Switch Funday - The New Denpa Men - My First Hour

Welcome to Switch Funday!

This week i checked out the free to play game The New Denpa Men, from  Genius Sonority. The Denpa Men series is something i'm vaguely aware of from the 3DS but i've never played any of the games. going into this Nintendo Switch version i didn't know what to expect so i was surprised when it revealed itself as a free to play game.

After playing it i looked it up and my thoughts whilst playing the game make sense. something i say a few times is how the game feels old. graphically it's fine, but for a free to play game the tutorial is surprisingly light and very little of what the game is is explained to us. the way the game works and why is not explained to us in a way that makes me think it's a console game and part of a series, whilst the free to play mechanics and microtransactions make it feel like a mobile game.

It's also slow, with an introduction that does little to get across what the world is. all i know is that there is legendary loot, which appears to be from the earlier games, and we're after it so we won't be bullied any more. 

The gameplay aspect is more similar to a dungeon crawler. the two locations we've been to so far are varied and give the game a more casual feel. But the game makes it very clear, repeatedly, that if you are wiped out in the dungeon you loose all the loot. if you teleport out of the dungeon you can keep your loot but as you haven't finished it you can't continue the story. 

Combat is not explained, but thankfully it's not too difficult except that resources at the start are scarce. so i immediately ran into issues of health and AP (magic abilities). this is kinda compounded by the choice of Denpa Men in my party, but seeing as it wasn't explained to me who i should bring with, let alone which ones i should catch, i imagine this is a situation that many may find themselves in. most modern mobile games rarely leave the start of the game to such luck

After an hour, i've come away feeling like i've not really even started the game. so i may come back next week to see if things improve with an extra hour of play time. but if i was to judge the game after this hour, i wouldn't recommend The New Denpa Men. it doesn't bring anything new whilst also feeling old and unwelcoming, designed for those who played the 3DS games. The Denpa Men's celebrations, or lack there off, when winning a battle sums up my feelings after playing this.

Version 2.0.10 played

Online Saturday - Foamstars - Now Free To Play, No PlayStation Plus Needed!

For Online Saturday i'm back with Foamstars, from SquareEnix and Toylogic. Foamstars is out across PS5 and PS4. I'll be playing the PlayStation 4 version of it. 

The game is now Free to Play. not only is the game free to download, it doesn't require PlayStation Plus to play it. the game has been updated a few times since i last played it back in May, https://youtu.be/SCjUS_FTOKk, so i also found the recent changes beneficial. the biggest change i appreciated were the regular game modes being grouped together so when you're looking for a game it can be any of those modes.

Mobile Friday - Punko.io: Tower Defense - A Successful Combination Of Roguelike And Tower Defense

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Punko.io: Tower Defense, from Agonalea Games, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

It's a combination of a Roguelike and a Tower Defense game. it's always interesting to see which elements of a roguelike are used and how they're used in combination with tower defense. At first glance it may look similar to  Kitty Keep, which we previously looked at https://youtu.be/aQNjKxIjSJg, but Punko.io: Tower Defense is not an idle game and each of the roguelike and tower defense elements are controlled more by the player than the computer.

The roguelike element of the game makes criticizing it a little difficult. one of the goals with that play style is repeatedly dying and working out what elements are repeated, learning how the loop works, and slowly making progress. But, seeing as Punko.io: Tower Defense starts off with telling us something wrong, i think it's fair to criticize the game's poor tutorial. Punko.io: Tower Defense starts straight into a level and we're soon instructed to choose a card or upgrade, but we can't upgrade as there's only 1 playable card. then the tutorial stops. if the game is going to have a tutorial, it should be correct, but for it to then stop and leave us alone is unfair to new/unfamiliar players. it may work on a console market which has more "seasoned" players but the mobile market is more casual. the game should at least ask if we want a tutorial, fix the first command, and offer some extra information to help new players.

The tutorial for the home menu is better than the gameplay one, but itself still has issues. near the end of the video i get a key, but at no point does the game tell me where or what to do with it. i thought i would be unlocking some sort of gatcha area but the forth unlock was evolution. i had to guess that the key unlocked a chest and that chest was in the shop. but i was surprised that i had two sets of keys for another chest. i can understand, to a point, why the gameplay may have less information, but the home menu aspect of the game needs to be better.

When it comes to equipment i'd argue that Punko.io: Tower Defense gives us too much information. the way the equipment aspect of the game works feels old and poorly executed. when you get 1 item, then it's fine, but as soon as you get more than one of the same item, it's difficult to manage. in the video i showed an example with shoes. i had one equipped and then got a second one. both were "good" quality. but there's no way to compare their basic stats. you have to look at one, remember, close, click on the second, and then compare. that might be manageable for HP stat, but both items have a long list of "Grade Skills" that unlock as you upgrade them, leaving us with much more to remember and making a quick task take longer. Many games have Quick Equip button that'll simply equip the items with the highest stats and that would work here. but the game needs to present the Grade Skills better.

Punko.io: Tower Defense's core gameplay loop is simple and effective. the character art is stylised and cool. graphically it's nice to look at, play, and it didn't heat up my phone. it mostly does ok with the Dynamic Island but at times it's off by a few pixels. for a lot of players it's a good game to have. but it's not the most approachable game, it feels like it was designed and made for a more experienced audience. the non-gameplay side of the game feels too basic and not as well designed as the rest of the experience and so sticks out because of that. i would recommend Punko.io: Tower Defense as no two runs would be the same, but it does need a little more work.

Version 1.0.0 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Metaphor: ReFantazio - Prologue Demo On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Metaphor: ReFantazio - Prologue Demo from Atlus.

Going into this demo, i didn't know anything about the game. i had somehow missed previous trailers and news about it. so other than it being an RPG, i didn't know what to expect. So i went in with no real expectations, it was all up to the demo to showcase itself.

And it did a fantastic job at that. the demo appears to be the first few hours of the game, tho it admits there are some changes from the retail game. The demo is quite open about it being a demo and that the aim is to showcase many aspects of the game. it's also clear that our save from this demo can be carried over into the final retail version.

one of the cooler features of this demo is the difficulty choice. if your focus is story, then choose that mode. the demo makes it clear that you won't die from battles. the other difficulty levels revolve around how difficult the battle aspect of the game becomes. i did this demo on normal and after this hour and a half i'd say it's probably fine to keep it at Easy and focus more on the story. the fights are fine, but they don't add much to the game beyond the style the game already oozes. 

This game has soo much style and design i would argue that perhaps it has too much. there were a few moments where there was a load for some flashy stylish thing that only lasted a few seconds before there was another load back into the gameplay. On a PS5 where load times may not even exist this may work better, but on PS4 it felt more like a waste of time. 

For me,  the biggest shock was how poor i thought the story telling was for most of this video. but this could be explained due to Atlus cutting some story elements from the demo. But the story bounces from the present to the past, from one group to another, and often there was very little linking anything that was happening together. it took about an hour for all groups to be tied into the story together and for things to start feeling more harmonious. But once it got going i really got into it and enjoyed it

I would recommend the Prologue demo for Metaphor: ReFantazio. beyond the main story that's told, we get glimpses of something entirely different teased as the game asks for our name like we were another part of it's story, rather than us controlling characters. Having many difficulties makes it approachable to a wide audience, and there seems to be a lot here to play.

On PS4 i'd say that it plays great. there are some cutbacks that are noticeable but they don't really affect gameplay. for example, the main city we're in at the start looks big and interesting, but there aren't as many people around as you'd expect. the loading was better than i expected and the game uses a very short walking anime to help cover the loading of a new area of the city, so it feels like this PS4 version itself got attention rather than it being a straight port from PS5.

Backlog Conquering - Poison Control On PS4 - Part 1 - The First Two "Belles' Hells"

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

Poison Control is a surprise pick for a series that focuses on Backlogs. it came out in 2021 so it's one of the more recent games i've bought. But the thing is i don't remember buying it, so i don't know why i have it. it's not a PlayStation Plus game so my Backlog Conquering series is the perfect place to try it as whilst it's not an old game, it's still in the backlog.

Switch Funday - Star Wars: Hunters - 10 Season 3 Ranked Games

This weekend is the first weekend of Season 3 in Star Wars Hunters. I've been playing the Switch version of this game. For Online Saturday i tried out the Matchup Clash game mode and played 10 games, winning 4, https://youtu.be/mM-AylzecFI. For Today i played 10 games in the ranked game mode and my team mates and i were able to win 6 of them.

Unfortunately, there were two failed multiplayer matches. i showed the first one as it happened right at the beginning of the video, but there was another before the second match. what's frustrating about it is how long it can take for the game to sort itself out and get back to the home screen. the example i included was one of the faster examples of this.

Online Saturday - Star Wars: Hunters - 10 Games From The New Season 3

For this weekend's Online Saturday video i played the recently released Season 3 in Star Wars: Hunters on Switch, from developers NaturalMotion Games and Zynga.