I would have to lean towards Shiren the Wanderer as well, though I really love Izuna also.
Shiren is amazing, for my liking it beats hard Adom but there's many littles features in Adom I regret not have in Shiren:
- Auto walk in Shiren stops only when you collide a monster or cross something. That's quite stupid in games like that and could make you dead quite fast. Auto walk should works like in Adom.
- I understand Shiren has graphics but anyway I wish I had a look command like in Adom.
- The beginning of Adom is incredibly diversified, it's quite important because it's the part you'll play the most and from far. I enjoyed a lot how Shiren beginning was much more easy but now it becomes a little tedious because the price seems to be a lack of random generation.
- Adom classes is an interesting feature I'd like have in Shiren.
- Adom warns you with some periodic messages of the main features in a level, like if there's a monster house and some other points. That wouldn't be hard to add to any roguelike and Shiren could benefit a lot of this feature.
- Adom pets or companions are almost useless but benefit of a polished design I wish Shiren had. For example you could give some orders to pets or companions or could use some items or spells on them and you could find an object to get more detailed information about them. Even if Shiren companions are more useful and not always a burden a designed a bit more detailed would have been great.
- Secrets seems to me much better designed and generated in Adom, eventually it's because I haven't yet understand the tricks around this in Shiren system.
That mentioned there's also many features I don't like in Adom and like in Shiren and that's why I prefer much more Shiren. Almost all in game hints in Adom are extremely obscure, so much that they are useless. Beside obscure hints Adom has also very few in game hints when compared to Shiren. Many mechanism in Adom lack of any logic and it's extremely difficult to remind them and often I had to check and check again the guide for the same tricks. Adom pets get a detailed design I wonder why such waste by having make them so useless, in Shiren they can be a burden but also can have a good use and won't die after the first fight like in Adom. The mini secondary stories that slowly evolves in Shiren if a quite cool feature. Well Shiren graphics are cute and that's a plus even if it's less important for the core gameplay.