BGM - "Valley Inn"This is the Valley Inn, the beginning area of the game. After every death, of which you will undoubtedly see many over the course of this Let's Play, we get sent back here. Although it doesn't serve
much purpose mechanically, It's a nice, comfy little area to start our quest each time we die horrible, and really helps add to the flavor of the game -- there's no real urgency to our hero's quest, no looming threat to the world that must be taken care of as soon as possible; Denton has all the time he needs to tackle Table Mountain. This allows the game to maintain plot continuity between runs -- if you get halfway through the dungeon before dying, any progress you make on any sidequests along the way is remembered by your save file, and is considered canon to the story. This stands in contrast to classic computer roguelikes, where "permanent death" means that every time you start a new run, you're creating an entirely different character -- even if most players will just reuse the same character template over and over. In this game, on the other hand, no matter how may times we splat, it'll still be the same Denton waking up in the same Valley Inn for a different day of horrible torture on the same road to the Land of the Sun.
Koppa: "It's a memento of his friend's. True that you don't see many Wanderers wearing them nowadays though."
Man: "Whoa, you're a talking weasel! That's pretty uncommon too!"
Yes, very astute observation of you, Mr. Unnamed NPC. Any other smart remarks?
Hmm -- an inn in a town called "Valley Inn". Fascinating.
The man to the right is the warehouse guard, who explains to us how to properly take advantage of the warehouse -- but we'll be leaving him alone, because I'd rather explain it myself.
Warehouses are the first of the game's "mercy mechanics" as a console roguelike. Anything you stash in here will be saved between runs, leaving all its special properties intact, allowing you to hoard the best loot from your runs before equipping it all at once and heading for the Land of the Sun for real! This mechanic is probably the most important one out of all the mercy mechanics in the game, and the one that most distinctly sets it apart from more traditional mainframe roguelikes. There are some caveats to this mechanic, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them.
In roguelike jargon, rules that keep track of some kind of progress between runs rather than during are called
metaprogression. The most traditional of roguelikes have no metaprogression at all, so this can naturally be a very heated topic among roguelike purists! By the standards of indie neo-roguelikes, the metaprogression mechanics in
Shiren the Wanderer are actually pretty weak, in that they don't have a significant impact on the overall gameplay experience, but by the standards of traditional roguelikes, the metaprogression elements in
Shiren are quite strong.
The kanji for "warehouse" or "storehouse" is painted on a banner to the side of the door in elegant calligraphy. Denton stops to admire it. The localization in the DS release of the game changes all kanji signs to small pictures, like a sword or a mug of beer, hinting at the nature of the business inside, but this fan translation leaves all the kanji in for flavor -- and, presumably, the convenience of not having to edit any sprites.
No inn town in an RPG would be complete without a bar, of course. To our left is another kanji banner, this time with the kanji for
sake on it -- this is the one that would be replaced with a slightly setting-inappropriate mug of beer if we were playing the DS version.
"You've got promise. So I'll tell ya something. Equip your arrows, then use the L button... and fire! Fire!! FIRE!!!!!"
Oookaaay. If I ever find any arrows, I'll keep that in mind, sir.
Denton takes note of the pub and reminds himself to come back to it later if he needs a little something to forget the horrors on the road ahead.
Heading east, his attention is drawn to a sign hanging out in the middle of the path. Denton stops for a moment to read it.
It appears to be a scoreboard of some kind -- perhaps for a local gambling tournament.
Wait... who was that Shiren person anyway?
The last object of interest in the town is this one last building. There don't seem to be any people standing around by it, and it has no sign with a name on it -- only another banner, with the kanji "番" --
ban, meaning "turn", "round", or "number of a series". I wonder what goes on in here?
Next update -- exploring the buildings!