Title: Dokapon Kingdom Connect
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: Sting
Publisher: Idea Factory International (NA)
Release Date: May 9th, 2023 (NA)
File Size: 1000MB
Review copy provided by Idea Factory International
If you were around during the Wii era, you may recognize Dokapon Kingdom. This is/was an RPG and board game hybrid created by Sting. No, not the singer, but rather Sting, the Japanese developer that also created the Dept. Heaven series which includes games like Riviera: The Promised Land, Yggdra Union, and Knights of the Nightmare. They also created the 2-game Evolution series on Dreamcast (which later got a combined release as Evolution Worlds on GameCube).
Anyway, this game out of nowhere just sort of became a sort of cult hit within the niche market over the years, with physical copies going for insane prices on eBay. Well Sting (or perhaps Compile Heart) took notice and had a remaster made for Switch. Note that the Wii (and PS2) original was localized by Atlus, who also localized pretty much every game by Sting during this era. This time via Compile Heart’s involvement, Idea Factory International did the honors, fully retaining Atlus’s work, including the English dub! So how does it fare? Will you get rich, or be betrayed by your best friend? Let’s find out!
Your character at the start of the game on the first space.
Dokapon Kingdom Connect is as mentioned a remaster of the Wii version (well, the PS2 version was possibly identical, I’m not sure), but with the big addition of online play. The game at its core is a board game with SRPG elements. The game does have a story mode which is what this review will focus on, as I’m no expert on determining online quality, as I stay away from online gaming as much as I can. It’s never been my thing, sorry.
Anyway, you can play with a friend, or alone versus CPU opponents. You can vaguely customize your character between one of four classes, and choose from five colors, and even their face design (which comes with a different voice each!). Same goes for the CPU, you get to pick their appearance, as well as their difficulty, while the game picks a random name (but you choose yours).
A look at the commands on the battle screen.
The players are then thrusted into the Dokapon Kingdom world, where monsters are attacking and taking over the various towns. The king begs the crew to save the kingdom and to bring back lots of money. He even offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to the winner… even if the winner is a girl it seems! Well the princess seems totally willing to go with it, so yeah, sounds good to me then!
After your turn order is determined, you get to spin a 6-sided roulette wheel to determine how many spaces you can move, with your first task is to simply make it to the castle. However, you have to move all the spaces you get, you can’t stop anywhere in between, but I guess that’s typical of board games.
The tutorial explanation of the battle system.
Various spaces have events tied to them. Some give you money, a spell item, a weapon or shield (to boost Attack or Defense), or blank ones which put you into a fight with an enemy. During battles, you pick randomly who goes first and the first chooses to either attack, use a strike of sorts, use magic, or some kind of special move (or give up in certain scenarios). The second person then chooses how to react, but you both choose at the same time so you won’t know what happens until you both move.
The key bit is the sort of Rock Paper Scissors system. An attack can be weakened by using Defend, a Strike can be avoided and turned on the attacker with a Counter, and a magic attack can be weakened with a magic version of Defend. Some also get a buff technique which can’t be defended against.
Princess Penny and her adorable dog Cash!
After both of you move, the whole turn ends. If you’re still fighting, you’ll resume the next turn, and so on and so forth. Win and you’ll gain experience and money, and possibly an item. Lose and you’ll lose money or items, and if you died, you’re sent back to where you started and have to skip two turns
The first to reach the castle will earn 8 points to buff their stats with, with the second person only getting 4 points. You then end up in a much larger part of the kingdom, with monsters occupying towns as spaces. In these, you have to fight a naturally more powerful enemy (often different colored versions of common enemies). Beat it, and you liberate the town, and you can then choose to invest in the town to help it grow and thus earn you more money in the long run. Either way you get a MASSIVE bonus from the king for liberating it, however this doesn’t go into your spending funds.
Your character liberating a town space.
One major critique I have to admit is how the game isn’t as random as you’d expect. Consider this; you save the game at the start of a turn, you do stuff, it doesn’t go your way, you then decide to restart from that save point and thus hope for better odds (also known by the hip folks as “cheating”). Anyway, you then proceed to do the exact things you did before… and the results are exactly the same. Sure enough, it’s as if the results of any spins of the roulette, effects of things, results of turns in battles, ALL play out exactly the same way you did the last time. The only way to influence events to turn out any different is to pick something else and maybe you’ll get a different result. Problem is; I find that your opponent will have a remarkably better outcome than you, just happening to get just the right rolls or items to best you, again with no change that can be done by resetting to a save point. So if your goose is cooked, then it’s cooked good so to speak. Good luck.
Visually it’s a fairly nice-looking game that holds up well despite its Wii (or more likely PS2) origins. It’s locked to 30fps but likely is native 1080p in docked mode (I seriously can’t imagine it not being the case). The colors are vivid, the textures may have been up-ressed for the remaster, but either way look fairly clean. Audio-wise it’s great. There’s some good English voice-acting (I swear the voice of the girl with the “Normal” face setting is voiced by Lara Jill Miller, aka Kari from Digimon!), plus all the NPCs you meet also have their own voices which is awesome, and the music sounds really nice as well. Very pleasant overall in my opinion.
The Basic Settings menu.
Overall this is a fun game that may be at its peak with friends (it’s long been known as a “friendship destroyer” so take that as you will), but as a single-player experience it’s a bit hit-and-miss depending on how you look at it. Its also a bit pricey at $69.99 CDN which to me is their way of taking advantage of the high prices the Wii version held on eBay. But hey, if it’s worth it, then by all means!
You’ll Love:
+ The mechanics and gameplay are quite fun.
+ The game has a lot of charm and character, with a well done English dub and good music. It’s very enjoyable in this regard too.
+ Some not-so-subtle LGBTQ acknowledgement as you can marry the princess as a girl character, awesome!
+ Has screenshot and video capture support.
You’ll Hate:
– The game sort of cheats with pre-determined outcomes that reverting to a prior save won’t change. Plus your opponent seems to have an unfair advantage.
– While the visuals hold up nicely, it’s just a fairly barebones remaster. Would’ve been wonderful if Sting gave it more of an upgrade over the Wii version.
– The game is super long. You may be in this for dozens of turns, thank god for being able to save at the start of your turn (it also auto-saves after every “week” in the game). You also get many save slots, so make as many as you need!
7/10
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