40.0 hours played
Written 12 days ago
I recently discovered this series was actually on Steam after finding out the localized name for this game. I remembered it by its Chinese name and its executable back then was Rich3.exe but I didn't realize this series was still going. After reliving my childhood nostalgia playing the classic version, I figure I'd try the later ones. Since I can't read Chinese all that well, I skimmed through 4~8 as a curiosity, but this one being translated into English makes it a bit easier to play. Note that I say "translated" instead of "localized" because while the English translation is functional, it is very much lacking and could do with a native English speaker in charge of the translation. Nonetheless, I was able to figure it out to be able to complete the story and the character missions.
Story-wise, it's silly fun. I only somewhat understand it due to the lacking translation effort, but then, I don't really play this for the story. But I do appreciate it having a story mode because a lot of the earlier games seem to not really have a campaign to speak of. And this having one makes it have something to actually play through instead of just infinite board games with CPUs. The character missions (or "Biographies") have additional three-pack missions for all of the main story characters as well as what I understand to be long-time series characters. I wish all of these characters were featured in the story as well, but the leftover characters seem to only ever interact with the story characters instead of each other. It makes it feel like there are two tiers of characters, one not important enough to be in the main story. But this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. Either way, it's more challenges for you to check off and series characters to learn more about, which I'm ok with.
As for the gameplay, it's mostly Monopoly with a few twists. And much like Monopoly, you have to understand that luck is baked into the game. Like Monopoly, this manifests in how you normally move around the board, which is by random dice roll. After that, whatever you land on you either purchase if there is no owner, or you pay rent to the owner. There are a few things that make things more interesting than Monopoly though:
1. You have to manage Ready Cash and what I'll call a Savings Account. All purchases must be made with Ready Cash, so if you don't have enough on hand, you won't be able to buy it. At the same time, you earn interest on your Savings Account every 20 or so turns, so balancing these two is key.
2. In addition to normal properties, there are also vacant plots that you can build into a variety of buildings with effects ranging from siphoning money from opponents savings into your own, or restaurant that charges opponents that land on it money in addition to sending them on vacation for a few turns.
3. Items allow you to mitigate luck. Vehicles allow you to roll between 1 and 3 dice on your turn to tilt the odds in your favor. The Dice item allows you to move to a space of your choice within 6 spaces. Stop Cones force a player that pass it to immediately end their turn on that space. Just to name a few. Purchasing the right ones and using them effectively is the key to success in this game.
4. Within the item pool are explosives, as in addition to jail, there's also a hospital state that you can send injured players to. Players that are in jail or in the hospital do not collect rent, which makes it important to strategically take out opponents when you may be close to needing to pass through their dangerous property.
5. Most of the story missions and character missions are team based. Being a team means that either teammate can improve property of their team, and the game ends when the opposing team goes bankrupt. This adds a fun cooperative aspect to it where you can combo items together since teammates get back-to-back turns. Properties still have an owner, and the owner is important when determining who is collecting rent, as the one thing you can't do is collect rent for your teammate if they're incapacitated, and if one teammate goes bankrupt, all of the properties they own become unowned again (with their improvements intact).
6. NPC gods routinely dot the map, which can grant positive (like occasionally give you an extra upgrade when improving your property) or negative (like cause you to sleepwalk) effects for a few turns. It gives you more things besides opponent properties to avoid or more things for you to aim for, and makes the game more interesting from the get-go.
7. The game operates on an index system, where almost all prices routinely increase across the board via a multiplier every 10 or so turns. This makes games have a pretty hard cap turn-wise, as once the index reaches a certain point, even small properties start charging relatively exorbitant rent for landing on them. Since player income is relatively limited, this will make games end instead of dragging on forever.
That's just a few things, not including more minor mechanics like a routine lottery system, a stock market, to mention a few more. And that's only the classic game. There's also a battle game that's sprinkled throughout the story and character missions that makes for a fun distraction sometimes, where the hospital is removed, and all weapons simply take away increasing amounts of money, tied to the price index. It's decent variety, even if I don't like it as much as the classic game.
Overall, I feel it's a pretty fun game. I wouldn't have completed all of the achievements for it if it wasn't. I have some issues with things like the aforementioned lackluster English translation, how vestigial the stock market feels compared to the old games (as in, I got all achievements without ever needing to buy/sell stocks), and how the boards feel smaller/Mario Party-esque compared to Rich3. I think how much you like this game is going to boil down to how you deal with luck, because even with all of the tools at your disposal, sometimes, you just get unlucky. But if you have a good strategy, sooner or later, lady luck will swing back in your direction. The art style looks charming to me, and the music is fun and upbeat. The characters have fun personalities, with maybe the exception of Daniel, which I suppose is because his voice clips are in "English". Special shout out to October, whose voice lines are mostly in Taiwanese dialect, and that makes me smile as an Taiwan-born American.
