Dokapon Kingdom

"The night was dark. A Party Game scurried along the boulevard, ducking in the shadows left by the streetlamps, her heart fluttering. "I can't let Nintendo know I'm out here," she panted to herself. "Mom and Dad would never let me out of the house by myself." "Mario Party?" a husky voice called out from down the street. "Dragon Quest!" Mario Party whispered to herself. She pulled herself out from the shadow of the trees, the front of her blouse dirty from her window escape down the side of the house. The RPG took her into his arms, burying his nose in her soft hair. "Don't worry," he whispered. "Your parents will never find out.""

- And that's how Dokapon Kingdom was born!

A hybrid RPG/board game for the PS2 and Wii, Dokapon Kingdom (and the recently released Dokapon Journey) cast you in the role of an adventurer in the titular kingdom. Your goal? To make yourself as disgustingly rich as possible. You do this not only by earning money through battling monsters and selling items, like you would in a normal RPG, but also by going around the world map and saving towns from monsters. Then, Monopoly-style, the towns make you their leader and add themselves to your worth. By rescuing towns (and later pumping them full of cash to make them worth more) and gathering treasures, your worth goes up.

Rather than traveling in a standard fashion, the world map is a game board, and a spinner determines how far you'll travel. Naturally, players take turns spinning and moving. The spaces on the board each have different effects. Some are stores where you can buy items, or treasure chests where you can find goodies. Most of them are yellow squares, where you can either find events (ranging from the awesome, such as the town-worth-increasing Mitch, to the downright evil, such as Weber) or fight monsters.

Battles are both turn-based and turn-based. (No, really, it makes sense.) During battle, one side is the attacker and one side is the defender, and which you are is determined by a card you draw at the beginning of battle. Attackers have specific abilities available to them, and defenders do as well. Attackers have a standard attack (whose damage can be greatly decreased by a standard defend), a "Strike" attack that does high amounts of damage (but can be countered and turned against its user by the defender's "Counter" move), an offensive spell (whose damage can be decreased or turned by a defensive spell), and a special ability that can't be countered, but uses up a vital attack turn. Defensive fighters have a standard defend (decreases all damage, but especially that of a standard attack), a "Counter" move (only works on "Strike," but prevents all damage and turns it on the strike-r), a defensive spell (resists offensive spells), and the ability to run away. Each fighter gets the chance to be both an attacker and a defender in one "turn," and then it's on to the next player's turn. If the battle is ongoing, it'll pick up the next time it rolls around to that player's turn again. This is more or less necessary when fighting boss monsters.

Is there a plot to the game, besides "get rich however possible?" Well, yeah, there's this whole thing about an ultimate evil attempting to take over the world and the Princess' hand being up for marriage and all that, but who cares about all that when one of the Standard Status Effects is "Shaved Head?"

Unlike most RPGs, Dokapon Kingdom was designed to be played with multiple people, and very competitively. Though it can be difficult to amass a group of people together long enough to play a 40+ game, if you can pull it off, it's definitely fun. Dokapon is a unique hybrid experience, and, with the right kind of friends, it's a blast. Oh, and--play with your friends. Definitely. That computer? A cheating bastard.

The game was developed and released by Sting Entertainment.


 * Afro Asskicker: You can turn your character into one by purchasing the appropriate hairstyle magazine from Kira and returning it to the barber at Dokapon Castle. The male version even includes a stylish headband.
 * Alien Abduction: One of several random events involves a UFO transporting a player aboard, removing them from the board until their next turn. When returned, all of the player's stats will permanently be either nerfed or buffed slightly. This seems to be one of the game's several balancing agents, with tendencies to punish players with significant leads and reward players lagging behind.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Strike. Using it successfully causes lots of damage, but the relevant counter, Counter, not only causes them to totally avoid the attack, but hit you for massive damage at the same time. Comparitively, Attack does less damage, but the relevant counter, defend, only reduces the damage, and they don't get to strike back at you. High level monsters like to Counter a lot, so Strike is difficult to use on them.
 * However, early game a "Strike or Die" strategy can be very useful in quickly obtaining towns/levels/etc. And against players the psychological aspect of it usually breaks those high defense stalemates.
 * Bare-Fisted Monk: Mostly subverted. It's possible for a player with the Monk class (or any other) to fight without weapons, but they tend to get the greatest bonuses from fist weapons.
 * Bonus Boss: Do all of the king's side quests and he'll receive a piece of inflammatory mail from an imp named Wallace. Not ready to put up with this, he tasks you with finding Wallace and teaching him a lesson, failing to mention that he's perpetually several levels above you and reads inputs nearly as blatantly as Rico Jr.
 * Camp Gay / Camp Straight: Gold Jr.'s Camp Something.
 * Card-Carrying Villain: Overlord Rico, who outright stated that he wanted to Take Over the World because that's what Evil Overlords do.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: On Easy, they -might- be tolerable in one versus one. On Hard, they know exactly what they're going to do 35 weeks from the current turn, and no amount of bad luck is going to affect them.
 * The only solace is that the computer doesn't exploit the XP gain from a low-level player beating a high-level player. Nor do they actively exploit the Darkling-human trick to allow someone to permanently carry the Game Breaker Darkling equipment.
 * Continuing Is Painful: You loose a lot of money and items when you die. And if you want to come back faster, you've got to fork over even more cash.
 * This is half the reason you give up if you know you can't take another hit. the other half is because you can lose TOWNS if you are defeated by anyone, even especially another player.
 * Cool and Unusual Punishment: One option to punish the loser in a PVP duel is doodling on their character's face. While most of the randomly generated doodles look suitably embarrassing, one places a giant X in the middle of their face, resembling a badass scar more than anything.
 * Deal with the Devil: Extradimensional troublemaking demon-thing Weber can give you a Contract that will warp you to a specific map space and transform you into the Darkling.
 * Death or Glory Attack: The standard Strike command. Much more damage than the basic Attack, but if the enemy uses Counter, then it misses completely and earns you a smack in the face. Even worse, some enemies are guaranteed to Counter if you Strike
 * Degraded Boss: All the boss monsters you fight in towns show up later as normal enemies. There are very few "unique" bosses.
 * Rico Jr. becomes a Boss in Mooks Clothing after his first defeat.
 * Escape Rope: The Field Warp.
 * Everything's Better with Monkeys: Chimpies, which transmit the Z Plague.
 * Fiery Redhead: Kira is usually easygoing, but if you try to rob her she becomes extremely sassy in a hurry.
 * Fighter, Mage, Thief: The three base classes. The Warrior is the strongest physically and randomly gets strength boosts, the Magician is the strongest magically and can dualcast field magic, and the Thief is the fastest (dodge bonus) and steals an item every time he passes by an opposing player.
 * Gentleman Thief: Risque the Bandit fits this to a tee, though his self-professed status as "bandit extraordinaire" is called into question by his somewhat dubious success rate.
 * Good Old Fisticuffs: If a player has no weapon they'll simply punch when attacking. Not recommended outside of a Self-Imposed Challenge as there is no attack bonus for going barehanded.
 * Gosh Dang It to Heck: Enemy AI taunt:
 * "Now I'm hecka mad!"
 * Also, fiery canine enemies called "Heckhounds".
 * And the spell, "Heckfire".
 * "One cannot simply walk through the gates of heck".
 * Hair Antennae: Kira the Merchant.
 * Heroic Comedic Sociopath: The default setting for all players; sure, you're trying to save the kingdom, but you are allowed, nay, encouraged, to: cheat your fellow adventurers, beat up your fellow adventurers, steal from your fellow adventurers, steal from the kingdom you're trying to save, and just generally be a heroic jerk as you get as much money as you can any way you can.
 * The computers taunts emphasize this as well. Count the number of times they say something not particularly nice at the beginning of their turn, and compare it to...well, everything else.
 * Hide Your Lesbians: If a female character wins, the King states that he can't publicly marry two women. He has a... creative solution to this.
 * Penny doesn't seem to mind, though.
 * Highly-Visible Ninja: The Ninja Prestige Class, whose color remains just as vibrant as any other class you'd choose and whose class specialty (using 2 items in a single turn) has nothing to do with stealth.
 * ...well, unless you use a Vanish.
 * Infinity Minus One Shield: The Wabbit Shield. Only obtainable from Wabbits, which only show up during once-in-a-blue-moon outbreaks. It's just about the only shield item that doesn't boost Defense, but it offsets this by buffing every other stat ridiculously.
 * Infinity Plus One Gun: The No-Recoil Cannon, which is not only the best weapon stat-wise for the Robo Knight class but transforms them into a tripod-mounted cannon when used to attack.
 * Inventory Management Puzzle: The different classes have different inventory sizes for both their items ans spells, ranging from the maxed out at 12 to the pitifully tiny 4.
 * Kill Steal: Enemy trying to capture a town you've got your eye on liberating? Just swoop in and finish off the enemy yourself, and "thank" the other player for "softening them up for you"...by attacking them, too.
 * Kingmaker Scenario: If someone turns Darkling near the endgame, they probably had no chance to win anyway, but they're in a good position to bomb the people in the lead and decide the final winner.
 * Les Yay: Female heroes are just as motivated by the Standard Hero Reward as the male heroes, and if a girl does win, Penny does not mind the idea of marrying the other girl.
 * Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!: Several of the NPCs, including an excavating mole, a cat wizard shopkeeper and dog clergymen.
 * Lost Technology: The item that unlocks the Robo Knight prestige class.
 * Luck-Based Mission: Oh, where to start on this one...
 * Trying to level up? Even if the opponent is the same level (OR HIGHER) as you, they'll randomly give up, denying you of experience.
 * When an AI player does this to you, though, It's a good sign - You know that debt that Dr. Exiles forced on you? It's not your debt anymore. If you don't have a debt, slamming them with two random status ailments works just fine.
 * Trying to keep out of debt? The moment the game decides to screw you over, expect a visit from Dr. Exiles, who will take a random amount of money, possibly forcing you into debt. Good luck with that if you have the least experience.
 * Evasion is random. It's fairly common to see town monsters evade your normal attack and then kill you immediately afterwards. Not even the computers can avoid this.
 * Roche is a double-whammy. If you have debt, she'll actually take it off of you, provided she ever appears for you. If you don't, expect to lose big.
 * Magic Knight: The Spellsword class.
 * Mascot Mook: The Wabbit.
 * Metal Slime: The Wabbits--They've got extremely high defense and a lot of life, they run easily, and they only appear during a special event. Be vewwy vewwy quiet when hunting them.
 * Gel Splatter, a slime creature with ridiculously high defense and speed, appears in the Tower of Rabble. It drops an equally ridiculous amount of gold on defeat.
 * Mini-Dress of Power: The female Monk sports the miniskirt and top variety.
 * Minigame Zone: The Casino Cave. The only way to get the item necessary to unlock the Acrobat Prestige Class is to win it at the slot machine here, making it easy to get sidetracked.
 * Multicolored Hair: The hairdresser in Dokapon castle has purple hair with a shock of bright yellow. Justified in that she's a hairdresser.
 * She can also give a female player character a similar haircut, instead colored their default color with a splash of electric blue.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Actually, the ultimate evil is named... "Rico." Make "Suave" jokes at your own expense.
 * And his son is "Rico Jr."
 * National Stereotypes: The world map is a barely-modified map of Earth and the mayors of the towns in each continent match up roughly with stereotypes from their real-world counterparts.
 * Chance Boutique is a lusty, heavily-accented French stereotype.
 * Only in It For the Money: The players to some extent, but really the entire kingdom of Dokapon falls under this. The game states very plainly that the kingdom's inhabitants, from commoners up to the king himself, love money above all things.
 * Overlord, Jr.: Rico Jr.
 * One-Winged Angel:
 * Prestige Class: Eight of the eleven classes are, with requirements ranging anywhere from just mastering any one basic class, to mastering three other prestige classes and retrieving a MacGuffin from dungeon-within-a-dungeon that can only be entered by first getting an uncommon Random Drop from a none too easy enemy.
 * Princesses Prefer Pink
 * Pun: Krysta is full of these, all (appropriately) cat-related:
 * "Which [item] would you purrfer?"
 * "HSSSSSS! Meow I'm mad!"
 * Purely Aesthetic Gender: The king states at the beginning that the one who weds Penny will be the next king, not the next ruler. Also see Les Yay above.
 * Robot Girl: The Robo Knight prestige class, girl version. The boy version is a Giant Mecha.
 * Rouge Angles of Satin: Subverted with the Wear Tigers. They appear to be feline lycanthropes in full plate, but examination of the flavor text reveals that they are human warriors who wear the skins of tigers on their heads to intimidate enemies, turning this into a Lame Pun.
 * Saintly Church: The temples, which cures you of status ailments by praying to the Holy Spirit and serves as a checkpoint in case the you die.
 * Serious Business: You want to rob the item store, or anyone else? You gotta win at Ro-Sham-Bo! And no, not that kind. I mean rock-paper-scissors.
 * Sidequest: In the form of several fetch quests, ranging from tracking down a certain local food the king has a sudden hankering for to what is essentially gathering puppy porn for the princess's dog.
 * While unrelated, these jobs actually serve as a quest chain to earn your way up to the Bonus Boss.
 * Stripperiffic: Would it kill those female fighters to put on something besides a Chainmail Bikini?
 * Standard Hero Reward: The king offers Princess Penny's hand in marriage, but only to the hero that brings him the most money at adventure's end. This kicks off a lot of heroic sociopathy.
 * Title Scream: By one of a few characters at the title screen. The king's is especially silly.
 * Universal Poison: The basic version does your level in damage each turn, and the Z Plague, transmitted by chimpies, does double that.
 * Vendor Trash: Every town has a unique item. Though some of them can be given to the King, most of them serve better as Vendor Trash. This is especially true of the gems the castles give out.
 * Verbal Tic: Krysta, the anthropomorphic cat wizard who runs the magic shop, speaks normally save for the occasional, unenthusiastic "meow" or lame cat pun.
 * Warp Whistle: The Town Warp and Store Warp, which aren't exactly predictable, and the Guided Warp, which lets you actually chose where you'll end up.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?:
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Or red. Or green. Or pink... basically whatever color your character is.
 * Wandering blacksmith Gutz and bandit Risque.
 * Chance Boutique, the item shop merchant, has pink hair.