inputs manageable within the reduced capabilities of a controller, while still delivering all the surprise and depth that made the great roguelikes great.
These multifarious, surprising reactions have been expanded and polished to a joyous apex in Serpentcoil Island, and their ruleset is crisp, clean, and flexible. Every single monster, item, and piece of gear has one unique ability, and these individual peculiarities interact in ways that punish sloppy play just as much as they reward creative thinking.
For instance, if Shiren finds a grass but has not identified it, he can use an Identify scroll to determine whether it will heal him, poison him, or make him blind for a few turns. If an Identify scroll isn’t handy, he can throw the grass at a monster, forcing whatever the grass’s effect is onto the creature. But if that unidentified grass happens to be a Strength Grass, well, now Shiren has a monster with boosted power barreling towards him.
Every encounter cries out for analysis and strategy, and once the player is subsumed into its magisterial rhythm, Serpentcoil becomes an endless fountain of deeply engaging adventure. Roguelikes have a deserved reputation for difficulty, but once the basics sink in, Serpentcoil seems less like a ballbuster and more like a permissive, ever-changing delight.
Defeating Jakaku and “finishing” the main quest is just the beginning. Once that’s done, Serpentcoil unfurls a luxurious, multifaceted, sandbox-style postgame. All sorts of extra dungeons are made available, many with unique themes and modifiers, all asking the player to stretch their understanding of the games flexile mechanics to the utmost in order to make it through. I particularly enjoyed the Inference Dungeon which is full of unidentified items – many cursed or dangerous – and demands creativity and wise risk-taking to make it through.
As much as I want to continue fawning over the mechanics, attention needs be given to the audiovisual aspect. The OST is full of lush, traditional Japanese instrumentation, but it’s also catchy as hell – a surprising standout element in the package. And while I’m sad that Spike Chunsoft abandoned the decadent pixel art of Tower of Fortune, I ended up won over by the cheery, shiny polygonal graphics here. Everything is cute and plasticky, with the tactile quality of modern board game components, and a tasteful glaze of Wii-era fidelity and charm. I dig it.
It is customary when talking about Shiren to share at least one story from one’s own experience, so…
I was in one of the postgame dungeons themed around sacred gear, swords and shields laden with multiple bonuses and runes. I had found a Synthesis Pot, into which I could put several weapons and combine their upgrade bonuses and special effect runes. I had just finished cooking up a real masterpiece of a weapon and excitedly threw it against the wall to break it open and retrieve the mighty blade — but forgot I had stepped on a Far-Throwing Trap on the same floor, which means that anything I threw was not stopped by walls. So, the pot containing my masterwork supersword flew right off the map, out of the game and my life forever.
Shiren! Damn, what a game.
Serpentcoil Island is easily, easily one of the best things I played 2024. In a just world, it would be on a lot of others’ lists as well.
Rating: 9 out of 10
— Ben Schwartz
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Spike Chunsoft. It is currently available on PC and Switch. This copy was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was “completed” (with dozens of hours of postgame content still ahead of me). There are light indirect multiplayer elements interwoven into the main single-player experience.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E 10+ and contains Fantasy Violence, Comic Mischief, and Use of Alcohol. From the ESRB: “This is an adventure role-playing game in which players assume the role of a wanderer searching for island treasure. From a ¾-overhead perspective, players explore towns, interact with characters, and fight their way through dungeons. Players use swords and arrows to defeat fantastical enemies (e.g., elemental ninjas, spearfish) in turn-based combat. Battles are highlighted by impact sounds, light effects, and dwindling health bars; enemies generally disappear when defeated. During battles, players can consume sweet potatoes, resulting in flatulence cloud effects and accompanying text (e.g., ‘Makes you fart, sending all beings in the room running.’). One sequence depicts a drunk character (e.g., hiccupping, swaying) that is referred to as ‘a lousy lush.’”
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no spoken dialogue in this game, everything is conveyed through text. The text size cannot be altered. There are no relevant audio cues. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.
- Sonic Forces Review - December 8, 2025
- Pacific Drive: Whispers In The Woods Review - December 2, 2025
- Slime Rancher 2 Review - November 11, 2025