King of Tokyo – Richard Garfield

Genre: Board Game

Players: 1-6 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

King of Tokyo is a Board Game originally released in 2011, and it is widely considered to be one of the better family-friendly board games for novice players to get into the medium thanks to its appealing premise of a bunch of Kaiju monsters fighting for control over Tokyo, its simple and fairly fast-paced Yahtzee-inspired dice-rolling gameplay, and the variety provided by its diverse power cards. The entering/exiting Tokyo gameplay element also provides a good risk/reward mechanic, as does the question whether to keep a good roll even if it’s not quite what you were aiming for.

In 2026, a version of the game was released on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, and the main question here isn’t whether the core game is good – it’s generally-agreed to be solid in its original medium. No, the question is whether it transitioned well to the videogame format.

The presentation in this videogame release of King of Tokyo is… well, a choice. Rather than sticking with the cartoony comic-style look of the board game, the videogame version of King of Tokyo goes for a dark, gritty, largely monochrome 3D art style seemingly inspired by traditional Japanese art. This is backed by a similarly moody mostly percussion-based soundtrack. Oddly, even though we have all these crazy kaiju beasts in 3D, they’re not really rendered in an especially impressive cinematic way, nor do they make much noise – paired with the subdued soundtrack, this makes King of Tokyo an oddly quiet game. I wouldn’t say this presentation is inherently bad in and of itself, but it seems like a pretty terrible fit for the game’s topic matter. I suppose I wouldn’t mind this so much if this presentation were an optional skin in addition to something that stuck closer to the look and feel of the board game, but with this being the only option, I think fans of the board game will be disappointed.

The gameplay does a decent enough job providing newer players with a quick tutorial of how everything works, as it comes up. And mostly, this works well. There’s an option to speed up animations and bot-controlled opponents’ turns to make for a faster game, and the game labels controls well enough so you can see how to do different things if you forget.

Here’s where the problems start, though. The power cards are one of the more important and varied parts of the game, and actually seeing what cards there are, both in the shop tableau as well as what’s already purchased by players, is vital to the game’s strategy. Yet actually being able to view these cards and see what they do is something nestled away within a sub-menu of a sub-menu.

Also, I have to mention the lack of online multiplayer here. I commend this game for supporting up to six players locally, but it’s disappointing that it has to be local. And this is especially surprising that you can play the game online for free on your web browser via Board Game Arena. So buying a version of the game for a game console and not having this option seems like a pretty major omission.

Speaking of omissions… okay, look. I’ll credit this game for costing $30 on Nintendo Switch when the physical game retails for $45. However, there’s an argument to be made that that cost is in part due to the physical materials. I bring this up because this game doesn’t include any of the board game’s expansion content, and as of this writing doesn’t make it available via even paid DLC. No Power Up expansion, no Power Up: Halloween, no Mindbug, and none of the monster pack expansions. And that’s not even talking about spin-off and variant games like King of New York!

Even if they were going to be stingy about not including add-on content here, they could have added… something? Perhaps a campaign mode or scenarios, something to take advantage of the videogame format? Maybe make a special console-specific variant of the game where each of the monsters has their own unique ability or something. I’m just spitballing here, coming up with potential ideas, but I’m apparently already doing more than this videogame’s creators did.

So what does this all amount to? The videogame version of King of Tokyo does still have at its core the same game that was great as a board game… but so much was lost in the transition. The presentation is dour and lifeless, and lacks the great expressive personality of the board game. The interface hides away the power cards in sub-menus, despite that they’re one of the most strategically-important parts of the game. And this game makes no attempt to add to the content of the game or make use of the videogame format in any way. The result is a flawed but functional port of a great board game that’s ultimately still much, much better as a board game. What a disappointment.

tl;dr – King of Tokyo is renowned as a fantastic Board Game to introduce players to that medium, and this videogame version of it saps out the color and energy of that game, hides away some of the most important gameplay information in sub-menus as you play, and is woefully lacking in content and features, not even offering online play despite free browser-based versions of the game including that feature. The result is a pretty terrible port of a great board game. I still highly recommend playing this game… but I recommend just playing the board game instead of this pathetic port.

Grade: C-

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