Dokapon - TV Tropes

Dokapon is a Japanese series of turn-based board game Role Playing Games originally created by Asmik Ace Entertainment and currently developed by Sting Entertainment. The games are essentially the logical conclusion of shoving Mario Party, Dragon Quest, and Monopoly into a blender, pressing "puree" for five minutes, and adding a dash of cheat-happy AI and salt. Lots of salt.

In the Dokapon series, you are cast into 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 Status Effects is "Shaved Head?"

Unlike most RPGs, Dokapon is 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+ hour 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. And even on Easy, where it doesn't cheat - they're overly predictable in battle.

Games in the Series 

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The Dokapon series contains examples of:

• An Adventurer Is You: Most games feature character classes and class changing, although a few games like DX and UP! have distinct characters instead of classes.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • The games are set in a bog-standard fantasy world, but you also have robots, modern banks, modern casinos, and aliens running about.
  • Comes with the territory in UP! since it's Utawarerumono (although this one is more on Science Fantasy).
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In a series where the Story Mode typically takes as long as an actual full-size JRPG, god bless the Save function in multiplayer for allowing games to carry over between sessions.
  • Many of the games from 3-2-1 onward feature a "starter" dungeon in the Story Mode that consists mainly of item and equipment spaces so players can start the game with beginner gear. Leaving said dungeon sooner than other players also rewards a bonus to start with.
• Art-Shifted Sequel:
  • There have been gradual changes to the art style over the years to match the current era's style of anime design, but the biggest jumps in art style are the World and Kingdom, as the box art for the World is more gritty and shounen with paper cutouts for player characters instead of the 3D models from the previous two games while Kingdom (the game right after the World) is cutesy and Super-Deformed.
  • UP! has a cleaner and more cutesy art style compared to mainline Utawarerumono games.
• Big Ball of Violence: Fights occurring on other spaces are depicted as violent dust clouds.
• Boring, but Practical: The basic Attack option is the least rewarding offensive option in most cases, but it's also the least risky, as unlike with Striking (which can backfire heavily in many cases) and Magic (which can be neutered with defensive Magic, which sometimes also causes effects like the opponent healing more than the damage you dealt or even paralyzing you), the only option against Attacking is Defending, which only partially reduces the damage taken.
• Character Customization: Some of the later games feature a limited amount of cosmetic customization, including Purely Aesthetic Gender and player color. Kingdom also features hairstyles that can be discovered and which serve a gameplay purpose in at least one event.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The AI in the series is notorious for how terrible it cheats. Many of the later games have the AI read your inputs and automatically Counter your Strikes.
• Controllable Helplessness: In Journey, if your character is stunned in battle, a menu with all options blanked out will still appear for you to interact with. In other games, it's either automatically proceeded or won't show up at all.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: For a certain definition of "cooperative"; while the players are working towards common goals in Story Mode, they're still trying to beat the shit out of each other while doing so.
• Counter-Attack: If you select the Counter option when the attacker chooses Strike, you will evade the attack completely, then promptly strike back with a powerful attack of your own, inflicting massive damage to the attacker.
• Cursed with Awesome: In the World and Kingdom, after defeating the assassin, you can get an accessory which greatly boosts your stats if you are wanted (a state that prevents you from entering any buildings or run away in battles, making survival more risky), sometimes even turning this state into an advantage.
• Cute Witch: The female Magician is almost invariably this in design, and is notably one of the few playable females to dress modestly.
• Damsel in Distress: Princess Penny on the oft chance she gets kidnapped. It tends to not last, though.
• Death or Glory Attack: Strike deals double damage compared to your standard attack and in many cases will invariably lead to a One-Hit Kill. However, the Counter command completely negates Strike and causes the enemy to deal that exact same damage to you. While Striking will generally work against early to mid-game foes, most endgame foes will automatically Counter if you choose to Strike regardless of whatever they planned to do that turn, as will the Darkling in many games (the game will explicitly warn you about this). Striking can still work against humans, however, as unlike AIs you can psyche them out.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Wiwi, the rabbit-like creature who makes its debut in Ikari no Tekken, is reduced to an enemy in the World and Kingdom (where it's called "Wabbit").
  • Wallace is the main antagonist in Ikari no Tekken and DX, but only a minor optional antagonist in the World and Kingdom. In Journey, however, he returns as the Final Boss (although he is also a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere compared to other final bosses, who are at least hinted before the confrontation)
  • Many playable characters in earlier games like Gamamaru, Brikin, Tap and Luchil also appear as NPCs in future games, sometimes also with design changes.
• Dub Name Change: Many recurring characters have their names changed in localized versions. For example, Princess Penny was originally called "Puririn" in Japanese.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In Kessen, 3-2-1 and Journey, the roulette only has numbers from 1 to 6. Later games also have a small space for 0, making it possible for you to land on the same tile.
• Excuse Plot: Most of the main series games have a very flimsy "story" for Story/Scenario Mode, usually involving the King sending out heroes to clean up the world and succeed him as the King of Dokapon, sometimes with marrying(?) Princess Penny involved. In fact, no one really cares that much even if you somehow decide to commit regicide and take over the Kingdom yourself, nor does that guarantee you to be the next King.
• Funny Animal: The Thief class in 3-2-1 is a furred bipedal... "creature" (of unknown origin, but definitely not human).
• Gaiden Game: Most of the spinoffs, which feature certain aspects of Dokapon gameplay fleshed out.
• Genre Mashup: It's a turn-based board game combined with an RPG combined with Monopoly combined with rock-paper-scissors. With UP!, it's also part visual novel.
• Geo Effects: Landing in the poison swamp without galoshes will poison your character, and your character will also take damage every turn in underwater maps if they don't have air ring in most games.
• Goshdang It To Heck: See you in Heck, kids! However, in Sword of Fury, the word "Hell" is actually used in one instance, in "Hell's Gate".
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Players have the option to Give Up when defending if they know that they're on the losing end of a fight. Giving Up counts as a loss but incurs less severe penalties compared to dying.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: As evidenced by the page description, there has been very little change in the core formula since the series' inception. The later games offer new classes, maps, enemies, and on occasion new mechanics, but the gameplay is more or less the same.
• Ms. Fanservice: Most of the playable female classes are busty, scantily clad young women except for the requisite Cute Witch, the Valkyrie (female knight) class in Journey, and the cast of UP! (as Utawarerumono doesn't have much fanservice to begin with).
• Multiple Endings:
  • Games that involve marrying Princess Penny will have alternate dialogue if you win the game as a girl.
  • Subverted with Ikari no Tekken, where the Demon King will ask you if you will help him defeat the God, but regardless of if you agree or not, the ending will always involve the player killing the God and a new King will be elected.
  • DX has proper multiple endings, in Good, Bad, and Normal flavors.
• Never Say "Die": UP! doesn't refer to characters running out of their health as "dying", instead just saying that they're "defeated".
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • If you have Footsore or Paralysis, don't even think about using gems or spinners to bypass it unless you cure it first. (This is, however, a good opportunity to use your other items and field magics in Journey, as normally using them will also cost your turn; also, in the World, the Robot's field ability can bypass the Footsore effect)
  • You can kill normal town monsters (which frees the town and the next player who enters it will claim the town) and other normal monsters that are fighting other players with a field magic, but you can't do this to major bosses and big monsters; they'll survive with 1 HP and you have to enter battle with them to deal the finishing blow.
• Oddball in the Series: While 3-2-1 and Kingdom take place in an Expy of the real world and many of the other games straight up take place in a fantasy world, The World is the only game that actually features the real world as part of the setting, with the protagonist becoming Trapped in TV Land.
• Oh, Crap!: In Ikari no Tekken, the character will briefly panic when they're about to be hit by a magic spell.
• The Plague: There is a recurring enemy called Monmon, who has all stats (except Speed, which will be multiple times higher than even the fastest player) being the lowest, but getting hit by it will cause the player to contract a deadly virus that deals more damage than the Poison status and can be lethal. The virus can also be given to other players by touching them, and it can only be cured by visiting the castle or using the virus cure Monmon drops when it's defeated - normal antidote and church will not cure it.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Averted in the World, where some jobs are gender-exclusive; and Journey, where there are technically four jobs (warrior, thief, mage and knight), but they work differently on different genders.
• Purposefully Overpowered: The Darkling. The series Comeback Mechanic, it's by far the strongest class in the game and has access to a slew of exclusive powers that can shake up huge amounts of the board, up to and including resetting every single town, but requires you to be in last place for a while and you must make a Deal with the Devil (usually sacrificing almost everything in your possession) to become the Darkling. Even then, the transformation is temporary, so be careful about where and when it wears off.
• Random Event: A core element of the game, as random events occur any time you land on an empty space, and there are also Weekly Events that can trigger at the start of every week (or during the week in some games).
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: Many conflicts in the series are resolved this way, be it Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors or literal rock paper scissors.
• Save Scumming: Depending on which game you are playing, it works differently. Some games have traditional RNG and you can keep resetting until you get the best results, while others generate a seed for all the upcoming events and no amount of resetting will change it. However, this will also allow you to figure out the best action among the set ones, and once you choose a different action all your future possible events will be changed accordingly.
• Shoplift and Die: While stealing from a store doesn't have any immediate consequences, failing a stealing attempt will cause a Bounty to be placed on your head, which bars you from entering certain events and also rewards any players who kill you with a cash prize.
• Skewed Priorities: The King in 3-2-1 and Kingdom seems more concerned about his wealth compared to the safety of the Dokapon Kingdom.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Kind of. Most offensive options have a corresponding defensive option that will reduce the effectiveness of the former if used at the same time. Attack can have its damage lowered by Defend, Strike can be reversed with the Counter action, and defensive magic works against most offensive magic.
• Two Girls to a Team: Urara and Molde in Sword and Fury, and Luchil and Razuly in DX.

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