One of the things I liked about the Nintendo 3DS handheld is how much the games used the innovative features of the console.  A lot of games would read WiFi signals and pings from other nearby 3DS owners (they called that StreetPass) and would do things with them.  One of the games that did stuff like this was The Denpa Men.  In that game, you could catch these little guys that looked like a cross between a Mii and a Pikmin, and then you’d send them off on dungeon crawling turn based RPG adventures.  They made like, three of these games on the 3DS!  I vaguely remember playing one, although I think I just played a demo of it and decided I didn’t like it enough to invest more time in it.  But now there’s a new one on the Switch called The New Denpa Men.  It’s free to play, so I decided I’d at least check it out and write a review of it.

The first thing you must do is catch some Denpa Men.  You do this by going to a certain mode and you’ll see them flying around in a void.  Use the motion controls on your Switch to aim and shoot a net at them.  If you capture one, you can keep it and add it to your party of adventurers.  When you have enough, you can go to the harbor and visit an island with a dungeon in it.

On these islands is usually a town and maybe a little overworld.  And also a dungeon.  In the dungeons, you’ll move your little men around a cave and fight monsters in turn based RPG fashion.  You can level up your men and they can even learn new spells and attacks.  If you see an antenna on a Denpa Men you caught, you’ll know they can use a special skill.  If you lose your guys or decide to leave the dungeon, you’ll lose all the items you got, but you’ll at least get to keep your experience levels.  Beat the dungeon’s boss to move the story along.  You can also buy and find items to help you in battle as well as decorate a little house for your men.

My main problem with this game is the lack of control in the battles.  You can tell your Denpa Men to attack normally and they may or may not use spells.  Or you can tell them to do an all out physical attack, defend, or run away.  And that’s it.  So if you want them to defeat a certain enemy first (like one who can heal) or use a certain spell, they may or may not do that.  I just prefer to have more control in my battles.  And the script text translation is horrible.  The game is not really bad per se, but it’s not good enough to me to feel like I need to spend more time with it.  The screenshot below has my friend code if anyone wants it, but I don’t know if I’ll be playing this game anymore after this article posts.

Kid Factor:

The New Denpa Men is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of In Game Purchases.  Violence is minimal.  You can attack cartoony monsters with blows and spells, and defeated characters just fall over and disappear.  The game is free to play and uses in-game purchases to make the battles easier, so parental supervision is recommended.  Reading skill is also a must.

Tags: Game Reviews