> PUT CPU IN VAX

Recently I've been sucked into playing NDS Shiren the Wanderer after picking it up from a local gameshop, and I blame this partly because of how similarly it looks to Chunsoft's other more famous mystery dungeon, PMD Red/Blue Rescue Team. but as a longtime PMD fan, Shiren doesn't play too similarly or nicely, and I'm still getting my ass handed to me hours later. I'm writing this as an intro to understanding Shiren as a PMD player I guess.

First off, as most roguelikes, you're supposed to die, learn, repeat, and improve. Talking to NPCs and doing certain quests moves you along in getting party members or special items, or even letting some stores open up. It's not something intended to be done right first try at all, no matter how many of the first-town puzzles you complete.
Let's talk about main differences from early PMD - you can save/quit anywhere, but once you've fallen, the game autosaves. This condition can be avoided only three times in one "run," where you'd need to send out a rescue, like in PMD. There's a rescue decoder here, which you'll find useful if you really want to save a run if you happened upon good items. When you are knocked out in battle, you lose everything - all of your items, levels, and cash. There is no Kangaskhan rock, but you can store items at storehouses in towns and come back to them later, however, there is drastically more limited space. You can make up for this by saving "Jars of Storage" and loading them up with items in the storehouse. Town layouts aren't like PMD and you move linearly to enter the main story dungeon. You can unlock other dungeons through sidequests/postgame, but again, it's not like stopping by a post and selecting which dungeon you'll enter. In this game, you cannot recruit enemies like in PMD, but you can eventually recruit 3 wandering NPCs after fulfilling brief sidequests. Oryu and Kechi are fairly useful but eventually are likely to die past early Table Mountain, from what I've seen. Oryu has the special ability to blind enemies, and Kechi can sometimes offer to give you a massage, which will either give you crazy stat boosts, horrible debuffs, or do nothing at all. Pekeji isn't really worth having on your team unless you're completely stocked on onigiri, from which I've heard he needs about 7-8 to actually become powerful. Else, he'll drain you of all of your food (or he will refuse to move forward and abandon your team), which is hard to come by as it is. Also, the more frustrating thing is that you cannot view the HP/status of your party members and can only vaguely gauge it based off their dialogue and behavior; if they're at low HP/'in trouble,' they'll run from enemies. Since there is no configurable tactics, you have no control over your party members and they tend to almost always chase after enemies, which is either a good thing or a huge detriment later.
Since there's no moveset/'attacks' like in PMD, you need to obtain good weapons and shields and keep buffing them up with Earth and Wind scrolls and the smithy. I hear something like 30+ buff on one item is good enough for endgame, but I haven't been able to get anywhere near that. As it is a mystery dungeon game, RNG is so finicky that it's easy to get through even three whole dungeons without seeing a single weapon to pick up. Also, traps and attacks can ruin your weapons by removing 1 boost level via the rust mechanic. You can counter rust by using a Scroll of Plating to seal up your shield and weapon. Also, different weapons have different strengths, and Pickaxes act like the 'mobility scarf'/ 'super mobile' and 'absolute mover' IQ skills. IQ skills don't exist here either.
You can meld weapons and other items together to make even better upgraded ones that you'll likely need for postgame, except I don't know enough to explain the mechanics since I haven't finished the sidequest for that. Gaibara's jar sidequest will eventually unlock Melding Jars to accomplish just that.
Also, a lot of items you will collect will be 'unidentified' until you reach the town, but you can deduce most staffs by usage. Traps exist in this game but for some reason, party members and enemies can't trigger them.
There are a lot of items with shared mechanics to PMD, just with different names, statuses as well.

items - TODO: ADD SCARF/ARMBAND EQUIVALENTS

Shiren the Wanderer	PMD
Weeds	Plain Seed
Rice Ball	Apple
Big Rice Ball	Big Apple
Giant Rice Ball	Huge Apple
Rotten Rice Ball	Grimy Food
Wood/Iron/Steel Arrows	Stick/Iron Thorn/Silver Spike
Medicinal Herb/Restorative Herb	Oran Berry/Sitrus Berry
Herb of Sight	Eyedrop Seed
Bitter Herb	Doom Seed
Dragon Herb	Blast Seed
Herb of Confusion	Totter Seed
Herb of Life	Life Seed
Little Belly Seed	Hunger Seed
Happiness Herb	Joy Seed
Herb of Invisibility	Vanish Seed
Herb of Revival	Revive Seed
Kigny Seed	Violent Seed
Scroll of Confusion	Like a full room Totter Orb
Scroll of Light	Luminous Orb
Scroll of Blessing	One-item Cleanse Orb
Great Hall Scroll	One-room Orb
Knockback Staff	Blowback Orb; Roar
Staff of Postpone/Paralysis	Stun Seed, kind of/just like it
Accelerating Staff	Quick Seed; Agility
Staff of Sloth	Slow Orb; String Shot
Switching Staff	Switcher Orb; Baton Pass
Pain Sharing Staff	Rebound Orb; Counter, DOES NOT WORK LIKE PAIN SPLIT.
Doppelganger Staff	Decoy Orb
Sealing Staff	Silence Orb

traps

Shiren the Wanderer	PMD
Summon Trap	Pokemon Trap
Spring Trap	Warp Tile
Pitfall Trap	Pitfall Trap
Curse Trap	Sticky Trap
Landmine/Big Landmine Trap	Selfdestruct/Explosion Trap
Log Trap	Gust Trap

The kecleon/thief mechanic is still employed for robbing stores in-dungeon, except I'd say it's more evil in this game, since if you happen not to have enough money to pay for an item, you simply cannot leave the store (in town) and must end your run/soft reset. Couriers act a bit like Kangaskhan rocks in which you can send your items down to your starting point if they're in a jar.
Fay's puzzle feels similar to Makuhita/Marowak's Dojo except it's a little better in a different way since it teaches you gameplay skills, although one can argue the latter is more for grinding up levels.

I honestly feel like Super Mystery Dungeon is closer to Shiren 1 than Blue/Red Rescue team, in which the GUI feels like the most similar thing in the long run. Super and GTI carry over the wand mechanic, and looplets feel like an homage to armbands, even though scarves are pretty much the equivalent. You can also talk to wandering Pokemon who may give you items or allow you to recruit them, much like the wandering NPCs. On the other hand, the most recent Shiren (Dice of Fate) feels much more like an old PMD game down to the spritework.

Obviously since they're two different games, there's still a lot of wildly different mechanics that you'll have to get used to. But have fun and enjoy the grind!