Okay, everyone in this thread who’s played one of these silly Dokapon games is a jerk. Especially flyinj. You’re jerks because a) I didn’t know about this game earlier, and b) I know about it now and could easily do nothing but sit and play for several days on end. The only thing that could make this game perfecter is if it didn’t have stupid kiddie anime graphics.
-TomI really hope you’re playing with 3+ people.
Yes, you could potentially play this game for 12 hours straight with four people. Not only that, but I did it with 3 non-gamers as well. Everyone loved it.
And if there weren’t kiddy anime graphics, you wouldn’t be able to put a pile of poop on your friend’s head after beating him in a duel that stays there for the rest of the game.
I admit, I saw it was cheap so I grabbed a copy. It looks pretty cool. However, I really REALLY feel something is up with the AI. It seems to almost always get first hit, the right counter to the combat rolls, and near perfect spinner rolls.
I especially like when it cast a spell on a monster guarding a town. I wondered what it was doing, but all became clear as it rolled just the number it needed to land on that town it just blasted. Gee I wish I knew my roll before I took it…
Besides that though. Interesting game. I will have to give it a whirl with some buddies. When I am not waiting on a demigod silver bullet patch or trying to stop the hordes of plant hating zombies that is.
How is this game for two players instead of 4? Can two people enjoy it? My wife and I would be likely purchase candidates if it’s relatively fun for two.
From what very little I played of it so far, I think it would be fine with two players. In fact it might be better as this really feels like a “competitive race/ rpg” type board game such as WoW the Boardgame or Runebound in that you don’t have a huge amount of direct interaction so extra players at some point would probably just slow the game down (or feel that way). That is not to say there is no interaction, there is some serious messing with people you can do.
If the AI didn’t seem to cheat so much (maybe I am wrong) I would think the best way to play it would be just two people then some AIs to fill it in as the AI moves pretty fast.
However, I am super newb so maybe I am wrong.
I never tried playing with any AI. I’ve only done four person games. You can play with 2-3 people with no AI, and I’d suggest doing that.
It very much is a boardgame experience, with all the fun of a moderately complex ruleset being taken care of by the PS2/Wii/DS while all the players just have fun messing with eachother.
So what is the preferred way to play this as a party game? Do you set a number of weeks for “normal” mode or do you play “story” mode? Story seems more interesting, but it seems like it keeps going forever (only vs AI so far).
I guess we would be looking for a 2 to 5 hour game or a few 1 to 2 hour games judging by our usual board game sessions.
It looks like the most manageable way to do a shorter game without the mandatory early-game slog is to play a game limited by turns and to start players at some advanced level. Because, yeah, it seems story mode is going to take some serious long-term dedication. As in “several separate play sessions”.
I’m intrigued by the scavenger hunt mode where players have to return to Dokapon Castle with a specific set of items to win. I can imagine the cutthroat that might occur there as well!
-TomI am not quite getting the combat yet. I thought attack was the opposite of defense (rock beats scissors) but I am watching the AI just do normal attack against mobs that do normal defense and it is whooping the creatures. Whereas I may do a “strike” and the mob does a “defend” (not “counter” which I understand to be the opposite of “strike”) and I do barely any damage and sometimes miss.
Is there less to the R/P/S and more about level/ equipment? If this is true, I like the game more, and will start focusing on equipment and leveling over worrying about what critters tend to do what R/P/S moves.
I look forward to getting some player vs player games of this on the weekend, but am trying to lower the learning curve as much as possible beforehand. Especially considering I am the least likely of the group to get frustrated by not understanding the game (which means I am the adopter and trainer for games). Also, I am trying to figure out what a good game setting/ length might be.
Thanks to this thread for bringing my attention to a game I would have totally missed.
Attack and defense are just the natural pairing that pit attack value vs. defense value. But the attacker can instead opt to try a strike, which is a superduper attack pretty much guaranteed to put the defender in a world of hurt. Unless the defender does a counter, which will put the attacker in a world of hurt. But if the defender does a counter and the attacker does a straight-up attack, the defender won’t get the full power of his defense rating.
At least that’s the gist of it as I understand.
Which reminds me, I’d love to know some specifics in terms of how attack, defense, and speed interact. Anyone know where I can find such info? The Gamefaqs FAQs weren’t very helpful.
-TomTom, this is a party game !
Last night I had my gaming moment of the month. During Story Mode, a quest popped up. It requires heroes to go into a cave to retrieve some quest item. I ignored it and continued doing my own things, while the AIs were racing with each other to get the quest item first.
A few rounds later, one of the AIs actually got the quest item and was returning it to the castle. I teleported to my town that is the closest to him, used my 4-spin dice and BAM! I intercepted him!
He was no match to me and surrendered immediately. I looted the quest item off him and received gazillion gold for completing the quest.
It is awesome.
Are you guys talking about Kingdom or Journey here?
I don’t remember a story mode in Kingdom. There might have been one, but since I’ve never played alone, I may have overlooked it. Apparently you can play through the story mode with multiple players? Or is that just in Journey?
Journey in my case. Sorry for the confusion.
Story mode is the basic game in Dokapon Kingdom with the chapters. Then there are normal (?) games and battles royale with special victory conditions.
-TomI’m not entirely sure of all of the specific behind-the-scenes mechanics, however:
Defend is the natural counter to Attack, and does nothing useful against attack magic or Strike. However, Defend only mitigates damage from Attack and gives you a chance (speed-based) to dodge. A high disparity between attack and defense stats can mean an Attack will blow right through Defend and one-hit kill. On the other hand, a sufficiently high defense vs. sufficiently low attack will mean the Attack does absolutely no damage.
Attack magic doesn’t seem to be dodgeable, and the damage is always based on your magic stat even if it looks like it would be a physical attack move. An opponent with certain varieties of magic defense skill can really screw you up if you use attack magic and they counter with the magic defense. On the other hand, if they do that to an attack or strike, they take full damage and probably don’t dodge either.
Strike does (large, usually. usually higher than Attack.) damage that seems to be based on the speed stat in some unclear way. An appropriately applied Strike is often a one-hit kill even on stuff you’d have trouble dropping with regular attacks. However, if they choose to Counter it, you do nothing to them, and they hurt you back, bigtime. Also often a one-hit kill. Countering any other form of attack means you take it in the face with no chance to dodge and no damage mitigation.
In general I found Attack/Defend to be the safest and most effective options.
Magic stat also affects how likely you are to hit and how much damage you do with field magic. If you pump it considerably, you can do hideous amounts of damage across the map, and do all sorts of horrible debuffs to people. The tradeoff is that the high magic jobs tend to be weak on things like HP.
On my test playthrough, I thought SP was “spell points”, so my warrior merrily poured all his points into AT and DF. SP=1? Pfft. Who cares? I’m not even casting any spells!
A few chapters into the game and it takes me five turns to land a hit on anyone.
-TomYeah, you do want some speed. I don’t think I’d ever again start as a thief, though. SP is useful to a point but you just can’t dodge reliably enough or strike reliably enough for it to be a real substitute for attack and defense. You want thief mostly for a) the offensive escape skill, which can do things like get you out of fighting the Darkling, and b) thief-based higher tier jobs. Both of which are better earned -after- you have a solid foundation of core stats. Although it’s also fun to be a dick and steal from other players with your field skill.
Arise!
Got my $20 copy finally. On a whim, really. Had forgotten all about this, was browsing titles and there it was. Get home and pop it in the Wii to try it out with my son and his friend and before you know it we are arranging for a sleep-over so we can keep playing into the night and the next morning. Awesome, AWESOME party game!
My main beef is the lack of understanding about speed (SP)… how is it evident that this is an important stat? I never got a clear indication of when it did or didn’t affect anything. I would have thought that, at the outset of any battle when you draw a card to see who attacks first, that perhaps a higher SP than your opponent tilts this in your favor but that was not apparent. You never seem to get an extra attack with high SP. Does high SP result in your opponent missing you more as opposed to high DEF which results in attacks doing less damage?
Also, does high MF only affect the combat magic; or does it affect your ability to cast spells on others at the beginning of your turn also?
High speed does result in you dodging more often (but not in any way enough to rely on), though apparently counter and possibly magic defense won’t give you a chance to dodge. More crucially, low relative speed means you have a low chance of hitting them. You don’t get extra attacks, nor does it affect the opening card flip. It also seems to affect how much damage your strike attack does.
Field magic interacts with your magic stat in a couple of ways: firstly, your chance of successfully casting field magic on another player seems to be directly related to the ratio of your respective magic stats. Secondly, higher magic means more damage from the direct damage field spells. It’s quite possible to get it high enough to have stronger field DD spells one-shot a given player or on-map NPC.