This game is a delight to play and takes you on an emotional journey. The story follows a puppy who gains the power of a magic paintbrush as all color is drained from the world. As the new wielder, you are tasked with fighting the corruption and bringing back color to the world.

Outside of the boss battles, there is no combat, the gameplay is entirely traversal and puzzle based using your ever growing paintbrush powers.

One of my favorite aspects of this game are the NPCs, who are varied and have their own developing stories as the game progress if you bother talking to them or doing their quests. You will regularly see familiar faces as you travel the map, as they like to move too which makes the world feel more alive as you are not the only one experiencing it.

I don't know why I expected a better game. Dragon Quest is known by many as the first jrpg. It is the standard that so many great games were built upon. And built is correct, for what is here is so barebones it is barely enjoyable.

You leave town, fight monsters, level up, get money, buy new equipment, move on. That's pretty much the whole game. And combat is mostly just hitting attack against the one monster on screen. There aren't enough options to have much in the way of strategy.

Play it for the history if you want, but there is nothing of substance here. This game could not be simpler and the formula has been greatly improved since.

What if Mario Party was an RPG instead of minigames and it hated you. I don't say that lightly, Dokapon Kingdom hates you, the player, and will take every chance it has to ruin your day. Too much money? one bad roll and you now have negative money. Too many towns? Given away to the other players. Got a really nice weapon? Broken immediately.

Sounds frustrating, right? But I gave it 4 stars anyway, because you have to embrace the madness. I played with a group of 3 others and watching the game ruin all of our lives collectively was a good time.