Dokapon Kingdom

One has to wonder what the developers at Atlus were smoking to think of creating a party game / RPG crossover. However, Fans of RPG’s and party gamers may be pleasantly surprised by this unlikely hybrid. Dokapon Kingdom plays out like Mario Party meets Monopoly and then Final Fantasy decided to crash the party.

When you begin your game, you are immediately greeted by the most annoying RPG pixie to date, leaving you with a strong desire to set the obnoxious little fairy on fire. But worry not! She doesn’t say much throughout the rest of the game. Each player gets to name and customize their character by class and look, you also get to choose a starter level for your characters, all the while wishing you could brutally end the ear splitting chirping of that damned pixie. Finally, you select the amount of weeks you would like to play, ranging from one short week, all the way up to 999 weeks.

Your Worst Enemy

Once you’ve started the game, your characters are thrust upon the map. You get the opportunity to spin for the amount of spaces you can move. There are many different types of spaces; you could have a random encounter with an enemy, take over a town, or buy new equipment, spells, and items. The battle system in the game is pretty much built on a rock/paper/scissors foundation. One side is on offense, the other is defensive, each side has skills that can defend against or counter the other sides attack. You cannot see what the other side is going to pick, so most of the time you are just relying on luck.

The Infamout Rock/Paper/Scissors battle system

Dokapon Kingdom has a very brutal competitive side, you can do horrible, game crippling things to your teammates. Such as steal their hard earned gear or towns, send assassins after them, draw on their face, make them wear the infamous “poo” or “balding old man/woman” hats. The game is even kind enough to reward the person in last place with the chance to switch over to “Darkling” mode. While in this mode the character loses all their possessions, but for a short time they can completely dominate the game and terrorize every other player, then can even go as far as resetting the entire map to its default setup, where NOBODY controls any towns. This can all be great fun as long as your friends aren’t the violent type. And if you do play with the violent type, just make sure sharp and pointy things are out of reach.

The downsides to Dokapon Kingdom boils down to its presentation. The sound and graphics, while they can be sometimes endearing, are quite atrocious for this generation of gaming. Many will find the music and voice acting to be obnoxious, but luckily, Atlus included the option of turning them off, as this may make the game more enjoyable for some. Many others complain about the random battle system. The game is based more on chance then anything else, so its hard to develop a consistent strategy to keep your character alive, which can also at times be very frustrating.

Kinda cute aren’t they? But looking at them makes me want to pick up my Nintendo 64

To fully enjoy this game, you’ll need to set aside a lot of time, as a 10 week game can easily go over 2 hours, and I’ve noticed that 10 weeks barely scratches the surface. To fully explore all the maps, dungeons, classes, etc. could easily take 200-300 weeks. If you truly want to get everything you can out of Dokapon Kingdom, you need to sit down with a dedicated team of players, and put a few hours a night/week into this game over a long period of time. My wife and I picked this up and set a 200 week limit. We eagerly played for several hours a night over the period of a month before we finally finished. I will say that it was a very enjoyable experience. I am probably one of the few reviewers that actually gave this game a somewhat positive review, but I am tempted to believe that many of those reviews either got stuck in the single player mode, or just didn’t give this game the time it deserves.

Dokapon Kingdom will only appeal to a limited audience. That being said, if you are a fan of RPG’s, have time to burn, and somebody to burn it with on a regular basis, and if you also don’t mind that the poor graphical and audible presentation doesn’t quite match up with today’s standards, you are likely to enjoy this game. However if you do not fit into this category, I would recommend skipping this title.