No One Told Me Dokapon Kingdom Is Just A Better Mario Party ► Ludology Now!

I both love and hate Mario Party games. I get nothing out of playing them solo, but they can be quite fun with friends. Until the madness sets in, until the arguing starts, the name-calling, the star-stealing, the punching. That’s how Mario Party always ends, and it makes Mario Party hard to want to start. That was decades ago. I’m an adult now, I have children who would enjoy playing it, but even seeing the box art for Mario Party in the N64 Switch Online menu triggers something in my brain.

I do have less subjective complaints. The minigames in Mario Party titles vary in quality dramatically, but still have far more duds than winners. The tone is off; characters are far too happy and excited given the atrocities and crimes they are committing upon each other. The boards don’t offer enough true variety. I could go on, but I don’t have to, because now I know about the wonders of Dokapon Kingdom and the far more recent Dokapon Kingdom: Connect.

Dokapon Kingdom: A Mario Party JRPG

While I spent 2007 playing BioShock, God of War II, and Rock Band, in Japan Sting Entertainment developed and released Dokapon Kingdom on the PS2. One year later, when I was busy with Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV, Atlus USA brought the game, which in itself was a remake of a SNES title, to the United States. In 2023, while I was playing Armored Core VI, Dredge, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Idea Factory was releasing Dokapon Kingdom: Connect worldwide on Windows just a few months after Compile Heart published a version of the same game on Nintendo Switch. There was also a Wii version at some point.

This is to say, Dokapon Kingdom has always been there. It just wasn’t on my radar until last year, and it wasn’t until recently that I had a chance to actually play it myself. Now that I have, I’m extremely mad at myself for passing it by for so long. Dokapon Kingdom fixes all of the problems I have with Mario Party, and it does so without losing any of the things which make Mario Party games enjoyable – at least for me.

Note: I bought the PS2 version of Dokapon Kingdom at the Humane Society Thrift Store for $3, after stumbling upon it randomly a few weeks after watching a lengthy Dokapon Kingdom: Connect stream, mostly just to see how similar the old game was to the newer one. To my surprise, they were basically identically the same, and that’s how I ended up being hooked.

That “enjoyable for me” clarification is necessary, because there are some major differences in Dokapon Kingdom that Mario Party fanatics may not enjoy nor appreciate. There are no “minigames” in Dokapon Kingdom like there are in Mario Party. Instead, there are turn-based JRPG-esque battles with rock-paper-scissors mechanics, equipment bonuses, job trees, and boss battles. The goal is not to “get the most Stars” but to “get the most money” and, while you are still all vying for first place, you are also ostensibly working together to save the Kingdom of Dokapon itself.

It’s far more interesting, streamlined, and surreal than it sounds on paper. Let me walk you through a week of Dokapon Kingdom, which is ostensibly how the game measures what “round” you are on; autosaves happen Saturday night, and there are no manual saves. Players take turns moving around the “kingdom” overworld board each day in a random order chosen at the beginning of the game, and every player can use one item/spell, move, and interact with the space they landed on during that day. Here’s how it looks in process, with my current game on Chapter 3, Week 33, with three players instead of the full roster of four:

SUNDAY
- Edmund (CPU) goes first. He chooses to roll, moves 2 spaces, then lands on a blank space. While this often triggers a monster fight, it can also trigger one of seemingly dozens of random encounters. Edmund encounters an NPC called Risque (dressed in a demonic Victorian outfit) who offers to steal an item from a random player for money. This is risky, because the random player might be Edmund himself. He turns Risque down, and Edmund’s turn is over.
- Chris (Me) goes next. I choose to roll and get a 3, and decide to also land on a blank space (there are many paths to choose from in the overworld). I do get a monster encounter – a “Wear Tiger” a few levels underneath me. There is a moment where we have to select who goes first, and I draw second, so I must defend, counter, or give up. I choose to defend, the Wear Tiger attacks, and I lose 103 damage. It is now my turn, so I choose to “strike” – a stronger attack that must usually be countered to avoid. However, it misses. Our battle pauses, and it is the next person’s turn.
- Scarlett (NPC) goes last. She is already mid-battle from a previous week’s encounter, so we watch as first she lands a “Scorch” spell on a Wizard enemy, then watch as the Wizard enemy misses an attack on her. The battle is ongoing, so we cut away, and the day is over.
MONDAY
- Edmund (NPC) has control again. He chooses to roll, moves a few spaces, and enters a combat encounter with a giant troll. Edmund attacks first and downs the troll in one hit, so he gains EXP and currency, then his turn ended.
- Chris (Me) is still mid-battle from the previous round. This time, I can attack first, so I attempt a Strike again. This time it lands, the enemy is defeated in one hit, and I level up to Level 21. I increase my Speed and Attack stats (my character has the Thief job, so these are already pretty high) and gain some money.
- Scarlett (NPC) is still in mid-battle. The magician she is fighting gains the ability to attack first, and Scarlett knows that it will be fatal, so she chooses to Give Up. Scarlett loses some money and has to sit out the next day’s turn.

The week progresses in this fashion, with some players stopping by Item Stores, Weapon Shops, and local Temples here and there to restock their equipment and set new spawn locations. I stop at two towns I’ve liberated (meaning, I destroyed the monster that was occupying their town location on the game board) to collect taxes, invest money, and heal up for free. Edmund liberates a town himself, nearly dying in the process. Scarlett got cursed to have footsores and, for a while, could only move one space at a time. At the end of the week everyone’s Total Assets (amount of money, number of liberated towns, job progress, investments, etc.) are tallied and presented in order from first to last, with a line graph showing the difference from previous weeks included. The game can be saved and the players move on to the next week.

Sometimes a mole with a jackhammer appears to offer his services in trying to dig up an underground spring. Sometimes a young child dressed like a cat appears to play Rock, Paper, Scissors with you and doesn’t pay up when they lose. Sometimes the King of Dokapon Castle will be all, “I’m feeling really generous, everyone can have $30,000 right now,” but he’s actually holding your wallet, not his own. Sometimes you get abducted by a UFO. You’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next, but you know it’s not going to be what you expected.

Mario Party Mad, Dokapon Kingdom Glad

The “this is not even remotely fair” aspect of Mario Party is truly alive and well in Dokapon Kingdom, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much here. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few days thinking about why exactly that is – at times, I think Dokapon Kingdom is even more unfair than Mario Party games can be, but I don’t get mad at the game for it the same way I get mad at blatant Power Star theft in Mario Party. I think it’s a couple of things.

The first reason Dokapon Kingdom doesn’t invoke rage like Mario Party does is that it is, especially if you are playing with friends and/or NPCs in Story Mode, an intensely cooperative competitive experience. You are all trying to save Dokapon Kingdom, and rarely are the times when all four players actually want to battle each other. For 95% of the fights in Dokapon Kingdom, it’s one player versus a computer opponent, whether that’s a regular monster, another human-esque NPC, a boss monster, a ghost-clone of yourself, or whatever else you probably weren’t expecting to fight that day.

That’s not to say there aren’t ways to impede other players’ progress or even attack them outright, it’s just not something that everyone should or will be doing all the time. Players who are performing exceptionally poorly are sometimes offered a contract and, should they accept this “deal with a devil” agreement, will turn into a demonic version of themselves called a “Darkling” with powers to do anything from sealing other players’ item bags to completely terrorizing the map and making monsters return to literally every liberated town. If someone with a grudge against you becomes a Darkling, things get rough real fast.

These powers are only temporary (although the EXP gain from using them isn’t) and, even if you are in last place, re-liberating all of those towns is something you’re going to want to do eventually. Because of this, even though some of the Darkling powers look on paper like they are overpowered and infuriating to deal with, it’s really not that bad in the long run. I’ve played games of Dokapon Kingdom where the same character became a Darkling at least four times over the course of about 60 weeks, and they still remained in last place because they never liberated any towns.

The second reason Dokapon Kingdom is better than Mario Party at keeping the fun party vibes going is that it’s already so ridiculous and off-the-wall that it’s almost impossible to take it seriously. This is a game where main quests include tasks like “Retrieve the Princess’ Piggy Bank” while you also must “Avoid the Robo-Sassin” moving around the map. Sometimes you land on a Red Loot space, roll the dice, and instantly die – or worse, instantly lose all your money. Defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory at all turns. You’re not here to win, you’re here to experience.

Of course, it’s hard for me to completely ignore that need to win. That’s why, if you are prone to save scumming, it may interest you to know that Dokapon Kingdom does preselect its dice rolls. If you start the week and spin the wheel to move, then reset and spin the wheel again, it will always land on the same spot. If you battle an enemy and end up going second, you can reset, follow the same steps again to get to where you were, then pick first. It’s not something a bunch of players are going to want to do when playing cooperatively, but it is an option if, like me, you just want to see what happens if you go in a different direction. Knowing a battle will always be a loss at this moment means you can choose a different path forward.

There’s so much about Dokapon Kingdom that I still don’t know about yet, and for a game that has basically been remade every ten years since the 90s, that’s wonderful to discover. Finding a brand-new (to me) PS2 hidden gem in 2025 is not something I thought could still happen, and the fact that it’s been continuously released so often means that now I can play it with my friends online over Steam. “I found a new PS2 party game and it’s better than Mario Party, play it on Steam with me.” You love to see it.