MONOPOLY Reviews

Unlike traditional board games that you buy once and when taken care of will last your lifetime, you have to purchase electronic board games over and over again! I have purchased this app many times since 2005 for my computer and then iOS devices. I am repeatedly forced to purchase new versions through planned obsolescence by Hasbro changing who is licensed their game. In 2017, after upgrading my iOS software, my previous version stopped working. I again purchased the latest “official”version licensed by Hasbro—that time to EA. Like the previous versions, very little changed. With the most recent new iOS update, the EA version crashes only when you select play a new game. The version was the traditional board with traditional rules and specific optional rules that I liked. I once again purchased the “official” version (this version) to find something that is too busy and not traditional at all. Ironically, it has a photo that shows the traditional board, but that isn’t an option! None of the customizable optional rules reflects the choices of upping the starting dollar amount, setting a specific (higher) amount for free parking, etc., that allowed the game to progress at a faster speed. Extremely disappointed! I requested a refund and will try again in a few years when Hasbro licenses the game to someone else again under their planned obsolescence system.

The AI advantage is abundantly obvious in this game. It begins from the start. The chances you’ll go first are low, I’m talking 1/30. Then you’ll land frequently on properties already purchased. To top that off when you go the chances you’ll roll a 4 are about 75% putting you on tax and paying out $200 before you really start. AI trade offers with other AI are never rejected so they’ll get a property set quickly. I’ve had it where AI has been around the board twice, I haven’t even made it once and AI has a property set and hotels. Dev’s have said they don’t give an unfair advantage to AI. I say, if your willing to pay the money for the game see for yourself in addition to several other comments with people having the same issue. You’ll get to the point where you can predict by round 2 which AI is going to win, then the game becomes about watching them land exactly where they need to. It’s so obvious you can be more accurate predicting where the “randomness” is going to place AI. Your chances if doing this correctly are better than your chances at winning. Oh, and this is on easy mode. For Dev’s to say that AI doesn’t have an unfair advantage is an insult, share your probability tables then. The game is a waste of money and time unless you enjoy frustration and watching AI get miss your property over and over while you will miraculously land on theirs over and over.

There are a few things that keep this game from feeling like a genuine this app experience for mobile. One of my biggest complaints is the fact that you cannot do something as little as pull down your notification screen a smidge without being forced to bear a 20 second+ dimmed out “Rejoining game...” screen. That’s ridiculous. Why should it take that long to get back in the game when I hardly even left? The connection errors/bugs are ridiculous and make it rare to get a solid game in. That’s unacceptable, really. What’s the point in playing a game that’s likely to crash because of bugs? Also, the lack of any form of communication between players is upsetting. Seriously, no chat box? No ability to use our microphones? You want to charge $4 for a board game and not let us speak to each other? They’re also charging $30 for a season pass that I believe features strictly cosmetics. 🙄 Marmalade, if you want our money at least give us a solid game. Another complaint I have is the only games rules we have to choose from are: Classic and Quick mode. It would be nice to have the options to change the rules/play custom games and whatnot. To the this app fans, tread carefully because this game was clearly developed as a cash grab and not to give us the mobile this app we would expect in 2020. The base gameplay is acceptable, but the flaws make the game close to unplayable.

The game itself is very nice. It’s this app. But the AI just ruins the whole experience for me. When you start off, if you get lucky, you might buy a couple properties in the first few laps around the board. The AI on the other hand will make extremely one-sided trades and eventually get color sets within 5 turns. But of course they still somehow have 1200 left even though they bought around 7 properties. Then they put hotels on the given set. That’s when everything goes downhill. Everybody somehow starts landing on those properties and the one AI starts taking off. Meanwhile, even if you have 10 properties, you’re lucky to get a color pair with a few houses on them because you had to trade to get it and the AI had to overprice the property they’re selling you. I have started about 30 games, but when I know I’m going to lose the game I quit just to save time. I’ve won 1 game out of the roughly 30 games. If you have average luck you’d win about 7 ish games. So the math isn’t mathing on that. I don’t really care if I win, I just want to have fun. It’s hard to have fun when the game is manipulated against you to get absolutely crushed every game. Also another thing I’ve seen is that there are a lot of issues when leaving the game and the incorrect housing will be there, people will have different amounts of money, or a move just won’t even register and I’ll be back where I was before. So some major problems there also.

The game is fantastic, just like the board game. But it comes with so many glitches that it literally becomes impossible to reach the end of a game. Just played 3 games with my friends online, and all 3 ended prematurely due to glitches or malfunctions.

For starters, if your phone receives any notifications that pop up on screen, you run the risk of being disconnected from your online multiplayer this app games. This includes pop-up notifications for texts, emails, phone calls, other apps, anything. And especially don’t think about quickly exiting MONOPOLY for any reason, that’s a guaranteed disconnect. But even if you play the game without distractions, certain mechanics start to breakdown after enough time passes. You’ll draw Community Chest cards to pay $50 only for the debt to not be taken from your account. You’ll roll the dice only for them to disappear and your turn to never end, the token never moving and it being impossible to reroll the dice. You’ll make a trade offer, only for the game to freeze and be impossible to resume.

My friends have so much fun playing on MONOPOLY , but have only successfully completed a handful of games since MONOPOLY ’s release. Clearly, more troubleshooting and supporting updates are required before MONOPOLY becomes more playable.

The algo running the others players is opaque. the game designers must believe that injecting drama and suspense into the game make for a better game experience. The dice rolls are not random. rolls and chance and community cards which should be random are instead used as tools to elongate the game. I am not simply complaining because i had a few games here and there where i had a run of bad rolls. it is very easy to beat algos and i can manage to steamroll to wins in all settings and player counts. it is just that the game is obviously tilted to manufacture glorious wins and painful losses with the apparent purpose of added entertainment value. but the fact is that there is strategy to this app classic, and if a strategic player can win 100% of games easily due the implementation of ruthless tactics and strategies accounting for randomization then that is how the game should be played. It is not more fun to have it thrown in your face that you mortgaged one property on the board and all of the players land on that property six times in a row. If it could possibly be chalked up to a random bit of karma then it truly would be a moment of humor and levity, but with this algo it is predictable, thus not random. and this removes the fun of the gameplay. As a result I do not trust this producer and will not purchase other games from Hasbro.

Edit: Adding to this months later. Just played a game where I went around the board 6 times and didn’t land on a single color property that can be built on. Watched 2 AI’s set to medium acquire 2 FULL sets each within 2 passes around the board. 1 AI specifically had 2 oranges and not enough money to buy the 3rd, but landed on the single property it needed 3 times in a row before it finally had the money to buy it. Incredibly rigged and frustrating, the OPPOSITE of a game of chance. Worst 3$ I’ve ever spent, don’t waste your money.

First off the game is noticeably rigged. (Surprise right). Any time I put the computer difficulty to Medium and above, 95% of the time I’m the last to roll and when I do half the time I land on 200$ tax my first roll. Second I wanted to see if it was possible to own all properties on the board, it is, but as soon as I got to that point I went to jail my next 10+ turns in a row whether it was from landing on chance, 3 doubles, or landing on the man himself. I kid you not I spent 15 minutes straight going to jail. The only thing difficulty should control is trading/managing properties, not taking the random aspect out of the game and rigging it against you. Can’t tell you how frustrating it is rolling last on 90% of games and getting screwed over on every chance and chest landing.

I love this app and MONOPOLY because it takes away the hassle of keeping up with board pieces and having someone act as the bank. However, it is far too common for a player to get disconnected or for the game to freeze, ultimately ruining the entire game and leading me to have wasted 2 hours of my time. Also, it is hard to differentiate when a player is simply not paying attention, forgets to roll, or forgets to end their turn so it would be EXTREMELY USEFUL to have a ******chat function****** or at least a button the players could use to notify other players when the game has come to a standstill. I really hope that the this app app creators will take these suggestions into account as I have recommended MONOPOLY to many people and know they have experienced the same frustration as me. Also, it would be awesome if their was a way to pause the game (which I know may actually difficult due to connection issues). Additionally, the game disconnects when someone gets a phone call or even if low battery signal pops up on a players phone. Sometimes the bots will pick up and play for the disconnected user but other times the game is screwed. Regardless, I love how the game is customizable and has great layouts. Love this game, will definitely keep playing, but would profoundly appreciate some improvements given that the this app brand has historically been held with such high regard.

I have been playing this game for just about two months now and I can honestly say that the frustration is outweighing the fun. Other people reporting that there is nothing random about the dice rolls are 100% correct, in my experience. I’ve played dozens of single player games since buying this and I notice the exact same patterns that others are reporting. I don’t mind losing a fair game, that’s part of the fun. I’m also not saying that the AI makes you lose every game. But it does feel like a good number of games you just see the AI sail past multiple blocks of properties you own, not just once but over and over. Only once you lose all your houses and are bordering on bankruptcy do they start landing on your property. This happens quite frequently. I have I’ve seen developer feedback back to this on other reviews and they say, we would never intentionally want the player to have a negative experience. I believe them, but I also wish they would take another look at the single player AI, algorithms. whatever you want to call it, because there is a balancing issue and it’s ruining the experience, at least for me. Again, nothing wrong with losing, it’s what makes winning fun. But when you’re losing to the same recurring patterns and it gets to a point where you can predict the AI rolls, that’s just not fun. I hope the developers read this and consider the feedback as I will continue playing the game in hopes that changes are made.

The game as presented is excellent, graphics and game play are well done, and the improvement made since first introduced solved the technical glitches. I would give this 5 stars, but unfortunately the lack of a true chat interface or community makes self policing the games impossible. Online multi-player has become vertically impossible to play now, as immature opponents destroy the integrity of the game. They do this by not losing gracefully. Many of these players, when it becomes clear they are at a disadvantage will trade all their assets to another player well behind for $1, instead of just leaving the game and allowing AI to finish. Most recently it’s worse, as it’s now becoming common for players to land on an expensive property, but if they are not instantly bankrupt they are able to sell their assets for $1 to another opponent, and then no longer have assets available to pay the owner of the property they land on. These idiots and an unwillingness of players to
Simply reject these offers has rendered your product virtually unplayable except as a stand alone against AI, or against specific friends through IP. If you are looking for an online experience against random opponents, this is no longer a viable option.

This is a slick, nice running this app game. I first saw it played on Twitch and said I have got to experience this. The graphics, animation and modeling are really fun. Based on old reviews, I think many issues from the past are solved. The network seems reliable and the rules and variations are pretty much on point. The AI players add a new dimension. They are annoying at worst and a wonderful addition for shrewd dealing humans, at best. The klunky repetitious and nonsensical “offers” they make are pretty bad. And the fact that they only assess deals based on value of the deeds and classifying them as “easy, medium, or hard” just improves their luck and reduces yours makes them pretty frustrating at times. But they’re fun to push around and like I said, they create a whole new dimension in game play. Imagine making a deal with a predictable robot to mess up your human opponent, etc. That said, the overall game feels cold and lonely. How do we know we are really playing against a human when we join Multiplayer online? What is our own record of wins and losses? What if we want to play against a particular player again? Marmalade and Hasbro are doing a pretty nice job getting all their games online. But these old parlor games deserve at least a minimal social component to keep people returning. Edging really close to four stars!

It’s this app, just like you remembered in the classic board game, which is what I’ve wanted on iOS for a long time. After playing very frequently, I’ve been noticing some issues. 1. Dice rolls do not seem random. Quite frequently the computer rolls the perfect number to squeak by your hotels. It happens way too often. 2 when playing multiple computer opponents, if the first computer player on the list of players on the right side of the screen goes bankrupt, you can no longer purpose a deal with the other remaining opponent. It defaults to try to make a trade with the bankrupted player with no option to change it to the other player, so the only way to trade is to wait for the computer to strike a trade with you and then counter the trade. 3 when you get a card that says each player pays $10 for a birthday or whatever, the money never comes out of the players account. Maybe that’s because of the free parking rule. Not sure. 4 if you use up all of the houses so that there aren’t any more in reserve, and then sell a hotel, more houses Automatically appear. Seems odd.

Being able to speed up the game instead of watching each and every animation would be appreciated.

This is a fantastic implementation of this app. I am a “classic” this app guy, and I love that the classic rules adhere so faithfully to this app rules. For all the lamentations of this app games running too long, playing in classic mode online against human opponents rarely takes more than a half hour. The graphics are great. The background music is spot on for setting a this app mood. Again, superb implementation by the game team. The only reason this is not a 5 star rating is due to the extreme frustration in online play … even against supposedly “ranked” players … of players making (and other players accepting) bogus “deal me out” trades. This is where a player essentially offers all their assets to another player for some ridiculously low dollar value (usually $1) and quits. This absolutely destroys the game enjoyment for the other players. In the very least I should be able to block players who do this, so that we can never be in the same game again. But also, the game developers should try and find a way to detect and prevent such “trades.” Again, it absolutely destroys all gameplay enjoyment when this happens. And it happens frequently. If this issue is resolved this game is clearly a 5 star.

Fun but want more customization. The this app rule that when you go bankrupt, regardless of total debt owed, all assets go to the player to whom the debt is owed is totally ridiculous. If I owed $100 to a friend and couldn’t pay they wouldn’t get everything I own. The bank/collections would when they seized my home and assets lol. The player should get compensated for the debt fairly at atleastttt that value FIRST (lots of fun options here)…and then all properties can either go to auction for all or be returned to the bank and become available for purchase as you roll. Otherwise players that have been getting trounced all game can just get ridiculous freebies (properties, sets, etc) at the expense of the wealthy players who really did the “bankrupting.” Totally absurd.

As an example, I just all but bankrupted 2 CPUs with my hard-fought-for sets and then in succession they both owed the 3rd CPU player less than $30 each on their next rolls and went bankrupt…and suddenly the worst player on the board just got 4 complete mortgaged sets and every other property on the board. Laughable. Maybe thats a this app rule bc this game was made for teens? Regardless, never played that way as a kid bc it was a joke and ain’t playing that way now.

The game’s port is great, both for those who want to play the game as it was meant to be played - according to the actual rules - and for those who just want to play using their house rules, as the more popular ones are all playable. Reasons for losing a star: Utility strategy is faulty, as you should never buy a utility at full price (can’t be upgraded, and the rent payouts are too low), but the AI (even at most difficult level) buys the utilities as if they were buildable properties. I have yet to find a this app app that uses correct buying strategy. As with most other this app apps, this one uses the “buy everything you land on” approach, which is okay, but not ideal. Search the Internet and read “The this app Companion” book for the truly strategic ways to play this game. Second, the AI doesn’t know that it should stop offering the same trade over and over once you choose “Reject All” and the board situation hasn’t changed. Rejecting the same trade offer after every AI turn is tiresome, especially when there’s only one AI between you and victory, and you know you’re going to win. Just put up a screen that allows you to resign. You should know when you’ve been beaten. But since it’s a free app (don’t bother with the pay options), it’s a pleasant diversion.

Been playing this game in almost all my free time for a week and love it, but there are a couple things that bug me a lot. The first one being my game doesn’t always save. A majority of the time when this happens, it’s just my most recent turn that doesn’t save, but there have been a couple times when I started over a new game because I didn’t want to wait around 5-20 minutes to get bankrupted only for the new game I start to not save at all and I’m back to the old one I just quit. Another thing is it’s very annoying when an AI tries to make the exact same trade every turn. They’ll try and get me to trade something for the same property and same amount of money so many times in a row even though I keep hitting reject trade. Also it seems like the AI’s work together sometimes against me instead of working for themselves. One AI will accept a stupid trade just so another AI can get a this app to put houses on. Like the first AI will give another AI one of the good monopolies in exchange for something like a second railroad and $50. Why? These are the only real complaints I have about these games but otherwise I do like it a lot. I have played many hours already in the week I have it. Worth the money but I hope at least the game being saved properly will be fixed soon.

From a design perspective the game is very good. I like the customizability of the options like not having to do auctions or getting 400 if you land on Go itself. If you play single player mode against the machine, here is what you can expect. You will go around the board very slowly the first one or two times while the other three players jump ahead 7 to 11 spaces at a time buying up all the properties ahead of you. You will land on chance, community chest, free parking, every place except the properties that you want to buy. When you do eventually collect a color group and try to build houses or hotels there, expect other pieces to land on the space in the middle of your properties or land just beyond them. You have to wonder how random the dice rolls are. There are difficulty options, which is far as I can tell just affect how willing the other pieces are to make trades with you. When it’s not your turn, you can see them freely making deals with each other, but when it’s your turn, expect to have to pay 200 over face value to buy any property while they assemble groups right away. If you can’t get a group going right away and build on it, you will be wiped out quickly. You will find yourself mortgaging everything and selling your house off right away as the other pieces build quickly.

This game should easily be 5 stars. It looks amazing, it’s got great visuals and animations, the controls and interface are fantastic, and it has great pacing. There’s just one big problem that makes it very frustrating to play. When you play against AI set to Medium or Hard difficulty, your rolls are sabotaged. I’m Easy mode, players all hit spaces with the same random likelihood and the AI players will just accept almost any trade you make them, making it easy to win. In Medium mode and higher, rather than making the AI more intelligent with their decisions, the game just makes your rolls extremely unlikely to be good, which is not a fun way to increase the difficulty at all. At the start of the game, you will almost always either hit a space that is owned or you will hit community chest. The AI players will often have 5-7 properties before you get the opportunity to buy even one, so there is almost no way to catch up, and the AIs will freely trade each other color sets constantly. Also, I hit Income Tax probably 5-6 times per game. Seriously, keep track of your games and you will realize you hit Income Tax at a much, much higher rate than any other space on the board. It’s a beautifully designed game that should be a blast to play, but the odds are clearly stacked against you which makes it not much fun, unfortunately.

EDIT: now that I’ve gotten a developer response informing me that they are working on giving the players options of which community chest cards they would like, I’m happy to give the game a full five stars! They have been working hard to please everyone with this game and including features like offline pass and play and fixing bugs left and right and I can only say that I really appreciate all the effort and love they give this game. Five stars well deserved.

Original review: I love this game and I really want to give it five stars but my only gripe is that they changed the community chest cards. I get that a lot of people are offended at the old cards because everyone in society is so hypersensitive about everything these days and everyone likes to be a victim but it just shows that they are willing to compromise on the game to not offend people who get offended at virtually everything. I lost a bit of respect for the company but the game itself is still amazing. I’m just going to postpone my updating of the game for now.

I’ve been playing this mobile edition of this app for quite some time and I figured I’d give my official review. I would like to start with a brief list of suggestions to make the game a little more enticing to potential players as well as current players! The maps currently playable are wonderful and creative (as I’ve got the season pass) but if you could try to bring some of the more up to date this app boards that we see in stores such as the Rick and Morty board or the this app Cheater Edition, that would really make the game pop. Adding a section for players to create more custom rules on their private games as well as allowing players to group up with friends and adding other random people from online rather than AIs. Some smaller suggestions would be to allow the players to click a button for random token/name selecting in AI games. Also, being able to look at properties on the board when it’s not your turn as well as a “free view” giving the ability to zoom in on the city and appreciate the architecture while other players are taking their turns. Aside from the occasional lags in the game during online play, I would still rate this game at a 10/10 and will continue to play!