The Denpa Men 2: Beyond the Waves Review

It's unusual for a role-playing game to put style ahead of character development and complex battle mechanics. Yet, the lack of depth doesn't feel egregious in the case of The Denpa Men 2: Beyond the Waves. What it lacks in complexity, it makes up for with colorful exuberance. Despite the uplifting visual style, the strength of the enemies standing in your path keeps you on your toes, and you spend so much time outfitting, capturing, and switching out your colorful cast Denpa Men to keep up with the challenge that you never miss the emotional trappings of a traditional collection of intimately connected adventurers.

Don't worry little guy, you're just my prisoner.

The purest of motivations drive you forward here: the hunt for treasure and, ultimately, discovery. With this laser focus on the core elements of the dungeon-crawling experience, Denpa Men 2 avoids the burden of proving that its characters and story are worth your time. Instead, it allows exploration and combat to take center stage, and paints the world in a kaleidoscope of color and personality that's often too adorable to ignore.

Your quest to rescue the abruptly abducted dwarf children at the start of the game begins with a single Denpa Man: the hero. During the hunt, you explore deep caves and tall mountains in search of the responsible party, but despite the fact that lives of children hang in the balance, your journey is a lighthearted one. Even fearsome characters, such as the diabolical King of Evil, are softened by the writing, which turns the maniacal desires of a powerful enemy into a humorous take on the naive possessiveness of children. The storyline serves only to carry your team to the next dungeon or town, but it offers a gleeful twist on RPG cliches.

Before things get serious, your randomly generated hero needs some assistance, and through his chirpy Denpa speech, he opens your eyes to the secret world of the Denpa Men. Denpas are captured through an augmented-reality interface where they float and soar about your surroundings as seen through the 3DS camera. Though their flight paths are occasionally erratic, recruiting Denpa Men is the easy part and is as simple as pointing your camera and snapping a picture.

You're coming with me!

There's a Denpa Man for every unique Wi-Fi device in existence, and a major component of the game's draw hinges on the near-endless variety of potential recruits. Readily available are the common Denpa Men, who have a single-colored outfit and lack antennas, which are the source of magic for some. However, if you take the time to look for Denpa Men in different real-world locations, there's a fair chance you'll discover some with striped outfits, oddball expressions, and powerful adornments atop their heads.

Though their expressions are more for amusement than practicality, the size and color of your squad members determine their balance of strength and agility, and elemental resistances, respectively. As in the Pokemon series, the success of any exchange in combat is defined by the elemental makeup of the attacker and the target, and preparing your team properly or haphazardly diving into a dungeon is the difference between enjoying an empowering experience or suffering an embarrassing reminder of why you should have taken the time to test the waters and form your team accordingly.

Players with experience in the first Denpa Men game eventually get to import their old hero and supporting cast into the new game, but anyone can enlist the help of other people's Denpa Men through the use of QR codes, albeit at level 1. Their meager stats are important, because if you fail to protect them from harm, Denpa Men generated from QR codes disappear completely if left to die in battle. The benefit of this exchange is in the elemental makeup of the Denpa Men in question. Since you are limited to capturing Denpa Men in the real world, and held to the restrictions therein, a QR code may be the most reliable way to acquire a red, fire-based Denpa Man that also has an antenna with water magic, for example.

The intrepid and colorful Denpa Men head inside after a hard day in the dungeon.

Another way would be to dye your Denpa Men through the use of flowers. You collect various seeds throughout the game, and planting them in patches of soil throughout the world yields flowers that can be used to alter your Denpa Men's colors and elemental resistances. Growing flowers, fishing for lucrative water life to sell, and competing in the online-enabled coliseum against other teams of Denpa Men can keep you busy for hours, if not days, should you wish to extend your time with the game beyond the main story path.