When there’s a crowd, you can grab the Monopoly Rivals board game and have fun between just the two of you. Battle your rival in the ultimate property trading game – buy the most properties, collect the most money, and win the game!
Overview
Classic Monopoly for Two may sound boring, but not Monopoly Rivals. Buy, sell, and auction your properties in a race against your opponent to be the best. Whoever owns all the properties or bankrupts their opponent wins the game! Chance and Community Chest cards are included, adding the element of surprise to turn the tables just when you may think you are on the winning end.
What’s Included
A standard set of the Monopoly Rivals Edition Board Game includes the following:
- paper game board
- 16 Chance cards
- 16 Community Chest cards
- 2 zinc tokens
- 16 red houses
- 16 blue houses
- money pack
- 1 die
- instructions.
Pros
Tight on time? You can get right into the Monopoly Rivals edition and finish much faster than you would a normal Monopoly game. Since there are only two players, there is no waiting for anyone to finish their turn. Get the ball rolling right after your opponent makes a move, and play at a faster pace than any other traditional Monopoly edition! Instead of having to wait hour-long rounds, you can easily finish a game in no time. The length of each game is roughly similar to that of Junior Monopoly, so you can rest assured that it will not drag on into the wee hours.
This edition of Monopoly is decently priced for the fun it brings. The game board is the same size as a junior edition board, and the two available player tokens are the top hat and the motorcar that one can find in any classic adult Monopoly. Given that the price is about the same as what a junior edition would cost, yet Monopoly Rivals includes features from the adult version such as Chance, Community Chest, and Jail, the price seems like a good deal.
This edition is also great at teaching young children how to add and subtract. The cute style of the game and its fun aspect are unlikely to feel like schoolwork to them. Simply assign your kid to be the banker and prompt them to calculate the payouts for each round!
One more advantage is that L.O.L. Surprise! Monopoly may look like a child’s game, but it is actually a spin-off from the classic adult Monopoly and Monopoly Deal. Although the board is small and shaped like a junior Monopoly board, the game set still contains all the elements of adult Monopoly, such as houses, hotels, and title deeds (doll cards).
Cons
Unfortunately, the biggest selling point of Monopoly Rivals Edition can also be its downside. If you have three or more people, some will have to be left out of the game. Since there are only two player tokens, making it impossible for more people to play together. One way around this limitation is to get multiple boxes of Monopoly Rivals and have each pair play their own game, but it may not be as fun as if everyone were playing together.
Monopoly Rivals also does not include any special or exclusive game pieces worth noting. None of its game pieces are unique to this game and can be easily found in other junior Monopoly sets. By themselves, the game elements are not interesting enough to warrant it becoming a collector’s edition, unlike some other themed Monopoly editions where fans maybe after the collectible player tokens. Monopoly Rivals could be worth getting if you are bent on collecting all the available editions of Monopoly. However, it would be unlikely to attract anyone else who is not already a Monopoly fan.
Overall Review
If you are looking for a fast game between two people using the Monopoly rules we all know and love, then we would recommend you try out Monopoly Rivals.
However, if you are looking for something different or more interesting, then you may want to look somewhere else. Monopoly Rivals itself does not introduce any additional mechanics, but only condenses adult Monopoly into a two-player mini-game.
That said, Monopoly Rivals can be a great way to progress kids up to classic Monopoly. After all, it is suitable for ages 8 and up. However, we think younger children can also learn how to play it as long as they are supervised.
Maria Garcia