Ludo XXL

Genre: Board Game

Players: 1-6 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Ludo XXL is a family-friendly Board Game released on Nintendo Switch in 2021 and ported to PC and PlayStation 4 in 2022. As the name indicates, this is a version of Ludo, AKA Pachisi, AKA Parcheesi. For those unfamiliar with the game, this is a board game where players are trying to have all four of their colored pieces make a circuit around the game board without other players’ pieces landing on them.

The presentation here is decent, with the board and pieces represented in full 3D with four different selectable themes. I will complain that a few of these themes use colors that make it harder to see individual pieces, but otherwise this game looks decent enough. These visuals are joined by a synthesized instrumental soundtrack that works well enough for the game, but isn’t at all memorable.

As for the gameplay… well, this is Ludo, a game that’s over 125 years old at this point, so rating the game itself seems silly at this point. This is a classic “roll and move” board game, and it has withstood the test of time, even if it’s not quite as timeless as a game like chess.

With this being the case, we can at least judge this game on its features, and here Ludo XXL has some good qualities and some bad ones. On the positive side, games can be played with a variety of options turned on or off to customize the gameplay experience, and there are optional gameplay modes that add spaces to the board that can do various things to help or hinder the player who lands on them. Furthermore, unlike most versions of Ludo, this game include alternate boards that support as many as six players, which is a nice touch.

On the other hand, this is a game that will have players do a lot of waiting. Waiting as other players take their turns, and even waiting as your roll is counted out. You can speed things up somewhat by fast forwarding through AI opponents’ turns, but this is still fairly slow, and you have to manually turn this on every time your turn ends. And worse, you can’t speed things up on your own turn. Roll a five and you’ll have to wait as the game… slowly… counts… all… five… spaces.

Then there’s the price tag. For a game this old, this well-known, and this prolific, $20 really seems like it’s pushing things as far as price goes. While this game does try to add some extra features and gameplay elements to the classic board game, I don’t feel like this price is justified, especially with Ludomania costing a mere $4, as well as the fact that a version of this game is included in Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, along with 50 other games.

In short, unless you are a major fan of Ludo, I just cannot see this game being worth it to you. Yes, the included options are nice, but not nice enough to overlook this version’s tedious slow pace, high price, or the fact that you can find the game cheaper elsewhere.

tl;dr – Ludo XXL is a version of the classic Board Game Ludo, aka Parcheesi. This release of the game includes a nice variety of options, but the pace is dreadfully slow, and the $20 price tag seems absurdly high for a game that can easily be obtained cheaper elsewhere. Unless you are a huge fan of this particular game, don’t buy this version of it.

Grade: C-

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