the game barely works half the time and the amount of fiddling and fuckery i found required in my run which at one point saw all my companions getting duplicated and fucking up a quest didn't detract from one of the best meditations on mortality and how funny skulls are ever.

fuck the rat

Edit: Nordom is my son

It’s hard to put into words how thankful I am that my friends were willing to suffer through this with me, because this game is nothing if not brutal bullshit front to back. But as we’ve all maybe learned through a session of Mario Party, there’s no such thing as good or bad luck, it’s all simply relative. What causes the success of one causes the downfall of another, and it’s a zero-sum game to the point of causing everyone to become a Kissinger-level political realist working their hardest to destroy all goodwill to become king of the crab bucket. And I am never leaving the bucket

The trick of a bullshit luck game is to ensure that the players feel like they’re able to manipulate it and suffer through it to win. The issue with games like Monopoly is that they may as well be totally pre-determined from the start. You simply roll, buy, and work within the extremely limited options you have and hope to lady luck you win. There’s very little you can do to sabotage other players directly beyond random chances from community chest cards and so on. Hell, the latest Mario party games fall into a similar problem where all you can do is hope the player in control picks something for you to do whilst you’re railroaded towards the end. There’s very little if any player agency in these beyond the mini games, a common reason they’re cited as the worst games in the series.


Dokapon is extremely luck dependant. If anyone says otherwise, they’re the kind of GameFAQs user I’d stay far away from, especially when Undertale was declared the best game of all time. Every roll you cast determines where you can land, what enemy you fight determines your chances of winning, hell even what the AI decides to use in combat can be what secures your victory or defeat, as I have learned many times in the final area. And you beg and hope that luck won’t fuck you over in the final moments fighting the area boss, hoping to at least get 1 village before it’s all taken away. And all the while you still have a sense of control over how you approach this luck and navigate through its system towards the end. It’s not polished, it’s not a smooth experience, it’s certainly not balanced, but it’s a game that builds stories between players like few others. It’s one of the few games where every session of play we’ve had some grand narrative weaved between each of us and looking back on it at the end, it’s a hilarious trek that’s extremely unpredictable, front to back.


The JRPG systems at play somehow blend well with the board game approach without hampering pacing to the point of exhaustion and boredom. Turns rarely take more than a minute, sometimes even just 30 seconds, which helps when you’re playing with 3 other people. And each player’s turn is exciting to follow to see and plan around for your own strategies in the future. There’s an encouragement to follow and counter their plans at the same time as you work to establish your own foothold on the board. Alongside that they’re likely to be screwed over by luck just as you were a minute ago, giving a strong schadenfreude.


Giving the player tools in the form of items they can buy to both sabotage other players, in the form of field spells to directly damage or hamper progress, or spinners and crystals which allow them to “tactically” plan their progress through new zones gives enough activity that’s usually not found in this style or format. The fact that the player is dependant on luck still forces them to make backup plans, and plans within plans with plans, ones which can be equally sabotaged by so-called “friends”.


The games systems are not polished enough to avoid snowballing at all, and the developers seemed keenly aware of this, causing the inclusion of the greatest asset of the game, The Darkling. When a player is in last long enough, they will become the most powerful character in the game by a country mile for a period, with special abilities allowing them to reset the board entirely. Lending the player, the ability to enact revenge in such a clear coded “you’ve been in last for a while, let’s spice things up” way, one which still gives opposing players the slightest ability to avoid through hiding in other areas lends a dynamism you don’t get with traditional Mario party rubber banding. It does have meaningful issues still, as the global reset can cause a stalemate where gaining towns may weaken someone’s position long term actually and causes the final act of the game to become a hell state of inaction because of certain players (Like me). All the same the tools and strategies cause fascinating forms of in game storytelling.


Players shift states from hero, to villain, to underdog, to doomed fool all in the matter of minutes it can feel as a result of both luck and conflict. It’s hard to find games which can escalate tension to this degree in a party setting, one which is also still so entirely dependant on luck. There’s comedy, anger, and sadness, all the while being placed in a ridiculous setting made ultra-ridiculous by your friends revealing themselves to be Machiavellian psychopaths of the highest degree.


The endgame has serious issues no doubt. Spells which can destroy equipment can seriously put players in a state of fatigue and if you run a magic build like I did you’re just not allowed to have fun, but god this is still one of the funniest games ever made, and it all comes solely from player interactions. The fact that my friends suffered through this with me for all those sessions maybe says something about this game. It’s a shame others in this style don’t try to emulate it but maybe it’s for the better, I’d rather not have more broken controllers on this planet.