The Wake

There’s a reason why Dokapon Kingdom is called “The Friendship Destroying Game.” The latest game from Japanese developer Atlus will cause players to curse, take controllers away from each other and, in some cases, may cause fist fights. It also takes the party game genre into a whole new level of fun.

Think of Dokapon Kingdom as a sort of Mario Party-type RPG. Up to four players battle it out in the Kingdom of Dokapon, saving towns from evil demons and collecting money for the king of Dokapon. Since money makes Dokapon go round, the person who has the most total money value gets to marry the princess and become the next king.

The concept sounds easy enough, and at face value the game looks like it plays easy enough as well. Battles consist of Rock-Paper-Scissors type choices to make, along with actual Rock-Paper-Scissors matches with anyone who has a problem with the way you pillage and plunder. Players move using spinners to land on the number of spaces they can go. The game has a sadistic AI, however, that will punish you if you’re not careful.

There are also spells and other nasty things you can use outside of your turn to make your opponent’s life difficult, like giving them a footsore so they can only move one space on a gigantic game board. Or you can hire a RoboSassin to kill any one of your foes that make you angry. If your
opponents are ganging up on you, you can sell your soul and become a Darkling, where you can wreak holy havoc all across the board by accumulating Dark Points and casting nasty spells, such as stealing everybody’s magic abilities. Players who wish to be thrown out a window in real life could collect enough Dark Points to summon monsters to every town on the map, thus resetting all the progress everyone’s made in the game. This should only be used if you don’t like anyone else you’re playing against, as it will automatically start a cage-match brawl inside your living room.

Dokapon Kingdom takes all those board games everyone loved when they were little and combined them to form an amazing party game experience that one-ups (pun intended) games like Mario Party and Wario Ware. It has far too much depth to describe here and an insane amount of strategy goes into every round you play. The game has a few other modes as well, like who can conquer a certain town the fastest or who can get to a certain space first. The game does suffer from a few drawbacks, like a wretchedly slow pace to such an expansive game. It is supposed to take about 16 hours to finish Dokapon Kingdom’s story mode, but don’t be surprised if it takes longer as some of the tasks you’re required to perform may take forever, depending on how forgiving the AI is.

However, that doesn’t change how ridiculously fun the game is. It is a must for anyone who likes RPGs, partying and trying to make a lot of people very angry. In other words, it is definitely something every gamer who owns a PS2 or WII should buy. It even teaches you new words to describe how awesome you are, like sweetdiculous. Despite a few shortcomings, Dokapon Kingdom is too sweetdiculous to ignore. Buy it. Buy it now and waste away the time you should spend studying.