err yeah i meant the first one since the one on the DS is a slightly upgraded port of the original,there is only one in english but in japan there is a remake of the gameboy color one (which has a fan-translation which translate only the menu's but it's good enough to go trough the game and is different from the actual shiren 2 which is a N64 game) and sequels in shiren 4 and 5 (4 also has a PSP version)
anyway the one on wii (which would be shiren 3) change in that instead of one big dungeon to go trough you instead traverse several small one,this end up killing the arcadey spirit of the original and make the game more plot centric,worse yet while early dungeon can be strolled around with easiness later dungeon start throwing you high level monster as soon as you enter making progress impossible barring previous preparation!
of course if you die you lose everything so you are often forced to backtrack to a previous dungeon to get supplies which is annoying and boring... to make it even worse,most of the dungeon have a boss at the end,the boss in question is immune to all your trick and can't be paralyzed,sleeped or fucked with thus making finishing the dungeon a matter of bringing enough healing item and having a decent weapon and armor rather than simply trick your way to the end
there is an easy mode which make it so that you don't lose your item upon death and also make you start with several healing items which make the game a lot less aggravating but frankly it seems like a make-shift solution to a problem that shouldn't be there to begin with
the other gimmick is that other than shiren there are 2 other playable character,shiren master and asuka (a character from a previous game) they get their own equipment (in fact the gimmick is that shiren master can't equip shield but has better weapon's and asuka can equip spear which can hit enemies 2 square ahead) and are AI controlled but you can control them manualy if the situation call for it,if they die it count as if you did die instead which adds another grade of aggravation to the game
monster are now color coded and each color of monster has a special ability other than it's own ability,for example all the red monster can score critical hits instead of just the minotaur which is really aggravating and stupid,there is a system where some room have color coded shrine where upon putting a weapon or shield inside the shrine that item gain a bonus and extra stuff related to the color of that monster but it doesn't add much to the game
lastly there aren't a lot of new monster and items added to the game to begin with,shiren is an amazing game because every monster has a trick and a different way to screw you over but in shiren 3 most monster just come to you and punch you in the face and it really kills my enjoyement of the game
i think they realized they fucked up because all of the thing described above are gone in shiren 4 replaced with a day/night system where upon night arrival,monster get crazy strong but you also get magic nuke abilities
