Post by Pimpjira on Jun 2, 2016 21:08:28 GMT
This time I am doing a review for a game that isn't very known. And that game is Dokapon Kingdom. Dokapon Kingdom was released on the Nintendo Wii(so of course playable on Wii U, yay for backwards compatibility!) and Playstation 2 in 2008, published by Atlus USA, and developed by Sting. Fans of JRPGs may recognize the name Sting for some cult favorites like Baroque, Riviera, Yggdra Union, and more. This game isn't exactly in their usual style as it not serious at all and is as much of a party game as is an RPG. I don't think there are any differences between versions aside from more control options(can use wiimote, Gamceube controller, or classic controller) and no need for a multitap to play with more than one extra person on the Wii, but all of my comments here reflect the Wii version as that is what I own.
Dokapon Kingdom is a JRPG/Party game for up to four players that is at it's best when playing with friends or family. There is a story mode but even it I think would be best with at least one extra person. Playing with all CPUs is an option but of course that isn't what party games like this and the Mario Party series are all about. With that said I am going to start with covering the normal party mode of the game. It will be easier to talk about the differences in the story mode after that.
Same as Mario Party(if making comparisons to any other party game I will stick with that series as I imagine it's what the most would be familiar with),is a party game for up to 4 players. For this game though it is an option to play with 2-3 players and not fill in the extra slots with CPU characters as it is not based around mini games. In fact there are no mini games and all and instead turn-based JRPG type battles but I'll get to that later. The game begins with choosing from one of three classes(warrior/thief/mage, more can be unlocked through mastering different jobs that can be changed in-game), picking your name and gender, starting level for all players, etc to get set up. Now instead of multiple boards to choose from, Dokapon Kingdom has one big game board split out into several continents. The starting area is always the same at Dokapon castle and players will take turns moving around the map, spaces moved being decided by turning the spinner. The game goes by weeks and when each player takes their turn a day goes by, and a week is seven days in the game as you might expect.
The object of the party mode is to the have the most worth at the end of the game. The world of Dokapon Kingdom has been overrun with monsters and most of the net value is gained by taking over the towns on the map by defeating them. As with most board games, there are different types of spaces and I will describe the most common ones. The standard yellow spaces are random and bring up a battle with a monster or an event(I will go into the events later). The level of the monsters fought will be highly dependent on the area so how much exploration is available at the start will depend on the starting level which can be from 1 to 50. If 1 was selected, players will be stuck in the starting area for a while until the some levels and get better equipment. The next most common would be the town and shop spaces. Towns are ruled over by monsters at first but when taken over they can be used as inns to heal health and magic(free for town's owner, others have to pay a fee), or to develop on to increase worth and collect taxes for the owner of town. The shops are split up into weapon shops for buying better weapons and armor, items for different types of items, and magic for both magic used in battle and on the board. Dokapon Castle is the starting area, and players can return here to change jobs, their hairstyle, heal free of charge, etc. Then there the item/magic spaces, temples, and such but those are the most important ones and I would likely bore anyone reading this by describing all of them so I will move on and go into the mechanics of the game.
I will begin with the battles that I already mentioned a little bit. Battles are gotten into by attacking a town ruled by a monster, random battle on the yellow spaces, or by attacking another player on a yellow space(you can't attack another player at a shop or on an item space for example). Battles are standard JRPG turn-based fare(other than the strike/counter mechanic which I will go into shortly) but both the attacking and defending player only get to do one action per turn and they battle will continue when one of their turns come up again. Both characters will have four options to choose from. The attacker will have attack, strike, magic, and skill. The defending character will have defend, counter, magic defense, and give up. Attack and defend are self explanatory and work as you think they would. Magic and skills will depend on the character and they have different effects. Give up puts the player on time out and the penalty will be less than if they are defeated. And now strike and counter is a risk and reward mechanic. Strike is a much more powerful version and attack and deals a lot more damage but the risk is that the opponent will counter and in that case choosing counter will end up with tons of damage to the attacker and most likely ending up in death unless there is a large difference in levels/equipment. Using counter is as well though because counter does nothing if the attacker uses a regular attack and then it does a lot more damage. The four options are chosen by selecting a direction on the dpad. Only one magic or skill can be selected at a time so there is no use of on screen menus and possibility of cheating by looking at the players screen.
When a battle is decided between characters the winner gets to choose a punishment for the other player. If the other character is knocked out the victor can choose from taking all their money, a town, a piece of equipment or a silly punishment. The silly punishments are for giving the loser humiliation and they range from changing their name to anything they want(so yes this game can be M-rated depending on who is playing), giving them a silly hair style, and putting graffiti on their face. If the losing player gives up the punishment is less severe as in only taking half of their money or giving them a status effect. Status effects can range from the usual poison, footsore(can only move one space at a time for a few turns), locking out using items, etc. I think I've made battles fairly clear so I will move onto the events mentioned earlier.
Dokapon Kingdom has a number different characters and events relating to them. When a yellow space doesn't bring up a random battle monster it could be a number of different events, I will explain a few but not all of them. One is that the bandit Risque will show and he will try to steal from another player for a fee, this often fails. Another is a girl in a pick bear suit name Roshambo that will challenge you to a game of rock/paper/scissors and if you lose she will take your money and you get money if she has any(she starts with none and only has the money she has won). And another is Rico Jr. who will attack you and is stronger than monsters in the area, strikes cannot be used against him as he auto-counters. Another is Weber who never brings anything good(unless in last place, will expand on this in a bit) and will give you a bug that eats your items, a blackmail that will randomly kill a character and can be given to another by paying money, etc. There are others but these are the more interesting ones. And speaking of the rock/paper/scissors game one more thing to bring up is that players can attack shops and try to score a piece of equipment, and some rare items or magic depending on which shop. And this is decided not in battle but a game of rock/paper/scissors. If the player wins that will get one of those things out of it and they lose they will become wanted. A wanted player is generally wanted for either 7 or 10 days and they have a bounty on their head. If another player kills them during this time they will get the reward. During this time they cannot land on shop/town/etc spaces or even Dokapon Castle.
The last major thing I have to go into here was hinted at when bringing up Weber and that is the Darkling. When a player has been in last place for two whole weeks they have the ability to become a darkling. Generally they must land on the single darkling space in the game to do this and sign the contract buy if they are lucky and want to Weber might appear on any random yellow space and give it to them right there. The darkling is severely over-powered and can change things up big time but they must give up all of their money, towns, and possessions to do so. The darkling has a number of abilities besides it's super-powered stats and the main one is the power to land on towns and summon monsters on them which then takes that town from the player and it's unowned again. The others are done by spending darkling points of which the player gets a random amount every turn decided by using the spinner. These range from being able to summon monsters to all towns at once, call all players to the darkling's space, give everyone footsores, etc. The more powerful the ability the more points they take to use. The time of being a darkling lasts for 10 days and is likely to make that player a target for some time after the damage they are likely to deal during that time.
The last tidbit to talk about will be that I didn't really go into items, magic, or skills. Items can range from 2/3/4/5 spinners for moving more spaces, potions for healing HP, they have different effects similar to how items work in Mario Party. Magic can be used to target over players and monsters on the board for dealing damage, or giving status effects, switching places with them, etc. Magic can miss and the percentage of hitting is dependent on the spd stat. Skills are learned by leveling up jobs and can have a high number of effects in battle. Each job also has an inherent skill on the board such as the thief can steal items by passing other characters on the board, the warrior's atk will go up randomly during a turn, etc.
There is a lot to this game and it sounds like a lot on paper but thankfully the game explains everything well at the right times. It's one of those board games where people might end up confused about the rules are not be able to have fun because it's too complicated. I did not go into everything for this review because I could take all day going into every little thing. Now that the basics have been covered I will talk about the story mode of the game. There are several other options for the party modes but the normal mode is the best one. There is battle mode that revolves around killing targeted monsters and such but in my experience no one cared about that one so much or the other mode that I actually don't remember at all because it didn't leave an impression.
The overall story of the game is simple. Basically the Dokapon Kingdom is broke and the world has been overrun by monsters and the king will give his most cherished prize(his daughter Princess Penny's hand in marriage of course) to the player that is able to inquire the most net worth by the end of the game. That is the prize whether the character is male or female. The story mode really brings the whole game board into play. In the normal mode where characters are able to roam freely if they start at a higher level, in the story the character level will always start at 1. The story progresses at first with players killing the red monsters as they summoned one by one onto a random town. (all the other monsters are purple, the red ones are stronger and the king gives an extra reward for defeating them)
When all the red monsters on a continent are defeated it is onto an objective which involves going into the dungeons which largely seem useless in the normal and mode and killing a certain objective, catching a character on the map, playing at the casino in the middle of the cave, etc. These objectives add a bit of variety to the normal play. The story mode is a fairly lengthy experience and can really depend on how competitive players are on whether decide to work together to see it all or do all they can to be #1. It's a little similar to the GP mode in kart racers in that case, do players want to somewhat work together and get through them are possibly drag things out? The story mode is definitely worth playing through once just to get use out of all the locations in the game, and it at times feels more like playing a JRPG with party game elements than how the game is more often a party game with JRPG elements. It changes things up enough to be interesting.
In the end, I would highly recommend Dokapon Kingdom for fans of getting together with friends or family and playing a fun party game. I would say someone who doesn't care much JRPGs could get into this, but liking board/party games would be a must. The story mode wouldn't be so bad as a single player experience but for that I wouldn't recommend paying more than $15 or so and at least in the case of the Wii version that as is not likely as it is a somewhat rare game. I would love to see a new entry in the series, hopefully with local and online options but unfortunately that is not likely. There is another Dokapon game that was released on the DS that was released around the same time and I think that's been it for the series in the west. And none have been released in Japan since, pretty sure there are some older games in the series that never made it but there would be no way to be able to play through them without being to read Japanese.
Dokapon Kingdom is a JRPG/Party game for up to four players that is at it's best when playing with friends or family. There is a story mode but even it I think would be best with at least one extra person. Playing with all CPUs is an option but of course that isn't what party games like this and the Mario Party series are all about. With that said I am going to start with covering the normal party mode of the game. It will be easier to talk about the differences in the story mode after that.
Same as Mario Party(if making comparisons to any other party game I will stick with that series as I imagine it's what the most would be familiar with),is a party game for up to 4 players. For this game though it is an option to play with 2-3 players and not fill in the extra slots with CPU characters as it is not based around mini games. In fact there are no mini games and all and instead turn-based JRPG type battles but I'll get to that later. The game begins with choosing from one of three classes(warrior/thief/mage, more can be unlocked through mastering different jobs that can be changed in-game), picking your name and gender, starting level for all players, etc to get set up. Now instead of multiple boards to choose from, Dokapon Kingdom has one big game board split out into several continents. The starting area is always the same at Dokapon castle and players will take turns moving around the map, spaces moved being decided by turning the spinner. The game goes by weeks and when each player takes their turn a day goes by, and a week is seven days in the game as you might expect.
The object of the party mode is to the have the most worth at the end of the game. The world of Dokapon Kingdom has been overrun with monsters and most of the net value is gained by taking over the towns on the map by defeating them. As with most board games, there are different types of spaces and I will describe the most common ones. The standard yellow spaces are random and bring up a battle with a monster or an event(I will go into the events later). The level of the monsters fought will be highly dependent on the area so how much exploration is available at the start will depend on the starting level which can be from 1 to 50. If 1 was selected, players will be stuck in the starting area for a while until the some levels and get better equipment. The next most common would be the town and shop spaces. Towns are ruled over by monsters at first but when taken over they can be used as inns to heal health and magic(free for town's owner, others have to pay a fee), or to develop on to increase worth and collect taxes for the owner of town. The shops are split up into weapon shops for buying better weapons and armor, items for different types of items, and magic for both magic used in battle and on the board. Dokapon Castle is the starting area, and players can return here to change jobs, their hairstyle, heal free of charge, etc. Then there the item/magic spaces, temples, and such but those are the most important ones and I would likely bore anyone reading this by describing all of them so I will move on and go into the mechanics of the game.
I will begin with the battles that I already mentioned a little bit. Battles are gotten into by attacking a town ruled by a monster, random battle on the yellow spaces, or by attacking another player on a yellow space(you can't attack another player at a shop or on an item space for example). Battles are standard JRPG turn-based fare(other than the strike/counter mechanic which I will go into shortly) but both the attacking and defending player only get to do one action per turn and they battle will continue when one of their turns come up again. Both characters will have four options to choose from. The attacker will have attack, strike, magic, and skill. The defending character will have defend, counter, magic defense, and give up. Attack and defend are self explanatory and work as you think they would. Magic and skills will depend on the character and they have different effects. Give up puts the player on time out and the penalty will be less than if they are defeated. And now strike and counter is a risk and reward mechanic. Strike is a much more powerful version and attack and deals a lot more damage but the risk is that the opponent will counter and in that case choosing counter will end up with tons of damage to the attacker and most likely ending up in death unless there is a large difference in levels/equipment. Using counter is as well though because counter does nothing if the attacker uses a regular attack and then it does a lot more damage. The four options are chosen by selecting a direction on the dpad. Only one magic or skill can be selected at a time so there is no use of on screen menus and possibility of cheating by looking at the players screen.
When a battle is decided between characters the winner gets to choose a punishment for the other player. If the other character is knocked out the victor can choose from taking all their money, a town, a piece of equipment or a silly punishment. The silly punishments are for giving the loser humiliation and they range from changing their name to anything they want(so yes this game can be M-rated depending on who is playing), giving them a silly hair style, and putting graffiti on their face. If the losing player gives up the punishment is less severe as in only taking half of their money or giving them a status effect. Status effects can range from the usual poison, footsore(can only move one space at a time for a few turns), locking out using items, etc. I think I've made battles fairly clear so I will move onto the events mentioned earlier.
Dokapon Kingdom has a number different characters and events relating to them. When a yellow space doesn't bring up a random battle monster it could be a number of different events, I will explain a few but not all of them. One is that the bandit Risque will show and he will try to steal from another player for a fee, this often fails. Another is a girl in a pick bear suit name Roshambo that will challenge you to a game of rock/paper/scissors and if you lose she will take your money and you get money if she has any(she starts with none and only has the money she has won). And another is Rico Jr. who will attack you and is stronger than monsters in the area, strikes cannot be used against him as he auto-counters. Another is Weber who never brings anything good(unless in last place, will expand on this in a bit) and will give you a bug that eats your items, a blackmail that will randomly kill a character and can be given to another by paying money, etc. There are others but these are the more interesting ones. And speaking of the rock/paper/scissors game one more thing to bring up is that players can attack shops and try to score a piece of equipment, and some rare items or magic depending on which shop. And this is decided not in battle but a game of rock/paper/scissors. If the player wins that will get one of those things out of it and they lose they will become wanted. A wanted player is generally wanted for either 7 or 10 days and they have a bounty on their head. If another player kills them during this time they will get the reward. During this time they cannot land on shop/town/etc spaces or even Dokapon Castle.
The last major thing I have to go into here was hinted at when bringing up Weber and that is the Darkling. When a player has been in last place for two whole weeks they have the ability to become a darkling. Generally they must land on the single darkling space in the game to do this and sign the contract buy if they are lucky and want to Weber might appear on any random yellow space and give it to them right there. The darkling is severely over-powered and can change things up big time but they must give up all of their money, towns, and possessions to do so. The darkling has a number of abilities besides it's super-powered stats and the main one is the power to land on towns and summon monsters on them which then takes that town from the player and it's unowned again. The others are done by spending darkling points of which the player gets a random amount every turn decided by using the spinner. These range from being able to summon monsters to all towns at once, call all players to the darkling's space, give everyone footsores, etc. The more powerful the ability the more points they take to use. The time of being a darkling lasts for 10 days and is likely to make that player a target for some time after the damage they are likely to deal during that time.
The last tidbit to talk about will be that I didn't really go into items, magic, or skills. Items can range from 2/3/4/5 spinners for moving more spaces, potions for healing HP, they have different effects similar to how items work in Mario Party. Magic can be used to target over players and monsters on the board for dealing damage, or giving status effects, switching places with them, etc. Magic can miss and the percentage of hitting is dependent on the spd stat. Skills are learned by leveling up jobs and can have a high number of effects in battle. Each job also has an inherent skill on the board such as the thief can steal items by passing other characters on the board, the warrior's atk will go up randomly during a turn, etc.
There is a lot to this game and it sounds like a lot on paper but thankfully the game explains everything well at the right times. It's one of those board games where people might end up confused about the rules are not be able to have fun because it's too complicated. I did not go into everything for this review because I could take all day going into every little thing. Now that the basics have been covered I will talk about the story mode of the game. There are several other options for the party modes but the normal mode is the best one. There is battle mode that revolves around killing targeted monsters and such but in my experience no one cared about that one so much or the other mode that I actually don't remember at all because it didn't leave an impression.
The overall story of the game is simple. Basically the Dokapon Kingdom is broke and the world has been overrun by monsters and the king will give his most cherished prize(his daughter Princess Penny's hand in marriage of course) to the player that is able to inquire the most net worth by the end of the game. That is the prize whether the character is male or female. The story mode really brings the whole game board into play. In the normal mode where characters are able to roam freely if they start at a higher level, in the story the character level will always start at 1. The story progresses at first with players killing the red monsters as they summoned one by one onto a random town. (all the other monsters are purple, the red ones are stronger and the king gives an extra reward for defeating them)
When all the red monsters on a continent are defeated it is onto an objective which involves going into the dungeons which largely seem useless in the normal and mode and killing a certain objective, catching a character on the map, playing at the casino in the middle of the cave, etc. These objectives add a bit of variety to the normal play. The story mode is a fairly lengthy experience and can really depend on how competitive players are on whether decide to work together to see it all or do all they can to be #1. It's a little similar to the GP mode in kart racers in that case, do players want to somewhat work together and get through them are possibly drag things out? The story mode is definitely worth playing through once just to get use out of all the locations in the game, and it at times feels more like playing a JRPG with party game elements than how the game is more often a party game with JRPG elements. It changes things up enough to be interesting.
In the end, I would highly recommend Dokapon Kingdom for fans of getting together with friends or family and playing a fun party game. I would say someone who doesn't care much JRPGs could get into this, but liking board/party games would be a must. The story mode wouldn't be so bad as a single player experience but for that I wouldn't recommend paying more than $15 or so and at least in the case of the Wii version that as is not likely as it is a somewhat rare game. I would love to see a new entry in the series, hopefully with local and online options but unfortunately that is not likely. There is another Dokapon game that was released on the DS that was released around the same time and I think that's been it for the series in the west. And none have been released in Japan since, pretty sure there are some older games in the series that never made it but there would be no way to be able to play through them without being to read Japanese.
+ Fun combination of JRPG and party games
+ Interesting story mode to play through
+ Plenty of stuff to keep the game from getting stale
- Not quite enough settings. Would've been nice to be start the game with different jobs unlocked as it takes a long time to get them.
-Graphics may be to cutesy for some and lewd costumes on characters that appear to be 5-8, but it doesn't look realistic at all so I don't think it would bother most.
+/- Darkling system can be game breaking and unfair but can also keep things fresh and interesting, Dokapon is a game of luck at times.
4/5
