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I enjoy the music despite generally finding music as a whole to be insufferable. It doesn't grate on my nerves like other games do. The lack of voice acting is a little lame, but the music carries the weight of the cutscenes pretty well.
Story
There was a time when I would have said Shiren 3 had an amazing story; I've since reviewed hundreds of books in physical, eBook, and Audio Book formats, as well as read up on some InuYasha movie lore, only to realize two things. The first is that Chunsoft / Spike Chunsoft couldn't tell a decent story if their life depended on it, and the second is they're lazy, as they've seemingly recycled Japanese myth and slapped a Shiren skin over it twice now. Not only that, they've recycled the same plot forPokémon Mystery Dungeon titles twice as well. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Darkness is simply /Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Team with more details, and I've been told Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon is Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity in the same way.
Gameplay
The very first thing I noticed on my second attempt to play Shiren 3 (2018) was how unbearably slow it feels at the start. I had to get used to navigating in these double-wide hallways and diagonal paths. When I came back to the game in 22, I experienced the same issues that I eventually got used to. While I appreciate the detail of being able to watch Shiren bend over and pick up every item, I'm grateful to be able to turn off that annoying animation, and especially the horrible attack zoom. Good riddance.
One of the most common complaints I've heard about Shiren 3 is how the player characters keep their levels throughout the story. Nothing says, "I've never played Shiren 3, I simply parrot what other people tell me to say" more than the people who bitch about that 'cause anybody who has actually played the game knows that keeping your levels doesn't help with jack shit. After watching a member of the Shiren community play Shiren 3 for the first time, and livestream it, I realized just how many beginner pitfalls the game has. While it explains some mechanics via menu tips, it generally leaves you high and dry.
For example, a Katana costs 2,000 Gitan, but if you sell one, you get 200 Gitan or 10% of the purchase cost. That's total bullshit. You lose all of your equipment on defeat on the normal difficulty and get reset back to the start of the dungeon with the gear that didn't carry you through on easy. From watching "Aeir" stream Shiren 3, I've since learned that the "Easy" difficulty is really no different than "Normal". 'Cause we both had the same experience at different points in the game. He had to resort to a grinding session to build up his gear enough to progress the story, while I had to do it repeatedly throughout the main story. If you go farming, you can sell all of your hard-earned loot to purchase gear, which is all absurdly expensive, only to realize post-credits that you need 10s of thousands of Gitan to progress with the post-credits story.
You have to pay the Blacksmith 10,000 Gitan to add a "Rune Slot" to your weapon, shield, or armband, or 5,000 Gitan to remove a Rune from them *after doing his personal quest*. And not only that, he'll ask for a random item, which I'm VERY FUCKING BITTER ABOUT 6 years on, 'cause on my first full play through in 2018, he asked me for a Bitter Herb, the only currently known spawn location of is in the "Tsuzura Labyrinth", the "Final Dungeon" of the game. When you can successfully use the Blacksmith's services, he'll give you a single cryptic hint, of which there are many, that tell you how to transform one item into another. How the holy hell could anybody possibly figure this out solo? And the lack of any official guidebooks for this game is utterly disgusting to me. Shiren 3 is damn near unplayable without a wiki or FAQ, and the community has had to brute-force its way into figuring this shit out over the last 15 years, and there are still countless gaps in our knowledge base.
"Rare" items in other Shiren titles, such as Kabra's Blade or the Windshield have NOTHING on Shiren 3. The only reason I have either of them is because the game essentially gives them to you for free. And the process of transforming them is on another level. For example, one of the runes needed for the Kabra Reborn is obtained by acquiring a Dragonkiller, transforming it into a Flame Sword, and fusing it to a Kabra's Blade. For the Stormward, you need to add a rune slot to a Bulky Shield, so you can fuse 4 other Bulky Shields to it, a rare shield in its own right, to transform it into a Satori Shield and then fusing that onto the Windshield, and again, that's only one step. But the only way you'd know this (is a wiki) is if you manage to get all 5 or 7 of the blacksmith's cryptic hints to explain the process in detail. Now ain't that some shit!
Shiren 3 is by far the most brutally unforgiving Shiren title I've ever played. Many people in the community I've spoken to have complained about how the story dragged on for far too long, of which I agree vehemently. It's 30~ dungeons long and about 2/3 of the way through is when I find myself losing my patience, and wanting to rush it to get to the post-credits, where I can start progressing quests.
If you thought the blacksmith thing was bad, I'd say that's because it is. But it's far from the only total bullshit curveball Shiren 3 throws at you. One side quest is progressed by speaking to a random character inside of a house, who'll tell you the secret to this old granny's bug repellant. You need 3 types of monster meat, and coincidentally, the Bufu Cave opens up. I use trickery to escape the place early with cleavers and staves, but be careful not to talk to the old granny with 1 of 2 of the 3 pieces of monster meat required for her bug repellent, 'cause she'll take them and not progress the quest. Another one of Shiren 3's bullshit pitfall traps for unsuspecting players.
Shiren 3 is absolutely littered with BS pitfalls like this, so you may be asking why I like it so much. The answer is simple, really. I live for the grind! As a former achievement hunter, the harder something is, the more I want it! Shiren 3 NA feels more like a true "roguelike" than any of the other Shiren titles. When you get defeated (on Normal or post-credits), you lose everything but your levels. And as I previously established, those levels don't mean jack-shit. And there are plenty of level-reset dungeons. Every single thing I have in Shiren 3 is something that I've EARNED! You can spend 10 hours raising up a set of equipment, using every exploit in the game, and the game can snap its fingers and make it disappear with no rescues, no save states, and no hope of recovery. You either quit or get back to exploring. I think rescues are a crutch that only serves to weaken the player base into a bunch of pansies who can't get over their materialistic ways. Yeah, I want a Kabra Reborn for my story trophy collection, but the game makes you work for it, and the "freebie" Kabra's Blade and Windshield the game gives you are the only ones I've ever owned.
Back in mid-2018, after I'd left achievement hunting and my former hobbies, my internet was down for a bit. All I had was my phone, which was unbearably laggy and slow, and my 3DS. I booted up Pokémon Blue and needed a way to stretch out my gameplay, so I started a new challenge. The "Earned Experience" challenge, where every single monster earned every bit of experience. No switchouts, no Exp share, and no rare candies. When I started the challenge in Pokémon Platinum, it took me probably 20 hours or more to evolve my Magicrap into a Gyarados. I treasure that thing, because it earned every single experience point it had, and it was all the more satisfying when it finally evolved. And that's the mentality I bring into Shiren 3. The grinder the game is, the pitfall traps, all of the bullshit the game throws my way only hardens my resolve.
Localization
Not to say I don't appreciate that Atlus localized this game, but good god, ugh. First of all, the dialogue is truly awful. I know they couldn't exactly "re-write the plot", but when you have shitty lines like "Tell my wife, your sister....", I don't know if that was Chunsoft's bad writing or the shitty Atlus localization. They started the infuriating trend of dropping "Mystery Dungeon" from the title, they started the infuriatingly annoying trend of re-naming items and monsters for no good reason, and in one case, called the "Dragon" by the name "Floor Dragon", which is a totally different monster not in this game. Their localization is full of stupid inconsistencies as well, such as keeping "Jar" instead of "Pot", but naming a boss the "Pot King", and a monster the "Hot Pot Frog". It's all very sloppy and lackluster.
On the old Atlus forums, they claimed that "despite their best efforts," they couldn't implement the Wi-Fi, Leaderboard, or Rescue mechanics. I wish they had elaborated on why that was, however. I have my speculations that it had something to do with the Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer DS2 - Magic Castle of the Desert connectivity or the ending of the Chunsoft x SEGA Project in Japan, but I'm afraid I'll never know. While I don't miss rescues, I feel that other aspects of the game were sorely lacking because of their lack of inclusion.
The lack of a European release, and according to old forum threads from around the launch, even people in the U.S. who wanted copies seemed to have a hard time finding it. Why put all of the effort into localizing this game, then kneecapping its features, not releasing any tertiary media to explain its bullshit mechanics, and then seemingly giving it a limited release? It started yet another trend of a poorly understood Mystery Dungeon game with no accessibility media such as guidebooks, changed localized names, and games that seem ashamed to bear the Mystery Dungeon title that has continued to /Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island in 2024 which all only serves to hurt this series and its accessibility outside of Japan.
As grateful as I am to Atlus, Aksys Games, and Spike Chunsoft for localizing these titles outside of Japan, I find them all to be truly insufferable for different reasons, and they're all a large part of why this series seems doomed to obscurity. We, the fanbase, have had to carry the weight of this series on our backs while the people getting paid to localize them seem to not give half a fuck. Each game having its own set of localized names really only makes the series inapproachable and Shiren 3 does that well enough on its own.
Final Thoughts
I've done my best to lay out what I both like and dislike about this game while providing examples as to why and my mentality. I hope this long-winded diatribe will help shed some light on why I enjoy this game so much despite its flaws. Shiren 3 is seen as the "black sheep" of the Shiren series, I've heard people say it's "too easy" because you keep your levels. As I stated previously, nothing says, "I've never played Shiren 3, I simply SQUAWK parrot what everybody else tells me to say." quite like that dumb argument. Shiren 3 is littered with flaws, as any game is, and if you can look past them, there's fun to be had here. The second biggest argument seems to be people whining about how long the main story goes on, and how it's such a slog to actually get to the post-credits level-reset dungeons. I totally agree, but that's simply the way it is. Either play it or don't. I'm simply tired of hearing stupid arguments from people who've never played the game, or spend more time bitching about it than it would take to beat the story and unlock those dungeons, or asking for a save file to be able to play them.
