Say you’re three spaces away from the entrance to Dokapon, and you spin a four. You must move the exact number of spaces that the spinner lands on. Which leads me to another problem I have with the game. I, however, was stuck in the outskirts for another twenty-odd minutes, futilely spinning the spinner, trying to get the number of moves I needed. Within ten minutes of the start of the game, my opponent was in Dokapon. To actually enter Dokapon, you need to land on a certain space on the board. For example, the first part of Story Mode puts you in the outskirts of the actual kingdom of Dokapon. It seemed like every turn, my CPU opponent got the exact number on the spinner (Dokapon Kingdom’s version of the dice in other party games) he needed to get. My biggest problem with it, and with the game in general, is the AI. To be honest, my experience with the single player portion of Dokapon Kingdom was…well, it wasn’t what I was hoping it’d be. This kind of makes battles drag on a bit, especially when you or the enemy are one attack away from dying, and you just want to get it over with, but you’ve got to wait through three other players turns to do so. Each participant in the battle can only make one move per turn, and after both have taken their action, the turn ends and the battle is resumed upon the character’s next turn. On the defensive side, you can choose to defend, counter (effective against strikes), M Guard (lessens damage from magic attacks) or give up.
If you’re the attacking player, you can choose between attacking, striking (a more powerful attack that also leaves you open to countering), using magic, and using an ability. Players and their opponents will take turns either attacking, casting magic, or defending. Battles work largely like traditional turn based RPG battles. I should probably take this opportunity to explain one of the most important gameplay mechanics of Dokapon Kingdom, battles. For a game that relies so heavily on RPG elements, entirely too much is left to chance. Herein lies one of the major complaints I have with the game. Land on an item space, and you’ll be presented with a roulette of sorts that determines the item you get. Acquiring money, searching for items, casting magic, and battling are just a few of the things you’ll be spending your time with in Dokapon. Players take turns moving around the map and taking various actions determined by the space they land on. The game’s basic flow is much like that of Mario Party or other similar party games. I just don’t play as many of them as I used to. My favorite game of all time is Earthbound, after all. While RPG’s aren’t really my thing anymore, I do like them. Now, before I go any further, let me clarify something I mentioned earlier. You can have up to four characters playing simultaneously, be they CPU or human controlled, but I figured since it was my first time playing I’d go easy on myself and just go up against a single computer controlled opponent. Once I got past the initial game setup menus (which are narrated by a pixie with a voice that sounds like nails on a chalkboard), my opponent and I were thrust into the Kingdom of Dokapon. But I figured that I’d check out the single player mode first, just to get a feel for the game and how it played. I had been told that Dokapon Kingdom really shone in multiplayer. However, my experience with the game was far removed from what I’d hoped it would be. I always love to see new, original game ideas (a rarity these days, it seems), and Dokapon Kingdom certainly fits that bill.
Normally, neither genre that the game mashes together are really my kind of game. I’d been looking forward to Dokapon Kingdom, Atlus and Sting’s board game/RPG hybrid, for quite a while.