 |
Title: The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave Publisher: Genius Sonority Developer: Genius Sonority Console: Nintendo 3DS Release Date: September 27th, 2012 Genre: RPG Rating: E |
When it comes to RPGs on the eShop, you’ve been pretty much stuck with either the older games on the VC like The Sword of Hope II or had to settle for the Mystic Quest-esque Planet Crashers. As much as I like Sword of Hope II and can at least laugh at Planet Crashers, it still felt like a good RPG was missing.
Enter The “Denpa” Men: They Came By Wave, a unique RPG developed by Genius Sonority (developers behind Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon Trozei). The game was developed to take advantage of the Augmented Reality function in the 3DS. It was also designed to be different depending on where in the world you were (or at least where in relation to radio waves you were).
Were they successful? Let’s find out.
THE GOOD
Up until this point, we have had basic games on the AR cards that demonstrated Augmented Reality. We’ve even seen it in used as a sort of mini-game area in certain games like Kid Icarus: Uprising. But this may be the first that Augmented Reality has been important to the plot of a game.
You start the game with one Denpa Man, a figure that kind of looks like the Prince of All Cosmos from the Katamari series. He asks you to round up some other Denpa Men so that you can save his girl. You get these other Denpa Men by capturing them during the Augmented Reality portion of the game.
What types of Denpa Men you get will depend on where you are in the world, or at least in relation to radio waves. When I was at home, I could only catch white and black Denpa Men. Out at a park, there were orange and green Denpa Men. At a store, I got blues and reds. And about a half hour away from where I live, I encountered multi-colored Denpa Men. I may have to try it out at an even longer distance someday to see if I can get any different versions than what I found.
Battling in this game is fairly simple. It’s a turn based battle system where you can either order each character individually, put them on auto-pilot for the turn, or order them to attack without using their skills. For the most part, you can get by ordering in mass. However, if a turn comes around where you absolutely need a specific Denpa Men to either use a skill on an item, you can order that particular one and then continue with the mass orders.
Dying is also interesting in this game. When all your Denpa Men get wiped out, they all return to the space where you found them. However, if you can’t remember where you found them, you can always go to the shrine to bring back your lost Denpa Men for an offering (an item you buy at the Shop).
Another inclusion that I liked was that of teleporters in dungeons. Now, you can get teleporters as items in the game but the ones I liked the most were those that naturally appeared in each dungeon. You could use them to go back to the main island (Digitoll) and return at that exact teleporter. It was a great way to prepare for the bosses (which you will need to do no matter how much experience you earn).
The music wasn’t anything too special but fit well with each stage. I did like the main battle theme, as well as the instrumentation of the score.
THE BAD
The graphics were good overall. However, I had an issue with the 3D effect. Similar to my experience with Rhythm Thief, I felt that it didn’t really add much outside of the battle sequences. I would recommend keeping off for everything (especially during the AR part) except for battle.
I also had an issue with the difficulty in this game. For the most part, you can cruise through the game. However, there was a boss in the second half of the game that just came out of nowhere in terms of difficulty. Pretty much up until this point, bosses in the game were fairly easy to defeat. But, even with proper planning, this particularly boss is a pain and will require some grinding through the dungeon to be able to beat.
And then there is the last boss. With the right planning, this guy is incredibly easy, possibly the easiest in the game. Rather anti-climactic.
OVERALL
This was a very well put together game. The concept was good. The execution was even better. There were a couple of issues that I had but they pretty much can get tossed out.
And did I mention that Denpa Men is $9.99 on the eShop? It’s a good value.
The “Denpa” Men: They Came By Wave will take about 15 hours to complete the main story and even more to explore the rest of the game afterward. And by the time you’re done with the game, you’ll probably feel like playing Katamari Damacy afterwards. Or maybe just singing “Katamari on the Rocks” will suffice.
Or perhaps you’ll dress up like Vlad the Impaler and sing about Russia…
…in German.
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Overall |   |
The “Denpa” Men: They Came By Wave is available now in North America and was developed and published by Genius Sonority. The game is rated E for Everyone.
The see more, check out The Denpa Men home page.
