A review by Rebecca Fleming
I love the Legend of Zelda series. The first Zelda game I played was Ocarina of Time, and since then I’ve been hooked. Naturally, when I saw the Legend of Zelda Monopoly in EB Games one day, I was sorely tempted to buy it, but for a long time I resisted, because I’m not really a fan of Monopoly. Eventually, though, the temptation became too much, and I ended up caving in…
Zelda Monopoly breaks up the properties into sets based on locations from different games in the Zelda series; for example, you’ve got Great Bay, Snowhead and Clock Town from Termina (Majora’s Mask) as the yellow set, and Lorule Castle, Sacred Realm and House of Gales from Hyrule (A Link Between Worlds) as the pale blue set.
Chance and Community Chest are replaced with Empty Bottle and Treasure Chest (how fitting), and we have the Potion Shop and the Bomb Shop in place of utilities. Train stations have been turned into Zelda modes of transport, such as Skyward Sword’s Loftwing and Wind Waker’s King of Red Lions. The houses and hotels are green and gold, which I thought was a nice touch.
I played Zelda Monopoly with some friends on New Year’s Eve, and while we all thought the board was gorgeous, we were all a little disappointed that the designers didn’t put any effort into changing the corner pieces. For example, we thought that the Jail square could have had an image of the Gerudo prison, while the “Go to Jail” square could have had one of the series villains, such as Ganondorf or Skull Kid. Still, these were minor nitpicks and it didn’t stop us from having fun playing and cursing at one another over property disputes.
The pickup cards include gems such as “Attacked by cuccos. Go back three spaces” (I’m sure we’ve all hit an innocent cucco with our sword because we thought it would be funny, and then immediately regretted it) and “Break some pots. Collect 150 Rupees,” making them relevant to the world of Hyrule. Appropriately, the Monopoly money shows Rupees (Zelda game currency) of different colours, and the player tokens are all items used within the games:
Unlike in most Monopoly games, the Zelda tokens are gold, not silver. There’s the Ocarina of Time, the Triforce, the hookshot, the boomerang, the longbow and of course Link’s signature Hylian shield. The game also came with a gorgeous illustrated map, which you can see under the tokens. Here’s a look at the map along with the chest envelope it came in and some of the property cards:
Even if you don’t like Monopoly, I think this is worth having for a Zelda fan simply as a collector’s item.
