Monopoly is a very boring game when you’re just throwing dice and hoping to get lucky early on.
Then, two or three players have a lot of fun haggling over properties for a bit in the middle.
But once the trading is done and monopolies are locked in, there’s never a reason to trade again and you’re back to just rolling dice until someone goes broke.
The original version of the game had a “cooperative” mode, where you tried to develope the whole board in the fewest number of turns. But even that was largely “roll dice, hope you get lucky”.
It’s just not a good game, overall. Catan plays much faster and still gives you the bargaining dynamic. Puerto Rico lets you play a soulless land developer without the randomness. Tzolk’in has a way cooler board. And if you’ve got 2-3 hours to blow on a board game, pick up one of the insane 4Xers like Eclipse or do something more exciting like Galaxy Trucker for a madcap puzzle/racing adventure.
Monopoly is designed to be unbalanced on purpose. It’s mostly derived from the Landlord’s Game that was made to be a political education tool about the accumulation of land and real estate in a few private hands.
In a really cynical turn of events, Hasbro (or whatever company came before) ripped of the woman who made The Landlord’s Game to make monopoly and made billions in the process.
Monopoly is a very boring game when you’re just throwing dice and hoping to get lucky early on.
Then, two or three players have a lot of fun haggling over properties for a bit in the middle.
But once the trading is done and monopolies are locked in, there’s never a reason to trade again and you’re back to just rolling dice until someone goes broke.
The original version of the game had a “cooperative” mode, where you tried to develope the whole board in the fewest number of turns. But even that was largely “roll dice, hope you get lucky”.
It’s just not a good game, overall. Catan plays much faster and still gives you the bargaining dynamic. Puerto Rico lets you play a soulless land developer without the randomness. Tzolk’in has a way cooler board. And if you’ve got 2-3 hours to blow on a board game, pick up one of the insane 4Xers like Eclipse or do something more exciting like Galaxy Trucker for a madcap puzzle/racing adventure.
Monopoly is designed to be unbalanced on purpose. It’s mostly derived from the Landlord’s Game that was made to be a political education tool about the accumulation of land and real estate in a few private hands.
That doesn’t make it a good game. They don’t give it away for free at Economics classes, it’s sold worldwide by Hasbro!
In a really cynical turn of events, Hasbro (or whatever company came before) ripped of the woman who made The Landlord’s Game to make monopoly and made billions in the process.
The irony is too damn high.
Spot on.
There is a reason that it only has a rating of 4.4 of 10. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1406/monopoly/
Still 3.4 to high…