Dokapon Kingdom- the second best party game ever created (Wii/PS2)

Games
1

A few days ago I picked up Dokapon Kingdom for the Wii after hearing it was a mixture of Mario Party and an RPG that four people could play at the same time.

Yesterday afternoon, I had three friends over and we started playing it around 1pm. We finally stopped playing at around midnight.

This game is absolutely fantastic.

Here’s the premise:

You create a character, and choose one of three initial classes (warrior, mage or thief). All the players start at the center of the kingdom, and take turns spinning a spinner and moving the amount specified. The gameboard/world is a huge area covered by a mazelike grid of spaces. The most common space is a yellow one, which usually results in a fight with a random monster. Sometimes, however, special random events occur when landing on these spaces.

Other spaces include loot spaces, which give you a random item… magic spaces, which give you a random magic spell and various other similar loot-givers.

The goal of the basic game is to have the most money after a specified number of weeks. The main way to get the big bucks is to take over towns on the map, which are another type of space you can land on. All the towns are initially guarded by a monster. You defeat this monster, and the town is yours. You can then invest money into the town, raising it’s town level and income generation. If you invest enough money into towns, they eventually start producing items.

There is a lot of interaction with other players. You can cast overland magic spells that you find/buy on them, such as fireballs to reduce their health, muckyfoot to make it so they can only move one space for a certain timeframe, poison, fear, etc. If you land on the same spot as another player, you duel them. The winner can then do some pretty hilarious things to the loser. You can choose to steal one of their items, or more amusingly, you can give them a dumb looking haircut… or put a tattoo on their face… even change their name.

There are also dungeons you can go into and explore, which have some pretty sweet loot in them.

The game reminds me of a much deeper version of the Runebound boardgame. If you’re into RPGs, boardgames, or fantastic 4 player console games, you have to pick this thing up.

2

Damn you for sharing my taste in games! Now, in the midst of Fallout 3, Red Alert 3, Fable 2 and god knows what else, I have to look this up, too???

Thanks :)

3

Can you play 4 players (well) with 2 controllers?

4

I had 4 wiimotes, but you could easily just pass one around to each player when it’s their turn. You never need more than one controller active at a time.

5

Vaguely recalling this thread I picked this game up yesterday since my wife and I had a few gamers coming over to visit last night. The wii is always great for socializing and entertaining since the party games are top notch, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong with this one. What I didn’t anticipate was the addictiveness and bloodthirsty competitiveness this game brings out in my friends and wife. The pranking is awesome, and of course we all went for that after winning some PVP. Screw taking someone’s money I want to give them a bad haircut!

Seriously awesome game, and well worth the cash for anyone who has at least one friend with a wiimote and 6 hours to kill.

6

I love that one of the haircuts is a shark on your head.

Anyway. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun in multiplayer, and one of the few multiplayer games I know of that can support four people on a single controller (particularly nice on the PS2 version, since most four player games on the system require a Multitap.). I sent it back to Gamefly, though, because it’s not really very fun against the computer and I don’t get enough people over to my house to really get the most out of multi. Maybe in a while when it’s cheaper.

7

Is anyone playing Dokapon Journey? As someone who hasn’t played either Dokapon, I’m curious: how do they compare?

8

Does this game offer a fun and rewarding two-player experience? I won’t be able to manage four.

9

I’m holding out to see if online is confirmed for Dokapon Journey. It was the one feature that the original desperately needed. Japanese developers need to start thinking global and realizing that nobody in America can just walk down to the train station and find random groups of people doing ad hoc multiplayer for new titles.

10

The whole idea of this game being on a DS is kind of weird.

The Wii version is fantastic because you can get 4 friends over for a 5 hour game. You need one Wii.

With this, you need 4 DSes and 4 copies of the game. Which is pretty ridiculous. Even if it had internet WiFi support, I can’t imagine it being much fun. The whole point of the game is to be sitting in the same room with your friends having a good time. Playing a 5 hour game of this alone in your room against strangers on the internet sounds terrible. Not to mention, how many would actually stick around for the full 5 hours?

If you have a Wii, get that version. I absolutely love it.

11

I have a Wii and I have that version of Dokapon. I can’t quite get a four-man team together IRL so I haven’t gotten as much out of the game as I would if I had online. I don’t want to play randoms so much as play against the friends I talk to frequently on Skype but usually only see at conventions once or twice a year.

This game would make some sense to me on DS with Wi-Fi support-- most people these day have a network of online acquaintances who they’d like to play with a trash talk-- but without Wi-Fi support it isn’t a product that makes any sense outside of Japan’s ad hoc game party culture.

12

Saw this (Dokapon Kingdom) today for $30; if it was $20 I probably would have jumped. But people are commenting on how long the games are like it is a good thing… is there any way to get a shorter game for 2 or 3 players? (I can’t imagine my kids hanging in there for more than an hour or so.)

13

You can make them as long or short as you want. It’s about 10 turns an hour with 4 people.

It’s cool though that if you play longer, there is more loot and cool stuff to see.

14

My initial opinion was revised after a friend of mine bought it (for PS2). It gave us months of hilarious fun, including multiple all-day sessions.

That was one runthrough of the story mode, btw (hah, story. not a word accurately associated with this game.). One we never completed. So yeah, it’s a 60+ hour long party game.

15

I’m wondering this as well… How does it play with just 2?

It’s currently on Amazon for $20.

16

Ya know, this might be exactly what my group may be looking for. We are just too hip for those goofy Nintendo party games… but throw in some mages, monsters, and swords…hooAH! Sad, but true.

  1. How long does a game take?

  2. How does the player to controller thing work out? Can we play 4 (max?) players with only 2 wiimotes?

This might cause me to dust off the old blue light maker of non-gaminess.

17

Not true. Up to four people can play with just one copy of the game. My husband and I have been playing and loving it. He has the card in his DS and I download it from mine. The map is somewhat limited, but you can still get a four-hour game out of it.

I think we may have to get Kingdom, though. I want to put a shark on his head!

18

  1. Depends enormously on a great multitude of factors. Like I say, our game of story mode lasted many, many hours (but it’s saveable at any time.). I’m pretty sure you could cut that way down with the right settings, though.

  2. It’s entirely turn-based and board-gamey, so you can (and we did) play with a single controller. (I wouldn’t buy it for Wii, but that’s me. I can’t imagine it makes a huge difference.)

19

Is the download version a more limited version of the game? Or does it behave exactly like you had your own cartridge as well?

20

In the download version some of the “cutscenes” are missing, so you just end up seeing a background. Also I guess they cut down the number of sprites needed by making the character classes tied to specific colors.