Too poor to fork out money for the latest Pokemon X & Y release? The Denpa Men 2: Beyond the Waves on the Nintendo eShop will be your savior! This delightful RPG strategy game granted is not on the same scale as Pokemon, but is a steal for only $11.99 USD. Denpa Men 2 will provide hours of gameplay and will take you on a journey to level up the cutest jelly-bean creatures.
This game carries a unique touch of innovation rarely seen in other handheld games. With the sales-pitch out the way lets dive into why this video game proves that the eShop market place isn’t just the pathetic waste of virtual space that it once was.
The Denpa Men 2 is a turn based strategy game where seasoned Final Fantasy fans and Pokemon trainers will feel right at home. Players of the first Denpa Men will love that you are able to carry over your characters into this sequel. You begin your journey with one lone hero and must obtain a party to start your adventure. More on how to catch them later.
Once collected, you will travel a world map littered with dungeons and tough bosses. You can also go fishing and grow flowers which are more game fillers than anything of real substance.
Combat is like any turn base game and while each character does have individual moves, the option of auto-attacking AKA “go for it” made for a fast combat system that required little thinking. This “go for it” selection makes things so easy in fact that in the middle of combat if a party member requires a revive your Denpa Man with that ability will conveniently do just that. This works similarly for healing. Yes, it is a dumbed down version of any kind of strategy but it is certainly quicker than picking moves individually for each character.
The use of collecting your adorable party members via radio wave frequencies such as Wi-Fi connections is brilliant. The more Wi-Fi connections you connect to, the more various the types of Denpa Men will emerge. Hint: asking to tether your 3DS to a friends mobile Wi-Fi hot spot works the best!
Once connected, you enter the in-game radio tower and an AR session starts. Your surrounds, be that your bedroom, lounge room or train become your hunting ground. New Denpa Men spawn and you need to catch them to join your group. The trial and error of discovering different ways to obtain rare Denpa Men had me twirling my 3DS fast and frantically around, always on the hunt for my next catch. Also, for a quicker way to pin point exactly which Denpa Men to select you can go online and catch them via other player QR codes! This makes it easy if you simply cannot find a bunch you need to defeat a boss, but you still require to level them up as you receive them at level 1.
Once you have selected a strapping bunch of Denpa Men with various antenna powers, leveling them up, and defeating bosses in dungeons is a superbly satisfying experience. The game does get grindy in certain sections and there is a need to boost your party’s level high enough to complete areas. It will depend on how much you can tolerate this grind, but once you down a boss it makes the effort all the more worth while.
Graphically speaking the game does cater to the 3D functionality of the 3DS but follows suit of so many of these games and was played with the slider all the way down. It is a vibrant game with bright colours but with a somewhat lackluster soundtrack that was only turned up when the endearing Denpa Men had something to say.
Overall {rating}
The game itself goes well into the 20 hours + range to complete the main story line. Once complete there isn’t a whole lot of incentive to play this game again, but that’s not to say that this was still one incredibly satisfying journey. Be-warned if you see more people in public places using their Nintendo 3DS’s as hunting rifles!
