Fact: 99% of wanderers quit adventuring right before they’re about to hit it big.

Shiren 6 won’t turn you into Howard Ratner, but it’s addicting enough that you’ll probably feel like him at some point. A big part of what brings this about for me is that, in contrast to the approach of certain roguelikes like the Necrodancer games (which have unique pulls of their own), you have no means of mitigating the randomness of or otherwise controlling which items you’ll find. Whether you die frustratingly deep into a dungeon or at its entrance, the unshakeable chance that you’ll come across some killer weapon or weirdo shield or several different kinds of companions early on enough to make your next run a relative breeze makes replays so inviting, especially when taken together with the game’s brisk pace (compared to other turn based RPGs) and the length of each area being just right for its respective gimmick. Potentially the coolest contributor to this feeling’s the passive online elements which give other players the option of rescuing you if you die, in turn letting you continue your run and retain your gear from that point if they’re successful. The relatively small fanfare this game’s gotten in western countries so far means you’ll likely be waiting a timezone or two for just the chance of engaging with this system at all, but it’s no less effective than the other stuff I’ve mentioned at funnelling you into the grindset of “just one more run.”

Making it out as if its addictiveness or how far you’ll make it’s all down to randomness and other players’ goodwill would be selling it short, though, because there’s still ample room to flex your own familiarity with the mechanics despite how simple they seem on the face of it. This probably doesn’t look like much, but rest assured that my cheeks were firmly clenched during it for a lot of reasons – moving carefully in a zigzag motion to limit the directions in which the bowboy can attack, getting just barely enough health back each turn to be able to survive a single hit towards the end, briefly pausing to process whether the trap I’d stepped on had actually triggered and taking more damage than I needed to because I’d equipped a shield that trades protection for halving the rate at which your hunger increases each turn. The latter notwithstanding, my decisions got me through it as much as the luck of two of his attacks happening to miss. For how much of an immediately noticeable load they take off in scenarios like this, this still holds true whenever you eventually unlock companions through certain sidequests too. I’d have been snookered in this situation if it weren’t for them evening the odds, but them surviving the ambush along with me’s also down at least in part to the equipment I’d kitted one of them out with, as well as managing the party’s collective HP by occasionally swapping positions with them.

Companions are just one example of a lot of gamechanging content that the devs impressively have the restraint to keep optional. You’d think a game finishes when the credits roll, right? In this case, there’s so much content you’ll only see after that point that it’s tough to pinpoint a definitive start or end. Off the top of my head, I want to say that probably half or more of the dungeons in the game only become accessible in the post-game, and each of them comes with some new mechanical hook that you won’t experience in the main story dungeon until they’re unlocked. Turning enemies into peach buns and then turning yourself into a playable version of those enemies by eating said peach buns? Check. Having every enemy that appears be a giant miniboss version of them, emphasising running away and hunger management as opposed to fighting? Yup. What about if barely any weapons spawned and you can’t tell what any of the items you’re picking up are, but you can see every trap and use them against enemies in exchange? They thought of that too, and it’s just as well, because I didn’t.

I once read somebody who wasn’t keen on roguelikes as a whole write that “when every run is different, every run is the same.” Although it’s an interesting thought, I think the sheer variation in items, dungeons and environments here (which my above description only really scratches the surface of) offset this a good amount. Somebody else might never experience what it’s like to have to essentially act as a support character for your party because no good weapons have dropped only to have a sentient cabbage brainwash you all into killing each other, feel a sudden pang of despair at a water enemy causing your dozens of unpreserved foods to rot all at once when you’re nearly starving or scrape your way out of an encounter with a critical hit brought about by your current health ending in an odd number, but those are just a few experiences I’ve found especially memorable. You could argue that even static story events tied to progression checkpoints won’t be the same for any two people, given how different the contexts leading up to them will be thanks to all of this.

As all of the above’s hopefully conveyed, you can expect the hours to fly by while playing this. Not sure whether it’s right to call something a hidden gem when it’s part of a franchise notorious enough to have more than half a dozen Pokemon spinoffs, but considering that (like I mentioned at the start) runs of mine have only ever been rescued overnight, I’d wager that this could well do with more appreciation outside of Japan. It’s yet another point in favour of trying out lesser knowns on a whim: if, like me, you ever happen to be looking to fill a turn-based-RPG-with-fun-positioning-stuff-and-getting-fiddly-with-equipment-shaped hole in your Switch’s library, this a great shout.

We love a game where the genre of background music changes depending on the ethnicity of your enemies.

The Punisher is an honest character. In a world of goody-goody, boy-scout superheroes who seem keen on saving the world through no-kill rules and putting their enemies in jails with revolving doors instead of cells, The Punisher gets shit done. He picks up a gun and goes out in the street and shoots the bad guys to death. It isn’t complicated by anything else. They’ve done bad, he kills them, they can’t do bad anymore. There’s no risk of recidivism, of reoffending, of getting away; they’re dead, and it’s done. He's cleaning out the bowels of New York City, one pull of the trigger at a time.

The Punisher is a dishonest character. He, and his fans, and his writers all hold the belief that treating a symptom is treating a cause. Drug addicts and purse snatchers and rapists and jaywalkers and protesters all meet the same end of the same barrel of the same gun, mowed down for “being criminals” and nothing more. Non-violent offenders, first-timers, gang members fresh out of getting jumped in — every criminal gets shot to death. There are no second chances, no degrees of justice, no punishment too severe. If you’re one of the lucky ones, maybe you won’t get tortured before your head gets blown off as retribution for being addicted to heroin.

The matter to ultimately keep in mind is the fact that The Punisher is a comic book character for children. Teenagers with behavioral problems, at the oldest. These mass-market superhero comics have exceptionally rarely been intended for actual adults; there’s a reason that Frank Castle debuted in a twenty-cent Spider-Man comic, and not in the middle pages of Arcade between shit by Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman. Much as the most diehard Punisher fans would like to pretend as though The Punisher has ever been telling a mature story for mature adults, this can only hold true when in direct comparison to other superhero comics from the same parent company. Certainly, The Punisher is as dark as Marvel is willing to get, but what you ought to take away from that sentiment is that these stories are the darkest that Marvel is willing to get. Take The Punisher seriously, and you’ve already lost long before you began.

The 2004 movie tie-in game mostly seems to understand this. Despite coming out shortly after the movie and bringing back Thomas Jane to play Frank, there’s little that the game actually has in common with the film; aside from a set piece or two where The Punisher has to take on a legally-distinct version of Kevin Nash’s character in his apartment, the game is far more faithful to the comics than Jonathan Hensleigh’s version was. Fuck, the movie took place in Tampa instead of New York. There's an unwavering adherence to the comics present here that reveals The Punisher as the absurd little aberration in this world that he is; throughout the runtime of the game, the grizzled angel of death that is Frank Castle has to share screen time with goofy characters like Nick Fury and Iron Man, all kitted out in their magic power armor that they use to fight human waves of color-coded Russians and Italians. The Punisher will grab some Yakuza guy in a bright-pink Steve Harvey suit and shove a gun in his mouth until the Yakuza screams “it’s my birthday!”, giving Frank a burst of health. You then blow his head off, and Frank quips “last one”. The game is well-aware of how stupid this all is, and assumes that you’re as in on the joke as it is. Don’t think too hard about it; everyone knows this is silly.

A core mechanic of the game lets you take human shields, which can absorb an inordinate amount of bullets and then be interrogated to recover any lost health. You can also press the L1 button to throw them about fifteen feet ahead of you, at which point I immediately clocked that this was a Volition game. The Punisher seems like it wants to be Max Payne at first glance, but it’s actually Saint’s Row. The controls are remarkably similar, as is the tone; The Punisher himself is taking all of this very seriously, but it’s all so ridiculous that you as the player clearly aren’t expected to. The gameplay loop is simple to start, but gradually demands more of you; starting enemies will die in a shot or two to the chest, but foes later on will be kitted out in Arsenal Gear Tengu armor that essentially requires you to land perfect headshots if you want to deal any meaningful damage.

This all comes together to create an inverse enjoyment curve. You start the game mowing down whoever crosses your path in a very wish-fulfillment-styled rampage, but spend the latter half slowly walking around the battlefield with a human shield and taking potshots at enemy heads with the most accurate weapon that you have. Shotguns are basically invalidated as a weapon type the second that enemies put on bulletproof vests, and you’re limited from that point on to little more than your choice of the AK-47 or the M16, and whatever handgun you can get ammo for. Regular enemies die to headshots just as easily as the guys who showed up dressed as the Combine, so there’s a massive compression in what you’re able to do as a player the further into the game you get. The optimal strategy is to take a shield and fish for headshots, and that’s about all you’ll be doing for the final three hours of playtime. Two of the bosses can only be damaged with explosives that get dropped by the adds they summon, which is about as fun as it sounds.

It ends up as little more than a game that’s mostly okay, which used to be something that was celebrated when a licensed title pulled it off — even more so if it was a movie tie-in game. Aside from a few good laughs and some initially interesting gunplay, there’s not much to this. It can’t manage to be more than a version of Blood on the Sand with about the same gameplay quality and a less interesting final product. Even as ridiculous as Frank grumbling “I’m gonna kill every inmate on Riker’s Island” is, he still can’t reach the heights of Fiddy going after his fucking skull. I’d suggest that anyone who’s thinking about this ought to go try Blood on the Sand instead, but the average Punisher fan probably draws the line at being asked to play as a black guy.

I was originally going to format this review as a comic storyboard, but I wrote too many words for that to be viable. For your consideration, here is an album of Punisher doodles that I left on the cutting room floor.