Fortune Street Review
Itadaki Street may be a familiar series in Japan, but Fortune Street marks the franchise’s first official release outside its home country. Build a monetary empire by buying shops, controlling districts, and playing the stock market wisely, and end up the richest player against friends or computer rivals. With a variety of boards, characters from both the Mario series and Dragon Quest, and multi-player options, Fortune Street can be addictive if you’re willing to invest the time.
This virtual board game may share some features with Monopoly, but Fortune Street proves to be an original take on the genre. You move around a game board by rolling a die, then purchase shops in order to build your net worth. It sounds like a pretty dry game, but then so does Monopoly. What makes Fortune Street stand out is its clever system of shops, stocks, and district values which allow you to build your bank account on a variety of platforms. The resulting game is a treasure trove of strategy and planning–you might want to consolidate your money into a handful of shops, or maybe you prefer to invest a little bit of stock in everything, ensuring you always have a piece of the pie. Or if you prefer a quicker version of the game, you can play with easy rules to simplify the experience, though even easy rules has its own set of challenges and strategic elements.
Purchase shops to start your empire; invest in them to build their value.
However, every game has a degree of chance to it, and sometimes luck in Fortune Street is even more important than distributing your assets wisely. In the end, the roll of the die can be the difference between success and failure–if nobody is landing on your shops but you’re stuck landing on theirs, money will change hands pretty quickly. In this respect the game can be pretty frustrating at times, especially when playing against computer players whose luck is sometimes suspicious.
The other significant problem is that, like an actual board game, Fortune Street can be excruciatingly slow to play. The first several rounds of a game are just preparation, and even after that there are long stretches of time that seem to wait in anticipation of something important happening such as a big buyout purchase or a significant change in the stock market. That’s not to say there aren’t things you need to do and think about and every turn, but there are plenty of times where the game is slow and a bit boring as a result. This also means that, even on the smaller boards, one game can last a very long time.
Sometimes it all comes down to a lucky roll of the die.
Local and online multi-player allows you to play against friends and family or random opponents, forcing you to out-plan and out-wit more sophisticated competition. Sure there’s a sort of single-player campaign, but multi-player is what gives the game its longevity, and there are a good number of options when creating a local or online match. The online system is quite convenient when playing against friends, but good luck finding random players; if anything, you might find some when searching worldwide. However, thanks to the simple, turn-based structure, playing online is a breeze. You can even select “out to lunch” to have the computer take over your character if you need a break, so despite the long game length you aren’t stuck in your seat.
There’s nothing fancy about the controls in Fortune Street; you hold the Wii remote vertically or horizontally and only need a couple of buttons to throw the die and move around the board. Similarly, the presentation is fairly basic. There’s certainly no need for flashy visuals in a virtual board game, but even so the graphics are a bit bland, and even the background scenery lacks remarkable features. The music is in the same boat, though it doesn’t help that much of it is simply remixes of familiar Mario or Dragon Quest tunes.
Fortune Street is a rather odd game. On one hand there’s plenty of strategy for players to dive into, but on the other hand lady luck can ruin the best laid plans. The game certainly takes a while to grow on you, and even then asks a good deal of patience from the player with its slow, sometimes tedious pace and occasionally haphazard luck-based events. But for those willing to give it a chance, Fortune Street can be an addictive virtual board game, solo or with friends.
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