Throughout gaming history, developers have tried to deliver innovation by combining two existing types of games. Rockstar, for instance, made gaming history with a simple combination of shooting and driving games that they called Grand Theft Auto. Shooting and driving is an obvious combination, though — characters in movies have been doing both for years. What if you combined two genres that couldn’t have less in common —l ike, say, mixing the lengthy, complex, single-player experience of an RPG with the casual, light-hearted multiplayer fun of a party game? Well, that’s exactly what Atlus has done with their latest Wii title, Dokapon Kingdom — and it works surprisingly well.

Dokapon Kingdom casts each player as an adventurer-for-hire, contracted by the King of Dokapon in an open call for a hero to save the land. You see, monsters have been invading recently, and it’s caused an economic crisis. Until the monsters terrorizing the world are vanquished, the King can’t collect any taxes, so he has promised the hand of the princess (and dibs to the throne along with it) to whoever can get rid of the vile beasts. Ignoring any (possibly coincidental) parallels to the real-life world economy, the game’s story is pretty much just there to give players an incentive to run around the game world, killing as many monsters and collecting as many taxes as possible.

 
The King might be crazy to offer his kingdom to the winner,
but that won’t keep people from trying to claim the prize.

Things start off with character creation; you can customize your character’s gender, job, color, and face, so even in a four-player game every player can look unique. As for the different jobs, when you first start you can choose from Warrior, Magician, or Thief, but new classes unlock as you progress in the game, and of course each job has its own strengths, drawbacks, and exclusive skills. Once the game begins proper, play progresses much like you’d see in a game like Mario Party, only with a world map instead of a game board (although the kingdom’s map is laid out like a game board, with set paths to travel and defined spaces to land on). Each player in turn gets to spin a numbered dial to see how many spaces they can move around the kingdom, and when you stop some kind of event generally occurs. Depending on where you land, you could get a new item or magic spell, encounter an enemy monster, or visit a town — and that’s just for starters.

 
The characters move around the game world like a giant game board,
with set paths and spaces to travel along.

Players can pursue wealth — which in turn determines the winner — in many different ways, so there are any number of valid strategies to victory. Most towns are under attack from a boss monster, and defeating it means the town is yours — along with its citizens’ taxes. If you don’t mind being a little underhanded, you can attack your fellow players; defeating another player lets you steal their money and equipment (or even humiliate their character by giving them a terrible haircut). If you’d rather go straight to the source, you can rob shops and towns directly, but if you fail you get a huge bounty on your head, which other players can collect. You can always fall back on that RPG standard, fighting monsters and selling loot, to make your fortune, or you can focus exclusively on the various quests and side-tasks the King assigns throughout the game to score the lucrative rewards. The game doesn’t care how you get your money, so you’re free to play as straight or dirty as you like, but let’s face it, isn’t it a lot more fun to fund your win with cash stolen from your fellow players?

 
Victory goes to the richest player (regardless of how they amassed their wealth),
so feel free to get your money by any means necessary.

Visually, Dokapon Kingdom keeps things simple. Characters and environments are simple and cutesy, but the game has a bright, colorful art style that’s perfectly suited to the lighthearted party vibe. There’s a lot of variety in the various areas of the game, too; there are seven continents to explore, and each has a range of different terrains and locations, from deserts to beaches to snowy forests. The music matches the graphics, and the soundtrack is mostly comprised of bouncy, upbeat tunes.

 
The game’s visual style is cute, colorful, and fun.

 Like any party game, Dokapon Kingdom is best played in a group. Sure, you can play single player if you want, but you’re still competing against other characters, just AI characters instead of player-controlled. Party games are meant to be social experiences, though, especially in a game like this, where half the fun comes from messing with your friends. But this leads us to what is probably Dokapon Kingdom’s biggest problem: the game’s depth and strategy comes at the expense of some of its accessibility. I played the game with several groups of friends, some gamers and some not. While my gamer friends were accustomed to keeping track of things like experience levels and multiple attack skills, my non-gamer pals (many of whom had enjoyed marathon Mario Party sessions) were confused and put off by the game’s complexity. Party games have always been a very pick-up-and-play genre, and their relative simple rules and quick, mindless mini-games have made them perfect for a casual party audience. Dokapon Kingdom, on the other hand, requires its players to invest time and energy learning relatively complicated strategies, combat systems, and sets of statistics before the game begins to yield its fun.

Despite this, Dokapon Kingdom is one of the deepest, most fun multiplayer games of recent memory, provided you have the group of players to do the game justice. The sheer number of ways to mess over your fellow players will have you and your friends laughing and playing long into the night. RPGs and party games might not seem like the most obvious combinations at first glance, but Dokapon Kingdom proves that the mix can deliver one of the best multiplayer experiences on the Wii.

Gameplay: 8.3
The turn-based action might not be as fast and furious as a game like Mario Party, but the huge variety of options and tactics available to you give the game a level of depth that’s unmatched in the party game genre.  Besides, Dokapon’s focus on backstabbing between players guarantees laughs and fun.

Graphics: 8.1
The visuals might be a little on the simple side, but that’s not to say they’re bad. The art style keeps things cheerful and colorful, and cute, bouncy animations keep even things like battle lighthearted and fun.

Sound: 7.8
The music is serviceable, but a little fantasy-generic. Most characters have some voice acting, but the players’ voices are limited to battle shouting. Other characters, like the King, have some lines voiced and others not, seemingly arbitrarily.

Difficulty: Medium
There’s a bit of a learning curve, as you acquaint yourself with the various systems and options contained in the game. Once you’ve learned the rules, though, the difficulty will largely be determined by your opponents, as well as a heavy dose of luck.

Multiplayer: 8.8
This is a game that was designed around multiplayer. They’ve made it as simple as possible (players can drop out at any time, with their characters taken over by AI), so you never have to stop the game when the player lineup changes.

Concept: 8.8
The developers have incorporated elements of party games and RPGs, but the game is something entirely unique. It’s definitely an idea that could be further refined in a sequel, but it proves remarkably fresh and entertaining.

Overall: 8.4
Dokapon Kingdom is a cute, hilarious, addicting game with a multiplayer experience that can’t be matched. It’s not going to appeal to every gamer, but I can honestly rank my time with it among the most fun I’ve ever had with my Wii.