This Game Makes Me Hate You!
Dokapon Kingdom is going to make you hate whoever you play it with.
I’m serious.
Dokapon Kingdom can be pretty much summed up as Mario Party crossed with an RPG. You move around a board by using spinners to determine how far you go, you level up, fight monsters, and buy equipment.
You also screw over your friends whenever the opportunity presents itself. It presents itself often.
I can’t really say much about Dokapon Kingdom (by Atlus, for Wii and PlayStation 2) past the first couple of hours because we’ve never made it that far. We’ve played it four player with two different couples and both times everyone just got really pissed off.
Say you’re doing really good. You’re playing a Knight, and you just got a badass sword. You’re killing everything in one hit. You have a lot of items.
Then your friend comes across like some traveling bandit or whatever and pays them to steal all your shit.
Then your other friend lands on the same space as you, and you have to fight. They win, so as a punishment, they shave your character’s head. So now instead of being a cute, blue-haired anime knight, you’re all bald and lame while a pink-haired magician is gloating about kicking your ass.
Then you lose like 2 turns, and everyone goes on to this cool new area and you’re stuck back in the starting area because some gate closed or some other stupid shit and you have to wait another 5 turns to open. You can’t get any experience points because you’re too strong for the weakling monsters in the area, while everyone else is fighting tougher monsters and leveling up.
Oh, and you’re bald for the rest of the 40-hour (or more) game.
Then your Wiimote gets jammed through the TV screen, you kick the table over, and beat your friend in the face with his own shoes.
The game OPENLY ADVERTISES itself as a friendship destroying game. It’s like the freakin’ Surgeon General’s warning! I don’t know why we thought it was a good idea to buy it. I mean, it’s fun for the first few turns while everyone’s still low level, but once the game starts pitting your against each other (and peace agreements don’t work, some of it is unavoidable) tempers will rise and the fun stops.
Still, for some odd reason, I still really like knowing I own it. Maybe it’s because it’s so powerful.
See? Video games CAN resonate emotionally with their players.
Oh, shit. I guess this proves that video games make people violent, though.
I’m going to recommend Dokapon Kingdom because I feel like this is something that everyone needs to experience. Words cannot describe the experience that is Dokapon Kingdom. It’s one of the most unique games I’ve ever played, and the fact that the experience is still so vivid in my mind shows what a lasting impression it left on me.
It’s just so bizarre. Seriously, play it. But make sure everyone who plays it with you is warned.
11 Comments
Ever since Christina posted about the game in the forums, I’ve been thinking about buying it. The main source of complaining about it seems to be the frustration.
Now here’s the question about that.
A lot of my friends play cutthroat strategic card and board games. We play to crush out competition, and have a good-hearted nature about ourselves in that we crush eachother on the gaming battlefield and can still have fun outside of it. Do you think that even to us this game would have the same effect?
Also, is the problem that all of this makes the game unfun and you not want to play because it’s no longer fun, or is it more that it’s annoying because your buddies are trying to cut you off at every turn in every way possible?
I think you guys will enjoy it, actually. If you guys have played a lot of games together before and can keep that good-hearted competition going, then you’ll get the fun of the competition without the destroyed friendships.
I want this game sooooo badly now…..
….NINJA POWERS ACTIVATE!
FORM OF….DOKOPAN KINGDOM!
[can't play himself]
[brother picks up disk, inserts it in wii, and I get over heated]
[/////crap]
I have to admit, I can actually get pretty frustrated at straight skill games. After long times of playing my brother at SSB, him being the only person I have ever played I can’t beat, it cause extreme yelling, but usually no physical violence.
However, being violently mad at your friends does add some fun to things. Games with at least some chance bearing on the victor (Mario Party, Mario Kart, etc.) becomes awesome. One night, Me, my brother, and 2 friends bought Mario Kart Double Dash, and we played it straight from 7 pm to 7 am, yelling and screaming at every blue shell and special attack (much to the dismay of my sleeping mother.)
I’ve known about the game for a long time, but haven’t bought it as I don’t know if I can get enough of my friends to commit to playing it. I’d really like to try it at some point.
How long is the average game?
You can play as long as you want, there’s save points and stuff every 10 turns or so. I’ve heard to really COMPLETE it, it can take about 40 hours or more.
Is it fun or possible to play by oneself?
I like how ever since the podcast where you said shit it’s been pretty much OK to say it now even though you said you wanted to keep swearing out as much as possible for now.
Oh, so it’s not the kind of board game you can just roll up with some friends for an hour or two and have a winner at the end? I got the impression it was on some kind of turn timer, or something else mario party-esque.
@Andrew
I write how I talk, and while I don’t swear a LOT certain subjects make my language a little more colorful. Like Dokapon Kingdom.
It’s weird, too, because I never even really say “shit” that often when I talk. Whatevs.
I dunno. I don’t have a specific rule for or against it. The words just come out of me, man.
Man, all your talk about Dokupon Kingdom made me actually break it out of it’s packaging, open it up and play it with my boyfriend after having just sat there for over a year since I got it.
The bright colours and squeeky animu characters in the character creation scene and first 3 mins of gameplay nearly made me vomit and we played through about “2 weeks” of turns until neither of us could stand it anymore.
You made it sound interesting and it was literally painful to play. I was like, I could either level this ridiculous animu chick up who keeps shouting “girl power” every battle I win, or turn on one of the 1000zillion persona/SMT games I still need to play/beat a grind up a more interesting game/character.
You’re a good salesman at least- I was genuinelty interested in playing this game after reading. Too bad it sucked.