Dokapon Kingdom – WII – Review

Throughout gaming history,
developers have tried to deliver innovation by combining two existing types of
games. Rockstar, for instance, made gaming history with a simple combination of
shooting and driving games that they called Grand Theft Auto. Shooting and
driving is an obvious combination, though — characters in movies have been doing
both for years. What if you combined two genres that couldn’t have less in
common —l ike, say, mixing the lengthy, complex, single-player experience of an
RPG with the casual, light-hearted multiplayer fun of a party game? Well,
that’s exactly what Atlus has done with their latest Wii title, Dokapon
Kingdom — and it works surprisingly well.

Dokapon Kingdom casts each player as
an adventurer-for-hire, contracted by the King of Dokapon in an open call for a
hero to save the land. You see, monsters have been invading recently, and it’s
caused an economic crisis. Until the monsters terrorizing the world are
vanquished, the King can’t collect any taxes, so he has promised the hand of the
princess (and dibs to the throne along with it) to whoever can get rid of the
vile beasts. Ignoring any (possibly coincidental) parallels to the real-life
world economy, the game’s story is pretty much just there to give players an
incentive to run around the game world, killing as many monsters and collecting
as many taxes as possible.

 
The King might be crazy to offer his
kingdom to the winner,
but that won’t keep people from trying to claim the
prize.

Things start off with character
creation; you can customize your character’s gender, job, color, and face, so
even in a four-player game every player can look unique. As for the different
jobs, when you first start you can choose from Warrior, Magician, or Thief, but
new classes unlock as you progress in the game, and of course each job has its
own strengths, drawbacks, and exclusive skills. Once the game begins proper,
play progresses much like you’d see in a game like Mario Party, only with a
world map instead of a game board (although the kingdom’s map is laid out like a
game board, with set paths to travel and defined spaces to land on). Each
player in turn gets to spin a numbered dial to see how many spaces they can move
around the kingdom, and when you stop some kind of event generally occurs. Depending on where you land, you could get a new item or magic spell, encounter
an enemy monster, or visit a town — and that’s just for starters.

 
The characters move around the game
world like a giant game board,
with set paths and spaces to travel along.

Players can pursue wealth — which in
turn determines the winner — in many different ways, so there are any number of
valid strategies to victory. Most towns are under attack from a boss monster,
and defeating it means the town is yours — along with its citizens’ taxes. If you
don’t mind being a little underhanded, you can attack your fellow players;
defeating another player lets you steal their money and equipment (or even
humiliate their character by giving them a terrible haircut). If you’d rather
go straight to the source, you can rob shops and towns directly, but if you fail
you get a huge bounty on your head, which other players can collect. You can
always fall back on that RPG standard, fighting monsters and selling loot, to
make your fortune, or you can focus exclusively on the various quests and
side-tasks the King assigns throughout the game to score the lucrative rewards. The game doesn’t care how you get your money, so you’re free to play as straight
or dirty as you like, but let’s face it, isn’t it a lot more fun to fund your
win with cash stolen from your fellow players?

 
Victory goes to the richest player
(regardless of how they amassed their wealth),
so feel free to get your money by
any means necessary.

Visually, Dokapon Kingdom keeps
things simple. Characters and environments are simple and cutesy, but the game
has a bright, colorful art style that’s perfectly suited to the lighthearted
party vibe. There’s a lot of variety in the various areas of the game, too;
there are seven continents to explore, and each has a range of different
terrains and locations, from deserts to beaches to snowy forests. The music
matches the graphics, and the soundtrack is mostly comprised of bouncy, upbeat
tunes.

 
The game’s visual style is cute,
colorful, and fun.

 Like any party game, Dokapon
Kingdom is best played in a group. Sure, you can play single player if you
want, but you’re still competing against other characters, just AI characters
instead of player-controlled. Party games are meant to be social experiences,
though, especially in a game like this, where half the fun comes from messing
with your friends. But this leads us to what is probably Dokapon Kingdom’s
biggest problem: the game’s depth and strategy comes at the expense of some of
its accessibility. I played the game with several groups of friends, some
gamers and some not. While my gamer friends were accustomed to keeping track of
things like experience levels and multiple attack skills, my non-gamer pals
(many of whom had enjoyed marathon Mario Party sessions) were confused and put
off by the game’s complexity. Party games have always been a very
pick-up-and-play genre, and their relative simple rules and quick, mindless mini-games
have made them perfect for a casual party audience. Dokapon Kingdom,
on the other hand, requires its players to invest time and energy learning
relatively complicated strategies, combat systems, and sets of statistics before
the game begins to yield its fun.

Despite this, Dokapon Kingdom is one
of the deepest, most fun multiplayer games of recent memory, provided you have
the group of players to do the game justice. The sheer number of ways to mess
over your fellow players will have you and your friends laughing and playing
long into the night. RPGs and party games might not seem like the most obvious
combinations at first glance, but Dokapon Kingdom proves that the mix can
deliver one of the best multiplayer experiences on the Wii.

Gameplay: 8.3
The turn-based action might not be as fast and furious as a game like Mario
Party, but the huge variety of options and tactics available to you give the
game a level of depth that’s unmatched in the party game genre.  Besides,
Dokapon’s focus on backstabbing between players guarantees laughs and fun.

Graphics: 8.1
The visuals might be a little on the simple side, but that’s not to say they’re
bad. The art style keeps things cheerful and colorful, and cute, bouncy
animations keep even things like battle lighthearted and fun.

Sound: 7.8
The music is serviceable, but a little fantasy-generic. Most characters have
some voice acting, but the players’ voices are limited to battle shouting. Other characters, like the King, have some lines voiced and others not,
seemingly arbitrarily.

Difficulty: Medium
There’s a bit of a learning curve, as you acquaint yourself with the various
systems and options contained in the game. Once you’ve learned the rules,
though, the difficulty will largely be determined by your opponents, as well as
a heavy dose of luck.

Multiplayer: 8.8
This is a game that was designed around multiplayer. They’ve made it as simple
as possible (players can drop out at any time, with their characters taken over
by AI), so you never have to stop the game when the player lineup changes.

Concept: 8.8
The developers have incorporated elements of party games and RPGs, but the game
is something entirely unique. It’s definitely an idea that could be further
refined in a sequel, but it proves remarkably fresh and entertaining.

Overall: 8.4
Dokapon Kingdom is a cute, hilarious, addicting game with a multiplayer
experience that can’t be matched. It’s not going to appeal to every gamer, but
I can honestly rank my time with it among the most fun I’ve ever had with my Wii.