The Denpa Men 2: Beyond the Waves

Genre: Top-Down Turn-Based Monster Collecting JRPG

Players: 1, Online Content Sharing, StreetPass Support

.

Review:

The Denpa Men 2, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013, is very similar to its direct predecessor, released only a year prior. As such, much of this review will be copied over from the review of the first game, although this game does have a few changes and additions that I will note here.

Like the first game, The Denpa Men 2 is… odd. This is a JRPG whose closest point of reference (other than its predecessor) would likely be the Find Mii games, with a hint of Pokemon-style Monster Collecting as well. The monsters in question? Tiny floating, colorful, bodysuit-clad men. Picture the character Tingle from the Legend of Zelda series and you have the right idea.

This game has the premise that our world is filled by these little Denpa Men, invisible to our naked eye, and gathering around Wi-Fi hotspots (the game generates them based on the Wi-Fi device’s MAC address). One of the first things players will do when playing this game is to use the Nintendo 3DS’s camera to scan the area around them to look for the little guys and catch them. Different Denpa Men gather near different Wi-Fi locations, and the game encourages you to try searching for them in multiple locations to catch a wide variety.

The catching is done by aiming the camera at them to fire a net, giving this game a small real-time element, although thankfully players can attempt this as much as they want without penalty, other than the frustration and tedium of your desired catch fading away before you can snag them and being forced to wait until they randomly appear again.

The Denpa Men themselves look a lot like Mii characters due to their simple design. They’re not Miis (which seems odd to me – it would have been a good use of the feature), but they could easily be mistaken for them. As such, they are simple, cartoony characters that aren’t visually impressive, though they do have a lot of personality. The same goes for the world of the game – its Top-Down 3D world is simple, although not quite as simple as the first game in the series. I suppose I would describe it as “quaint”. Similarly, this game’s soundtrack still has a few of the odd and discordant themes that defined the first game, but they are now joined by more traditional JRPG-style themes… though not anything that’s particularly memorable.

The story this time has a bit more thought put into it than the first game… but only slightly. The game starts with your first Denpa Man (possibly the same one you started the first game with if you import your profile) complaining about a monkey in their garden, which soon escalates to a gang of monkey kidnapping his Denpa Wife and Kids. It’s silly and clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously, but like the first game, the plot is clearly not the point here.

As I indicated earlier, players are encouraged to gather a wide array of Denpa Men to be able to form diverse parties, and particularly to have the flexibility to build parties that are best suited for each new area they venture into. Different Denpa Men have varied strengths and weaknesses, as well as different abilities, and there is clearly a strategy to the game where you’ll want to make sure that a new area with a team that has strong typing against the enemies you’ll be up against.

This isn’t a small issue, either – the difficulty in this game can be a bit steep, even early on, and ignoring typing can spell doom for players. The game even has a limited form of permadeath – if any of your party get knocked out without being revived before leaving the current dungeon, you’ll lose that character indefinitely… or at least until you can summon them back at a steep price.

Because of that, Denpa Men 2 is a game that will have you doing a fair amount of grinding, usually at the start of new areas where you can leave to heal up HP and MP before re-entering the area for more grinding. This game’s turn-based combat is extremely simple (each Denpa Man has at most only one ability and a normal attack), but it uses this simplicity to streamline matters – players can easily complete combat within a few seconds, especially when fighting an inferior enemy – at that point, you can simply have your group gang up on the enemy with a single button-press.

Thus far, I’ve largely copied over much of my review of the first game, so you’ll undoubtedly wonder what’s changed, beyond the slightly-improved presentation and new story. One of the most notable changes comes early on, in the form of a new world map to explore, in place of the simple dungeons that all of the former game’s adventuring took place in. What’s more, the overall game length has been roughly doubled this time around. There’s a bit more customization this time around too, with your Denpa Men able to equip multiple times of clothing instead of just one accessory.

There’s also a new StreetPass feature that enables players to explore optional dungeons, as well as an ability to send out a team of your Denpa Men to challenge another player’s team online. There’s additional activities like gardening and fishing that you can benefit from… there are lots of little extra things this game adds to give players a greater variety of things to do.

While many of these features are nice additions, some of the new additions are more of a mixed bag. In the first game, your Denpa Men were healed automatically upon leaving a dungeon. Now, you have to have them sleep it off in a bed like a more typical RPG. It’s theoretically a nice addition, but it adds extra steps on top of the more streamlined gameplay that was in the first game.

Another new addition is that players now have three buttons they can use in battle to automatically direct their party instead of two – you can have your characters attack using abilities, attack without abilities, or now attack while healing characters who need it. Unfortunately, this new “heal” option takes the place of the one-button “attack without abilities” shortcut, meaning that if you don’t want any abilities used, you either have to navigate to the option, or tap it on the touchscreen. It’s a minor complaint, but it does make the game less streamlined. Oh, and also, the use of healing when using this shortcut is inconsistent – I found that many characters who needed healing were still ignored even when selecting this option.

In the end, The Denpa Men 2 is overall probably an improvement over the first game, but it still has many of the flaws of the first game as well as some new ones that slightly muddy the breezy simplicity of the original game. Add in the slight bump up in price to $12, and I would say on balance, this is a wash. This is still a fun and unique RPG, but it’s one with niche appeal that won’t be for everyone.

tl;dr – The Denpa Men 2 plays much like the first game, being an odd Turn-Based Monster-Collecting RPG, where the “monsters” you’re collecting are little floating multicolored bodysuit-wearing men hanging out around real-world Wi-Fi hotspots. This game expands on the first one by adding an overworld and a few additional features, but also slightly muddies the streamlined nature of the gameplay. The result is a game that’s probably more or less on par with the original game, and like that game, this is a niche game that won’t be for everyone, but is also unique and strangely compelling.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Andy Miller, Exlene, Johannes, Ilya Zverev, Connor Armstrong, Eli Goodman, K.H., Kristoffer Wulff, Stov, and Gabriel Coronado-Medina. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}