Monopoly Hotels Review – Building an Empire will Break the Bank

Last week we talked about a new game from Electronic Arts called Monopoly Hotels, and this week we’re back with our Monopoly Hotels Review. Think you have what it takes to become a Monopoly Mogul or will you even want to try?

Monopoly Hotels brings the classic game we all know and love into the modern age, and while things are quite different, the vibe of the board game still remains. The game starts you out with a Hotel on Mediterranean Avenue, and from there you’ll attempt to expand your empire until you own every property in the game. Each Hotel is unique, and some properties have been redone to represent different buildings like a Museum, Zoo, and Aquarium. I’m on level 10 right now, and there are already 130 unlocked items to build between the Guest Rooms, Decorations, and Attractions.

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Your goal is to fill each Hotel with rooms which allows you to collect rent so you can expand. Building a room takes 3-steps and follows the usual formula of build & wait. The rooms are all animated, and there are a lot of cool Hasbro themed rooms available including lines like My Little Pony, The Littlest Pet Shop, G.I. Joe, and Mr. Potato Head. It’s a nice touch, and I was shocked to see a White & Black Dojo Rooms with Storm Shadow & Snake Eyes. Therein lies the rub, as the rooms are pricy and you’re going to have to break the bank if you want them in your Hotels.

The premium form of currency in Monopoly Hotels is gold, and the cooler rooms can only be bought with it. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but EA takes it to the extreme (as usual) and makes it to where you cannot complete the game without spending real money. Seriously, some of the tasks in your Sticker book require you to use those premium rooms, and there are NO free gold offers in the game. A good example of how screwed up things are is the “Royal Repair” task that requires you to place two rooms in the same hotel which in turn earns you 25 gold. One of those two rooms costs 44 gold to unlock… see the problem?

It’s pay to play at its finest folks, and it really ruins what would have been an awesome game. You’ll see a lot of comments in the Play Store claiming otherwise, but those were left before folks hit the paywall. That or they have more money than they do sense. Always dig through those comments; it’s not hard to separate the fluff from the “truth” if you dig deep. You can thank those constant “Rate Me” pop-ups for all those fluffy 5-star comments.

Verdict

There’s a lot to love about Monopoly Hotels, and it’s one of the cooler Monopoly games I’ve seen put out for mobiles. Money constantly rains from the heavens, there’s plenty to build, and all the guest rooms are extremely cool. The in-app purchasing system ruins it all though, and unless you can afford to spend 50 or 60 bucks on a mobile game I can’t recommend this one. It’s just one more freemium game ruined by a publisher, and another nail in EA’s coffin as far as I’m concerned.

If you still want to check out the game, you can pick up Electronic Arts Monopoly Hotels for free on Google Play.