Original Release: Square, 2004, PlayStation 2
Other Releases: PSP (2006)
The fifth game in the Itadaki Street series was the first to incorporate guest appearances from game franchises outside of the Dragon Quest world, but seems to assume that new players are already very familiar with at least one of the previous titles
Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Special (PSP, Square, 2006)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Itadaki Street, the weird hybrid of Monopoly and a basic stock investment system that no one ever bothers to explain the finer points of. At least, not in this edition. I guess they assumed you’ve played one of the SNES entries or something, if not you’re on your own to figure everything out.
I mean, I understand the basic theoretical principles of the game. The general idea is to invest heavily in one of the five “streets” of shops that each board is broken up into. Both buying individual properties you land on, a la Monopoly, and buying stock in the street as a whole. You establish a presence and raise the value of the area along with your own properties; alternately, you can invest in stock in an area that the other players are heavily physically developing and ride the economic wave along with them.
The thing I couldn’t grasp, and where a tutorial or some pointers would be really helpful, is how you do that without simply enriching the other street residents even more than you. You can have comparable properties on the street, and somehow their stonks are flying through the roof while yours are going nowhere. Investing where you don’t have properties seems to just make the effect worse. You better understand that stonk system though, because it’s the only way to win, and the computer understands how to hustle it fully from the very first match.
The game also really seems to come down to dumb luck in the early phase, with the first couple of trips around the board really determining who jumps out to a lead that you basically can’t catch. If you land on a couple properties on one street, then get the cash to upgrade them, it seems like you can basically just then Stonk the street/develop property to death for the rest of the game and no one can really do anything about it.
All of this would also be better if you could more readily experiment with it, but games are one to three hour slogs that take absolutely forever to resolve. There are some pointless time sinks like the “Casino,” which is really just battles against slimes that net you a trivial amount of money (if they don’t waste your time for a few turns then run away).
I haven’t tried other titles in the series yet, but if they’re like this, I see why Square didn’t bother trying to bring it to the West (at least until the Fortune Street Mario crossover of 2011). And I can see why it sold dismally when they did. It expects you to do homework to learn how to play, but without any guidance at all in-game, and that’s a proposition like 9 out of 10 people are going to turn down. Break this out at a party and I guarantee normies will think you’re a weirdo and hate you.
Links
English translation – at the moment focuses on menus and things vital to play, most of the incidental character dialogue in-game remains untranslated
Videos