by Tanya Short

Created on: June 22, 2008   Last Updated: April 27, 2011

For anyone but extreme Monopoly enthusiasts, Galactic Imperia is a disaster - I give it a 2 out of 5. This potentially quirky game is boring, ugly, buggy, and there's not much to recommend it.

If you've ever played Monopoly, you know the basic rules of Galactic Imperia. Run around a board, buy whatever you see, and hope your opponents land on your purchased spaces. Repeat. I'm actually a fan of another Monopoly-based video game series, Culdcept and Culdcept Saga, so I know it CAN be done well. Unfortunately, Galactic Imperia does not.

Single-player mode is identical to multiplayer mode, except that the other players are computers. There is no variety of gameplay, no campaign mode - in short, nothing to entertain someone playing by themselves. You click two buttons (Roll Dice, and then either Buy or Done) and wait five minutes until it's your turn again. Maybe it would be fun to huddle four people around my computer and play, watching each other take our turns, but somehow I doubt it.

The game is also technically incomplete. In the hour I played, it crashed twice, for daring to start a new game or roll the dice. As the game dragged on, my computer opponents started taking longer to think about their next move... even when their next move was to roll the dice. The English translation is sub-par, with misspellings, grammar mistakes, and incomprehensible sentences strewn throughout. It's endearing at first, especially the robotic voice acting, but wears thin very quickly.

Maybe I would be more forgiving if the visuals and audio were appealing. Instead, the graphics are composed of neon green, bright blue, and extremely few polygons, resulting in an almost nauseating mess of blurry colors. The user interface was the real culprit, however, as all of the elements (such as what land you'd purchased or how many victory points you'd accumulated) are so tiny you have to squint to read it.

If you've purchased all 500 variants of Monopoly and you're burning to play another one, go ahead and try the Galactic Imperia demo. Otherwise, don't bother.

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