Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer is a roguelike video game developed and published by Chunsoft. It is the second entry in the Mystery Dungeon series, following 1993’s Torneko no DaibÅken. It was originally released for the Super Famicom in 1995 in Japan; a Nintendo DS remake was published by Sega in 2006 in Japan and 2008 in the West.
The player takes the role of the rÅnin Shiren, who travels through thirty areas on his way to the Land of the Golden Condor. The game is turn-based, with all enemies and characters in an area moving whenever the player performs an action, such as attacking or moving. If the player falls in battle, they lose all their progress and are forced to restart from the beginning of the game: to counter-act this, they can choose to store powerful items in warehouses, and pick them up again on further playthroughs; the Nintendo DS release also adds rescue quests, where a player can save other players who have fallen, allowing them to continue from where they left off.
The game was developed with the core concept of repeated play, with the player having to improve their items through multiple playthroughs, and was seen as a way for the developers to more fully express the Mystery Dungeon series than with other titles in the series, which feature already existing game worlds that Chunsoft cannot change. The game was released to mixed reviews upon release, with reviewers criticizing the high difficulty and visuals, but praising how the game creates deep gameplay experiences through simple core gameplay concepts. Later, some publications called Shiren the Wanderer among the best in its genre and platform.
