Monopoly has been entertaining families (and causing a fair share of arguments) for more than 90 years. In that time, there have been dozens of special or themed editions and video games, ranging from Pokemon to Star Wars. The latter is certainly thematically tied to the new release from Behaviour Interactive and Ubisoft – Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains – but you might be surprised to find a very different type of Monopoly here once you dig into it.

“Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope”

At least at first glance, Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains will look familiar to anyone who has played the board game. The board is square, stops around the board are grouped into coloured locations and there’s a Jail, Go & Free Parking spot. That however, is where the similarities start and end.

The first and most noticeable difference for Heroes vs Villains is that this is a team game. The game can be played in either 2 v 2 or 3 v 3 modes, pitting the light side vs the dark side, mixing players and AI if you should wish. Economics is still central to the game, but this game spins a unique take on this too; As a team, you share a wallet, so any boons or banes that impact an ally, also impact the rest of the team.

Which Star Wars character you choose for your team also matters. Unlike the thimble or the wheelbarrow from the board game, each character comes with their own abilities. Some of these abilities are passive, like granting a discount on when claiming a location, or increasing the number of dice you can roll during combat (yes, there’s combat). Other’s are active abilities, that you can trigger at the end of your round. These come with a cool down and often cost money to use, but they can turn the tide in a tight game, like putting one of your opponents in jail. Choosing characters that complement one another can make a big difference to your fortunes.

“Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing.”

Team play isn’t just the only change here. There’s big changes to the win conditions too. Rather than revolving around the Republic Credits in your wallet, the aim is to end the game with as many ‘influence points’ as possible. These points can be earned in 3 ways.

The first is by simply landing on, then paying for locations as you go around the board. Each location is worth a set amount of influence points. The second is by upgrading these locations; Once you’ve obtained a Planetary Monopoly (say, by capturing all of the locations on Degobah), you can then pay to upgrade these locations. This increases the rent your enemies will have to pay should they land there, offers more influence points and grants an element of protection. You see, your enemies can still take the location from you if they land on the space and they haven’t been upgraded.

The last method to obtain influence points is likely to be the most controversial with players – the Go Event. These Go Events are triggered each time a character moves past the Go square. During these events, your team get a chance to replicate an iconic moment from the Star Wars series, presented via a dice role. Each event gives each player on the team a chance to participate (so long as they’re not locked up in Jail), attempting to hit a particular target with the roll, like getting a number higher than 7 with 2 dice.

The more of your team achieve the target the set during the Go Event, the more influence points you’ll be awarded. Even if just one of the team hit the target however, you’ll also get a reward that impacts play. This might be increasing an ally location to maximum upgrade, pushing the whole enemy team back around the board or, in one instance, wiping one location off the board all together.

The controversial element of the Go Events in Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains is that these events also determine the game length. You can set this to a maximum of 8, which leads to an 60-80 min game. The influence points gained by these events can’t be reduced and if you have some rotten luck (or some savvy opponents) your foes can rattle around the board to rock up some serious points quickly. It’s possible to get into a no-win situation shortly after the half way mark of a game if your whole team gathers near the near the end of the board, but you still need more influence points than a Go Event can grant you.

“I suggest a new strategy: let the Wookiee win.”

Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains also includes combat. If two characters from opposing teams land on a location, a battle is triggered. Here, the defensive character (whomever was on the square first) rolls their dice into a circular arena. The attacker then gets to roll their dice into the arena to attempt to get a higher score. While it’s a nice idea, this system is a little unbalanced. Being a defender and going first means the attacker can target your higher scoring dice, almost guaranteeing a win for the attacker each time, who takes control of the location. There are character abilities to offset this, but it means sacrificing strength elsewhere.

There’s also other significant changes to the typical Monopoly board. Utilities are replaced by Cantinas where you can purchase influential abilities, like sending someone to jail, pushing characters back around the board or reducing the influence of a nearby location. Canto Bight also makes an appearance around the board – here you can gamble credits on a dice role. Roll higher than a 3 and you’ll earn yourself a nice little pay off.

One of the last changes worth noting is the replacement of the Monopoly train stations with hyperspace lanes. Here you can travel to the nearest ally or neutral location, or, more helpfully, to the next hyperspace lane. This means you can speed around a quarter of the board instantly, reducing the time and dice rolls between you and the next integral Go Event.

With all of these rule and board changes, Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains barely feels like a ‘Monopoly’ game at all. For me at least, this was a welcome change. There are a number of existing Monopoly video game adaptations already, and by doing something totally different rather than just slapping Luke Skywalker on the box, the developers have breathed life into a board game format that is otherwise well trodden ground.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Of course, a totally new take on Monopoly might not be the reason you’re looking at this review. It might be because this game is Star Wars themed. Here, Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains is mostly a success at fully utilising the licencing. You can tell that there has been thought put into the characters that are here, taking characters from most corners of the galaxy far, far away. There are however a few omissions it would have been nice to see – Qui-Gon Jinn & Din Djarin being the most notable.

The characters that are here however are portrayed in an art style that’s reminiscent of that in Disney Infinity 3.0 – like a 3D animation, but stylised to fit the theme. They’re all instantly reminiscent of their TV or Movie counterpart, and move around the board with their own unique animations too. A lot of work has clearly been put into each piece, from design, animation and voice work, although the latter aspect is probably the weakest for some characters. For example, the voice actor for Mace Windy sounds nothing like Samuel L Jackson. To offset the lackluster vocal performances, the whole game is commentated by R2D2 and C3PO who chirp in with iconic lines and is a constant joy that imagined might start to grate after a few hours, but is still entertaining me after 10 hours with the game. I will never get enough of Obi-Wan saying “Hello there” whenever it is his turn too.

There’s been a lot of effort employed around the board itself too. Each location you land on triggers a holographic recreation that consumes the middle of the board. The Senate Building on Coruscant, Echo base on Hoth & Jabbas Palace on Tatooine are among these. These are great to see, and really lend themselves to strengthen the Star Wars theme. The battle arena is built specifically for each planet too, which was likely unnecessary, but shows how much effort the developers have put into this title. My favourite part of the theming however is the jail; whenever a character is sent there, they’re frozen in carbonite. If you’d ever wondered what Bo-Katan Kryze would look like frozen in rock, then this game will answer that question for you.

The only major failing grace of the Star Wars dressing around this game is the music. The official music clearly couldn’t be used, so instead, this game goes for a Star Wars-esque sound track. The same chords, just different. It’s not bad, per se, but it does seem like a shame to have so much work go into the rest of the game to have the ‘John Williams from Temu’ version of the music playing in the background.

“This is not the Monopoly you are looking for”

In terms of features, Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains will live and die with each player depending on how well they enjoy the plethora of new rules that have been introduced. The game can be played locally or online, but the new mode is the only one that can be played. There’s no traditional Monopoly mode here. I’ve wholeheartedly enjoyed this new take on the Monopoly staples, have played nearly a dozen games with my family, and will continue to do so in the future as it has become a regular for game night.

To increase the longevity of this, the game comes with a series of challenges to complete during play. These challenges unlock new dice types and costumes, such as an Anakin skin for Darth Vader.

In terms of performance, Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs Villains runs very well on PS5. While there have been reports of slow down or stuttering on other platforms, the PlayStation version runs very smoothly. The AI are well balanced too; they have 3 difficulty settings which make a real difference. On Easy, the AI will make some daft decisions, like rolling to escape prison when they have more than enough funds to bail themselves out. The medium and hard difficulties will give you a real test. The force might be with you, but they can beat you like a scruffy looking nerf herder if you make dodgy decisions.

Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs. Villains is out now for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam.

Developers: Behaviour Interactive

Publisher: Ubisoft

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we purchased a copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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