One day recently I was browsing around online, and it occurred to me: I hadn't heard about an upcoming Mario Party game yet. "Surely there's one on the way," I thought, "There's been at least one Mario Party game every year since the hay-days of Nintendo 64." So I took to the internet in search of a non-existent game.

   But while surfing the web in search of my white whale, I was instead attacked by a shark: a glorious, RPG-inspired shark with freaking Monopoly laser beams attached to its freaking head. This beautiful creature was worth every bit of its awkward Austin Powers reference, and I was happy to take it home and call it "Dokapon Kingdom."

   This really is one of the best local multiplayer games out there. If you enjoy trash-talking and utterly destroying your friends with more strategy than camping in Blood Gulch with the rocket launcher, then this game is made for you. If you and your friends are old-school RPG buffs that are sick of having to choose between playing the game you're addicted to and talking about it in person, this is your game. Be warned: if you're expecting fun mini-games and a solid 1-player or online multiplayer experience, put down the game case and back away slowly. But if you'll always have a Player 2 on the couch with you, than this game is worth the extra effort to hunt it down.

The Emperor's New Deal

   It's a beautiful day in Dokapon Kingdom. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the Dow Jones is up. Suddenly, literally every town in the Kingdom is invaded by monsters! The King becomes so desperate to resolve the inevitable economic crisis that he offers his daughter's hand in marriage to whoever finds the source of the problem and eliminates it.

   And that's where you and your friends come in. From this point on, the game is divided up into chapters and weeks. Each chapter has its own subplot and mission, and each turn you take is an in-game day. One-by-one, you make your way across a massive board game (big enough to make Final Fantasy X's sphere grid weep) as you save towns, gain experience, make money, steal, cry and love.

   The board is designed to look suspiciously like a cartoon-y map of Earth. After the prologue, the game drops you on Dokapon Castle, which is located in what is essentially Asia. Each town has been taken over by a monster, but one town at random is held hostage by a Big Old Beefy Monster (you can call him Bob M., for short). After beating him a few times (sometimes he regenerates in other towns), something awful happens to the King, or his daughter, or her dog, and you are given the main objective of the chapter. This objective can be anything from winning a fight against something really strong to delivering multiple copies of a rare item. When the objective is complete, a large reward is given to whoever completed it, a new continent is unlocked, and a new chapter begins.

It's all about the Benjamins

Rock-Paper-Scissors is a game of skill

   That's why the same people make it to the Internationals every year, and it's something to keep in mind during the RPG battles. At the beginning of each fight, you will randomly attack first or last. During the attack phase, you can Attack (duh), Magic Attack, Strike (a really strong move that kills most things in one hit), or use a Skill that can be changed based on your character's job. During the defense phase, you can Defend (softens Attack), Magic Defend, Counter (turns all damage from Strike onto the user), or Give Up. Similar to the Pokémon Stadium series, both combatants must secretly choose their action before the phase plays out.

   If the fight is still going on after a full round, the player's turn is over and the fight continues on the next in-game day. This is nice not only because it keeps the other players playing rather than yelling at you to hurry up and die already (that magical wish should be reserved strictly for family anyway), but it also allows them to cast Field Magic from the sidelines or to jump in the fray and kill-steal. If you choose to do the latter during a big monster battle, you can even snag up ownership of the town in the middle of the fight.

   Magic Attacks and Magic Defenses are treated as equips, but there is no real way to know which ones are better than which. Their resale values seem to be a pretty good indicator, but there's potential to make really bad rookie mistakes since you can only carry one of each. The game includes a Gallery for easier study of this sort of thing, but it's not there for you when you need it most.

But what does it all mean, Basil?

   Last Austin Powers reference, I swear. But seriously, the game could really use a more in-depth tutorial. All the game really offers is a one-screen description briefly explaining what's about to happen the first time you enter battle, shops, etc. That's all they give you.

   Then there's the character stats: AT, DF, MG, SP, and HP. These stats are never really explained. The game makes it pretty clear that these are Attack, Defense, Magic, Speed, and Hit Points, respectively; but it never clearly defines what determines your Strike damage, whether or not Speed effects evasiveness as well as accuracy, or how your Magic Defense is calculated. Part of the fun of this game is trying to figure out how it works, but there's a little more left unsaid than I would like.

1-Player Mode: Dokapon's hidden shame

   This is the very reason why I couldn't bring myself to score this game above an 8.2. I like this game, I really, really do. Weeks have gone by more dedicated to Dokapon Kingdom than to sleep. But it's almost all been with at least one other player.

   A la Mario Party, the game allows you to play against CPU-controlled players. Additionally, each player can be turned back and forth between human or CPU-control mid-game." This feature is great in theory, since it means you can play out the rest of the game if Player 3 moves out of town or something. But in practice, the CPU players SSSSUUUUUUCCCKKKK!!!!! Even at the easiest of the three possible difficulty settings, CPU players always seem to get exactly what they need at exactly the right time. Go ahead and throw in one CPU player to keep it interesting, but make sure he or she is outnumbered by real players willing to cooperate in case it decides to overthrow humanity.

Always leave them wanting more

   The only other REAL complaint I have with this game is that it felt like the game wasn't quite finished. What was burnt onto the disc is quality stuff, but there could've been more. Online multiplayer with chatting should've been there. One or two more board maps wouldn't have been hard to add. More classes, a higher maximum level than 99, 5 or 6 players, character alliances, taxis between continents (or at least passage through the Bering Strait), more hairstyles and enemy designs... just more overall.

   I do really like this game. It's one of my favorites. But what I would really like to see is a WiiWare expansion (or series of expansions) that beef it up a little more. Mega Man 9 proved it could be done, so let's keep this dance party a-dancin'! Sure, that sort of leaves PS2 owners in the dark, but that's the tradeoff for using ancient technology, right?

       ... Bran