A good party game as long as all the players are real people.
Finally, I though, I will get to play a decent multiplayer JRPG with my friends. And I was right. The first time I played this game was with one of my friends and we played it for 5 hours straight. We both like to play JRPG's and were thrilled that now we get to play it together.
The game is a mix of RPG and board game elements. Up to 4 players can play (live or computer). At the beginning of the game each player creates their own character. When all the characters have been created the game can begin. There are three modes of playing : Story, Normal and battle mode. The Story mode focuses on competing against other players to do a certain task, which is usually to liberate a town or to retrieve a certain object. The king of Dokapon has asked the Heroes (Players) to help Dokapon Kingdom and promises his daughter to the wealthiest player at the end of the game.
So after the King's little speech all the players scatter around the board. You move by spinning the spinner (similar like the on in "The Game of Life"board game). You make up your own pattern with the movement points you get on the spinner. This means that you aren't limited to going just one path, on the contrary, you are able to move backwards and make turns this help you navigate better.
There are a lot of different spaces where you can land. There are yellow spaces which usually mean a simple battle with a monster, Item spaces where a spinner is spun to determine which item you will get, town spaces that take players to towns,shop spaces and so on... Also, sometimes random events can occur. They can be both good and bad. You can lose and you can win.
The battle in Dokapon Kingdom is a little different than in most RPG games. There are only 1 on 1 battles. Upon engaging the players draw one out of two cards to determine who will go first. When the turn order has been determined each player gets to pick one out of four choices. The attacker can select either Attack, Strike, Magic move, or a boost.The defender can select either defend, counter, retreat or Magic or Special defend. None of the players know what the other one player has selected. Once both players have selected their command the battle begins. The attacker attacks and defender defends, obviously. After this faze, if nobody has died, the players switch roles (attacker becomes the defender and the defender becomes the attacker), this goes on until someone dies or runs away. After battles, player obviously gain experience, which they use to level up their characters. Upon leveling up a player earns a couple of points which he can distribute to his character's attributes. Most of the battles in the game are Player versus Monster, but there can also be Player versus Player battles. After the winner has been determined in a PvP battle he or she can chose weather to rob the player, play a prank on them or simply forgive them. Other than leveling up, there are also a lot of shops that sell items, weapons, magic spells and other items which are crucial in order to make your character stronger. Players can also own towns in the game. At the beginning all the towns are conquered by monsters, so in order to obtain a town a player hes to get rid of the monster that has conquered it first. Usually, the main mission is to liberate a certain town, which upon completion, unlocks another mission about the same thing, except for the fact that the monster will be a bigger challenge.
The battle mode in the game is mostly the same thing as the story mode, since players compete against each other, and all other rules apply except the race for the hand of the princess.
The Normal mode is just like Mario Party. After a certain number of turns, the wealthiest player is the winner.
The music is ok. It has all tunes necessary for a good RPG. You have the map theme, the battle theme, the (tough /boss) battle theme. The music isn't hummable but it is satisfactory. The graphics are cartoon like, nothing impressive, which is ok in my book.
So with everything I said so far this game should deserve at least a 9 in my book, if it wasn't for all it's flaws.
Sure this game is unique, and enjoyable, but it certainly has it's flaws.
First of all, this game in NOT a single player game. Well, technically it is, but there is absolutely no reason to play this game solo, because playing solo automatically means playing against at least one computer opponent. It is almost amazing how well the computer plays the game. Sure, the computer knows everything about the game and can almost cheat, and it literally does so. The computer moves so fast, that half the time you don't even realize where he is going, also he knows who to fight, where to go, how to develop an ultimate character and can predict the outcome of a battle, even a PvP battle (whenever a computer realizes that he is about to lose, he will give up like a little b***h).
I'm talking about a computer player set on Easy, I can't even imagine what the computer can be like on Normal or yet Hard. In fact, Even if 3 people would gang up on one computer player (which I did try with my 2 cousins) they wouldn't stand a chance. So there is no point in playing this game alone.
By the way, when you defeat another player, whether he/she is real or not, you can chose to either rob them, force something bad on them, play a prank on them( change their name, write on their face, mess up their hair) or to simply forgive them. Try to guess how many times did the computer player play a prank or forgave me? The answer is none! While you play with real people, it's always fun to change their names into : 'Idiot', 'A***ole', 'S****ead' and it kinda keep the game going.
Secondly, this game has no Co-op mode. So all I can say about this is: "You better pick carefully with who are you going to play this game, because sore-losers will not be happy". Maybe this feature isn't as important as I claim it to be, but all modern party games have this feature, so i don't see the reason why Dokapon should be different. There were at least a dozen times where a help from a friend could have been quite useful in this game.
Also, I don't like the character development in the game. Sure, you get to pick what class you want and you distribute the points by your will, but will that really make your character more powerful. Yes and No. It is true that you can customize your character according to your own will and make him unique in any way you wish, but as your character advances in level you will eventually get new classes which will require other attributes in order for it to advance. So each player will have to select another attribute to power up for the new class to work better. And in the end, you end up with all the attributes equally distributed. For example, let's say I chose a Warrior. Everyone knows that a warriors best weapon is pure brute force a.k.a. Strength. So I would probably start by spending a lot of my points on Strength, defense and Health. Is that making my character stronger? No it isn't! Because I don't have any points in Magic and speed. I am supposed to distribute my points equally to all attributes. Why is that you might ask? Because the 'classes' are nothing more then profession titles in Dokapon Kingdom (except that they give you special abilities which you won't use that often). You will need to have high attack, defense, magic and speed no matter which class you chose because you will need to use all of them. So, what is the point in distributing them if I am supposed to have it equally distributed amongst all my attributes. And besides, why would a warrior need Magic anyway??? That defies all laws of RPG's. Well, that's what I thought until I found enemies dieing from my warriors scorch magic (It even did more damage then a wizard). Later I switched to a wizard and had to boost my strength just so I could keep up with everyone. So to sum up this topic, there is no point in boosting just one or two attributes on a character. This is a fact because the computer players do it this way as well.
With all this said, I think I can sum up this review.
Dokapon Kingdom is a great party game when you have RPG-loving friends over. You will laugh, cry, curse at each other, compete and work together during a single match and every single match will be priceless regardless of how well everyone is playing. On the other hand, if you don't have friends to play this with you, SKIP IT.