The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave

Just what the fuck is a Denpa Men? er.. Denpa Man?

The Denpa Men is a trilogy (in the west, it's a tetralogy in Japan) of monster catching turn-based JRPGs exclusively played on the Nintendo 3ds. Judging off of their JP presence, I'd like to infer that it was massively much more popular overseas than it was in the States (or anywhere else for that matter).

But before delving into the game itself, I'd like to talk about myself and my relation to the game.

I have a lot of personal connection to this game, as with that, my viewing of the game inherently will massively differ from the viewpoint and opinions of others. I recall this as being one of my first true involvements with an online community surrounding a game à la being active within the space of creating YouTube videos on a now defunct google account and also participating within Reddit (🤓) communities surrounding the game.

So, why do I bring this all up?

I feel that my attachment and love for the uniqueness of the game doesn't go unfounded. When I heard about the deactivation of the Nintendo 3ds/Wii U Eshops, I came to the realization that this game will not, in any capacity, ever be able to be experienced in its true capacity. It was Pokémon Go before Pokémon Go. Utilizing just about all of the 3ds' features to their extent; camera + gyro functionality to capture creatures, utilizing both local internet connections and radio waves to generate said creatures, and other more menial features like utilizing streetpass & system play coins (albeit in the sequels) just simply cannot be recreated via any other means of playing.

A remaster for modern consoles simply couldn't work, maybe the Nintendo Switch could produce something of similarity, but there would be much lost upon the shift to hardware lacking the uniquely weird capabilities and features the 3ds had. Especially when clawing into the nature of the future games. This is all without mentioning the dual-screen feature of the 3ds.

Ok, enough talking about the unique mechanical aspects of the game, why I am throating this game front to back?

Denpa Men and more specifically The Radio Wave Men has a very unique take on the character collectathon genre of games. As stated prior, the generation of characters is tied to YOUR surroundings. It forces you to get up and move around to new locations to unlock more characters to find. Fighting a boss that requires a certain type of Denpa Man that you don't have? Time to get off your ass and get moving buddy you gotta hunt for that shit in the real world. I think by far this part of the gameplay was most appealing to me as a kid (and in retrospect as an adult too) because the 3ds already encouraged the whole "real world moving" for play coins and street pass. It felt great to have another bonus for carrying my 3ds around with me because at any time I could pop it open and check on the Denpa Men nearby to see if I was convienently in a spot that would generate characters to help me progress along the story.

Moving along the actual core combat gameplay, it gets a bit more nuanced than "catch Denpa Men, play game, win." The game was demanding and expecting a lot more of the player. Outside of the typical typings of your characters, there are multiple factors which have a hand in the usage of a Denpa Men. This image depicts most, if not all,of the various antennae that they can be generated with. DM1 has a more concise list, but DM2 and DM3 expand on the prior antennae types far more like I literally can't find a dedicated list anywhere online so you'll just have to trust me on this lol.

So, Denpa Men are generated on the following conditions:

Antenna: None < standard attacking antenna < single support/debuff < AOE attacking antenna < AOE supporting/debuffing
Color: Red, Blue, Teal, Orange, Green, White, and Black in addition to mixed color varaitions with their own unique stats
Cosmetic: Face, height, skin color, accessories, and head shape.

In addition to how the game creates a highly unique and customized expeirence on a per player basis, there's really not a set way to win the game that will cater to everyone. Two people within the same town might have wildly different party members as a result of what radio and internet waves are local to them and at that, a rare character (denoted by sparkles when appearing in the capture mode) that generated by you may not generate for anyone who goes to the location in which you caught it. Additionally utilizing radio and internet waves makes the game viable for just about anyone regardless of location.

I know I'm hopping throughout topics a bit hard here but please bear with me, back on the topic of combat. Your party will start out with a max capacity of 4 members, then 6, and then 8. It opens the doors further and further for party customization and resource management. As the location difficulty increases, you WILL need to catch more Denpa Men, more equipment to fit out your Denpa Men, and more healing items to get you through dungeons.

Ultimately, this culminates into an experience which, by its end, has you progress along a very basic and barebones story with combat and experiences far more unique than most other turn-based JRPGs I've played. But this game ultimately pales in comparison to the future titles, taking all of the unqiue aspects of this game and cranking it way the fuck up.

I'm surprised I've made it this far without making mentions of the artstyle or music utilized by the game. Lets talk about it.

Denpa Men are Katamari-adjacent little guys. I don't really know what to say about the artstyle if I'm being honest. It's pretty generic and the monsters are typical of that which you'd find in a JRPG. The music, however, is one of the aspect where the game shines.

The OST opts for a very electric sounding vibe. Listen to the title track of the game and you'll have a general understanding on the music of the game. It's unique and cute and I love everything about it. Some complaints I have are that there's 1 battle track so it can get pretty repetitive quickly but that's about the worst of it I think. The Boss theme and Great Demon King theme are fucking bangers though I'm never changing my mind on that idc if I'm biased or nostalgia blind idc that shit bangs. Enough of that, I think the music is pretty bangin'.

Conclusion: If you have a 3ds play this game. Or don't. Free will.

The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave is exactly what I expected it to be, but like, I’m not happy about that. I have a lot of nostalgia for the second and third games, but I didn’t play the first one back then, the lack of overworld being a major turn-off at the time, and as such, I only ended up buying the first game a couple years ago, wanting to make sure I had all three games downloaded before the 3DS eShop’s inevitable closure (although, wow, did that come sooner than I expected it to). I may come back to this game at some point in the future, but having gotten around a little more than halfway through the game, I think I’ve had my fill for the time being.

For what it's worth, the game is undeniably charming. This is true for all of the Denpa Men games, but it’s especially worth noting when considering the aforementioned lack of an overworld to provide an added layer of engagement between dungeons. Unfortunately, unless you’re Shigesato Itoi, your game cannot be carried on charm alone, and this game shares all the same gameplay issues that plagued the series’ later entries without having the same breadth of side content to fall back on.

To get the most obvious out of the way, yes, the game is poorly balanced. I was hoping that, being a game centered entirely around gameplay, this entry would have somewhat better balancing than the other games, but that is sadly not the case. First of all, the game straight-up lies to you about its level curve, as the game’s recommended levels for each dungeon are at best a bare minimum, and at worst not nearly high enough for you to beat the boss at the end. Second of all, the difficulty isn’t even fun; the bosses don’t present the player with clever challenges, they’re just large HP walls with grossly overpowered AOE attacks that can be easily cheesed with one very specific strategy, but don’t promote any alternative playstyles. Well, I say “easily cheesed,” but like I said, if they whip out one of those AOE attacks, which they do often, you’re pretty much screwed and have to start over. I mean, look, I have no shame, I probably would’ve beaten this game if I could’ve cheesed every boss fight, but the fact that I’m expected to level grind and still employ a cheese strat on top of that is just frustrating.

I’m also not a fan of how it costs money to revive your Denpa Men, because this game is incredibly stingy with its money. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say this was implemented to encourage people to just go out and catch new Denpa Men, rather than revive your old ones, but it’s 2023. The AR stuff was cool when the game first came out, but nowadays I feel kinda weird just waving my 3DS around in public. (Maybe that one’s just on me though.) That, and like with Pokémon, I can’t help but get attached to these randomly generated little guys. There’s something inherently funny about the idea of a blue guy named Nathan with a crescent-shaped head, or a green guy named Demetrius with a large nose who can summon icicles to attack enemies at will. The game would probably be easier if I had access to a wider variety of Denpa Men, but I digress.

Perhaps it’s a bit unfair of me to levy this last point against this game as a flaw, but it also feels like a pretty major talking point, so I’d like to address it anyway. The AI in this game is too good. I’m not talking about the enemy AI though, no, I’m talking about the party AI when you hit the auto-battle button. Usually, I don’t bother with auto-battle features in JRPGs, but because the combat in this game is so simple (there isn’t even a guard option here like there is in later entries, much to my dismay, as it would’ve helped against some of those AOE attacks) the AI will often do exactly what I was going to do anyway. Sure, once and a while they’ll attack the wrong enemy, or use a physical attack instead of their antenna power, but it didn’t happen often enough to stop me from going on autopilot for most fights (and especially when grinding) once I realized how competent the AI actually was. Thus, what the bulk of your playtime in this game ultimately comes down to is waiting for the game to finish grinding for you, occasionally popping back to the hub world to heal before going right back in to continue. This is especially frustrating considering how slow the animations are. If any game needed a speed-up toggle, it was this one.

Yet, in spite of all that, I can’t hate this game. The series was simply too integral to my childhood; it played a large part in influencing the kinds of games I enjoy today. And to the game’s credit, the dungeon crawling itself is actually pretty good. Once you get past the second dungeon, which bafflingly decides that putting all of its treasure chests behind hazard tiles while enemies can spawn anywhere on the map is a good design decision, most of the game’s dungeons feature lengthy branching paths full of treasure for those who want to see all of what every dungeon has to offer. It helps that you can also usually get an extra level or two from going through the dungeon a second time to see all of this.

Maybe one day, I’ll finally get my Denpa Men 5 in the sky.