Dokapon Kingdom

"Hours later and unentertained"

I don't normally review games poorly so listen up! Dokapon Kingdom, short and sweet, is one of the worst games that I have ever had the misfortune of playing. Before I berate this game as the utter piece of crap that it is, you can rest assure in knowing that there is a little bit of gold glinting beyond the muck but I wouldn't go to great lengths to find it as the muck is rife with smells unimaginable.

Without spoilers, the basic summary of this game's plot is that there is this kingdom that is over run with monsters and the king can't be bothered to do something about it so he sends you and your friends in to duke it out. The person with the most money at the end when all the baddies are beaten gets the princess and the throne. Woohoo! So it becomes a board game style fight to accumulate wealth. Sounds sorta like another game I played a long time ago... Oh yeah... Mario party; a much better game!

On with the review!

The Concept 9/10: I threw this factor in because the game concept itself is amazing and because I need to say something nice about the game as well. Four player board game with little side quests and devious things that you can do to your friends. I give the developers my thumbs up for their creative ideas. However, executing the idea is seemingly not their forte. The game concept would be worth a good hard earned dollar or two... If it were well done that is... And sadly, this game is not. The gameplay is about as well done as an uncooked slab of steak. Which brings me to my next point, the execution of the gameplay!

Gameplay 2/10: The game developers saw it fit to not dive into actually involving the players much. You see, the gameplay is boring, uninitiating and just plain old frustrating. The only saving grace is that four players can play off of one controller. You take turns spinning a roulette to see how many steps you can move; you can't move any number less or more than the amount prescribed. This is purely frustrating. My friends and I sat around for two hours trying to get to one village as the game's random roulettes wouldn't actually allow us to land on the damn place. We gave up playing at that point; a very common occurrence with this game. The battle sequences are basically rock, paper, scissors in disguise. You have basically seven things total that you can do; four options for offense and three for defense. Basic attack, heavy attack, magic and stat changes for offense and defense, counter stat changes. At the beginning of each turn, the two combatants choose what they will do and then the game makes them act. You do this blindfolded so you have no idea what your opponent will do. Each attack has an antithesis move that can sort of undo it and bring about the untimely death of your opponent. Attack is undone by defense. Heavy attack is countered by counter, magic can be defended if you use M Def. It's entirely luck if you happen to pick the right thing. If you happen to lose a battle, you will have to spend three turns dead before rejoining the fray. Again, this leads to frustration. There were instances where level one enemies had taken out my friend's level 15 characters simply because they were unlucky and picked the wrong option. This sort of luck in gameplay is unacceptably ill-conceived; if I wanted to decide which of my friends was best via luck, I would go get a set of dice and be done with it. Also, because of the rote nature of the battles, they become boring after about fifteen minutes. Another major qualm with the game was it's speed of progression. Snails complete one hundred meter dashes before a single game of this against your friends can come to a close. I seriously balanced my checkbook, read a small chapter for my society class and cleaned up most of my friends mess while the game was going on. It's just too long and moves too slow to actually be fun. The leveling of characters and job classes was a good idea except that every job class is virtually the same short of how their stats level; something you can fix as they give you the option to distribute extra stat points as well. The animations are even the same for every class. The only difference is their physical appearance. It's also interesting to note that this game is listed as a GROUP game but I barely spent much time interacting with other players during the game at all. So I am having trouble seeing where the group part of group game comes into play here. Oh wait! IT DOESN'T! This isn't a group game at all. This is a "hey let's get four people in proximity and pretend to be entertained for four hours" game. Halo is a group game owing to the fact that groups of people play simultaneously. At no point in this game will any more than one individual be playing. I repeat, only one person will ever be playing at any given time max!

There are other flaws but I think that I have beaten this category to the point where it resembles the proverbial dead horse. I am personally avoiding going into the fact that this game is considered an RPG when it lacks a story line and defined characters that interact to form cohesive plot. Oops! Went into it anyway...

I have said this before about other games but it is really a smack in the face when game developers ignore the success of their competitors. This is another shining example of pure ignorance. Had the creators taken heed of the highly successful Mario Party series instead of trying to reinvent the wheel on their own, they would have seen that this particular style of wheel has a paradigm for success. However, the ideas that they are employing here are just plain, old, and insipid. Mario party had four player mini-games that were fun. This game has none of the sort. Mario Party's gameplay was quick and editable for time constraints. This game WILL take up enough time that child neglect court cases could imaginably happen. I could go on for ages...

Overall, the gameplay is nothing short of flawed, lackluster, and paltry at best.

Graphics: 5/10 - Yeah.. the game has graphics. They are about on par with most basic Gamecube games and do not stretch the boundaries of the Wii by any means what so ever. The best thing that I can say about them is that they exist and barely that. The anime-esque characters that are drawn and the menus used are just too simplistic. They lack depth and reminded me heavily of the hours spent playing the original Animal Crossings nearly four years ago. The color schemes and slight physical customability of the characters are nice and allow some level of user customization but they don't do anything to blow me away by any means.

Sound 4/10 - The music is interesting at first but becomes a quick rote experience. The background music is always the same for each area of the map. The battle music is always the same. The menus.. everything... It's not highly addicting, not even all that good. It simply is there much a like its graphical counterpart. The only saving grace is that the music is not so annoying that it gets stuck in your head.

Replayability 2/10 - I honestly don't know why anyone would want to replay this game. It would take too damn long. My friends and I pumped in over 10 hours into just one game across three Saturday night get togethers. It's just not something you undertake lightly. It's too time consuming, too rote, and too lackluster. You can replay the game, but I can't fathom the reason why.

Overall 3/10 - If you are interested, rent this game first. It's really not worth paying for unless you are absolutely certain that you will be entertained by it. The gameplay is too flawed, the graphics are too lackluster, the sounds are simply there and replay value is near non-existent. I can't recommend this to game to anyone.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/09

Game Release: Dokapon Kingdom (US, 10/14/08)