i've already name dropped this game on one of the thread but i feel like making a more detailed thread about it since i was thinking of giving it a replay so bear with me
i absolutely love this game,it's a game that i put behind only the king of classic (it's chrono trigger) so it make me quite sad to see this has remained in japan until a hero know as aeon genesis decided to fantranslate it (the guy also fan translated live-a-live and metal max which are other awesome game) the game got a ds re-release with a few addition and then proceeded to be slammed by most review site,ign gave it a 6.5 so by the god hand rule you know it's good stuff
so anyway what's this game about? this game is a roguelike,this means that
1) it take places in a dungeon,this dungeon is made out of rooms and corridors
2) these rooms are divided in a grid
3) add random items and monster
4) game is turn based,but the turn are very very small,each step you take or sword swing you do count as a turn,to someone watching you play it might even look like an action game but if you don't move nothing happens
at this point you might wonder "ok so why you swoon over this game so much?" well this game is challenging! really challenging! you see everytime you die you get sent back from the start without all your hard earned experience and items (a fact which seemed to shock most reviewer even tough i seems to understand that demon's soul pull off something similiar and was praised a lot) this make for a game where you are seriously worried (heck dare to say scared!) about dying
oh and the game will try to kill you in every manner it can think off,a lot of enemies are strong enough to kill you in a few hits (tough to counterbalance this they too can't sustain a lot of attack so it's a "kill or be killed" scenario) some are more subtle and inflict bad status,one enemy when killed turns into a ghost which goes in search of another monster,if he finds another monster he'll make that other monster stronger,another tries to ruin the item you are carrying around,another goes around killing EVERYTHING in sight,this might sounds like a good thing but everytime he kills something,he become stronger which doesn't bode well when he finaly finds you!
to counter balance this the game give you tons of item,every item is 100% sureproof,this is not final fantasy,i've tried to play this game with a normal rpg mentality and i hated it at first and one of the reasons it didn't click is that i wasn't using anything of the stuff you find around,all of these items in a way or another will help you,one item for example will push an enemy away allowing for a quick escape,other item are more aggresive giving you the chance of inflicting bad status on your enemy either depowering them or stopping them in their track,so ultimately the game becomes a matter of making a good use of the stuff you find around
the sequel is coming february on the wii,but you could play the real thing like right now by downloading the snes version paired with the fantranslation (or the DS version) the fantranslation can be found here
http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=shiren 
