I'm not RPGs that much, but NintendoLife's high praise of The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave and its colorful, very Nintendo-like presentation, convinced me to try it out (not to mention it's by Genius Sonority, the developers behind such familiar Nintendo games as Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon Shuffle).
I was more than a little bit leery of the game as I'd read that there's little to no story (or characters). This turned out to indeed be the case, and at first I was bored with catching Denpa men and tackling very straightforward dungeons. Before too long, though, I found myself being completely charmed by the cheery style and presentation, and having fun managing my little fraternity of Denpa men. Each Denpa man has different stats and abilities, and putting together your team and outfitting them to take on the next dungeon and survive the game's simple element-based system is satisfying. Firing up the hunting mode in a new area (which is necessary, as the game actually uses nearby Wi-Fi signals to generate catchable Denpa men) becomes more alluring when you start trying to track down rare abilities. The game alleviates the fairly high encounter rate by providing two options for auto battling (using special powers or just using regular physical attacks), which definitely helps move things along at a nice pace. The game has a pretty smooth difficulty curve, assuming you explore every part of the dungeon's map (even the optional parts), and it also lists what level your party should be at for each dungeon.
The game does a pretty good job of making each of the first few dungeons have a different feel, but about 2/3 of the way through the recycling of enemies and the sameness got to be a bit too much and I've decided to table it for now. I definitely enjoyed my time with the game, and although it's basic as far as RPGs go, I was surprised at how fond I became of it despite its lack of a story or characters. It's a testament to the developers' design that the polish (including the music) and charm of the game makes this a decent time-waster, and one of the better games I've played during the first six months of this year.
Catch these The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave links:
- Awesome trailer. That trailer reminds me a lot of the similarly awesome trailer for the game Muscle March.
- Entry at Wikipedia
- QR codes on official site