New screens and details for Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer

I know that some of us DS owners are frustrated by the lack of really, really hardcore RPGs for the system. Sure, Final Fantasy III was pretty tough in that oldschool 8-bit kind of way, but some of us cut our teeth on even older-school and harder-core games like Nethack. In these games, the challenge isn’t so much “beating the final boss” as it is simply staying alive long enough to make it to the next level of hell. We like our dungeons randomized, our characters with stats that go up to 9999, and our bosses full of spite and deadly status effects. Well, take heart, brave adventurers. A new DS RPG called Shiren the Wanderer shows a great deal of promise.

The next in the long-running series of Mystery Dungeon games from Chunsoft, Shiren the Wanderer features an all-new cast of original characters. The emphasis will remain on clearing large, labrynthine and semi-random dungeons of evildoers, using the series’ established turn-based movement system.

There will be a few concessions to newcomers with this release: A tutorial mode will be included for the first time, to help those who wandered unwittingly into the experience. The game also makes innovative use of the DS’s wifi capabilities, by allowing players who are defeated in a dungeon to call one of their friends to the rescue. Of course, that’s just what the dungeon wants.

Screenshots added January 22, 2008: