NEW MONOPOLY Review – How hard is it to make a working digital Monopoly game?

So a lesser-known fact about me is, I love digital Monopoly. You could never get me to sit down and play the board game these days, but I am always down for a digital game. My first game was actually very enjoyable and extremely promising. I tried two games after that and was hit with horrible bugs and glitches, which made me put the game down completely.

You can play with up to 6 people, and you can do that by using separate controllers or splitting the controllers, which is cool. I recommend keeping the player count as low as possible, though, because the game can really drag on if you carry it on too long.

One thing that I really like is that you can flip the board if something doesn’t go your way. This process is completely animated, which is hilarious. I love the dialogue that happens when the board flips, and seeing the pieces hitting the table is really satisfying.

So if you know the rules of Monopoly, you know this game. There are a few things that I want to go over, though, because this game does have plenty of options and quality of life features, which I thoroughly enjoyed. For starters, this game has a day and night cycle, which is really cool, but frankly, unnecessary.

The whole game is played on a virtual tabletop, which I really like. It makes it easy to navigate around the board and is the sole reason that flipping the board is so funny. It also makes it nice to toss the dice around; you can charge them up and whip them across the table, or throw them right into the board. The 3D element of this game is extremely well done, but if you don’t want the living board, you can use the classic one, too.

Moving your token is also extremely satisfying because you can move it with the left stick. However, that makes the AI take forever. Turn order in general doesn’t feel great, but at least you can skip when the AI goes. The first game I played, I ended up activating too much AI, and frankly, that was a mistake. It makes the game drag much longer than it needs to.

House Rules

The house rules add a bit of spice to the game, and you can activate more than one. Nothing was missing for me from this section. The house rules are fun, fair, and mostly balanced. But be aware that some of them are going to make your game drag on.

Free Parking Cash: Whenever you must pay a fine or tax, the money goes into the fund that you can collect by landing on the Free Parking tile. I love this rule; my mom would talk about how much fun it is, but I had never tried it. Now I won’t play without it.
Go and Movement: When you land on GO, you have the choice of either collecting 400 or moving your token to any place on the board. In addition, when landing on a Chance space, you can choose not to draw a card: An interesting rule for sure. One that adds a little depth to the game.
Snake Eyes: When you roll two ones, you receive 1,000. Again, a fun rule that I added, but didn’t get to see much during the play session.
Rent and Auctions: When landing on a free property, you can only buy it through an auction. In addition, when in jail, you cannot collect rent: A rule that I will never play with because it makes the game drag.
Property Improvements: You can build Houses without necessarily owning all properties of the same color. You can also immediately build a Hotel when there are no Houses available. I love this rule, and I seriously recommend giving this one a try.
King of the Hill: Passing GO won’t give any money: I never use this rule.
Dine and Dash: When landing on an available property, you may choose to pass on buying or starting an action. This will leave the property available for the next player landing on this property. I activate this just to make the game go faster.

There is a lot to like here…

I do enjoy all of the little additions that this game has. To go along with what I wrote above, there are some other little things I want to call out. Starting with the helicopter that picks you up when you have to go to jail, which I found to be completely adorable. The voice-over is pretty solid, too. I found it to be pretty enjoyable.

The living board is gorgeous and, frankly, is the best way to play this game.

Adding and adjusting settings is super easy, and the menus are fluid. Getting the game set up this way is truly one of the easiest ways to play Monopoly, and I really appreciate the fact that they made the process so smooth. Now, don’t fire this game up and expect to play online. I searched for a match for 20 minutes and didn’t find one, and I made a lobby to hang out in for 20 minutes, and no one ever joined. But this was okay because the AI in this game is pretty good. It is not the best, but it is not awful. There is plenty of fun to have with AI. With that said, they take forever to take a turn, organize property, and buy houses, which is negated by the skip button.

I also like that the board has weather, which I don’t think is needed, but it’s nice to see. Really, it feels like everything possible was done to improve this experience and make it more fluid. You can unlock special dice, which I didn’t figure out how to do because I didn’t care about this level of customization. There are plenty of tokens to unlock, too, some that you can get for free with your Ubisoft account, which I think you need to play this game, but I can’t say for sure, so I won’t add or subtract points either way.

Bugs and Glitches

Because of the nature of this game, my tolerance for the bugs and glitches I encountered was extremely low. The Broken Token is not handed out without a lot of thought. Understand that not everyone will encounter the same bugs and glitches. I am reviewing this game on the Xbox Series S.

Four different times buttons stopped registering.
Made it about 45 minutes into two separate games and hit a freeze. Waited for 10 minutes the first time, and the second time the game crashed. Because of the nature of Monopoly and how long each game can take, this is completely unacceptable. There is no save state; you just lose the game.

Monopoly is a game that can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours and probably more, depending on who you’re playing with. To lose those hours is frankly unacceptable.

Final Thoughts

Not everything is great in the UI department. For starters, trading is convoluted and often takes a large chunk of the game’s time. Especially if it is two bots trading with each other. I also really dislike the way that the UI is ordered during your turn. It’s extremely easy to flip the board over instead of simply ending your turn.

Rolling dice feels like it takes a few sections too long to get going. The trade-off is that it’s pretty easy to get your dice stuck on something if you want to try for a specific roll, though this won’t work every time.

Finally, while there is a lot to like here, the idea of freezing and losing a whole game is so much of a turn-off that I uninstalled this game completely.

Score

New Monopoly is getting a Broken Token…

Because of the bugs and glitches I experienced, I heavily suggest steering clear of this one or at least going into it knowing that you could lose a whole game. Those lost games never appeared in my stats either, which made the whole experience that much more frustrating.

However, this game is fun when it works and is a fantastic take on Monopoly. Play on Gamepass or purchase at your own risk.