Shiren the Wanderer: The roguelike real deal 

Thank you for the kind words - I'm glad this was of interest :-). I think ADOM and TOME are much more "hardcore" as far as roguelikes go. Shiren the Wanderer is a genuine roguelike, but in terms of presentation and general design it's a touch more accessible, where ADOM and TOME have a touch more depth. I'm a Nethack player from way back, so I do like my roguelikes hardcore, but Shiren gets me thanks to its lovely anime presentation and sense of humour. So, tough to chose a favourite between all these. I say play 'em all TBH :D. Great genre, the roguelike. Got all the time in the world for the real ones.

You're welcome! And I love Shiren and the Dark Spire. I also bust it out from time to time. Very nearly missed it because it was released in such low numbers here in Australia.

I'd throw Chocobo Mystery Dungeon in there - particularly the two on PlayStation original - but yes, I do agree that there's something about the Mystery Dungeon formula that makes it timeless and the epitome of the genre.

Azure Dreams is my favorite game of all time

Thanks for clarifying that!

Thank you very your very kind words! I'm glad I'm interesting. I do try :D. Genso Wanderer is very much a homage to Shiren, so you'll find Shiren very comforting and familiar when you play it. Let me know how you find it once you're playing!

The NIS Classics are off to a good start, too! In the process of reviewing the first one now. I hope longer term NISA looks at some of its library stuck on PS3 as well. I'd love to play Guided Fate Paradox again :D

@@DigitallyDownloaded less than a week later and they announced ZHP in NIS Classics Volume 2. Im so happy that a new generation gets to experience that game.

It’s described as a mystery dungeon game because it is literally part of the mystery dungeon series.

I think that's the point he was getting at, you "believe", genre's are supposed to be better defined and less vague, when you say "Real-Time strategy" it becomes far more obvious what kind of game its suppose to be.

Rogue original are : turne base, random dungeon items npcs, permadeath. Shiren are a roguelike for me!

Yes, the crux of the video is really that, for me at least, the point of a genre is to help you figure out whether you should be interested in the game (book, film, whatever) based on the genre it belongs to. If I like RPGs, I should pay attention to the new RPG coming out. That kind of thing. It's not perfect of course, but a genre is a shared set of characteristics that define the key elements of a game. The problem with roguelikes and rogue-likes is that they are so broad that I just can't see them being useful. I love Shiren the Wanderer. I don't like Binding of Isaac at all (just a hypothetical example). Should I be interested in the next game that bills itself as a "roguelike?" It's honestly hard to tell. I'd just like to see a narrower scope for the roguelike, so that when I describe Shiren the Wanderer as one, people who have never even seen a screenshot will have a more clear idea about what the game would be like. There's always sub-genres for other games. Anyhow, this is just an academic exercise. More to the point... everyone play Shiren :D

@@DigitallyDownloaded real roguelike fanatics wouldn't consider the mystery dungeon games roguelike at all. there are some made up rules: "the berlin interpretation". those guys will get a heart attack if you call that a classical roguelike. ;) they even argue if genre classics like ADOM can be a roguelike, cause its not open source. or TOME which has unlockable races/classes, which is way to much progression for a purist. but time moved on, its 2020 now and the genre is thriving and the mystery dungeon games are a great entrypoint.

@@theMisfit81 Hahaha, fair call. I'm sure I'm going to get some angry folks at some stage telling me I'm a horrible person because I'm not quite *that* much of a purist :D

Glad to hear you're having a great time with it! :-)

Sure did. Loved it a lot - though I will forever be more a Chocobo person as far as Square Enix spinoff roguelikes are concerned. Chocobo's just too cute :D

I'm glad you enjoyed the video, and I hope you love the game as much as I do!

You're very welcome :-)

I didn't realise that this specific Shiren game was released on DS. Thanks for clarifying!

Nah it did lose its meaning. Roguelike literally meant games that play like rogue, then a bunch of games that didn't play like rogue, got released as Roguelites or whatever the hell people are calling them. But really, they're just arcade games. Most roguelites are remakes of Gauntlet.

It's really the same game. It looks great on the Switch's larger screen, but otherwise both versions of the game are equivalent :-)

Hopeully you get to play it soon :-)

What about "gamelike" because it has game qualities.

Bro but there is something around that kind of terms Things like "soulslike" are their very own thing, also terms like "metroidvania" ando such The Word "roguelike" by itself it's a broad term that decribes a game with somehow specific core mechanics

To be fair the industry also struggles to tell the difference. You should see the number of press releases from indies that I get, proudly talking up their new "roguelike"

Too many people just want to debate between the two terms, and IMO the term roguelite shouldn't even exist, because it kind of makes the game Gauntlet irrelevant. It had a lot of these concepts, and was not inspired by rogue. It was a 4 player arcade game, was very good quarter muncher, one of the best.

I'm so glad it has fans. It's such a great game and series :D

Hahah, you'll find I do that a lot on RU-vid. I generally use these videos to drill down into a particular topic to accompany my written review :-). I'm glad it was of interest!

I do that mostly because everyone else's thumbnails are in colour. Also I like the B & W aesthetic

Late to the party but Tangledeep looks awesome im buying it today. Thank you

Repetition is ingrained into rogue. It's supposed to be repetitive, they're pick up and play games.