Some game crossovers deserve excitement: Snake/Sonic in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Ezio in Soul Calibur 5, and the entire Marvel vs. Capcom series come to mind. Others don't make as much sense from a gamer's perspective: Iron Man in Tony Hawk's Underground or Nicole in Dead or Alive 4 (who would want to bare-knuckle punch her Halo Spartan armor?). Unfortunately for Square Enix and Nintendo, Fortune Street fits among the latter.
Fortune Street is a four-player party game featuring Mario and Dragon Quest characters where players take turns moving around a board, buying stocks and properties, and collecting cards that reward monetary bonuses. "Cool," you think as you read that description. "So it's like Mario Party meets Monopoly but with more characters!" I'll admit, that's what I thought at my first glance at the game.
So how does the game manage to waste what should be an awesome mix?
First off, the game doesn't take advantage of the either license in any special way. That big Mario-head world pictured above? The board for that is a straight line with two loops attached. The same can be said for the other layouts. Instead of using warp pipes and other Mario-esque additions to add to the gameplay, the game uses the license as an excuse to skin the generic levels with familiar Nintendo locales. All we get are simple paths made to look pretty, as in the picture below (is that supposed to be Dragon Quest?).
The same can be said for the use of the characters. In the single-player mode, they exchange banter that fits their personalities and relationships. But this is a party game, so most will be playing the multiplayer. Here, characters don't say so much as a word. This makes for a very "dead" experience on screen, as all the characters are simply moving from place to place, not interacting in any way. What's worse, Fortune Street lacks minigames to break up the monotony like in the Mario Party series. This is straight-up board game.
On top of that, not everyone is unlocked at the beginning of the game. It's not exactly an interesting group at the beginning: In the session I played in, we had Mario, Luigi, Platypunk, and Slime on the board. With that said, I think most won't find the final line-up too exciting either:
Now, I could be wrong about that last point. Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was a hit on the DS, so it's not hard to imagine that I'm underestimating the number of Dragon Quest fans out there. But I can't shake the feeling that families and others that buy party games to play socially aren't the types that would appreciate the obscure characters that they're given in the beginning.
Even if I was a hardcore Dragon Quest fan, I don't think I would put in the time needed to unlock the better characters anyway. My play session lasted about 3 hours, and we were only just past half the score needed to win. If unlocking characters is anything like in Mario Party or Super Smash Bros, it seems that it would take days to unlock anybody. I don't personally know anyone willing to devote that much time to a board game.
All of these factors left me feeling that Fortune Street is more of a cash-in title than anything else. It's not as addicting (or heck, even fun) as a Mario Party game, and the use of the characters doesn't make much sense. A game made by Square Enix with Mario and Dragon Quest characters together could have been something great — a new Super Mario RPG, anyone?