Monopoly: Pokemon Edition

Today's review is of the 2024 release, Monopoly: Pokemon Edition. For 2-4 players, it takes 45 minutes.

Overview

Race to catch Pokemon in this twist on a board game classic. Here, the basic rules of Monopoly (roll a die, move spaces, buy property or pay rent if it is already owned) hold true, but there are plenty of twists:

- your goal is to collect eight different colors of pokemon (represented by the eight property colors on the board)

- when you land on a property (regardless of ownership), you can 'explore' (roll a die to see if you get a pokemon of that color)

- you can battle other players for their properties

- there are adventure and challenge cards and enable direct player challenges or give benefits (like swiping another's pokemon)

game contents; image from here

First to collect all eight pokemon wins!

Review

Though I'm no fan of the classic Monopoly (it takes too long), I was cautiously optimistic about this variant, as I enjoyed the Monopoly Gamer twist from a few years ago. Alas, I was disappointed. There is just far too much luck here. Well, it's really all luck. You need to land on the right colors, but then also roll the exploration die to see if you collect a pokemon of that color. There's not much to it. Lots of dice rolling. The battles and challenge cards provide some respite, but not much.

Rating: C