Wow. My girlfriend and I just played about 4 more weeks in our Story Mode game against 2 AIs, and I’m convinced the only luck I possess is bad luck. When we resumed the game, we had still unlocked only the initial continent. I and the 2 AIs were level 8, while my girlfriend was level 6, and I was in first place. Four weeks later with the second continent unlocked, my girlfriend and the 2 AIs are level 12, and I’m only level 9. You read correctly: the AIs each advanced 4 levels and my girlfriend advanced 6, while I advanced only 1. The amount of bad luck I experienced over those 4 weeks was astounding. [ul]
[li]I couldn’t draw first in battles when I really needed to, especially against the other players[/li][li]My opponents would constantly side-step my attacks in battle, even though my SP was always higher (by 10 or more), while I would never side-step theirs[/li][li]My girlfriend, playing as a Thief, would constantly (and I mean constantly) be missed by her opponents in battle, even though their SP was higher than hers[/li][li]I was about to take over a town on the 2nd continent, but I accidentally hit the wrong button (by this point, I had blood in my eyes from all my misfortune, so I’m not surprised by this accident). As a result, the banshee killed me (she’d previously killed me once before), leaving her with only 5 HPs. The blue AI then proceeds to cast Blistered Feet (only allowed to move one circle at a time) on the pink AI, who’s only one circle from this town. On the next turn, the pink AI will easily take the town. Way to go, blue AI![/li][*]… multitude of other things that just didn’t go my way…[/ul]Don’t get me wrong–I enjoy randomness in games. But when the randomness is so completely lopsided against one player as it was against me during those 4 weeks, I have to shout, “W…T…F!?” several times. The game ceases to be fun, and you feel like you’re cursed. Therefore, I have concluded that I am a horribly unlucky person. Thanks, Dokapon Kingdom!
As a Magician, whenever I would try to cast a field magic spell on my girlfriend’s Thief, my chance of success was only 49%. I thought, “How can that be, when my MG is 40+ and her MG is only 8?”
I then thought, “Well, maybe the chance of success is based on my MG vs. her SP.” But that’s not the case, either, since increasing my MG skill by 4 points still produced a 49% chance of success.
“My SP vs. her SP?” Yup. Sure enough, your chance of success for field magic is based on the attacker’s SP vs. the defender’s SP. When I increased my SP, the chance of success went up to 51%.
“Then why the hell did I dump so many points into MG if I can’t even hit someone with field magic!?” It turns out MG vs. MG determines the amount of field magic damage (and likely the duration of field magic ailments) inflicted, as evidenced by the pre-cast damage numbers of a Volt spell that targeted 2 monsters and a player. The pre-cast damage numbers were lower for those with higher MG.
So, to be effective with field magic, you first have to have a high enough SP to hit the target, and then a high enough MG to damage or handicap the target. I guess that’s why Magicians automatically receive 2 MG points and 1 SP point per level gain. Now that I know this, I’m playing my Magician much more effectively than previously.
It’s too bad that the battle AI in the game is brain dead, because it really ruins the game. When I’m the attacker and the only way the defender AI dies is if I choose strike and he doesn’t choose counter, why in bloody hell would the AI choose anything other than counter? Every single time the AI’s been presented with this scenario, he doesn’t choose counter, and ends up dying to my strike. If he simply chooses counter, I would die instead. Game ruined.
Whoever programmed the battle AI for this game should be embarrassed.
The game is a party game. It’s not ruined by bad AI if everyone playing is human.
Sure it is, since humans can’t control the empty space monsters and the monsters guarding towns. Fighting AI monsters happens much more frequently than fighting human players. Seriously, how difficult is it to program the AI to consider the following “if, then” condition:
If all of my defense options = me remaining alive except not choosing counter, then choose counter.
Why can’t I find any mention of this game on play.com, amazon.co.uk or lovefilm? Is it not released in the UK?
Fighting AI monsters may happen much more frequently than fighting humans, but they are speed bumps. Road blocks. The game is about being a dick to your friends, not thrilling life or death battles with the local wildlife.
It’s very possible. It’s handled by Atlus in the US, and most Atlus games get picked up by other companies for UK and Euro releases if I recall correctly.
POSSIBLE CONTENT SPOILER BELOW
I have to say, playing as the Darkling, even if for only 2 weeks, is great fun. I managed to spin for 200 Dark Arts points on my third spin, and was able to revert all the towns to monster control (our story mode access extended to “South America” at the time)! My girlfriend was not happy, since she was in 1st place by a mile. I was able to engage only my girlfriend’s Thief in battle, but I made sure I played the role: I trashed her gold, equipment, and items during multiple battle rounds, but the angel felt sorry for her and awarded her with an even better weapon and the same shield I had trashed. Bah! Damn do-gooder!
After changing back, I had accrued enough XP as the Darkling to increase 10 levels! I went from 4th in XP to 1st, and from 4th in net worth to 2nd. Who says embracing the dark side is a bad thing?
Just got this game in the mail today, after a year of trying to remember to buy it. My wife and I will be playing our first game later tonight!
Should we disable AI players for our first game? Are they ever worth turning on? I see Mysterio didn’t like them, but will the games be varied/fun enough for two humans and no other players? Basically, will there be enough head to head competition to keep the game from feeling like we’re each doing our own thing because our paths never cross?
Also, if one person pulls ahead (level/loot wise etc), in a two player game (with no ai or other players) does this make it impossible/overly difficult for the lagging player to ever catch up without simply waiting for a ‘lucky’ break?
I know I’m asking a lot of questions that will be answered when we actually play, but our play time tonight will be limited, and we won’t get another change to spend several hours playing till later next week (finals, work, etc), so I just wanted to make the most of it.
I’d keep the AI players enabled, even if they do make combat decisions at times that don’t make sense. Ideally, you’d play with four humans, but I think you two would be disappointed if you played with only the two of you.
In case you didn’t read my possible content spoiler in post 49, I’ll simply say there’s a mechanism in the game that ensures you’re never out of it.
Thanks for the info, and yea the spoilery post was the only one I sort of skipped.
This never got released on PAL systems. Boooooooooooo!!
Yeah, you definitely want some AI players in there, kerzain. Also, keep in mind the game can be a long haul. This isn’t something you guys are going to finish in 15 minutes. Think of it as part boardgame, part competitive JPRG.
Let us know how it goes.
-TomI have my 3 kids coming home for Christmas - this sounds like the PERFECT game for the family! Thanks.
The AI players are enormous assholes, but may be necessary to keep things lively.
Sporadic thoughts about the game:
We just finished a 3 hour play session. We’ll probably have about four hours we can play tomorrow, and then not until next weekend. The game seems like it will be a tremendous amount of fun, and we’re looking forward to playing it again. Both of us enjoy RPGs quite a bit, and we always liked some of the older Mario Party Games (plus we like board games), and this seems like a perfect fit. I can’t believe I waited so long to buy it.
We started off in story mode, and have a game going with 2 human and 2 AI, the AI were set at medium (haha, yea right) difficulty. The AI used a Magician named Kathy (OMG I hate her so much) and a Thief named Garrett (or something, all I know is he likes to yell Shazbot!, which is good).
We should have read the manual before diving in to play. I wasted a lot of time landing on squares that didn’t seem to do anything for me (like the Coliseum), or engaging in fights that I really had no business being in (like choosing to fight another player instead of trying to level up a bit first and improve some of my skills and equipment). All of these ‘lost turns’ set me back quite a bit.
I played a Magician and my wife a warrior. She was kicking ass (against everybody but Kathy, who is really quite rude), and I think I was in last place most of the game (I died a lot early on). I really enjoy the overland spells, and laying traps and such, but I wasted too much money on them early on (I hit a magic and item shop long before I went to the weapon/armor store) and suffered for it, because I didn’t have good enough equipment to face any of the more difficult challenges.
The manual doesn’t seem to go into much detail about the different types of attacks, or different buildings, but it seems like most of this will make sense the more we play. All I know is that a large part of the game seems to be learning the enemy’s typical battle behavior (such as a monster that prefers to lead with a pickpocket versus a strike etc).
We made it through the prologue, and are still gearing up for what I assume will be the final confrontation on on the continent we’re on in order to unlock the next continent.
This feels like a game we’re going to get a ton of use out of. Only really having the old Mario party games to compare it against I can already tell it is much more to our tastes than some of the absolutely luck driven drivel that started to dominate the later entries in that franchise. Plus, I’m burned out on the mario party style mini games.
I can already tell that this game is going to rank up there with Tetris Party and Mario Kart for games that keep our attention (in terms of straight up multiplayer) over the long term. Now if Only I could somehow get her interested in Monster Hunter Tri.
There is an awful lot of Dokapon Kingdom that you have to figure out through trial and error. That said, that was part of the fun for us.
Okay, we squeezed in a couple more games over the last two days. Now that I’m getting a better understanding about some of the underlying mechanics I can delve a little deeper into my thoughts for this game: First off, this game has that certain quality that very few modern seem to have anymore, and that is the potential to make me rage. I really do love the game, but the following is pretty much one long angry rant about the unfairness of it all.
There is absolutely no mistake about it, the A.I. cheats like hell. The developers did absolutely nothing at all to mask this fact, and actually seem to go out of their way to make it blatantly apparent that the A.I. is not, and will never, behave like a human player. As an example, when a human player takes a weapon from the A.I., the A.I. will be at the weapon shop one turn later buying a new one. On the very few instances where the A.I. digs into its potion bag and drinks a DF, DM or AT potion, you know for a fact that it knows ahead of time what tile it wants to land on, what it is going to roll, and what lays there for it. Even if the tile is an empty looking yellow square chances are it was just preparing for what it knew would be a Rico Jr hidden tile or something.
I can handle a cheating A.I., pretty much all of the best games out there lack programmers with the talent to create a challenging A.I. that doesn’t cheat at some point, my only problem here is that human players aren’t just fighting against the A.I. players, but the environment as well, and both the environment and the A.I. seem to be in cahoots, and will work together to set the player up for the biggest downfall.
Okay, enough about A.I. cheating: old horse, dead horse, not my biggest gripe – and none of this matters anyway if the game is played with four humans. My biggest gripe is that the tides of fortune can change much too quickly. One player can be dominating the game for six weeks of a seven week game, only to lose everything, seemingly for no other reason than the game decides the player must be punished. At times, many times, it seems as if there is no real random or strategic element to the game’s A.I. whatsoever, rather the game is simply programmed to choose a player and heap shit on them (i.e. the rock/paper/scissor games are rigged etc, and the game will force you to play one when it decides it was to take your fortune, etc)
There really doesn’t seem to be any benefit or advantage to being in first or second place throughout the game, because the only weeks that really seem to matter are the very last two. As long as you can stay competitive in levels it always seems like a comeback is possible (which is fine, but by ‘comeback’ I mean going from the gutter to dominating the entire board in just a handful of turns), unless you’re down to your last three days or something.
I like that there’s a way for the guy in last place to make a little bit of headway, but unlike other games that give them a small boost in some way, this game creates a scenario where one single player doesn’t only turn the tides, but can, and probably will destroy everything and everyone. Getting caught in those cross hairs sucks because there’s no challenge, it’s just god mode, and all you can do is wait until the abuse stops before actual gameplay can resume.
I could keep ranting, like I said this is one of those few games that makes me rage – but, I also believe it’s one of the best games I’ve played on the Wii – and it’s obvious to me the game would be immeasurably better with all human players. As long as I try to stop expecting the A.I. to follow the same rules and face the same challenges I face, I can forgive their perfect rolls every single turn. I just need to start treating them like a resource, and benefit from their programmed play style, while they’re reaping every reward imaginable.
Did that comic strip really require the addition of some bloom?