The box is mostly just air pockets with cardboard cubes that fill the voids. The box could be only a quarter as thick and still easily fit all the contents. The cards are cheap, as is the usual for monopoly, and the cardboard coins are okay but flimsy. The board is okay, but some of the player pieces look a bit too similar, especially from far away. So, the components aren't great, and you are paying way too much for this stuff at retail price. Either the licensing fees for the actors' likenesses was ridiculous, or Hasbro is just hosing fans of its brands. I feel the latter is more likely. That all said, I found this to be a rather enjoyable version of Monopoly. There are quite a few changes from the default formula. Instead of rolling two 6-sided dice, you only roll 1. The railroads have been replaced by portals, and if you land on them, you can move to any space between your portal and the next railroad/portal. There is only one type of space for the community chest type cards and so only one deck of those cards. The game gives you actual agency by making the piece you choose to play with correspond to a specific character with a unique power. (Though Chris Pratt's main protagonist seems to have the absolute worst power of them all because being in jail is usually a powerful strategy in Monopoly. His power automatically gets you out of jail. But for every character, if you are in jail when anyone lands on just visiting, you automatically break out of jail. And without two dice to roll, you can't repeatedly roll doubles and end up in jail. And with the portal spaces, you can hop over the go to jail space. So his power seems like total crap when compared to the character that lets you draw two of the treasure cards and pick your favorite anytime you land on one of those spaces.) So they could have done better balancing the powers the different characters get. In this version of Monopoly you also get to choose, when landing on a property, if you just buy it out right or try rolling the d20. Even the most valuable property has only a 50% loss chance, and if you win, each property has a unique reward. One of which is move to any other space on the board. So you can move right to this game's version of Boardwalk if you want to. One other nice thing about the game is that it ends as soon as anyone purchases the last property. If you run out of money before then, you just roll the d20 every turn until you succeed at a revival roll. It would be hard to come back from that, but at least you won't have a screaming crying kid who is told they need to quietly sit and watch everyone else finish the game. I think that is where this version of Monopoly shines. I feel like there are much better and more frequent player choices than traditional Monopoly, and it feels shorter and more streamlined. For example, there are no houses or hotels in this version and only $10 and $50 coins. As such, this game feels much more kid friendly. The only place it feels more complicated is the acquisition of properties. When you land on a property for the first time you have to pay a small value to the bank, then decide to buy it outright and skip any bonus rewards, or roll the d20 for an adventure that you are likely to win and get a reward. However, if you lose there are additional penalties. I feel like this game could also be played cooperatively where if any player "dies" then everyone loses the game. Playing this way you wouldn't even have to count your gold at the end and decide on a "winner". I also think it would be very unlikely that any player dies. My wife and I weren't even close to death at any time. Positive effects are overall much more likely than negative ones, and you even get to draw item cards which can be played to boost your d20 rolls and make winning adventures even more likely. I feel like this is a very streamlined casual friendly version of Monopoly. It does an okay job of making the D&D theme actually feel relevant to the game. And, I feel like this is a much more kid-friendly version than any Monopoly I played before, but it has enough choices and player agency that adults won't get bored as easily. I wouldn't play this on the daily, but I could see young kids really getting into it. I mean, my brother and I used to play Star Wars Monopoly on the daily when we were little, and the theme was just slapped onto that version of Monopoly. We would've loved this version. It's just too bad they are so grotesquely overpricing this. It really shouldn't be more than fifteen dollars. But, if you have to buy a Monopoly, this one would be my go-to.
