Just lately, my son and I had been invited to attend a particular hands-on preview occasion at Spike Chunsoft’s headquarters in Tokyo to play the upcoming Shiren the Wanderer: The Thriller Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island for Nintendo Swap, which is scheduled for launch in Japan on January twenty fifth and within the West on February twenty seventh. We had been allowed to play the sport for round two hours, and I’ll spoil the end result proper right here on this introduction: I needed to be torn away from it when the time was up. I might have performed all of it day if I may have. However let’s get into a number of the nitty-gritty particulars, we could?
Common readers will know that I stay in sunny Japan, which is mostly a pleasant place to stay other than the kaiju assaults each Friday. I don’t stay in an enormous metropolis although, so making a visit to Spike Chunsoft’s workplaces within the extremely trendy Akasaka space of Tokyo required taking a little bit of a prepare journey. Nicely, an excellent probability to play some Shiren on my Sport Boy as a warm-up. We arrived on the workplaces a bit early for the occasion, so we loved some drinks on the close by Starbucks. As soon as it was a extra affordable time, we headed up the elevator.
I’ll spare you the remainder of the little particulars, however we quickly discovered ourselves in a room with another journalists. Additionally within the room had been a variety of Spike Chunsoft’s individuals, together with the sport’s director Keisuke Sakurai, undertaking supervisor Hideyuki Shinozaki, and sub-producer Ryo Nishmura. After some introductions, we had been allowed to dig in to Shiren the Wanderer: The Thriller Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island on the offered Nintendo Swap items. Two hours should be loads of time, proper? My son and I had been sharing a Swap, and I took the primary flip.
The instantly placing factor is that the sport is in full 3D. Now, it’s been a reasonably very long time because the final totally new launch within the Shiren sequence, and that sport used 2D visuals. Fortuitously, the brand new graphical model nonetheless has all of the attraction of the standard sprites. Everybody who needs to be recognizable is, and the acquainted enemies are trying nice. This new model permits the sport to do some enjoyable issues with the digicam in cut-scenes and such, with one cave scene between dungeons shifting the angle behind Shiren to indicate off a beautiful aquarium-like view. It’s not going to win any prizes for finest graphics on the system or something, however it seems good and is trustworthy to the sequence.
By and enormous, when you’ve performed any Shiren video games earlier than, you’ll discover this one acquainted within the broad strokes. Shiren is doing that factor that’s in his identify, and stumbles upon individuals in bother. He heads into some dungeons accompanied by his trustworthy pal Koppa to hunt journey and possibly a little bit fortune alongside the best way. Mentioned dungeons are procedurally generated, as a result of this can be a correct Japanese-style roguelike. Layouts, enemies, loot, and extra can be totally different each time you play. There are some issues that carry over from run to run, however when you collapse within the dungeon you’ll lose the whole lot you’re carrying and be dropped again to degree 1. You’ll nevertheless bear in mind your experiences and hopefully can be higher geared up to deal with no matter defeated you subsequent time.
The Thriller Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island is supposedly extra streamlined in some respects when in comparison with the earlier entry in an try to get again to the roots of the franchise, however I didn’t see an entire lot of that in my transient time with the sport. Shiren is at all times deceptively easy till you understand all of the attention-grabbing methods parts can work together, at which level your mind begins clicking items collectively and issues get actually wild. For instance, your commonplace meals merchandise is an onigiri – , a riceball. It’s tasty, however it’s even higher when it’s roasted. If an enemy units you on fireplace, any onigiri you’re carrying is likely to be roasted together with you. Possibly you’ll discover an merchandise that means that you can stroll in water. That’s helpful! However a variety of your stuff will get ruined when you wade round carelessly. And so forth.
Anyway, my first flip ended pretty rapidly. A pumpkin-headed ghost, one of many common enemies within the sequence, handed by means of some partitions and stomped me in a few hits. I handed the controller over to my son, who had been learning up by enjoying the earlier Swap launch. He observed one helpful new UI characteristic: now you can equip a number of projectiles to make use of with button combos. You don’t need to maintain moving into and switching between them, making for a far smoother stream. Sadly, my son’s pleasure over this new characteristic would show to be his undoing. He made it farther than I did, however he occurred throughout an enemy that regarded like an enormous grasshopper. He fired upon it, and it used a bat-like weapon to launch it proper again at him, one-shotting him. Whoops!
Dad’s flip! This time I discovered a very nice sword early on, and that made an enormous distinction. Higher nonetheless, I quickly discovered a superb defend. Now we had been cooking with fuel! With these two objects I used to be in a position to make wonderful progress, making my means by means of a number of scenic places and assembly some attention-grabbing characters. At one level issues regarded like they had been about to go pear-shaped when a slime leveled up right into a extra highly effective type. I used to be in huge bother, however I used an merchandise to confuse it after which made a run for the exit. I made it to the following secure space, and time was up. I had torched ninjas, sliced up these annoying pumpkin-heads, and worn out total rooms of enemies with one scroll. In the long run, solely the agency hand of the Spike Chunsoft reps may cease me.
The wild factor is that judging by the overworld map display, I had barely scratched the floor. There was an entire lot extra sport ready for me, and I’ve little question I might have run into much more bushy conditions quickly. The joys of escaping that type of factor, the agony of your luck working out, and that want to select up once more and go a little bit deeper into the dungeons… that’s what Shiren the Wanderer: The Thriller Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island is all about, and I can’t wait to select up the place I left off with it when the sport releases on Nintendo Swap in February of subsequent 12 months.
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