If you’ve ever searched for Nintendo 3DS hidden gems, there are high chances you’ve been pointed to one of Genious Sonority’s Denpa Men entries before, especially The Denpa Men 3: The Rise of Digitoll. The series met with success in its homeland, where a free to play mobile live service version went live in 2017 and left western fans wishing they could join the fun — that is, until a couple of days ago. The New Denpa Men is a reboot of that mobile game that went by the same name, this time boasting a western release with a small catch: it’s a Nintendo Switch exclusive.
For those who have never heard about it, the Denpa Men series is a quirky creature collector JRPG that may look rather shallow at first, but presents an enjoyable complexity as you train your Denpa Men and build your dream team. Denpa Men are nothing more nothing less than alien beings that inhabit Wi-Fi waves, “Denpa” literally being the Japanese word for electromagnetic/radio waves.
The character designs will easily remind you of Keita Takahashi’s Katamari Damacy, and that’s precisely one of the series’ strengths. With such a charming art style and soundtrack, you’re almost sure to grow attached to your Denpa Men sooner or later, although the localization for this entry in specific could have used a lot more work.
Each Wi-Fi network in your surroundings offers a different collection of Denpa Men to catch, so taking your Nintendo Switch to new places and checking for new team members is part of the fun. With that in mind, the game lets you enter capture mode even when offline.
As you progress through the main story (comprised of repeatable instanced missions) doing your typical acts of JRPG heroism and helping Kota become a stronger Denpa Men, new merchants arrive in your island. That’s your main hub, where you can freely decorate the island, exchange gold for gear, train or “breed” Denpa Men, grow them food and much more. As it turns out, both you and your Denpa Men have much to gain with these side activities. You can also visit other islands and even help your friends by sending them Monster Vouchers they haven’t collected yet.
Surprisingly, there’s a great amount of secrets — including alternate endings and extra storylines — to uncover throughout missions as well, and some of them will even reward you Jewels, the game’s premium currency. Even when you have already collected the free Jewels from these secrets, this element adds to the replay value and gives you an upper hand as you’re able to obtain more experience points out of the stamina you spend to enter missions.
The stamina is, of course, a limitation on how much you can play in one sit. But in practice, it’s more of a way to keep you coming back and preventing you from unnecessarily overpowering your characters or carelessly diving into new challenges. By the time you’re finished exploring a dungeon/mission, you’ll likely already have replenished the stamina you have spent to enter it.
Overall, the benefits you can get out of Jewels are usually either useless or will cost you too expensive just to give you something that completely ruins the fun, which makes it all the more expensive if you think about it. The game itself doesn’t emphasize Jewels that much and it takes a long time to properly unlock the premium currency store.
As it stands, there’s no insane variety of resources or currencies to keep track off and no menus to lose yourself into either. This is a much more significant upside than you may realize at first, especially with the shape the free to play genre has taken over the years.
Most importantly, there’s high fun value on planning the roles of each of your Denpa Men, gearing them accordingly and then entering a battle and seeing your eight units fight together just as you intended. And even though they fight by themselves unless you give them specific commands, sometimes it’s your input on whether they are allowed to use their abilities on that turn or not that will make a difference on the outcome.
Final Thoughts
8 (Very Good) according to the reviewer
The New Denpa Men is a delightful throwback to when you could play free to play games without feeling like you were missing out for not spending your money. It holds the series’ characteristic captivating looks and considerably simple yet enthralling gameplay.
When it comes down to a live service like this one, there are many variables that may worsen or improve the experience in the long run. But the amount of fun you can get out of the box without spending a single penny is praise-worthy to say the least, and the combat/team building complexity proves itself engaging no matter whether you are a beginner or an expert.
Hopefully it lands in mobile devices again with cross-platform progression in the future. After all, more players managing Denpa Men and their islands will likely lead to more updates and a longer lifespan for the game.
This game was reviewed with a digital copy acquired by the reviewer.
