The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave

Genre: Top-Down Turn-Based Monster Collecting JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

The Denpa Men, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012, is… odd. This is a JRPG whose closest point of reference 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 to the point of being ugly, but it’s a sort of ugly with a strange personality to it. Similarly, this game’s soundtrack is odd and discordant, underlining the offbeat nature of the game and its characters.

There’s a bit of a throwaway story here about venturing into a “Tower of Evil” to fight “The King of Evil”, but… well, as you can tell from those names, virtually zero thought and effort has been put into it. Rather, the focus here is on the gameplay.

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. In one early area, you’re told that green Denpa Men are particularly resilient against the enemies within, and that fire attacks will be particularly effective, so forming a party of Denpa Men who have one or both of these traits will make it easier to find success there.

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 is a game that will have you doing a fair amount of grinding, usually at the start of new areas where you can quickly leave to automatically 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.

I should also note that the game’s structure is fairly simple as well. There’s no overworld to explore, no towns to visit. You select your destination from a menu, and the game’s dungeons are limited mazelike affairs that resemble Dungeon Crawlers. It’s nothing extraordinary, but I suppose it does allow players to focus on the simple gameplay.

“Simple” really is the word of the moment here. Denpa Men is indeed extremely simple and very weird, but the result is a game that’s fairly unique and oddly compelling. It’s not an especially deep experience, it’s filled with annoyances, and its quirky nature will not appeal to everyone. However, it’s an interesting and enjoyable experience that I feel is worth its $10 price tag, especially if you’re an RPG fan looking for something more offbeat.

tl;dr – The Denpa Men is 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. It’s an odd game, and it won’t be for everyone – the graphics are ugly, the gameplay is simple, and the presentation is extremely odd. However, it’s also unique and strangely compelling.

Grade: C+

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