I haven't played in a bit. I think the area I'm on is the one before where you are. There's an annoying monster there that keeps spamming some root attack and it hurts like hell! I died once there so I reloaded my file and lost a bit or progress. Nevermind going back out there and hunting the ones I lost.

You know, the great thing about this game is the fact that its on tap. If I had it in cartridge form, it would sit there on my shelf and gather the proverbial flecks of dust. But, as it is, it is great to bust out in a new area and search for a shiny Denpa Man! Like I said...portable perfection in JRPG form.

Oh my god, finally beat the ice demon. I had to go through the stage like 10 times and level up to 42 and it was still like... I barely pulled it off. I hope the rest of the game isn't like this because I can only take so much grinding.

You know what I hate about this game? How if someone you used a QR code to get dies, they are gone forever. Really it shouldn't matter if they die because you can revive before you leave a stage, but I just forgot about this and left the stage with most of my team dead and now these QR guys that I spent a ton of time leveling up are gone forever.

F that.

Ug. This game can seriously F itself.

So, for the first 6 or 7 areas there is a pattern built... you can get very far, and right before the boss, there will be a warp that lets you leave and come back to it. Essentially, a save right before the boss. So I'm at this insane, super long mazelike area now and it took me about a half hour to get to the boss and I was assuming there would a warp/save in front of him be but nah, nothing. Also he is impossible. So... I died and couldn't save and lost a half hour of progress.

Of course, I could let the game kill me and I'd at least keep the experience I earned and could revive my characters. Except to even get to this point I needed to use some QR characters ad the game doesn't let you revive them. Also it costs a lot of money to buy the stuff you need to revive so many characters.

I may be done with this game. I just don't see the point of grinding and grinding in this area when it doesn't even have a warp to get out and come back. I can use warp items, of course, but then I have to go through everything again to get back to the boss just to probably die again. I've never played a game that forces grinding so much. It's insane. You pretty much have to go through the later areas like 5-10 times each just to get enough experience to stand a chance on the bosses...

Wait nevermind there is a save. I just confused it for a healing thing. They're both blue circles!

@Guillaume I'll keep this in mind in case my current marriage doesn't work out.

@Zero That happened to me in the volcano, confusing warps and heal spots. In addition to the battle style, this game took a page from Dragon Quest in that the bosses are so freakin' hard.

Finally found a shiny Denpa man, parked in the alley behind a shady store. Don't ask! I'm glad I found one, but that's a Denpa Trail I don't see myself frequenting much.

@VickiL Did they... somehow figure out how to make shady places in the real world have the good characters? Ha ha. That'd be awesome, like "to get this special character you have to hang out in the alley on 53rd behind the liquor store at 3 in the morning..."

I love Dragon Quest, and sometimes the bosses are hard, but they're usually manageable with natural playing. Like, the only "grinding" I do, for the most part, is just fighting every enemy I see along the paths I'm already taking. I remember one major exception, having to run around a bit in one of the games for an hour or so to get prepared for a boss, but otherwise it wasn't too bad.

Denpa Men though... ug. The thing is (I was saying this to Guillaume in chat last night) I think they really built it around the "collecting" aspect, such that the later areas get insanely hard but they probably expect you to have a bunch of special characters by then. But if you don't, and aren't willing to run all over looking for radio waves... you're kind of screwed. Better be ready to grind hardcore. Albeit, I suspect you end up grinding either way.

And sure, you can use AR codes for characters, but that feels like cheating, and you have to grind a bunch to get them up to a decent level anyway.

@VickiL

That's...kind of interesting. I think the shiny Denpa man I have found was located in an area that was not well lit, too. I honestly think its a coincidence, but it could stand to see a little more research.

BTW, another minor yet annoying flaw of this game is that at points it forces you to try to escape from battles. I believe that it is when all of your characters are incapacitated by some effect and can't act or something? Yet just because I'm incapacitated, that doesn't mean that I want to escape, especially if I have killed a bunch of enemies and there is only one left and I want that XP. I'd rather try to live out the next turn or two and finish off the enemy when the effects wear off of my characters.

Weird.

So according to the Denpa Men Twitter feed (though apparently confirmed some time ago), the sequel is being localized!

Good god, there are things that I like about this game, but there are things that I definitely don't like. For instance, getting very far into a dungeon just to stumble upon a group of enemies that wipe my entire party out before I even get to do anything. Which has happened to me at least like 5 times in this game.

I really wish I had some video capture device, I want to show a bit of video in my upcoming review to show how freaking ridiculous this game is at times.

@Zero

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the good old RPGs leave some of that shit up to chance? I mean, stumbling into an area you're not quite equipped to handle? I seem to recall that happening quite often, and most recently in Xenoblade Chronicles. Yeah, it sucks, but that's the grotesque beauty of these games.

I don't know too much about the uber old school RPGs, but in Xenoblade you can see the levels of all enemies so you can choose to avoid the ones who will murder you ASAP. Also Xenoblade has a billion checkpoints and you keep all of the XP you gained even if you die, so dying is less of an issue.

Denpa Men is just sort of maddening in the sense that you're walking along doing ok and then you run into an innocent looking enemy and it is actually a group of like 4 or 5 enemies and you try to run and fail and they utterly obliterate your party before you even have a chance to do anything. I think there is some thing you can wear to make running successful more often but that seems like a weak way to have to do things. And once you die, you have to spend a bunch of "money" to revive everyone, except your QR code characters, which are probably your best characters, are gone forever, so at that point I just reset instead.

MADDENING.