The sixth game in the Dokapon series, Dokapon Kingdom is a turn-based RPG/board game hybrid developed by Sting Entertainment and released for the PlayStation 2 in 2007, with an English localization released by Atlus USA for the PS2 the following year and an Updated Re-release coming to the Nintendo Wii in 2010. It is a Video Game Remake of the second Super Famicom game, Dokapon 3-2-1, and thus features a similar structure and Excuse Plot while significantly overhauling the gameplay to its modern incarnation.
An Updated Re-release titled Dokapon Kingdom: Connect was released for the Nintendo Switch on April 13, 2023 in Japan, featuring online multiplayer functionality, with Idea Factory releasing the game internationally a month later. A PC release of Connect released on Steam on September 7, 2023.
Like most other Dokapon games, the goal of the game is to win the rights to rule the titular Dokapon Kingdom (and Princess Penny's hand in marriage, potentially) by getting rich enough to out-value your companions/competitors. How do you do that exactly? Work your way across the continents beating the everloving crap out of any monster who dares stand in your way, with any town and castle you rescue being added to your total value. Given that this is Dokapon, you're also actively encouraged to beat up, cheat, steal from, and all-in-all backstab your "companions" to gain an advantage and fight tooth-and-nail to come out on top. There's also something about a dark overlord trying to conquer Dokapon, but who cares when you can get abducted by aliens and beat up adorable, mysterious monsters or even other heroes for fun and profit?
"What do ya wanna trope?"
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- 100% Completion: There's a lot to unlock for the Gallery. This includes 24 jobs (male and female), 126 monsters, 67 weapons, 40 shields, 33 accessories, 80 local items and 28 hairstyles.
- Action Girl: Unlike the original 3-2-1, where only the Magician is a female, any adventurer can be female (and take any job), and they can slay several monsters (and even other adventurers).
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
- While items cost the same everywhere, and stays at an inn are based on the town's level and are only a small fraction of even towns on the starting continent, the end-game weapons' costs are comparable to an entire town's income.
- Gold amounts for many events are based on the number of weeks that elapsed instead of how much the service might actually cost, severity of the event, etc. This means that some events like Gutz the Black Smith and Robo-Sassin can start to become prohibitively expensive and bad events like Doctor Exiles and Epidemics can easily send players into deep debt if the story mode progresses at a slow pace. On the other hand, good events and the Alchemist's Alchemy will also give you more money the deeper you are into a game.
- Adaptational Deviation: In 3-2-1, it was Demon King Rich who is in charge of the Devil transformation. Here, it's Weber, an entirely different NPC.
- Adaptational Modesty: Connect does this with several female characters:
- Modesty Shorts were added to the female Warrior and Acrobat class outfits to make them less Stripperiffic.
- Chance Boutique's outfit now covers her cleavage and navel.
- The Banshee, Medusa and Mermaid lines of monsters have their chests fully covered, with the Mermaid line also having their stomachs covered.
- Adaptational Species Change:
- In 3-2-1, Mitch Digger is a blond man who vaguely resembles Ken from Street Fighter that employs anthropomorphic moles to dig up hot springs. In Kingdom, Mitch Digger is an anthropomorphic mole.
- In the original 3-2-1, Rico Jr. was more like a human with a tanned skin tone. Rico Jr. in Kingdom, on the other hand, is now clearly a demon like his father.
- In 3-2-1, the collector was a small boy; in Kingdom, it's Musashi, who's a bird.
- Afro Asskicker: You can turn your character into one by purchasing the appropriate hairstyle magazine from Kira and returning it to the barber at Dokapon Castle. The male version even includes a stylish headband.
- Alchemy Is Magic: The Alchemist is one of the prestige classes that requires the Magician class to be mastered. They have high Magic gains in their natural stat growths and their primary mechanics are their ability to duplicate items in their inventory and generate additional money in combat.
- Alien Abduction: One of several random events involves a UFO transporting a player aboard, removing them from the board until their next turn. When returned, all of the player's stats will permanently be either increased or decreased slightly.
- All or Nothing: The Gold Bug item will double or take your money on hand. If you are in debt, it will either erase your debt or double it.
- All Swords Are the Same: Downplayed. Adventurers will either slash or thrust with a sword depending on its type, but otherwise all of them have only either of those two attacking animations. Only bows will give the adventurers truly different attacking animations in shooting the opponent.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: A few of the possible prizes in the Casino are several hairstyles that can't otherwise be obtained. Aside from an exceedingly rare hairstyle contest that gives some money, they don't do anything aside from giving your character a unique look.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- In most battles, Deathblocks and Revivals are consumed in battle when a player would take lethal damage. The rare Coliseum weekly event pulls all players to the Coliseum to pit everyone into a fight among themselves and Comacho, an enemy whose stats are always double the highest of each stat among the players, meaning he'll likely win the event. Any players who use Deathblocks or Revivals during the event will still retain these items in their inventory after the event is over, ensuring that they won't lose valuable items from Comacho burning through them all.
- Starting from the English PlayStation 2 version, the game will auto-save at the end of a week, even if you choose not to save there.
- Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Downplayed. Magicians don’t wear armor, but they can equip shields. They can get as much defense as any other job from shields.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: The Spellsword's aptly named offensive battle skill, Pierce, spends a turn in exchange for negating an opponent's defense on their next attack.
- Artificial Brilliance:
- The AI (on any difficulty, see below) not only know how and when to use their field magic, they also know that just because you're a Darkling, doesn't mean it's good idea to pick a fight with the guy with three Deathblocks, and Soul Fire active with >500 attack.
- In general, the AI does everything to avoid Darklings such as entering dungeons, stocking up on and using Vanishes and Spinners, and even intentionally giving up against monsters to keep the Darkling from engaging them.
- Attack Reflector: For magic, Mirror and (Super) Bounce. For physical attacks, choosing Counter. The shields Mirror Shield, Binder and Metal Guard also have a chance to reflect attacks when you use Defend.
- Automatic Crossbow: When an adventurer Strikes or uses Mirror Image with a crossbow, they fire 3 consecutive arrows without reloading.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The combat option, Strike. When successful, it deals massive damage but if the target uses Counter, they'll avoid the attack and deal back massive damage in return. It's a high risk, high reward that can serve as a powerful tool early on but many bosses and special enemies, and a number of late game enemies are specifically coded to always use Counter against the player's Strike.
- The Dancing Blade weapon gives a huge boost to the user's attack, but it comes with the cost of randomly causing the user to perform a Strike instead of the intended action. Combined with the flaws of Strike mentioned above, this makes Dancing Blade a very dangerous weapon as it can cause you to die.
- The longer a game drags on, the less useful the Darkling becomes. Winning the game is determined solely by total worth, and becoming the Darkling forces you to give up everything you own except for Castles. In the early game this is manageable and advantageous since all players have relatively little net worth and you get more benefit out of steamrolling your opponents with brute force, but in the late game you're essentially putting yourself at a disadvantage for the sole purpose of hoping you can use Dark Arts to drag other players down with you. It's especially bad if you wait until the final Chapter, as the player who beats the Final Boss also wins every single unclaimed town at the same time, making even summoning monsters disadvantageous.
- Hero and Robo Knight are cool jobs with some unique effects but in a standard Story Mode game, are impractical to work towards due to their steep requirements to unlock in addition to not being proportionally more effective compared to other jobs. The Robo Knight has a nice Field Skill of activating Multi Crystal effect with a good chance, but it has poor stat growths that focus on DF (the resident worst stat in the game) and Battle Skills that are only situationally useful. While the Hero fares better with several desirable qualities such as a high weekly salary and a good set of Battle Skills, it requires 6 other classes to be mastered and an uncommon drop from a rare enemy to unlock, meaning that it'll likely only appear as the game is ending.
- The Criminal Studs gives you massive stat boosts that's just shy of Dokapon Crown, an accessory that is difficult to obtain. The catch? It only activates when you are wanted, so you'll actively want to fail to rob shops to make good use of its buffs. It's very unreliable and the buffs are not insanely powerful unlike the Overlord's Crown's either, so this accessory is more like a Bragging Rights Reward for defeating the Robo-Sassin than anything else.
- Back from the Dead:
- Adventurers always revive between 1-3 turns after dying.
- Revival brings an adventurer back to life with half of their max HP. The same applies to the Acrobat's field skill, Play Dead, and the Angel Chocker accessory.
- Background Music Override: During the Darkling's turns, their theme replaces the theme of the over-world/dungeon they're in.
- Badass Adorable: The player-controlled characters are cute anime-looking heroes who defeat monsters by the dozens.
- Balance Buff:
- In 3-2-1, using Defensive Magic completely negated offensive magic regardless of the magic used or the stats of the fighters, making Magic and the Mage class Awesome, but Impractical since there's really not much to do with a high MG stat in battle, only being able to bully other players with Field Magic (which they cannot do in dungeons). This was fixed in Kingdom so that Defensive Magic merely reduces the damage inflicted by Magic (although there is also passive production from Defensive Magic even when they're not used unlike the other modern games, making magic even worse in late game battles where the opponents have stuffs like M Guard DX), allowing players with high MG to still be able to do something even if their combat plan is extremely predictable.
- Speaking of Field Magic, in the original game, Field Magic could not be used at all inside dungeons. This was also fixed in Kingdom.
- Players now gain stat bonuses to every stat (including their class's preferred stat) upon leveling up in addition to Bonus Stats, compared to the original where characters only gained 2 points in their preferred stat for each level before Bonus Stats, and this is not getting into many more things like character passive skills and job specialty bonus. The overall stats of enemies have been bloated considerably to account for this (in addition to many new high-statted equipment), such as the Final Boss gaining over double its original stats and a 60% increase in HP.
- Kingdom gives the Darkling much more control over their influence on the game state, with the semi-random Event option being reworked into Dark Arts that you can choose from manually. This was in turn balanced by the addition of Dark Points, so a Darkling must choose wisely when to spend and what to spend on.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: Mostly subverted. It's possible for a player with the Monk class (or any other) to fight without weapons, but monks tend to get the greatest bonuses from fist weapons.
- Bland-Name Product: The drink items that temporarily boost a particular stat when consumed appear to be named after real-life soft drinks. Invigorade is likely based on Gatorade
(or Powerade), Stl-Bru on Irn-Bru, Jesta on Josta, and Phyoose on Fuze. - Bloodless Carnage: Adventurers use bladed weapons and crossbows while monsters use claws and fangs to kill each other, yet not a drop of blood is spilled. Justified in that the game is rated E10+.
- Bonus Dungeon: Daunting Mountain (and by extension, Castle in the Clouds) in Llano. It is completely optional, has enemies that are stronger than those in Llano, and contains an item that allows you to get a secret job, along with a lot of loot spaces containing gold and unique equipments. The Sunken Shrine can also be this if Chapter 5's quest doesn't involve fighting an enemy in it.
- Boring, but Practical:
- While the Ninja's field skill to use double items isn't particularly Ninja-like, nor is it flashy like some of the other field skills, it's an incredibly versatile skill that works well with the Ninja's large 12-slot item inventory. Being able to heal off status/lost health while still being able to use your spinner in the same turn is pretty useful.
- Fighting low-level monsters is a good way to earn job levels, since job progression is based on the number of battles won. You will still get progress towards a job even if the opponent gives up.
- Of all the Dark Arts that the Darkling gets access to, Castle Panic is fairly threatening despite its cost. It allows you to pay 160 Dark Art points to take control of a random castle. The thing is, this is the only way to steal castles in the game, so other players can't steal the castle back unless they also become a Darkling. Also, unless the castle had a value of 0 at the time, this is the only option Darklings have to add to their value instead of removing everyone else's. The only problem is that Castle Panic is the second-most expensive Dark Art, so if they have bad luck getting Dark Art points, they might not get enough points in 2 weeks to use it.
- Are you in last place and need to go back to Dokapon Castle (or the surrounding areas) pronto? Pop a Contract. You can just decline to become a Darkling when prompted, essentially giving you a free teleport.
- M Guard DX may not have flashy effects like charming or stunning the opponent or raising all your stats, but a 90% passive protection against Offensive Magic means that you don't have to worry about them anymore besides Rust and Banish, even if your MG is low (as you will probably never invest in it unless you are going for a Magician build).
- Boss in Mook's Clothing: Rico Jr. after they become a Degraded Boss after Chapter 4. Their stats are equal to the average of all the players, so they level up as players level up and get stronger as they get better items. They can be as strong or stronger than the actual bosses.
- Bottomless Magazines: Crossbows have infinite ammo.
- Bowdlerise: Connect changed the clothes on the female characters, such as Chance Boutique, the Female Warrior, and the Female Acrobat, by covering the former's chest and navel, the latter two's legs. It also changed the Z-Plague's Japanese name from Korori to Batan, likely to avoid connections with COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Overlord Rico's last words:Overlord Rico: Gruh... Not... again! I cannot lose to humans! Oh... No! Wait...! I-I need... more... (Beat) I need more voice lines!
- Build Like an Egyptian: Aphrike, the region that resembles Africa on the map, has the Pyramid dungeon located roughly where Egypt would be found.
- Bullying a Dragon: Any adventurer who attempts to screw over another one who might be 3 times over their own level and may have late-game equipment can expect to get Curb-Stomped in revenge for their troubles.
- Call-Back: In the intro, there is a photo of Princess Puririn from 3-2-1.
- Cap:
- Job levels go up to 6.
- Depending on the job, adventurers can carry between 6-12 items and 4-12 field magic.
- The maximum amount of cash you can have is 999,999,999G. The easiest way to hit this is to use Alchemist's field skill to duplicate Magic Medicine and then sell them.
- Stat points can go up to 999. Increasing them in a certain way at this point may cause the stat to overflow.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Overlord Rico, who outright stated that he wanted to Take Over the World because that's what Evil Overlords do.
- Cast from Hit Points:
- The Banish offensive magic spell, which lowers its user's HP to 1 in exchange for instantly killing their opponent.
- The Afterburn skill, which reduces your HP in exchange for massively increasing your stats, but only after the battle.
- Catch and Return: If someone with a bow Strikes and is Countered, the opponent catches an arrow and hurls it back at their would-be attacker.
- Class Change Level Reset: A variation. The Jobs' Mastery Level are independent from the player's level, starting from 1 and increases after every few wins regardless of enemy level.
- Color-Coded Elements: Fire is red, lightning is yellow, and Ice is blue.
- Combat Medic: The Cleric job, which has the Holy Aura field skill, which sometimes heals up to half of their max HP at the start of their turn. Their battle skills are Heal, which fully heals their HP, and Prayer, which heals half their HP and cures some status effects.
- Comeback Mechanic: The Darkling class, which is only given to an adventurer who has been in last place for two weeks. Said class has absurdly high stats and can potentially take away their opponents’ towns and castles.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: To put it simply, the only difference between difficulties is "how much this AI player will cheat." In Connect, the Easy and Normal CPUs are changed to be a bit less cheaty, but still pretty obvious. The only solace is that the computer don't collude against you, and will screw each other over just as much as they do you. Also, even on the hardest difficulty, the computer doesn't know what items or magic are the best, or how to make the most money (which is the key to winning, not how many good deeds you do).
- The "press to stop the spinner" is fake; no matter when you hit it, it will land on a pre-determined number or item. The computer on Normal or Hard has an increased chance of landing on whatever number they want (i.e. the exact number of spaces it takes to reach the next town). In an amusing In-Universe example, the Robo-Knight (an AI-themed class) has the field ability "GOTO", which (albeit randomly) allows you to do the same thing.
- The computer (including NPC monsters) can also change what defense move they are using based on your offense move. Against higher-level monsters or Hard opponents, they will usually use either defend or magic, but if you use Strike, they will use Counter.
- The Chimpy enemy from the Chimpy outbreak event will be able to use Attack and Escape even if you use Restrict on them, something not even the Dark Overlord can do, just to make sure they can pass the virus to you.
- Continuing Is Painful: You lose a lot of money and/or items when you die. Alternatively, you can end up losing a piece of equipment, which is even more painful if said equipment is rare and powerful. And if you want to come back faster, you've got to fork over even more cash. This is half the reason you give up if you know you can't take another hit; you'll still lose some money or items, but not nearly as much as you'd lose by getting killed. The other half is because you can lose towns if you are defeated by anyone, especially another player who can then make the difference.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Boss monsters are immune to Drain, Swap and Debug, and Banish is outright unusable against them. They also automatically counter when you strike. However, they are not immune to status ailments or a weapon's special effects.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: One option to punish the loser in a PVP duel is doodling on their character's face. While most of the randomly chosen doodles look suitably embarrassing, one places a giant X in the middle of their face, resembling a badass scar more than anything. Also, the "prank" hairstyles are meant to be humilations, but they are actually even more valuable than some of the Fashion Mag hairstyles in certain hairstyle contests.
- Cool, but Inefficient:
- Super Bounce, the Darkling defensive magic. It reflects back magic attacks for 4 times what it would deal to you. The problem is that your stats are so high with all the Darkling equipment that it'll usually reflect back nothing, since you're either not going to get hurt anyway, or are going to be one-shotted regardless by a Crazy-Prepared rival. It can be practical if stolen by a normal player, but the Darkling's other equipment is arguably better. It also doesn't provide any passive defense like Bounce, and you're usually fine with M Guard DX most of the time, which has a protection rate so high that you don't ever need to press the Defensive Magic button again (besides against opponents with Sleepy, Rust and Banish).
- The Robo Knight's Copy skill. It copies the stats of an opponent if they are higher than yours. This sounds useful on paper, but by the time you get access to the Robo Knight, you'll be at such a high level it's unlikely you'll ever use it. It does have some niche against Darklings, Comacho and Robo-sassin (who will always be much more powerful than the most powerful player), though.
- Cool Shades: The Punk hairdo gives your character over-the-top shades.
- Critical Existence Failure: Downplayed with adventurers, who look tired when their HP is low. Played straight with monsters, though.
- Critical Status Buff: The Monk class's passive ability increases your stats when your HP decreases. Which gives the "leave" button in towns a purpose.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- The Darkling against any adventurer lacking the best late-game equipment and several Revives and/or Deathblocks.
- Any adventurer who has late-game equipment and is overpowered compared to the others. Any Level 10 adventurer who thinks it's a great idea to target a Level 50 one can expect to be killed for their efforts.
- Damage Over Time: The Poison and Z-Plague status effects. The former can lower a player's HP to 1 at most, the latter can kill them. You will also take damage in the Sunken Shrine without some sort of protection.
- Damage Reduction: Defend and Harden reduce physical damage and most defensive magic spells reduce magical damage.
- Dark Action Girl: The female Darkling; Just like their male counterpart, they are an adventurer turned evil, and they possess stats and equipment that make them almost unkillable.
- Deal with the Devil: Extradimensional troublemaking demon-thing Weber can give you a Contract that will warp you to a "Dark Space" and transform you into the Darkling in exchange for all your items, field magic, gold, and towns, though this is the only thing he can give you that isn't horribly detrimental. He will only do this, however, if you're in dead last and have the Darkling Bat above you.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Played with. Getting Cherubs upon dying, while not as punishing as the Dark Angels or the Grim Reaper, will still take away 1/4 of a player's on-hand money or 1 item. Getting the Dark Angels can also sometimes just result in a harmless prank. Averted if you get the Grim Reaper since you'll lose all items, all money or even towns. Played straight if the player loses an item that is unimportant to them.
- Death Is Cheap: Revivals, Angel Chokers, and the Acrobat's Play Dead field skill can all bring an adventurer and Rico Jr. back to life immediately after being killed with half of their max HP. Regardless, adventurers will automatically revive within 1-3 days after being killed, depending on whether their death animation involved Cherubs, Dark Angels, or the Grim Reaper.
- Death Is Not Permanent: The longest an adventurer can stay dead for is a mere three days (turns).
- Death or Glory Attack: The standard Strike command. Much more damage than the basic Attack, but if the enemy uses Counter, then it misses completely and earns you a smack in the face. Even worse, some enemies are guaranteed to Counter if you Strike.
- Defend Command: Defend is an option that is available to the current defending player defending in the battle, which typically raises up a shield or causes a monster to assume a blocking pose. It's the most effective option at reducing the damage from an Attack, but isn't as effective against Offensive Magic or Strikes.
- Degraded Boss:
- All the boss monsters you fight in towns show up later as normal enemies. There are very few "unique" bosses, one notable exception is Overlord Rico.
- Rico Jr. becomes a Boss in Mook's Clothing after their first defeat at the end of Chapter 4.
- Delinquent Hair: One of the hairstyles is "Punk", which will give the character a mohawk.
- Demoted to Extra:
- Wabbit (Wiwi) was one of the playable characters in many previous games (Dokapon! Sword of Fury, DX), but is the Metal Slime here.
- Wallace was the main antagonist of Sword of Fury and DX, but is only an Optional Boss here that can easily be ignored in the Story Mode if you don't do the King's sidequests.
- Desecrating the Dead: Monsters and adventurers can change the hair style of the adventurer that they just killed in a fight, or draw on their face.
- Developer's Foresight:
- Normally, if you successfully rob a town, the major will accept their defeat. But if the town has no money, they instead mock you.
- A castle will not let you invest in it anymore if the investment has reached 999,999,999G.
- Roche will clear your debt if you have it and lose to him.
- If the beggar is encountered when the player is in debt, they'll give them an item instead.
- If you have no towns when clearing a chapter, the King will be shocked and ask you to have some towns next time as he gives you a castle worth nothing.
- The gate will not grant you a pass to Heck if you have no towns and calls you a mortal.
- There is a Darkling player clone, and they can be encountered when fighting other players' clones in Heck (it's normally impossible for Darklings to fight their clones).
- Devil's Pitchfork: Imps, Gremlins, and Incubi are all demonic monsters that attack players with mini pitchforks.
- Digital Bikini: The Connect release contains a lot of censored graphics, including covering up every bit of skin (to the point where characters are wearing full-body suits instead), and even Mermaid smiles for some reason. A video comparison can be seen here.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- Any piece of gear from the Darkling grants end-game stat bonuses and can be obtained as early as week 4 or 5 by having two cooperative players get a Darkling to Strike as the other player Counters.
- An early Wabbit event can grant a player the Wabbit Shield, which greatly boosts all stats by 20 points and HP by 200 points, or roughly 20 or so levels of stats.
- With some luck or Save Scumming, the Casino Cave in Chapter 2 can grant a player several strong weapons and shields, the best of which are the Dokapon Sword and Shield, that can carry them to the end of the game. These require huge amounts of money to bet, but the Casino has four levels of bets, the lowest being 5000g, and is rigged in the player's favor to at least break even at worst.
- Dracolich: The Zombie Dragons, which are mainly encountered from Chapter 7 onward.
- Dub Personality Change: Rico Jr. sounds pretty cool and calm in the Japanese version, but in the English version, he's much more of a Large Ham.
- Dump Stat: The defense (DF) stat is outclassed by the HP stat in increasing effective health. Level ups grant 10 health, but 1 DF doesn't mitigate enough damage to save 10 health. Most of your defense can instead come from equipping strong shields, so that points can be focused on other stats.
- Easter Egg: There's an island with a tree near the bottom-right of Llano with a tree. If a player checks it, then the credits start rolling.
- Escape Rope: The Field Warp, which lets an adventurer immediately exit the dungeon they’re currently in.
- Escort Mission: The end of Chapters 4 and 6, where adventurers must get the designated NPC to Dokapon Castle (Chapter 4) or to the second floor of the Pyramid dungeon in Aphrike (Chapter 6). Adventurers can steal the NPC by beating whoever has them or by stopping on the space they're on if the adventurer holding them dies from other means.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Chance Boutique has a French accent and drops the below mentioned Gratuitous French.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Tower of Rabble, where the player first fights Overlord Rico.
- Existential Horror: Downplayed. One of the AI quotes at the start of their turn if they're in last place is “This world doesn’t make any sense!”
- Experience Points: Adventurers level up after earning a certain amount of experience points. Said amount needed to level up increases per level up.
- Face–Heel Turn: Players will invoke this upon accepting the Darkling Class.
- Failure Gambit:
- While luck-based, Roche will erase an adventurer's debt if they lose to him.
- If an adventurer is in danger of having to fight a Darkling or Robo-sassin and doesn't have Vanish or the skill Escape, a legitimate strategy is to get into a fight with another player or monster and then give up. This puts whoever gave up in time out, which prevents them from getting into fights for a whole turn, thus saving the adventurer from fighting them. Plus, giving up against a player is much less punishing than dying to a Darkling or Robo-sassin. Just hope that the space doesn't give you an event instead...
- Faking the Dead: When a player with the Acrobat class is killed, it will sometimes turn out to be fake, and they will revive with half their health.
- Fantasy Counterpart Map: The world map/game board that the game takes place on is a squished version of Earth. Each major continent has a different name (e.g. the continent that looks like Africa is called Aphrike) and its own castle and monsters, with Asiana (Asia) being the easiest continent due to being where the game begins, and Flinders (Australia) being the hardest continent.
- Fashion Show: One of the random weekly events. Any players who are not in the middle of a battle at the end of the week are called back to the castle and judged on their hairstyle. The winner gets a hefty cash prize.
- Fight Woosh: Happens before every fight.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: Both the in-battle offensive magic and field magic contain this trio of elements (Scorch, Chill, and Zap for offensive magic, Magma, Ice, and Volt for field magic). In-battle magic also has wind (Gust), dark (Rust, Banish and Sleepy) and light (Aurora).
- Game-Breaking Bug: At launch, the Japanese version of Connect would freeze whenever you load a save if one of the characters in it has the katakana "ソ" (so) in their name. It is thankfully fixed later.
- Gangplank Galleon: Battles that happen on an ocean space take place on the adventurer's ship.
- Geo Effects:
- Landing on snow spaces paralyzes adventurers who don't have the Warm Gloves accessory, preventing them from moving for 1 turn.
- Poison swamp spaces poison anyone who lands on them and doesn't have the Galoshes accessory, inflicting damage to them equal to their level at the start of their turn.
- Gender Flip: The Old Man event in the original game was a Grandpa God, but in this game the old man is a youthful female goddess using magic to disguise herself as an old man.
- Gentleman Thief: Risque the Bandit fits this to a tee, though his self-professed status as "bandit extraordinaire" is called into question by his somewhat dubious success rate.
- Get on the Boat: Downplayed. Players travel between Hallstatt and Clovis and between Clovis and Gunnbjorn via a boat, but its purely cosmetic and players move the same as they do on land. It's also possible to get to the continents via a Town Warp, Store Warp, or Guided Warp.
- Gladiator Subquest: The Coliseum Battle weekly event.
- Glass Cannon: The Ninja Class's stat growths give a large boost to AT and SP, meaning a player that becomes one will gain an increase in hitting power, accuracy, and evasion, but nothing that helps with actually taking damage if they get hit.
- Global Currency: Every nation uses gold coins as currency.
- Golden Snitch: The player who beats the final boss immediately claims all unowned towns simultaneously, which has the potential to immediately put them far into the lead if the competing players were not sufficiently thorough in stealing them for themselves.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: If a player has no weapon, they'll simply punch when attacking. Not recommended unless the player wants to challenge themselves, as there is no attack bonus for going barehanded.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Parodied to heck and back. Every instance of the word "hell" is replaced with "heck", but it's clearly Played for Laughs. Overlord Rico is the ruler of Heck, there are fiery canine enemies called Heckhounds, one enemy battle skill is named Heckfire...
- Gratuitous French: The Item Store shopkeeper Chance Boutique."Thanks, mon cheri!"
- The Grim Reaper: One will sometimes appear to drag an adventurer into the ground when they die, meaning that they'll be "resting" for 3 turns, and either lose one of the following: all money, all items, a piece of equipment, or a Town. However, sometimes two angels will come and stop it, and give the hero the least severe penalty instead.
H-R
- Hair Antennae: Kira the Merchant, a shop NPC who occasionally shows up, has these.
- Healing Factor: The Cleric job has the Holy Aura field skill, which has a random chance of healing up to half of an adventurer's health.
- Healing Potion: Potions, Elixirs, and some local items.
- Heal Thyself: Potions and some local items will heal half of an adventurer's max HP when consumed, while Elixirs and other local items will fully heal an adventurer's HP.
- Hell Hound: The Heckhound monster. Its Breath battle skill lowers an adventurer's HP by 1/6 and sometimes break their shield and their Refresh defensive magic can heal them. Ironically, their offensive magic spell is Chill.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Players can name themselves on top of renaming players who they've defeated in battle, though in Connect, the rename feature instead gives random names.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath:
- The default setting for all players; sure, you're trying to save the kingdom, but you are allowed, nay, encouraged, to: cheat your fellow adventurers, beat up your fellow adventurers, steal from your fellow adventurers, steal from the kingdom you're trying to save, and just generally be a heroic jerk as you get as much money as you can any way you can.
- The computer's taunts emphasize this as well. Count the number of times they say something not particularly nice at the beginning of their turn, and compare it to...well, anything else.
- Hide Your Lesbians: If a female character wins, the King states that he can't publicly marry two women. He has a... creative solution to this. He wants an heir, after all (He does, however, eventually relent and let his daughter marry a woman).
- Highly Visible Ninja: The Ninja prestige class, whose color remains just as vibrant as any other class you'd choose and whose class specialty (using 2 items in a single turn) has nothing to do with stealth.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: This can happen if one adventurer tries to assassinate one of the other adventurers by hiring the Robo-Sassin, woe to them if their target has at least twice the amount of money he was offered as the Robo-Sassin may (but not always) offer to betray his boss and go after the hiree instead.
- Honest John's Dealership: Dr. Exiles will randomly appear on an empty space to heal an adventurer’s HP and/or cure their status ailments. Regardless of the adventurer’s condition, he forces them to pay him money equal to 2,500G multiplied by the number of the current week, which is far too expensive and will likely put any player in debt.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: For the most part, the Darkling, thanks to its powerful equipment, the Robo-sassin, whose stats are 1.5 times the highest stats of the players, or the Coliseum event, which includes an enemy called Comacho whose stats are double the highest of the players. They can be won with plenty of Deathblocks/Revivals and certain skills (like Soul Fire), though.
- Hot Potato: The Cursed Items are these, which will cause serious negatives effects to happen to you unless you defeat another adventurer to force it on them or in the case of Blackmail, pay half of your on-hand money to pass it on to someone else.
- HP to One:
- The Nitroglycerin cursed item will do this if it explodes (which it has a random chance to every time the holder gets hit). Interestingly enough, it can also save you from a lethal attack by forcing the damage of the attack to become (your remaining HP -1), then explode to deal no damage.
- The Alchemist battle skill Debug, although it can fail and bosses are immune to it.
- The offensive magic spell Banish does this to its user in exchange for instantly killing its target should it succeed.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Some local food items can heal up to half or all of an adventurer's health.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: The different classes have different inventory sizes for both their items and spells, ranging from the maxed out at 12 to the small 6.
- Insta Kill Mook: Any monster with the Banish offensive magic spell or the enemy-exclusive Wail or Power Poke skills.
- Instant Sedation: The Sleep Bow weapon, which has sedatives in the arrows it's loaded with. It can put an opponent to sleep even if they successfully defend an attack from it.
- Item Caddy:
- The Magician (field magic) and the Prestige Class Ninja (regular items) are the jobs built around this, able to use two items in their select category per turn.
- The Hero, the game's Infinity Plus One Class, can use one item and one Field Magic in a single turn (which is helped out by having 12 slots for both), though it can't use 2 of the same category per turn.
- The Alchemist class could be considered a variation on this, as their field skill will randomly duplicate an item or field magic at the beginning of their turn. The Alchemy ability is great for making money quickly as well. However, to balance this, they have a small item inventory of 6 and have to carefully manage their belongings so that they can make the best use of their field skill.
- Item-Drop Mechanic: Monsters have a chance of dropping an item when killed and will always drop an item if they give up.
- Job System: A pretty straight example of one. Each job gains skills specific to their class, and has an innate passive field ability. Stat gains upon leveling up are tied to the class. Job levels are gained by winning a certain number of battles as the class, and mastery of the job provides a permanent bonus point to a stat upon level up, no matter what class the player is. Prestige Classes can be unlocked by mastering other jobs and/or getting items from dungeons.
- Kill Steal: Enemy trying to capture a town you've got your eye on liberating? Just swoop in and finish off the enemy yourself, and "thank" the other player for "softening them up for you"... by attacking them, too.
- Kingmaker Scenario: If someone turns Darkling near the endgame, they probably had no chance to win anyway, but they're in a good position to bomb the people in the lead and decide the final winner.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Adventurers can attempt to steal from any store, freed town, or even Kira the Merchant to get equipment, items, field magic, etc. This can backfire though and make said adventurer wanted for a whole week.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Leveling up fully heals an adventurer's HP.
- Lighter and Softer: The artstyle of this game is more bright and cutesy compared to both 3-2-1 (the original game) and World (the previous game).
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Zig-zagged. Magicians start with Pickpocket (as do Warriors and Thieves), which has a measly power multiplier of 1.5. Combining this with them only having 3 MG at level 1 means that they can't do much damage at the start. But then, after some level-ups and gaining better offensive magic, they start to dish out large amounts of damage, especially with enemies lacking defensive magic prior to Chapter 3. However, they start suffering again in later chapters due to enemies (and most likely other players) having defensive magic that drastically reduces their damage, seals their magic commands, or even reflect all of their damage back at them. Warriors meanwhile do stay consistently good throughout the game due to physical damage being more reliable.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: In addition to the many human characters among the cast, several of the NPCs are anthropomorphic animals, including an excavating mole, a cat wizard shopkeeper, a dog clergymen, and a tax-collecting stork.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Princess Penny is as traditionally feminine as it gets, but she's more than willing to be married to a female player if they end up winning the game.
- Lost Technology: To unlock the Robo Knight class, the player will need to find a tablet aptly called "Lost Technology" somewhere in the Sunken Shrine. The tablet depicts ancient knowledge capable of turning one's body into metal and sure enough, becoming a Robo Knight turns your character into a robotic version of themselves.
- The Lost Woods: The dungeon between Clovis and Llano, which is aptly called Lost Forest.
- Luck-Based Mission: Oh, where to start on this one...
- Trying to level up? Even if the opponent is the same level (or higher) as you, they'll randomly give up, denying you any experience. On the bright side, monsters giving up on their own (that is, not forced by a Glory from Hero) will always give a rarer drop, which often includes very useful items or even equipments.
- When an AI player does this to you, though, it's a good sign. You know that debt that Dr. Exiles forced on you? It's not your debt anymore. Those dangerous cursed items Weber gave you? You can finally get rid of them and end your suffering. If you don't have a debt or cursed items, and the opponent also doesn't have much money or any item you're interested in, slamming them with two random status ailments works just fine.
- You also still will be credited with experience towards your job class even if the opponent gives up.
- Trying to keep out of debt? The moment the game decides to screw you over, expect a visit from Dr. Exiles, who will take a random amount of money, possibly forcing you into debt. Good luck with that if you have the least experience.
- Or Weber, who often appears to give you a cursed item when you least expect it. Especially Blackmail, which may activate at any time. If one falls into your hand when you have debt or you are sealed, you are screwed.
- Evasion is random. It's fairly common to see town monsters evade your normal attack and then kill you immediately afterwards even if you have way higher SP than them. Not even the computers can avoid this.
- Roche is a double-whammy. If you have debt, he'll actually take it off of you, provided he ever appears for you. If you don't, expect to lose big.
- You are only allowed to use the Skeleton Key before the roulette shows up. Red Loot Spaces also randomly choose results from the result pool. So it's entirely possible to use Skeleton Key one Red Loot Space expecting to find stuffs like Magic Medicine or Aura Knuckle, only to be given only bad results.
- Trying to level up? Even if the opponent is the same level (or higher) as you, they'll randomly give up, denying you any experience. On the bright side, monsters giving up on their own (that is, not forced by a Glory from Hero) will always give a rarer drop, which often includes very useful items or even equipments.
- Magic Knight: The Spellsword job requires mastering the Warrior and Magician classes to unlock and gets +2 points in Attack and Magic per level up. This makes the Spellsword versatile in whether to deal physical or magic damage in battle.
- Mascot Mook: Like in World, Wiwi, known as Wabbit here, is a special monster fought in certain events. It keeps its playable incarnations' ability to run away from battles.
- Maximum HP Reduction: The Field Magic Down and the Battle Skill Virus can also reduce your maximum HP in addition to the other four stats.
- Mercy Mode:
- The game will sometimes take pity on players who are in debtnote , or who have neither a weapon or shield note .
- Risque the Bandit has a higher chance of succeeding in his heist if you are ranked lower than your target.
- The Darkling class entirely might be considered an example of this, as a player must be in last place for two consecutive weeks to be able to become the Darkling.
- Metal Slime: Wabbits are rare enemies that only spawn for an early game side quest in story mode and a rare weekly event called Wabbit Explosion. Their stats are matched to the player's level, they typically are sturdy enough to take at least two hits to kill (made worse by the fact that they automatically select Counter if you attempt to Strike them, and they also have the Sleepy spell to put you to sleep unless you use Magic Guard), and they have a high chance to Escape battle. Defeating them grants the player a small chance to earn the Wabbit Shield, one of the strongest shields in the game that boosts all stats by a large amount. Be vewwy vewwy quiet when hunting them.
- Minidress of Power: The female Monk sports the miniskirt and top variety.
- Minigame Zone: The Casino Cave. The easiest way to get the item necessary to unlock the Acrobat Prestige Class is to win it at the slot machine here, making it easy to get
sidetracked. - Mirror Boss:
- The Doppelganger enemies which can turn themselves into a copy of a character, with their stats and abilities.
- The beginning of the final dungeon pits the players against clones of themselves. The players must deduce which clone is them and defeat it, to advance deeper into the final dungeon. note
- Mole Miner: Mitch Digger is a variation on this trope, being a mole with a jackhammer. He can use it to attempt to dig a hot spring near on of your towns, increasing its value if he succeeds.
- Mooks Ate My Equipment: The Big Bug can be forced onto adventurers by Weber. Firstly, it takes up an item slot, which can force an adventurer to toss one of their other items. Secondly, as long as an adventurer has it, then it will sometimes eat a random item or field magic in their inventory at the start of their turn. The only way to get rid of it is to either let it eat the last item/field magic in an adventurer's inventory, or defeat another adventurer and force it onto them.
- Money for Nothing: The main goal of the game is to have the most money at the end. After purchasing new weapons, armor, and spells in each region, players will get far more money than what items will cost. Even the few places in the game where players can dump their money such as Castle investments and the Casino just result in the players getting more money.
- Money Spider: Nearly all monsters in the game drop money, which can be handwaved in-game because the entire kingdom of Dokapon is obsessed with money.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- A good number of the female versions of the character classes (Warrior, Thief, Monk, Darkling) show off revealing skirts and a good amount of skin. The Acrobat female appears more how a dancer would dress in-game.
- Also Chance Boutique, with her revealing corset.
- National Stereotypes:
- The world map is a barely-modified version of Earth, and the mayors of the towns in each continent match up roughly with stereotypes from their real-world counterparts.
- Chance Boutique is a lusty, heavily-accented French stereotype.
- Nerf:
- In 3-2-1, you can raise a Town's level as much as you want in a single visit (to either the town itself or the tax office) as long as you have the money for it. In Kingdom, you can now only raise a Town's level once per visit.
- In 3-2-1, the player in last can always choose to become a Darkling as long as they go to the designated space (or use a Contract). In addition, the Darkling's duration fluctuates depending on how poorly the player in last was doing before becoming the Darkling, with possible transformation periods of over four weeks in severe cases. In Kingdom, Darklingdom is strictly always two weeks, and the player in last must stay in last for two weeks before becoming eligible for Darklingdom. The availability of Contracts was also scaled back, with them only being distributed by Weber rather than appearing on random treasure spaces. Even then, Weber may still give bad items to the player.
- The Ice DX Field Magic was a One-Hit Kill in the original game, dealing 9999 damage to its targets. In Kingdom, it's "merely" one of the high-tier magic spells that won't deal much damage if the user's MG is low.
- Paralysis went from "make the target unable to move for 2~4 turns and can't even trigger events or battles unless they use a Panacea or jump into a battle with another person or monster" to "stop at the space you're on for one turn."
- News Travels Fast: In Adventure, the King always finds out that the last big boss monster of the chapter has been defeated immediately after the fact.
- No Experience Points for Medic: Using Heal or Prayer does not give any experience points. It does contribute to a weekly salary bonus if used enough, though.
- No Hero Discount:
- Played straight with shops except on Saturdays, when every shop has a sale.
- Subverted in that you do not need to pay to rest at your towns/castles. Other players do.
- Noob Cave: In Story Mode, the players begin the game on a separate, smaller map for the Prologue, which help introduce some of the game's mechanics to the player such as how the spinner works and what different board spaces do. The south half of the board is filled with spaces to gather equipment, money, and items while the north half is filled with spaces to fight Kobolds, the weakest enemy.
- No-Sell: The Robo Knight's Harden offensive battle skill has a chance to nullify a physical attack. The Acrobat's Play Dumb does the opposite, nullifying magic attacks when it works.
- Not Quite Dead: Justified with Rico Jr., who always carries a Revival and thus never stays dead.
- Not the Intended Use: The Contract can also be used to just travel to Asiana; you don't have to become a Darkling, you can just reject Weber and he won't do anything to you.
- NPC Roadblock: The knights in Story Mode. From chapters 2-7, one will go away at the start of each chapter so that players can go to the next continent.
- Number of the Beast:
- The Darkling's Draco Blade and Demon Shield each provide 333 of their respective stat.
- Defeating Overlord Rico the first time earns you 6666 EXP.
- A certain late-game high level monster, Pazuzu, has exactly 666 HP.
- Old Beggar Test: There is a random event that has an old beggar ask for money; there is a chance it's actually the Goddess of Generosity in disguise. If it is the Goddess of Generosity and you gave money, you are rewarded with a rare item, otherwise you are punished with a status ailment.
- One-Hit Kill:
- The offensive magic Banish, unless the defender uses defensive magic.
- The Ninja battle skill Sneak Hit sometimes instantly kills their target.
- The enemy-only Wail and Power Poke skills also sometimes one-shot their target.
- The weapon Deadly Dagger sometimes instantly kills the target. It also works on bosses like Rico Jr..
- One Stat to Rule Them All: Speed (SP) affects several aspects of the game compared to other stats. It affects the ability to dodge and accurately land physical attacks in battle and field magic on the map. Less obviously, it also affects the damage that Strike deals as well as one's defense against Strike, meaning that for most battles, you aren't sacrificing damage to improve survivability.
- One-Time Dungeon: In Story Mode, players start in a small map in the Prologue that, once left, cannot be entered again. Though there are just Kobolds and the weakest equipments, and you also get basic equipments from the King if you leave it without them anyways.
- One-Winged Angel: At the end of the Story Mode, instead of fighting the heroes at the end of the Dark Castle, Overlord Rico enters the Dark Dimension to do this there while having the Demon's Guard guarding its entrance.
- Only in It for the Money: The players to some extent, but really the entire kingdom of Dokapon falls under this. The game states very plainly that the kingdom's inhabitants, from commoners up to the king himself, love money above all things.
- Ordinary Drowning Skills: When exploring the Sunken Shrine, your character will lose HP equal to their level every turn due to difficulty breathing underwater, unless they have certain accessories. They won't die from drowning damage, but this can put you in danger.
- Overlord Jr.: Rico Jr., Overlord Rico's son and self-proclaimed prince of darkness.
- Percent Damage Attack: Many battle skills deal damage based on the target's HP, and some of them also have an additional effect like destroying equipments or being a One-Hit Kill.
- Poor, Predictable Rock: Any AI opponent who doesn't cheat will usually play to their best stat and your weakest when deciding to use a physical or magical attack, and will rarely Strike or Counter. That doesn't mean "never", though...
- Power-Up Food: Common consumable drinks like Invigorade and Stl-Bru and some local items from the towns can raise one stat temporarily.
- Prayer Pose: Adventurers in the Cleric job do this after winning a fight.
- Precursors: Implied by the existence of the Lost Technology.
- Prestige Class: Eight of the eleven classes are prestige classes, with requirements ranging anywhere from just mastering any of the three starter classes, to mastering three other prestige classes and retrieving a MacGuffin from a dungeon-within-a-dungeon that can only be entered by first getting an uncommon Random Drop from a none-too-easy enemy.
- Princesses Prefer Pink: Penny, the King's daughter and princess of Dokapon Kingdom, wears a pink dress.
- Prongs of Poseidon: Mermen are aquatic monsters that fight with tridents.
- Pun: Krysta is full of these, all (appropriately) cat-related:
- "Which one do you purrfer?"
- "HSSSSSS! Meow I'm mad!"
- "Thank mew!"
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: The king states at the beginning that the one who weds Penny will be the next king, not the next ruler. Played for Laughs in the form of a Brick Joke. Apparently the King never thought there'd be any females who'd answer the call, realizing only at the very end.
- Purposely Over Powered: The Darkling Class. There's a reason only players in last place for a prolonged period are given the option of using it. They are given the best weapon and shield in the game, and it will take a very long time before other players get access to anything that comes close to their strength. Even then, the Darkling still has the Overlord's Crown, by far the best accessory in the game, which gives them a massive stat boost way above the closest-second, the Dokapon Crown. And if a player is fought by a Darkling, the Give Up option is disabled, meaning odds are the non-Darkling is going to die and lose something important. Along with this, the Darkling rolls 2 to 5 spinners each turn, making them much more mobile, and each turn, a Darkling gets points for their Dark Arts, which can screw over the other players in several ways (ranging from yanking them into combat to completely resetting their progress).
- Rain of Arrows: Downplayed. When an adventurer Strikes with a crossbow, they shoot three arrows at their target in succession.
- Random Event:
- When landing on Yellow Spaces, which usually initiate battle with an enemy, you may sometimes instead encounter an NPC.
- At the start of the week, there's a rare chance that an event may occur that either produces an immediate effect such as all towns get their value raised, or lasts until the end of the week. Unfortunately, it's the Boring, but Practical events, such as a 40% Store Sales, that you'll encounter the most, with the more interesting events such as Wabbit Season, Green Jr.'s card minigames, or the Coliseum Battle, only popping up once in a blue moon.
- There can also be negative weekly events like all shops closed, all towns going on strikes, towns losing money or a Chimpy outbreak, which fills random encounters with Chimpys, who have low stats but will most likely give you a virus that cannot be easily cured. In Normal Mode, there's another event involving Wallace suddenly appearing to take over a town and he'll jump from towns to towns and fill them with monsters if not stopped.
- Recurring Extra: The random event NPCs like Risque the Bandit, Gutz the Blacksmith, Kira the Merchant, etc.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Overlord Rico and Rico Jr. both have red eyes; the former also has Black Eyes of Crazy while his son's are otherwise normal. Darklings have red pupils and irises with a golden outer ring.
- Regional Speciality: Towns can produce Local Items, which are food items that can be eaten for random buffs or given to the King.
- Relationship Values: Another returning feature from the World, you can earn favor with the King by bringing him local delicacies from towns that you have conquered. The King likes certain items more than others, but you can also sabotage other players by claiming that whatever you brought him was a gift from another player. The player the King likes the most earns an additional Gold bonus at the end of the game.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: Subverted with the Wear Tigers. They appear to be feline therianthropes in full plate, but examination of the flavor text reveals that they are human warriors who wear the skins of tigers on their heads to intimidate enemies, turning this into a pun.
S-Z
- Saintly Church: The temples, which cures you of status ailments by praying to the Holy Spirit and serves as a Checkpoint in case you die.
- Secret Room: Several dungeons feature hidden spaces, most of which contain powerful equipment compared to other weapons available in the surrounding region. Later locked chests begin to contain one-of-a-kind equipment with powerful stats and effects.
- Serious Business: You want to rob the item store, or anyone else? You gotta win at Ro-Sham-Bo! And no, not that kind. I mean rock-paper-scissors.
- Shoplift and Die: Downplayed. Failing to rob a store, freed town, or Kira makes an adventurer wanted for a week, meaning they have a bounty and can't land on towns, shops, temples, or castles, and they also can't give up in battles. However, if they survive this week, everything will be back to normal again.
- Shout-Out: Whenever a negative weekly event occurs, the King will chime in with a voice clip shouting "Great Caesar's Ghost, gang!"
- Side Quest:
- In the form of several fetch quests, ranging from tracking down a certain local food the king has a sudden hankering for to what is essentially gathering puppy porn for the princess's dog.
- While unrelated, these jobs actually serve as a quest chain to earn your way up to the Superboss.
- Three of the classes require going into dungeons (or dungeons-within-a-dungeon) and getting an item from them (sometimes in addition to mastering several other classes).
- Snake People: The Medusa monster, which is half woman, half snake.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: In Adventure, the monsters that players fight increase in level throughout the game.
- Standard RPG Items: Potions and elixers for healing, Panacea, Soul Mop, and Miracle Serum for curing status ailments, Revivals for reviving, several temporary stat boosters, and Vanish for avoiding fights.
- Status Effects: There are 12 status ailments that can be inflicted on adventurers and some on monsters.
- Confusion: Causes the afflicted character to randomly select a different Battle Command than the one selected by the player.
- Curse: Causes the afflicted character to randomly hurt themselves instead of their target.
- Doom: Sends the Reaper to kill the afflicted player after 7-10 days. They can only remove the effect if they kill the player that cast it on them, or by using a Miracle Serum.
- Fear: The afflicted player is not allowed to land on spaces that guarantee a battle.
- Footsore: The player can only move exactly one space per turn. Spinners and crystals cannot be used to circumvent this.
- Paralysis: The afflicted player cannot move and is forced to land on their current space again. Tends to occur when landing on Battle spaces in the snowy regions. Like Footsore, Spinners and Crystals cannot be used.
- Poison: The afflicted player loses HP equal to their current HP each turn. It will not kill the player; it just leaves them at 1 HP.
- Seal: The afflicted player cannot access their items or field magic.
- Sleep: The afflicted player is not able to act in overworld and in battle, but wakes up after taking any damage.
- Stun: Sometimes in forms like Pertrified or Squeezed. Same as Sleep, though a stunned character won't recover if they get hit.
- Wanted: Earned if the player fails to rob a shop or town. They cannot land on any shops, towns, or Dokapon Castle, and if another player defeats them in battle, they are awarded a bounty.
- Z Plague: Can only be gotten by encountering a Chimpy. Causes players to lose HP equal to twice their current level each turn, and can be passed to other players by passing them. Unlike poison, it can kill the player.
- Stripperiffic: Would it kill those female fighters to put on something besides a Chainmail Bikini? Not that it'd help them in any way regardless...
- Strength, Sorcery, Finesse: The three base classes. The Warrior is the strongest physically and randomly gets strength boosts, the Magician is the strongest magically and can dualcast field magic, and the Thief is the fastest (dodge bonus) and steals an item every time he passes by an opposing player.
- Standard Hero Reward: The king offers Princess Penny's hand in marriage, but only to the hero that brings him the most money at the adventure's end. This kicks off a lot of heroic sociopathy.
- Superboss: Do all of the king's side quests and he'll receive a piece of inflammatory mail from an imp named Wallace. Not ready to put up with this, he tasks you with finding Wallace and teaching him a lesson, failing to mention that he has dangerous moves like Banish and Virus and reads inputs nearly as blatantly as Rico Jr. In Normal Mode, he instead appears to occupy a town and will occasionally move to another one while leaving behind the previous one occupied by a monster.
- Sweat Drop: In the NA region versions of the game, the pink female Alchemist does this in the game’s intro.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Battles basically boil down to this. Defend beats Attack by reducing damage. Defensive magic beats offensive magic by reducing damage (or some higher-level defensive magic straight-up reflects it back to the caster). Counter beats the high-risk Strike option by returning the massive amount of damage Strike would deal back to the attacker, often being enough to kill them.
- The Artifact: In 3-2-1, the Dokapon Orb item could also be brought to the Dokapon Castle in exchange for money that is based on week number (the same with Kessen and is useful when the game lasts for long enough). In Kingdom, this function isn't present anymore and it can only be sold in shops for a fixed amount of gold, which isn't even that much by that point of the game.
- Throwing the Fight: A strategy that the AI will employ when the Darkling is about. They might intentionally Give Up on a fight they can (on a regular monster or another adventurer, whether be human player or AI), to avoid getting killed by the Darkling.note
- Title Scream: By one of a few characters at the title screen. The king's is especially silly. Wabbit will try this, but it can only make squeaks that sound vaguely like the pronouncation in Japanese.
- Tom the Dark Lord: The ultimate evil is named... "Rico." Make "Suave" jokes at your own expense. And his son is "Rico Jr." However, his Japanese name is "Richy", which doubles as a Meaningful Name, much like how the Demon Lord in Sword of Fury is called "Avaris" (Greed).
- Trauma Inn: Played with. Resting at towns and castles only heal HP while visiting temples can only cure status effects. Visiting Dokapon Castle can heal both, though.
- Turn-Based Combat: At the start of combat, the adventurer initiating combat chooses between two face-down cards, one which will let them go first, the other making them go second. Whoever goes first chooses an offensive command while their opponent chooses a defensive command and then vice versa. If the fight doesn't conclude, then it continues on the next player participant's turn.
- 20 Bear Asses: At the end of Chapter 3, players must get five of a random item to the King.
- Unblockable Attack: Any monster skill that reduces an adventurer's HP by a certain fraction (they also have a small chance of breaking an adventure's equipment). The Ninja job has one in its Sneak Attack skill, which also has a small chance to one-shot their enemy. Some of them have varying chances to miss, which is fixed and irrelevant to the character's SP.
- Unbreakable Weapons: Played with. While weapons don't break under normal circumstances, there are a few monster-only battle skills that will instantly break an adventurer's weapon. The Rust magical spell can also do this.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: At the end of Chapter 4 of Story Mode, defeating Rico Jr. will give you control of Princess Penny to escort back to Dokapon Castle and a chance to obtain Angel Wings, an item that grants access to the Castle in the Clouds. Bringing Princess Penny to the Castle in the Clouds and dying there will leave Princess Penny in the dungeon. Since Rico Jr. does not spawn as an encounter until the chapter is completed, and the Angel Wings are consumed to enter the dungeon, it becomes impossible to progress the story further as the chapter can't be completed without returning Princess Penny to Dokapon Castle, who is now stuck in a dungeon that can no longer be accessed. In Connect, it has been reported that Rico Jr. can appear after being defeated, making it possible (but still difficult) to progress the story.
- Universal Poison: The basic version does your level in damage each turn, and the Z Plague, transmitted by Chimpys, does double that. The former can be healed at temples or with Panaceas, but the latter is contagious and can only be cured by the Miracle Serum or at Dokapon Castle.
- Verbal Tic:
- Crysta, the anthropomorphic cat wizard who runs the magic shop, speaks normally save for the occasional, unenthusiastic "meow" or cat pun.
Crysta: Welcome!...meow.- In the Japanese version, the King ends his sentences with "~daba", like his appearances in Sword of Fury (even though that one was a fake) and DX.
- Versus Character Splash: Happens before every fight.
- Victory Pose: Each job has a unique pose for both males and females (except for male Robo Knight, which copies the male Warrior pose) when they win a fight.
- Video Game Remake: The game is a remake of Dokapon 3・2・1 for the Super Famicom.
- Villainous Crush: Rico Jr. has one on Penny. This eventually leads to him kidnapping her (or as he calls it, taking her on a date), forcing the player to rescue her from him.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Justified with Rico Jr., who always uses a Revival and then teleports when an adventurer kills them.
- Villain Teleportation: Rico Jr. does this after being defeated (and uses a Revival), as mentioned above.
- Violation of Common Sense: So the Gate of Heck has appeared and it's just one step away from peace and prosperity. What should you do? To jump in and defeat the Demon King, of course! ....Expect the fact that you must give up some of your towns to do so. So staying back and taking over the towns the heroes have sacrificed might be the better option. Or, enter the Heck, then immediately exit it to claim the towns yourself before the others are able to. It also makes the bonus for slaying the Demon King less impactful.
- Warp Whistle: The Town Warp and Store Warp items take you to a random accessible town or store on the map. The Guided Warp lets you land on Dokapon Castle, any temple, or any towns you own.
- Warp Zone: The Spring Cave on the first continent has a space at the end where players can pay money to be warped to other continents.
- Whammy: Some events can force players into debt, like encountering Dr. Exiles or the weekly event where you have to pay money to help your towns recover from a disaster.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never revealed what happens to Rico Jr. after the death of his father.
- Wrecked Weapon: There are several ways that a piece of equipment can be broken. Numerous enemy skills (like Waterfall and Thunder) have a good chance of this, the Rust spell, from dying (especially to the Darkling, who can choose to discard your equipment if they think you are too dangerous with it)...
- You All Look Familiar: The shop and temple NPCs look the same throughout the game, while the town and castle NPCs have different clothing depending on the region but otherwise still look the same.
- Zip Mode: Players can increase the speed of their characters and the speed of CPU players’ entire turns even further.
"See ya later!"