Review: The New Denpa Men (Nintendo Switch)

At first, when I heard that the revival of The Denpa Men was going to be a free-to-play title, I was disappointed. The three Denpa Men titles that were released in English on the 3DS were favourites. They were nothing spectacular, but as grindy, retro-themed JRPGs with an enormously quirky hook (the Denpa Men themselves), they were delightfully charming little experiences. But then I started playing The New Denpa Men and realised that as a grindy, retro-themed JRPG with an enormously quirky hook, the Denpa Men was always going to be good for the free-to-play structure and The New Denpa Men doesn’t actually disappoint.

Related reading: Our review of the original Denpa Men… from way back in 2012!

The game makes it very clear at the start that you can complete it without spending real money. And technically this is true. You can get right through to the end of the content without spending a cent. You can recruit as many of the Denpa Men as you need to fill out a party, you can access all the dungeons, you can collect enough loot and equipment to customise your party, and you can fight the bosses.

But it’ll be a slog if you do that. The game’s premium currency (jewels) helps you access the really good stuff in shops, and those same jewels let you revive your party if you get a total KO. Without those resources, the “difficulty spikes” that you run into on almost every dungeon delve are significant, and it will take an awful lot of battling to make progress at about the midway point.

And yet, here’s the thing: If you liked those older school RPGs – the NES era Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, or Sega’s original Phantasy Star – this grind isn’t going to matter. The fact that each of the Denpa Men has very basic leveling and customisation, that the dungeons are largely linear and the enemy encounter rate is rapid-fire all hearkens back to those heady early days. When even the modern releases of Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star have had these qualities toned down, so you need to rely on an emulation console to play them as they were originally intended, Denpa Men, played free, is appealing and quaint.

If you don’t have the patience for that kind of hardcore grind – and most modern players don’t (with good reason) – Denpa Men’s monetisation isn’t too demanding, A couple of dollars will be enough of an investment to give you the edge, and it’s hard to begrudge a game with so much quality going for it a couple of dollars.

Denpa Men is a pure charm offensive. You start by capturing a team of Teletubbies-likes by entering a little mini-game and throwing some nets at them. Denpa Men have different abilities based on their antennae. A Denpa Man with no antennae has no magical ability, while others have the ability to heal, cast offensive magic, and so on. Then you dress them up with weird and quirky clothing (which can convey further abilities), and you’ll end up building a large party of them.

In combat, you’re strongly incentivised to simply select the “all out” attack option. Doing so tends to be a drain on resources, as the Denpa Men will use their magic attacks and abilities on common enemies when most human players would opt not to. On the other hand, because combat is so frequent this is the most efficient way through it, and so, rather than try and preserve resources, this is one of those rare times I used the “magic point” recovery items instead. The fact is that the dungeons are calibrated on the assumption that you’ll auto-battle your way through anyway.

I don’t mind how hands-off the combat is because the enemies are such a delight. The developer was clearly inspired by Dragon Quest here, and each new dungeon brings fun new enemy designs to run into (and given that the developer, Genius Sonority, did come from ex Dragon Quest developers, this design heritage should be no surprise)

Environments are vibrant and colourful, the little narrative beats are totally inoffensive, even if the game doesn’t have a point to make (as you’d expect from a free-to-play game). The only technical issue with The New Denpa Men is the localisation, which is terrible. However, I also spent half the time I was playing wondering if that was a deliberate design decision. Given that the rest of the game plays like something from the NES or SNES, so why not fill the narrative with “Spoony Bard” moments just for the aesthetics and humour of it? A lot of the mistranslations do come across as deliberate mistranslations, and given that the narrative isn’t telling a serious story, the “quirky” localisation does basically fit.

The New Denpa Men is a throwaway free-to-play game, but it’s not a bad time by any means and you’ll have a smile on your face while you play. Do I wish that Genius Sonority went the other way with Denpa Men and gunned for something of the scope of Dragon Quest proper? Yes, absolutely, and I think the inherent quirkiness of the series could work at full scale. But do I regret playing this? Not at all.