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Dokapon Kingdom
Wii
Capitalism: How Does It Work?
4/5 stars
“Dokapon Kingdom” is a member of the obscure, yet venerable, ‘Dokapon’ series of games that began on the SNES with the never-released-outside-of-Japan title, “Dokapon 3-2-1,” developed by Asmik Ace. Released in 2008 on both the aging PlayStation 2 and the two-year-old Wii (and followed a year later by a DS sequel/port), “Dokapon Kingdom” is the first proper game in the Dokapon series to see the light of day outside of Japan, this time developed by Sting. And by ‘proper’ Dokapon game, I mean a game that fuses the disparate elements of Party Game and RPG (whereas there have been several other games to bear the ‘Dokapon’ name that are either all RPG or all Party Game).
As a Party Game, “Dokapon Kingdom” naturally places a great emphasis on multi-player. In order to fully experience this game in all its glory, I recruited fellow Melted Joystick staffers, Chris and Nick to play through the game with me. I was curious to see how one of my favorite genres could be combined with one of my most-hated, and if the results would be fair or foul.
Presentation
“Dokapon Kingdom” isn’t a graphically-intensive game. While the game is fully polygonal, the textures used are cartoony. This artistic style actually serves the game well, as there are few jaggies and everything looks sharp and clean. Character designs range from normal to quirky to borderline-racist in some cases (in the case of certain natives who look like Broyles from TV’s “Fringe”). Weapon and shield designs are creative, with nearly 300 unique pieces of equipment. Unfortunately, enemy designs aren’t quite as diverse, and the ancient technique of pallet-swapping is used constantly throughout the game (though maybe this was a purposeful decision).
The character generator allows players to create a ‘custom’ character with a choice of gender, dominant costume/hair color, and a handful of different faces. For our playthrough, I created a red female thief named Twit, Chris created a black male warrior named Hurto, and Nick created a white male mage named Pug. As the game progresses, different hairstyles become available and can be changed by visiting the King’s stylist.
The soundtrack is decent, but nothing amazing. Most of the music fits well with the silly, cartoony theme of the overall game. Sound effects are used quite well for added humor, as monsters groan hilariously when slain. While there isn’t a lot of voice acting in the game, it’s very well done, and gives a lot of extra personality to the main NPCs the characters interact with throughout the game. There was a strange glitch that caused two different music tracks to play cacophonously over each other, but this only happened twice and went away after transitioning to a different screen.
Story
“Dokapon Kingdom” is a tongue-in-cheek parody RPG, much like the “Earthbound/Mother” series. As such, the story isn’t really something that is meant to be taken seriously. Instead, the entire narrative is a series of ridiculous jokes and RPG tropes spread across 7 chapters (one for each continent on the world map) and a final-boss-centric coda. In addition to skewering old-school RPGs, “Dokapon Kingdom” lampoons greed and materialism.
The game begins with monsters coming out of nowhere and conquering the entire World of Dokapon (which looks suspiciously like a distorted version of Earth). With all the world’s towns occupied by monsters, the world economy grinds to a halt. This economic hardship is extremely troubling to the King of Dokapon, a short, fat, blue-eyed, blond, curly-bearded individual whose castle is located smack in the middle of China (?!)… not because it causes problems for the world’s citizens, but because it inconveniences the King and cramps his lavish lifestyle. Thus the King issues a call to arms for Adventurers to come from far and wide on a quest to restore the world’s cashflow. The prize? Lots of money, the Crown, and the hand of the King’s only daughter, Princess Penny.
At its core, the goal of “Dokapon Kingdom” is to save the world. But the not-so-subtle undertone of this goal is to have the most money. At the end of each game week (7 turns for each player), the game shows a running tabulation of character wealth, detailing salaries, liquid funds, and real estate values. Ultimately, even though the players must cooperate to save the world, the player who ends up with the most money is the ‘winner.’
There will be random encounters with NPCs. There will be fetch quests. There will be a Final Boss with a secondary form. These are not spoilers! This game uses all of these tired old clichés in new ways by making fun of them.
Aside from the scripted story events, the rivalries and skirmishes between the players themselves can lead to hilarious sub-plots of betrayal and revenge… all instigated at the hands of the players themselves. While it is possible to try to play a ‘clean’ game, there are always trying times that can bend any alliance to the breaking point. “Dokapon Kingdom’s” tagline isn’t ‘Destroy Your Friendships!’ for nothing.
Gameplay
“Dokapon Kingdom” is an entirely turn-based game. Each player (or AI controlled character) takes their turn in the same order throughout the game (determined randomly at the beginning). Each player’s turn begins with the option to move or use an item. Items are carried in the player’s bag, which varies in capacity by character job, and come in two types: normal items and field magic. There is a huge variety of both item types, most of which are pretty useless. However, some items provide enormous advantages in battle, even though they are one-time-use.
Movement in “Dokapon Kingdom” is random and based on a board-game-style spinner that randomly allows the player to move anywhere from 0 to 6 spaces on the world map. The map itself is covered in circular spaces representing castles, towns, banks, random loot drops, dungeon entrances, and free spaces. The majority of the spaces on the map are free spaces, in which a random encounter with a monster or wandering NPC will occur. In typical RPG style, landing on free spaces to grind for experience and money by killing monsters is an important gameplay mechanic. Unfortunately, the game sometimes throws a long string of NPC encounters (which don’t generate experience) at the same player, resulting in that player falling behind the other players. These random NPC encounters can sometimes be good, like the wandering blacksmith who offers to create a higher-than-the-player’s-current-level weapon or shield at an inflated price or the merchant who sells rare items. More often than not, though, random encounters just screw-over the player, like the annoying little girl in the pink bear costume who will steal a large portion of the player’s money if the player loses a game of ro-sham-bo (rock-paper-scissors) or the wandering doctor (whom the Melted Joystick team dubbed “The Gynecologist” because he kept going after Twit) who will heal the player fully for an exorbitant, debt-inducing fee… that the player must pay even if there’s nothing wrong with them. However, the most annoying part of this game’s movement system is that the player must spin the exact number in order to land on a given space. This mechanic frequently leads to players wasting numerous turns in failed attempts at landing on a shop, town, or treasure chest.
Character development is based on a job system. By mastering the 3 starting jobs of warrior, thief, and mage, players can unlock additional jobs. Each job comes with a stable of different features as well as level-up stat boosts. By mastering a job, the character receives a permanent stat boost on each level-up, even if they have changed to a different job. The relevant stats are Strength, Defense, Magic, Speed, and Hit Points. Each level-up also provides the player with 2 free points to distribute among the character’s stats however they wish. To further boost their stats, characters can equip three pieces of gear: a weapon, a shield, and an accessory. Surprisingly, there no penalty whatsoever for changing jobs, making this the greatest job system I’ve even encountered in my long history of playing RPGs.
The combat system is based on calculated risks. Each character begins the game with two physical offense and defense options, ‘Attack’ and ‘Strike’ for offense and ‘Defend’ and ‘Counter’ for defense. Each character job also offers a variety of offensive skills, of which the player can have one at a time. These skills can be replaced by others at random after battles (but the player always has a choice of keeping their current skill). Characters can also buy or find magical offense and defense options, but can only possess one of each at a time.
The risk in this battle system comes into play in that Strike overcomes Defend (dealing huge damage) and Counter negates Strike (dealing huge damage to the attacker). However, Counter does nothing against Attack, which leads most players to take the cautious route and simply Attack and Defend (in which case the defender takes reduced damage). In an unfortunate design decision, this interaction between physical attacks is rendered meaningless against boss monsters, as almost all of them have a hidden ability to change their defensive move to Counter if the player battling them decides to use Strike, making Strike an almost-useless command. Magic adds further depth to battles by dealing full damage against both Defend and Counter. Only defensive magic is effective against offensive magic. However, late in the game defensive magic abilities become available that act against magic attacks like Counter acts against Strike or reduce magic damage to a negligible amount, leading magic-based characters who dominated during the mid-game between a rock and a hard place (as Nick/Pug discovered). Late in the game, many enemies gain access to damaging skills, which, not being magical and not being physical, allow no effective defense. Even worse, several of these enemy skills have an additional effect of randomly destroying the target’s weapon or shield.
In addition to the system of 4 offensive moves and 4 defensive moves, the battle system has two other major features, one good and one not so much. The good feature is that all of the player’s and enemy’s stats are displayed, side-by-side for comparison. Doing this allows players to strategize effectively and removes uncertainty when encountering new enemies. The bad feature in the way in which combat initiative is determined during each turn. Instead of relying on the Speed statistic, the beginning of each combat turn presents the player with two face-down cards and the ability to swap them between themselves and the enemy. One card says ‘First,’ the other ‘Last.’ This system makes it very easy for pathetically slow enemies to take the first move against speedy players… and due to “Dokapon Kingdom’s” emphasis on one-hit KOs, going first is important. Should a battle not conclude after a single turn, the player must wait for all of the other players/AIs to take a turn (item, movement, random encounter) before getting to take another swipe at their opponent.
All of these gameplay systems combine to create a chaotic experience in which player momentum can pendulum erratically (the hallmark of a good party game). Unfortunately, this otherwise-solid gameplay is plagued by one huge flaw: The random number generator is very Calvinist, in that it gives the illusion of the players having free will when, in actuality, every outcome is pre-determined. If a random occurrence doesn’t turn out well for a player, reloading the last saved game will result in the exact same spinner rolls, encounters, initiative orders, etc. if the player doesn’t specifically go out of their way to change their own fate.
Players take turns and build-up their characters in this fashion throughout the entire game. Each chapter is laid-out in the same basic format: 1. The players must kill all of the ‘big’ boss monsters occupying towns on the continent. 2. The King offers a fetch quest. 3. The player who completes the fetch quest receives a castle and the King opens the next continent for exploration. The King occasionally offers side quests, but the rewards aren’t adequate for the amount of wasted effort required to complete them. While Chris/Hurto was dominating in the early game, he wasted an ungodly amount of time trying to kill a Wabbit for the King, fell way behind, and was never able to catch-up.
Overall
“Dokapon Kingdom” is utterly unique, utterly chaotic fun. While the epic undertaking of Story Mode might not work for most groups (there is no game timer, but it must have lasted close to 100 hours), the variable-length gameplay modes should allow RPG geeks to have the same kind of mindless multi-player fun that most FPS fanatics love. “Dokapon Kingdom” is also a perfect fit for the Wii, bringing the most fresh-faced non-gamers and the most jaded hardcore gamers together on equal footing. This is one of those rare Party Games that can be enjoyed in a multitude of ways, thus making it a solid choice for all Wii owners. With a few minor tweaks, this game could have been perfect.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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