Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer

Overview

 
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer (MD:SW) is a cult-favorite console roguelike originally developed by Chunsoft for the Super Famicom as part of their Mystery Dungeon series.  Chunsoft's previous Mystery Dungeon game starred Torneko, MD:SW was their attempt to recreate that same magic but without having to pay license fees.  As Fushigi no Dungeon 2: Fūrai no Shiren, it  never made it stateside, even when it saw a re-release for the Game Boy in 1996. A decade later the game was ported to the Nintendo DS; two years later it was brought stateside.
 
Those familiar with Square's Chocobo Mystery Dungeon games will see the foundations of that franchise laid about Shiren The Wanderer. However, Shiren is a much more difficult game, to the point where dying and restarting is almost necessary to have a successful playthrough. As is tradition with roguelikes, dying "resets" the game world in some ways but the effects of your previous presence still lingers in some form or another. Sometimes, people remember who you are. At other times, you might encounter completely different folks or monsters. You lose everything you have on-hand when you die, but you can store weapons in safehouses for later retrieval--or leave them in the safehouse for them to grow and power up (and retrieve even later when you've inevitably died yet again).