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
