

Combat is a relative breeze, as is moving. Provided you play through the lengthy tutorial - which you really, really should I cannot emphasize this enough - Shiren the Wanderer actually is much more user-friendly than other games. It’s an unapologetically difficult, old school roguelike dungeon-crawler, and it forces you to be methodical as you make your way through each room. Because Shiren the Wanderer is definitely a challenging game.

Just play that tutorial, learn what you’re doing, level up your character a little before heading out into the world, and you’ll be fine. It’s more tough-but-fair, a game that includes a three-hour-long tutorial for a reason - the reason being, of course, that it’s a complex game that demands a lot out of players. Shiren the Wanderer is definitely hard, but not to the extent that newcomers shouldn’t even think about playing it. Turns out it was just another bit of bad advice from a Gamestop employee. As someone who generally isn’t fond of games for which “brutally unforgiving” is adjective, that made me hesitant to even start playing. When I casually mentioned to an employee at my local Gamestop that it was on my to-play list, he instantly launched into a spiel about how hard it was, and how it was brutally unforgiving towards newcomers from the get-go. I avoided laying Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate for the longest time.
