Dokuro Review

Posted By Shaun K. about 7 months, 4 weeks ago

Dokuro Review

Gamers are rarely fond of a particular sequence known as the “escort mission” and it is not hard to see why. Thanks to problems such as poor AI, awkward controls, and unbalanced enemy design, these missions often end up being little more than extended exercises in frustration. To build an entire game around the escort mission mentality is a daring move to say the least. It can–and has–worked in the past, with such games as Ico and Prince of Persia (2009), but it remains a risky move all the same. As the latest example of such a game, the Vita-exclusive Dokuro ultimately stands as perfect example of both the highs and the lows that the escort mission brings to video games.

There is just something very half-hearted about Dokuro, as if the developers at Game Arts took the leftovers of a multitude of game ideas and just shoved them all together regardless of proper fit. A puzzle platformer, the game is centered on that well-worn trope of a captured princess in need of rescuing. In a twist on the normal way these things play out however, instead of traveling to the princess to rescue her, players start out with her in the heart of the enemy fortress and then try to escort her to freedom. Filling the role of a nameless skeleton solider fed up with his lot in life and having fallen in love with the Princess, players will have to shuffle the princess along through 15 levels of 10 stages each and make use a multitude of abilities in the process.

If only Dokuro could leave its players feeling this way more often….

As a skeleton, the nameless lead of Dokuro is completely invisible to the princess he loves, but early on he acquires the ability to transform for a set period of time into a handsome prince who can pick up the princess and carry her when necessary. In his prince form, the game’s skeleton hero also has access to a powerful sword which can be used to slay many of the game’s plentiful enemies (as a skeleton, his attack only stuns and knocks back enemies, which in and of itself can be useful at times) but he loses access to the all-important double jump ability of his real form as well. And thus Dokuro builds much of its gameplay around this dichotomy and players should be prepared to switch between their digital avatar’s two forms in almost every stage.

Other abilities also eventually unlock including magic chalk that can be used to create a rope between two objects or a fuse between a source of fire and objects like bombs and cannons or an anti-gravity device that lets players switch between floor and ceiling at will. They will need every trick they can get however since not only is the game filled with numerous deadly traps and powerful enemies (including a number of boss battles) but the princess herself is completely helpless and not exactly all that bright either. This lack of agency or usefulness is indeed so notable that it stands as one of the central problems that eventually end up haunting the overall Dokuro experience.

Sometimes enemies must be used to solve puzzles.

At its best, Dokuro features levels that are more challenging to the mind than the reflexes or at least manages to strike a good balance between the two. These levels have that real pop and sizzle that the best platformer puzzlers do and successfully completing them leaves players with a real sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. At its worst, which is far more often than I would have liked, Dokuro features levels that are not only almost entirely twitch-based but also tend to favor cheap elements like pits, one-hit kills obstacles, and constantly regenerating enemies. I have nothing against a game that wants to engage in Super Meat Boy-esque challenges for the majority of its run time. What does bug me however is when a game indulges in such shenanigans for only about a fourth of the game.

Such a dichotomy ultimately does Dokuro no favors, because it makes it harder for me to flat out recommend the game without reservation to one audience or another. Those looking for a puzzle-driven experience will often find themselves hitting a wall, while those looking for a twitch-based experienced will not find nearly enough of such content in Dokuro for the game to be truly satisfying to them. It is also hard to escape the sense that these twitch levels are little more than padding, especially because in general they are simply challenging without really being clever and are often outright cheap in the worse kind of way. Fortunately, one of the better design choices featured in the game does at least allow these twitch levels to not be a completely insurmountable obstacles because players can skip a level at any time. What keeps this from being an ability that can be over-abused is the fact that players can only skip up to ten levels–Period. There is no way to increase that number or outright refill it, but if players go back and solve one of the previously uncompleted levels the corresponding slot will open again for use.

Yep. She cannot even walk down a step this small on her own.

Even leaving aside the previous complaint, Dokuro still has other problems that mar its overall experience. For one, the game does a very uneven job of introducing new gameplay elements. In the best platformers, when a new gameplay element is unlocked for player use, the stages immediately following this introduction, if not the whole world or level, focuses on reinforcing this new ability to help insure players have mastered it. Dokuro, by comparison, tends to flounder all over the place, introducing a new gameplay element and then more or less ignoring it for anywhere up to a dozen following levels. Or else the game will seemingly spend two levels setting up an interesting new mechanic only to then never return to said mechanic again, as happens at least twice in the course of the game’s 150 stages. This uneven implementation means that Dokuro also has a very odd progression of challenge and it is not unusual for the game to flitter completely at random between stages so easy they take less than thirty seconds to beat and stages so maddeningly tricky they can take hours to puzzle through.

The game also does not include a checkpoint system, which means that death instantly sends players all the way back to the beginning of a stage. This is hardly a problem in the game’s many shorter stages, but plenty of longer and highly intricate multi-part challenges also await and being forced to start over with these because of one little mistake quickly becomes infuriating. I mentioned that Dokuro can come across as very cheap at times and this design decision helps contribute to that feeling immensely. A challenge is one thing, but having to constantly redo steps one through eleven of a stage simply because step twelve confounds one is not the stuff of enjoyable game design.

The game’s story is flimsy at best and you will see every plot development coming a mile away.

Compounding this is the fact that the princess is worse than useless (she cannot even walk down normal-sized steps on her own) while also featuring completely inconsistent AI. One moment she will be blithely walking forward no matter what lies ahead, be it a trap or some other danger, while the next she will be completely ruining a strategy by suddenly showing concern for her own life in the face of a nearby enemy that is in fact no threat. The best escort games go out of their way to build a bond between the player and their companion and one chief method of doing this is by giving said companion some useful or necessary ability. Not so in Dokuro, and it makes the princess an annoying and grating character more often than not in the overall scheme of the game. Boss battles do not include the princess (who always ends up temporarily captured and off-screen) and there is no mistaking how much of a relief not having to deal with her for a bit is. As it is, players will likely have to fight the growing sense that Dokuro would have been a dramatically better game all around without the constant frustrating presence of its plot motivator.

The half-baked nature of Dokuro applies as much to its production values as it does the title’s gameplay. The game attempts to stake out a unique visual style of its own and to that end it resembles chalk drawings come to life. At first this plays out to good effect and there are definitely moments where the game’s visuals have legitimate charm and beauty to them. The problem is that Dokuro simply cannot maintain this level of visual acumen for its entire running time. Entire multi-stage levels play out across what basically amounts to empty black and white stages completely devoid of anything interesting to look at. Even the color that accompanies the transformation by the skeleton into his prince form does little to liven up these boring stages and it is remarkable how the game vacillates between impressive and boring visual design. It certainly never manages to leverage its unique aesthetic in the way that, say, a Paper Mario or Epic Yarn did and this fact ultimately makes this element feel more like a half-implemented gimmick. The developers could have employed a completely different visual style for Dokuro and no one would have been the wiser.

Players cannot jump when holding the princess which can make moving items around a stage tricky at times.

Another strange touch is that the game’s story plays out via cutscenes with animation so crude and stilted that it is almost wrong not to call them stills instead. This is especially odd since the actual game proper features perfectly fine animations throughout, not only for the characters but even for the various background and foreground elements that show up at times. Presumably, that means this odd approach to cutscenes is an attempt at some form of stylization, but whatever the people at Game Arts were going for fails to ever really come off. Aurally, Dokuro has nothing going for it, with minimal sound effects and a score that ranges from boring and bland to annoying and off-putting. This is one Vita game best played with the sound turned all the way down.

Ultimately, Dokuro is a game that simply feels like it needed more time in the oven. While the game does have a good number of stages, the uneven quality of many of these and the sense of filler that permeates much of the game negates this advantage to a significant degree. Combine that with an almost complete lack of replay value (there is an optional collectible coin in each stage, but since actually acquiring said coin has no impact in-game from what I can tell beyond a few trophies, there is little motivation to bother messing around with them for all but the most extreme completionist) and what is left is a game that struggles to justify its twenty dollar price tag.

The use of color in the game can feel very random at time.

At half that price I might have fewer reservations about recommending Dokuro to everyone; even with its problems this is far from a bad game and, as I said previously, there are times when it does fire on all cylinders. Dokuro is one of those titles where more is less and it is hard to escape the feeling that a leaner and tighter version of this game, with maybe half the levels to accompany half the price tag, would have ultimately been a stronger overall product. As it stands, Dokuro remains a game that mixes joy and frustration in equal measure, a fact that any would be player needs to take into account before dropping their money on it.

A review code for this game was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review. The reviewer spent approximately six hours playing the game.

Also, feel free to follow the reviewer on Twitter @bigred_13 please if you feel so inclined.

Dokuro Review

By Shaun K.

Dokuro's at times charming aesthetic cannot mask an overall experience littered with some serious flaws.