An RPG played like a grid like board game? The concept used in Dokapon Journey for the Nintendo DS isn’t really a new one. A childhood friend of mine used to draw up maps on a big piece of grid paper and from there he’ll populate it with monsters, traps and most importantly, he maintained stats of each and everyone of our characters. A pen and paper Dokapon Journey!
Now he forsaw that while someone is engaging a monster/trap, the rest will have to wait their turn to roll the dice and move their characters along the map. To counter this, he allowed concurrent movement, so unless your dice roll brings you to the same tile, you can basically move about the map without waiting for the previous guy to finish his turn. His ability to multitask as a pseudo dungeon master helped in this aspect as well.
Unfortunately, Dokapon Journey is nothing like that and if you ask me, it can be a whole lot of wait. You have to wait while your A.I characters (you can’t call them allies, more like competitors) battle someone, you’ll have to wait when the A.I character encounters treasure, or enters a shop. Basically the game applies the entire turn based aspect to everyone, and it’s transparent (you get to see what an A.I character buys from a shop!)
Patient gamers can get something out of Dokapon Journey’s inherent boardgame fun but does who want more meat in the form of action? You are better off getting some real-time RPG action. But if you want the game, check it out here.
