So last night I had the half unfortunate pleasure of playing a game called Billion Road. Short review of it.
If you’re coming to billion road expecting a spin on Mario Party (similar to Dokapon Kingdom, 100% Orange, etc), you will hate this game. If you’re coming to it for a game that seems to be built on japanese culture memes and has a focus on economics similarly to monopoly, then hey give this a shot.
At first it seems like its a mario party clone, but it very quickly reveals itself to be a quite complex board game. Unfortunately my friends weren’t really into that so they changed to something else later, but from what I can tell the game is rather competent. It has a well designed board, and the mechanics are well thought out too. Although I find the item system weird. You pickup useable items (mario party style items) as well as monsters to add to your “Party”.
Annoyingly, this is where the stupid complex strategy of the game already starts.
So your party of monsters can give you different things. You can pick up a guy that gives you a reroll, another one is a gift giver if you are the first one to the first goal (more on that later…), another takes you right where you want to go, etc.
So now back up a bit. The map is literally japan. Like straight up theres Ueno, Kagasuri Mines, Itoe Ui, cool. This is either made by / for japanese students and weebs, or is the slickest travel marketing I’ve ever freakin seen. Telling you in plain Romanji the name of a place, the map might have farms or cities or a military base on it so it tells you whats there, and it even shows you WHERE in japan it is so if you visit you know what to look up just from being interested via the game.
Sorry, cool map, anyways.
The roads on the map are just like in mario party. They go only to specific places, and I think they actually mimic the japanese public transport system 1:1 no bloody joke.Like each city will have 2 main roads and random connections in them, I bet the 2 main roads are the biggest roads in the cities or something, with the highways in-between the cities just being major japanese highways.
You guys think I’m kidding with this but the game has depth. On the eastern side of the map they even have the mountain range and its bigass highway with nothing on it because its on a MOUNTAIN, and then oh look tokyo. But as well, once you go one direction, you also get whatever pickups you run over (monsters, traps, items, surprise “contests”, etc).
Now back to the monsters. If you run over a dice guy(reroll), then a horse(takes to wherever you want), then a copycat(clone a players items / money I think?), your pickup of monsters is in reverse order of importance… I think. I didn’t get long enough to flesh out the monster system honestly to see how it worked so if I’m wrong sarry. But say you want to use your reroll guy you picked up in the order mentioned above. He’s ready to go every single move you have, so you can always reroll him, but if you have a copycat or another instant use monster in your cue, they will override the reroll guy.
Oh and about that gift guy. He’s both a gift and a burden. So you and other players can fight over this guy. If you run over another player with the gift, they “steal” it. He gives you random items that you can sell at item shops, but not all items are sellable. After realizing this when I had the gift guy I was desperately trying to get rid of him while my friends were pissed I was getting free mario party items. However, you can’t sell all of them, it gives you mostly useless items, and you very quickly realize that you get a full inventory of items after only a handful of turns and it limits part of your ability to actually travel around the board.
Near as I can tell general strategy of the game is to buy properties on the map monopoly style to make consistant money to get to the goal by any means necessary. Buying items, monsters, paying off debts, lifting curses, paying off the mafia, many many things involving money. To skip these things you have your monsters abilities, either to your advantage or others disadvantage, and items to get to the goal faster. And I think at the end of the game you count how many goals there are per each player.
Course now that I think about it that would mean that the whole part of mario party that everyone actually loves, being an asshole the everyone on the map, is basically what this game is meant to perfect. You stack up as much money from buying businesses monopoly style, race to get as many goals as you can, all while teleporting people into the middle of hokkaido, okinawa, or the middle of the ocean, or whatever horrible things you want to do to each other.
Which goes to the other point of the game, is fighting over the gift guy. You end up with an inventory of items from him that are fit to sabotage your opponents in your race to the goal, but then you have to balance your offense with your movement.
Honestly I bet this game gets really really intense.
I didn’t get to see many of the items unfortunately, but the item system looked really fleshed out. Every few pickups would be a different thing, sometimes a different drop from the gift guy, we were just getting the common ones because we were too early in the game and my friends eventually gave up.
Meh. Alchohol, birthdays, whatnot.
Although I do want to say, don’t plan to play this game drunk. If you don’t plan on reading everything, you’re not going to learn how to play the game. The tutorial of the game is all in the popup text boxes for the items, monsters, places, and pickups. Some things are taught to you complete tutorial window style, however, for those who’ve never played a digital board game before like this, (or mario party, like understanding that different tiles do multiple different things at once, etc) which I thought was nice. I don’t see many games actually do that, so for little kids who’d probably end up with this, makes sense.
Honestly, after thinking about it, I’m jealous of kids today if this is a bargain bin switch game at 35 bucks at Play n Trade, 40 bucks at Gamestop. Thats like the new katamari to me. Simple, fast, fun with people.
TLDR
If you wanna play wario party this isn’t mario party. If you wanna play sort of mario party where the whole point of the game is to stomp those economically beneath you like a japanese salaryman rising to a CEO with sorta gameshow vibes, do it.
Honestly I think I love this game. I will totally be buying it when I get my switch (hopefully soon ;-;). I’d love to do reviews for switch games if this is the level I have to set my expectations to at a minimum.