RISK Global Domination

For a variety of reasons, board games don't always have successful transitions into the video game format. Many manage the platform jump, but come with enough compromises that they aren't worth playing anyways. Risk is not one of those games. Save for the AI players that make solo play pretty much impossible, this turned out to be a remarkably well-translated board game. With all of the original rules in-tact, as well as "house rule" style customization, Risk Global Domination feels just as playable as the board game sitting in my closet, but without any of the setup or teardown.

For those unfamiliar, Risk is a strategic game about becoming the leading world superpower while preventing your rivals from doing the same. As the name suggests, whether you have a good plan or not, your actions are going to involve a degree of risk. In order to dominate the world, you must conquer the geographical regions held by your opponents while defending the ones you currently hold. Conquering more regions means you'll be allocated more new troops at the start of a turn, and you can earn a really big boost to your military for every full continent that you control. Once you place your troops throughout the world, they can be ordered to attack neighboring regions. This is where things get really risky; attacking opponents triggers a dice roll based on the sizes of the attacking and defending forces. This dice roll means that no matter how powerful you think you are, it's purely a difference in luck separating winning and losing a battle. This can be an extremely rewarding, or intensely frustrating, aspect of the game, but it is a part of its DNA nonetheless, which is why I was happy to see it so faithfully recreated.

This iteration of Risk also adds the convenient "auto-attack" feature, allowing you to skip watching all of the dice rolls and get to the battle's conclusion immediately, but you aren't forced to use it. A lot of strategy can play out in the midst of a battle, and that is all still present here. Each dice roll is accounted for, with minimal, yet impressive, animations to match each strike. Unfortunately, if you are playing against the computer, you can probably anticipate being on the defensive end of those rolls way too much. Unless the amount of human players outnumbered the amount of AI players, I found them to be much too difficult to play against. The game does let you decide if they should be aggressive, defensive, or balanced, but that never seemed to make them easier to deal with, so playing with the computers seem pretty unappealing.

However, assuming you have even one other person to play with, the troublesome AI is essentially a non-issue. Risk ends up being a great way to pass an hour or two, especially with friends that aren't into traditional party games. It also provides a unique experience in that the changes made to its presentation make it seem like it could be an original strategy title, rather than an adaptation, yet the core mechanics still feel exactly how they should. If you don't like the classic board game, you probably won't like this, but if you want something to play with friends that isn't quite so fast-paced, Risk is for you.

The game is available for Switch here (as of 6/30/21): https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/risk-global-domination-switch/

The game is available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S here (as of 6/30/21): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/risk/c2fchjg6rnpr?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

The game is available for PS4 and PS5 here (as of 6/30/21): https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0001-CUSA01023_00-RISKGAMEPS400002