Fun; but only play MEDIUM difficulty.

First, the graphics and interface are exceptional. I couldn’t be happier with this aspect. However, I find that enjoyment only happens on MEDIUM level difficulty. Here’s why:

The very first game I played was on MEDIUM difficulty. This was fun; felt well balanced and felt pretty good. The AI was okay; not great, but okay. Then I switched to HARD difficulty. The first time I did this I thought I was just having bad die rolls due to pure chance. I found the following happening:

* In mid-to-late game, I would roll doubles constantly; sending me around the board almost twice as fast as my opponents. On the rare occasion that I landed in jail, I rolled doubles everytime so I was immediately out of jail; back to sailing around the board faster than my opponents.
* The opponents had the best rolls immaginable. I had hotels everywhere and they landed one space before, one space after, or in the middle of the development. It was incredibly rare that they ever landed on my actual property.
* Opponent die rolls were perfect to land them in jail. They never rolled doubles to get out. And then they would immediately land back in jail. I swear, I usually had at least two opponents in jail at any given time. And in late game, the more time you spend in jail, the better since it reduces your risk of landing on opponent property. Meanwhile, the game was forcing doubles on me and I was sailing around the board at warp speed.
* The AI makes terrible deals with each other. If there is ever a chance for an opponent to trade with another opponent to get a monopoly, that trade seems to always seems to be approved immediately.

At first I thought this was a fluke. So I played again: exactly the same thing happened. Both games I lost. I had property; I had hotels; my opponents die rolls just wouldn’t let them land on them.

So this is the big downside of this game: the level changes is really just a way of giving favorable rolls to your opponents, and lousy rolls to you. The AI doesn’t get better. I read some of the other reviews on here and noticed that others are reporting the same thing.

So is it fun? For sure. It is worth getting; I just wish they hadn’t used this method of establishing level difficulties.

DrBonez about MONOPOLY