Dokapon Kingdom: Connect Review

Dokapon Kingdom: Connect is a remaster of Dokapon Kingdom that was released in 2007 for the PlayStation 2 and 2008 on the Wii, but that title itself was a remake of a Super Famicom game that came out in 1994. The game is a mix between a board game and an RPG. You move around the map collecting gold, gear to equip yourself with, and battling monsters in fights that resemble a turn-based role-playing game.

The world of Dokapon Kingdom: Connect is under attack by angry monsters that have shown up over all of the seven continents. The population is incredibly broke, so the King makes a plea worldwide for heroes to come to the Dokapon Kingdom to defeat the evil monsters and save the day. As a bonus, whoever makes the most money will win the Princess’s hand in marriage, which will make the lucky person The King of Dokapon. The design for Princess Penny feels like the Wish version of Princess Peach; it is so close but not quite perfect. The adventurers have two weeks in-game time before they have to get back to the castle and present how much gold they have been able to obtain.

Dokapon Kingdom: Connect is a multiplayer game that can be played with friends Locally, Online, or if you are on your own Offline, this will require you to play with one to three CPU characters. There are three types of modes to compete in:

• Story Mode — travel around Dokapon, and clear various challenges.

• Normal Mode — select how many weeks to play (1-999); the character with the most money wins.

• Battle Royale — three types of races: try to kill the most players, bring peace to a specific town, or retrieve a certain item and get it back to the king.
  
  

No matter which of the modes you select, Dokapon Kingdom: Connect starts pretty much the same way every time. The first thing you do is build your character; there are a few things that you get to decide.

• Name

• Gender: male or female

• Job: Warrior, Magician, or Thief

• Colour: Select your character's hair and wardrobe colour from red, blue, green, yellow, pink, white, or black.

• Face: Select your character's expression from Normal, Arrogant, Meanie, or Ditsy.

If you have computer opponents, you can use the randomly generated character to create the adventurer or customise it yourself. Once everything is done, you head to the map. To start, everyone uses their spinner to see what number they get from zero to six; the person with the highest number goes first. The game lets you see where you could land before you commit to going that direction, so you won’t be surprised when you go to a spot that you didn’t want to visit. 

You will go around the opening area of the board and there are a variety of space types to land on. Loot spaces will give you gear like shields or bucklers to equip your character with, treasure spaces where you spin for gold, and blank spaces where you will gain levels by defeating enemies. If you are in the middle of a battle, another character can land on that same spot and defeat the enemy before you get a chance to, or just challenge you to a duel and potentially steal some of your stuff or gold. 

In the Story Mode, to get to the Dokapon Kingdom, you need an exact “dice” — spin on the roulette. Depending on the order in which you and the other adventurers arrive, you will earn extra points that you can use to improve your stats. For Normal Mode, the match ends when the previously set number of weeks has passed. At that point, your stats, like the amount of gold you have earned and how many towns you have saved, will be compared. Battle Mode is pretty obvious, the character that has won the most battles, but depending on your settings, like Normal Mode, could take hours to complete.

Be sure that you have gear before you attempt to fight the large enemies placed around the map in Story or Normal Mode or they will obliterate you quickly. When you die, you can’t move for two turns, and randomly when the game wants, they change your hair to look like poo. To add to the insult, you will drop your items. If you are playing with computer characters, you will get to sit and watch them move around the board or fight in battles with no way to skip or even fast-forward through it. 

The visuals felt like I was playing the game on the PS2; I know this is a remaster of that version, but it didn’t look very different. The only real change they made was that the outfits for some of the female characters to make them less revealing. The music was alright but gets repetitive if you are playing a long round that lasts more than 20 minutes or so. There is also some voice acting from the characters; it felt like most of the time, they were taunting me when I was playing single-player with CPU characters.

Dokapon Kingdom: Connect in single-player was quite bland and frustrating. It felt like all I was doing was sitting around watching the computer play, and the pace of the game was already quite slow, so it just dragged. Plus, getting poisoned by your opponent so that you can only move one space made it worse. It sucks to lose to a friend, but constantly losing to annoying computer characters is way worse! The multiplayer was a lot more interesting. You have the option to play locally or online with your friends. Dokapon Kingdom has a reputation for being a mean version of Mario Party. Instead of trying to beat your opponents in mini-games and collect Stars, you can actually go after the other players and fight with them or steal directly from them for your own gains. At times it feels downright nasty if you have evil-spirited friends, but it’s not totally their fault because the game wants you to destroy the other adventurers, so they encourage you to do so. But, because of the RPG elements, this is more of a slow, drawn out, and painful death. 

I don’t recommend picking up this title if you are only going to play single-player as it is incredibly frustrating and the pacing is horrible, but if you want to play a few rounds with friends and want a meaner experience than what you get in a Mario Party title, Dokapon Kingdom: Connect may be a title to check out if you are okay with the super-slow gameplay or if you like other entries in this series.