I generally try not to be a cross-forumlinking person, but:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=248958

The argument may not be convincing, but it springs from pure truth: Shiren is glorious.

Dangit, I didn't even know such a thing EXISTED! (The DS version, I mean.)

Err... that thread seems to be prepping a lot of people up for disappointment. Guess I should try it out if it's made out to be so hot though, that's really the only way of know for yourself.

The sacrifice of the few for the many.

It seems as though March is determined to make my wallet a black hole, sucking away any cash that I may come into.

Also, wtf?

Nope.

Sorry, no random dungeon nonsense for me.  If the designers can't take the time to design dungeons, I'm not going to take the time to play their game.

No... I had put it on my maybe list, but then I realised it had little story and punishing gameplay... oh what's that? Uh yeah sorry, "oldschool" gameplay, dawg. I can always go back to Children of Mana if I've been naughty *shudders*.

*dodges knives*

To be honest, I'm not terribly familiar with the roguelike style. Could you recommend starter titles for a neophyte?

Well, games like the Chocobo and Pokemon spinoffs are much gentler, and the early PC roguelikes are still some of the simplest (nethack, on the other hand, has way too many rules, no matter how much people may reccomend you just dive into it).

To tell the truth, I didn't care a whit about the genre other than approving of it in theory (the same way I feel about high-competition fighting games and bullet hell shooters), but Shiren made me fall in love. It can take a while to click, but once it does click, it's like those pictures where you suddenly see the two people in profile or the deers among the trees. Things make sense and you begin to get better at the game.

That's not how it is. The dungeons are random because this is a challenging game. Because it is a challenging game, the player dies a lot. Dying is never game over, and never a situation you cannot recover from. The game is structured around dying and learning from the mistakes that led to your death. It's one of the few games I've played, and certainly one of the few RPGs period, where the player gains experience in the game alongside their hero. And because it takes time to master, the game randomizes dungeons, because you'll be going through them a lot.

It's not like most JRPG random dungeons. Care and time was put into making the game intelligent and challenging. It just so happens that it does something most JRPG players probably can't cope with: making death a part of the gameplay, instead of just a flat game over. There are no game overs in Shiren. Because of that, random dungeons are part of the process.

Keep in mind that ChunSoft has been doing these games for over a decade, and Shiren is still considered about the best they've produced. There's none of the silly bullshit Pokemon Mystery Dungeon was full of - you play Shiren to learn how to beat it, not to collect freakish little mutants.