So I love Monopoly and I have owned it on every system I have had that it's been available for, starting with the Sega Master System. ThatSo I love Monopoly and I have owned it on every system I have had that it's been available for, starting with the Sega Master System. That version was - for me - the very best, and nothing has ever surpassed it to date, including this. The reason for that is that the Master System version allowed for up to TEN other players, making for some massive games! Yes, it was slow and hugely unbalanced, but it was mega fun and very unpredictable.
The first good thing I found about this game is that it can hold up to six players. I breathed a sigh of relief at this - some versions have only allowed for a max of four, and that it too limiting. You can have any combination of human and AI, but you cannot select the playing piece the AI uses, unlike in a lot of other Monopoly games (including the most basic phone versions I have played years ago!) I find that a bit odd; you just get whatever piece for the AI that is due up next in line. Also, there are only four levels for AI: VERY WEAK, WEAK, AVERAGE, STRONG. No VERY STRONG I'm afraid. Some games I've played have had 10 levels of AI to choose from, so again, this is slightly disappointing.
Ok, so into the game...first thing you will want to do is turn the music off. It's maddening. Maybe the voice also, it gets old quickly. In fact, you could play the whole thing with the sound off and probably be saner for it!
You can select to play local or online. I was lucky to get into an online game yesterday (as it was only just released) and here's a few things I found...first,. it can be slow. You can skip your piece movement, and the camera sweep that happens between the end of the last players' turn before your turn, but some things - like the 'property available to buy' animation is unskippable. Too many things are unskippable here and it does drag time out. I would like to see a 'speed up' version as some versions have had, whereby you hold down a button to make everything in your move go at a fast speed. That IMHO is better than skipping the walking completely, as it's easy to forget where you are on the board doing that.
When you land on an available property you cannot afford, the game does NOT let you mortgage your stuff to buy it. Instead, you will be forced to auction it and can only spend the money you have at the time. I find this much better, it makes for a more tactical game. You need to make sure you pony up the cash BEFORE landing on a free property, so you gotta risk shutting down some of your spaces on the off-chance! That's pretty darn cool, and made a *big* difference in the online game. I busted guys by auctioning properties I *could* have afforded, getting them a lot cheaper. Every other game I've played has allowed players to mortgage in auctions, so this is a game changer.
Other mechanics take a bit of getting used to.
The trade is pretty good, allowing for counter-trades and such, but money is only increased/decreased per dollar, so for 100+ dollar transactions, you'll be holding down the control stick for a good while!
Finding places you have mortgaged to un-mortgage them proved fiddly for all of us. Every time, we spent a while searching for the places as it didn't seem clear on the board map overview. I know the other had the same problems because.......
You can see EVERYTHING the other players do! Your screen becomes their screen on their turn, so you see exactly what they are doing, even when they are looking around the board. I love this! It's hugely tactical, as you can use your turn to bluff purely by your actions; say, examining certain areas. Watching my opponent desperately scrabbling to scratch some money up was great fun!
The graphics on the new version are nice. There is a lot of detail, and the animations are very nice, but limited. Sometimes it gets confusing to work out which part of the board you are on or what properties you won on a strip - it *is* color coded, but this can get lost in the wealth of visual information sometimes. I often got lost, but maybe that will change when I get accustomed to the 'landmarks.'
Animations are good, but limited. I'd really like to see a sub-game whereby a bankrupt player can become a little person on the board and go on a GTA rampage! That would be great!
As this is linked to UBISOFT, you get some UBI-POINTS for getting three of the same color, building your first hotel, etc. This allows you to 'buy' stuff on their site. I got a factory to go in the center of the board. Fun but pointless.
There are some custom rules, not as many as I would like but better than nothing.
Overall I would recommend this. If you like Monopoly, it's worth getting for the online function, but it wont convert any non-believers with its' plodding style and the slightly confusing interface. Good effort.… Expand
