This game reminds me of Ludo which in Greek it correctly is called Grouchy! I love it and hate it.. Read to understand.
If I could collect all my thoughts about this game and sum them up into 2 words I would say "FRUSTRATING FUN"! Dokapon Kingdom is one of those things you both will both hate and love as long as you will give it a chance.
Not counting the people that will just press the eject button after after a couple of times of dying and losing slowly everything just so they will see if using the disc as a frisbee to at least not feel like they thrown away their money, the rest will definitely without fail love and hate it. This game should really be renamed to "Dokapon: The game that will try to frustrate the hell out of you"
Be it you break your neck to get every single town or collect bazillions and get the best equipment or you do nothing but randomly running around and kill monsters to level up (you can't really avoid that and you will need something to do to kill time as turns pass) you can very easily win the game. Skill, strategy and even a % of luck are all useless here. All you need is to be the worst player become a demon or darklord whatever and then have enough luck with spins to get enough dark lord points and put monsters back in every single town and take the castles off other players while in the process kill them and strip them from money and equipment.. which means they will be the same as you if your the same level as them!
I have played for I donno how many hours of this game and I have to say "I never seen the ending". The main time i played dokapon was with a friend and now I am actually trying to convince my GF to play it with me. I have tried to play it alone too but I had no one to share my frustration and after a day of playing I would put it on standby and never really try to continue again. I have tried to play alone 3 times, with a best friend about 8 times and now I am trying again. And THATS why if you read reviews you see everyone saying that you will love and hate it. And so you will my good Dokapon fan, even if you do not admit it!
After playing it first time for a couple of rounds all I could think of was Ludo, or Grouchy as we call it here. Yes you are at the top and you can constantly get kicked back to 0 and thus I believe this is one of the handful of games that were renamed in Greece and got a fitting name. But still Ludo will never even get close to Dokapon in frustration levels, the only thing it totally fits is the Greek name of Ludo. I have so much more to say but I think this is enough of random mumbling.
So its finally time to rate the actual game. Dokapon Grouchy is a very fu.. oops I meant Dokapon Kingdom is a very fun.. game and for the ones that enjoy the idea of playing a mix of Monopoly, Dungeons and Dragons (I mean RPG), Ludo (sorry its stuck in my head) and WoW (or actually any MMO that keeps telling you to "Go kill that" or "Go fetch that") you are looking at the right game!
--------------------------------------------Ratings start------------------------------------------------
Well not really ratings since I do not put any numbers but aw well.
Graphics :
Yes I start with the graphics not the gameplay. Gameplay needs to be left for last since it will be the longest and actually the main point of the game. The graphics on Dokapon Kingdom are cute and anime-ish. All cuddle and cute with no details and complex textures this game was designed for anime lovers. Of course if you look close you will see that they have some minor details and actually are not that plain to catch your eye. Personally I love them but them again I am more of an anime fan rather than the western cartoons that are detailed. For the 480p PS2 this is a pretty good game and before you actually question if I posted on the right console, this game was designed for PS2 and was imported on Wii. Characters are very nicely designed IMHO and the enemies ace cute be it it is a rotting zombie or a "sexy" mermaid.
Sound :
Actually it beat my expectation of a board game. To tell the truth I am not really a person that gets bothered from the music except if its REALLY bad or too repetitive. The voices you hear here an there are ok but to tell the truth after the 100th time of hearing them they get annoying (even chat boxes of them saying the same random things annoy me after a LONG time though). Thebattle music is actually fun and it has not made me feel any bored.
Storyline :
.....collect money, get properties, be filthy rich, run around to fetch stuff and kill anything that can be killed..... I won't tell more... cause I do not want to think more about this.... Who cares its just a board game and to tell the truth after watching the Star Wars Holiday Special every storyline seems detailed and interesting...
Gameplay :
And finally to the main point of the game. A board game with a HUMONGOUS game board and blocks that contain item roulette, treasure boxes, towns with bosses which you can take over, shops or random monster encounters and events that can change the whole game. Yes that's what Dokapon Kingdom is and that is why I probably go back again and again.
Afar from that wonderful game board you also get to enjoy more RPG like features. You can level up raising your stats and have different classes like Warrior, Thief and Mage or later on in the game if you level a class enough (yes each class can be leveled up to level 5) you will unlock more classes which of course you can change as easily as visiting the castle and asking for it.
You can also collect items which can be Equipment, Magic or General items. Equipment involve Weapons and shields which depending your class some give different bonuses, but also some accessories too that their effects vary. Magic is separated into in battle magic and map magic. You can equip yourself a spell and use in battle which can be offensive or defensive and you can get 1 use spells that might harm or weaken your enemies be it by taking away a chunk of health, poisoning, disabling many many more negative effects. There are even the "area' spells that even if I do not like mages I love using later in the game since they cause big booms. Lastly we have items that can be Health and magic potions, revives (if you have one on you it will automatically be used and you do not die), temporary buffs and many many MANY more items that do many many MANY things.
Now to talk about battles. You battle monsters on every blank space you fall, except if a random event triggers or if you when you visit a city that has a boss. You can also battle other players which I personally think it only worths it if you want to get an item off of them (only items) or if you can somehow prevent them from giving up (like putting them asleep or disabling their option of giving up). When the battle starts you get to choose between 2 cards to determine who will go first and who will be second. Each side has 1 offense and 1 defense round which offense having the options: 1) Offensive: a) Attack which... well you just attack, b) Strike which is a powered up attack with its only downside being that if the enemy chooses Counter the damage will go on the attacker, c) Offensive Magic which depends on what you put here varies from just giving a bad status on the enemy to burning him to crispy and d) Skill that again varies depending on what class you are and when you leveled up your class if you changed your skill (every time you level your skill you get an option to change your skill), 2) Defensive: a) Defend.. well where you just hide behind your shield and hope you will stay alive, b) Counter that avoids the stroke and hits the attacker for a big a lot, and is chosen imo ONLY if you know you can't beat your enemy since countering means that you stay totally unprotected from the enemy's attack.., c) Defensive magic that again varies from a magic shield that protects you from magic attacks to healing yourself, d) Give up which actually means that you throw the towel and if its a monster you lose some money or an item and if its a play well you can lose either half your money or the best item you have. Afar from that you are unable to play for 1 round (or 2 I am not really sure since I have used it only a handful of times.. yeah I die a lot!)
Conlusion:
So to sum it up you spin a wheel that includes numbers from 0 to 6 (0 is only used in events and not for moving on the board) run around killing monsters and other players, collect money, items, towns and generally wealth. Half of the time you will be trying to get more and more and the other half of the time you will be trying to get back what you lost. Sadly there is no replacement for a game like this and even the Dokapon Journey on NDS is just an inferior version of this even if its much newer since it just took away from the game a lot of RPG elements, made it much more simplistic and just left on it the FRUSTRATION factor. If you play alone you will have some fun and you will kill a lot of time. Now if you play with a friend you will have tons of fun and probably keep your frustration levels lower than when playing alone. I rated it 9 and not 10 only because of the frustration factor that it causes. The game is wonderful and has tons of potential and it only needs the company to stop trying to advertise the frustration as part of the comical part of the game.