Super Mario Party Review

Genre: Party Game
Players: 1-4
Playtime: 20+ Hours (Includes playing every mode, board, and mini-game, both in single-player and local multiplayer fashion)


The Mario Party franchise has a rich, long history of clever boards and mini-games, hilarious and bogus luck-based situations, and the cause of many a heated and memorable arguments to be had.  The last well-received entry in this chaotic series was Mario Party 8 for the Nintendo Wii, released back in May, 2007.  After 11 years with several missteps along the way, the new Super Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch now looks to do what many games on Switch do best: Go back to the roots and reexamine the core fundamentals of what made this series so beloved to begin with.  Does this reboot find success in re-rolling the dice?  Let's jump to the board and examine the many joys and cons to be found inside.

Mini-Games

A large component of any Mario Party game boils down to the mini-games, to which this entry fortunately delivers such a fun and interesting assortment of clever mini-games to be found.  There are many that involve an engaging degree of mind games and greed, which are a delightful blast in group settings.  And many games that test your reflexes and reward players more points for quick thinking, keeping a chaotic and high energy to the mix.  And the games that make use of HD Rumble, though slower paced, are such unique and captivating experiences to play and distinguish the subtle differences in rumble variations.  These many engaging gameplay styles combined with a delightful sense of humor make for perhaps one of the best collection of mini-games in the series.

A great mini-game that makes use of the motion controls and HD rumble, feeling the sizzle as each side of meat cooks.

Polish / Design

Another noticeable detail with this latest foray in the Mario Party franchise: It both looks and plays beautifully.  There is such great attention to detail in the animations and transitions between scenes in every corner of the game.  How the screen splits when stars are earned.  How characters animate to express joy or disappointment, or how they stumble when they get pushed aside by another passing character.  This care for detail didn't just go into aesthetic upgrades though, as there are also numerous considerations made to aid in general gameplay.  How the start of the turn shows the player how many spaces to reach the star, or when approaching an intersection, an indication of what space they'll land on depending on which path they take.  Or how each mini-game loads with a live practice along with the instructions before the actual game.  Such wonderful tweaks that not only speed up the game, but greatly aid players to better play the game.

Custom Dice

A new addition to the series is the inclusion of character-specific custom dice.  While some dice are more interesting than others and this does create slight advantages / disadvantages between characters, overall I find this to be a really fun and interesting addition.  As each character has access to both a normal die (1-6) and their character die, players now have at least one thoughtful decision to be made each turn as to which die to use.  Some custom die may better the odds of a specific number to land on a certain space, while others may have a high risk-reward for moving fast or not at all.  This clever wrinkle gives the player more power for strategy, while keeping a level of luck that this series is so well known for.  Love it.

Mario's custom dice exchanges the 2 and 4 for better odds at rolling a 3.  Should help him avoid that bad luck space below.

Sense of Humor

With a series spanning across now 13+ games and hundreds upon hundreds of mini-games, the creativity / sense of humor has been cut and dry at times.  Thankfully, Super Mario Party has a very loose and silly approach to some delightfully funny moments.  Just look at the cast of characters from the likes of Monty Mole to Goomba.  There is nothing quite as amusing as watching Monty Mole stress out as he plays in cruel irony whack-a-mole.  The hilarious joys of circling around each other in punching-glove karts, trying to punch each other's rear-ends.  Looking for love with card symbols in a gym.  This is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously and has all the more fun for it.

Variety of Modes

Super Mario Party is also packed to the brims with many other modes / ways to play, almost comparable to the likes of the WarioWare series with their multitude of various side-games.  After playing an hour or more of a traditional Mario Party board, these other modes serve as a great alternative for some varied enjoyment and change of pace to keep the party going.  Be it co-op boards / mini-games, rhythm-based music games, or assorted side-games like an old-school arcade baseball cabinet, there's plenty to be found and enjoyed no matter your preference.

A simple, but surprisingly fun baseball game found in Toad's rec room.

Depth / Content

Continuing off the last point, with this wealth of modes comes unfortunately a lack of substance in aspects of each.  After one or two treks down the river safari, the small amount of co-op mini-games will quickly become apparent, make this mode a bit of a repetitive affair.  Although each of the 4 boards available in this game are unique and distinctive, it is a bit of a shame that there isn't more to choose from compared to past entries in the series.  And while each of the games in Toad's rec-room are genuine fun at first play, their novelty wears off quickly.  If the empty space next to the board selection icons is any indication, it looks as if there is plenty of room for additional content to possibly be added to this game.  If such is true, it would go a long way in filling out this game's many modes which all hold great potential.  As is though, they leave a bit for wanting more.

Single-Player

The Mario Party series has never been one for great fun as a single-player experience.  Some have at least made some effort though with unique mini-games and/or bosses to be faced in such a single-player mode, be it after clearing a board or a chain of mini-games.  Super Mario Party unfortunately falls short of even that though, only offering a "Champion's Road", in which players face computers across every mini-game found in the game.  However, this mode is locked until you unlock every mini-game in the game, making this more of a repeated chore to go through.  And as remains the case, playing boards or the other various modes with computers does not offer the same joys as playing with friends and families, as the computers continually baffle and frustrate with their ineptitude and questionable decision making skills.

My sentiments exactly, Clubba.

Online

If a game is going to offer online, then it would be better to do it right or else not at all.  As the online currently stands, you can only play from a selection of 10 mini-games that rotate as Nintendo sees fit.  No boards or other modes.  Just a small handful of mini-games.  Keep in mind that you'd have to be paying for Switch Online to even play such.  Just sad.

Board / Coin Balance

While the four available boards in this game are varied in appearance and events, they seem to lack a little in endearing qualities compared to other past Mario Party boards.  This chiefly comes down to a lack of balance, both in board design and coin distribution.  Apparently the economy has never been better in the Mushroom Kingdom, as stars now only cost 10 coins and you're almost always guaranteed some increment of coins from mini-games, sometimes just out of sheer participation.  As such, there hardly ever is any fear of being able to afford anything, but rather just how fast can you get to it.  Likewise, the event spaces on each board never have quite the significant impact to make them fondly memorable.  At worst, you may lose a few coins or get moved to another space.  Not very exciting.

King Bob-omb may look menacing in the center of this board, but by the time he explodes (if that even should ever happen), losing a few coins hardly seems worth the worry.

Allies

This last point may be up to debate of personal tastes, but I find the Allies mechanic in this game to be rather unbalanced and overcrowding.  I like the concept that recruiting allies gives players additional custom dice.  However, allies also end up adding 1 or 2 to every roll, thus removing the predictability of certain custom dice.  As such and much else of the game design seeming to favor "get to the star fast" (again, no worries for coins in this economy), allies then become an overpowering necessity to just zoom around the board.  Not only that, but there are certain mini-games in which allies give unfair advantages, as well as several bonus stars in which allies are key to winning.  They simply hold too much sway as designed not to have and therefore lessen the significance of many proud custom dice.

If you take off your rose-tinted glasses, you'll realize that much of the Mario Party series is a nonsensical, luck-based, and often rage-inducing time among friends.  Despite these unbalanced and imperfect designs, they hold as fond and memorable bonding experiences because of the shared frustrations and hilarious experiences they are.  While Super Mario Party doesn't change this mold, it stands as one of the best in the series with its exceptional polish and fantastic mini-games, and is certainly deserving of the title Super.  If you've got a crew of family or friends, and you're not one to bother hooking up your old consoles, Super Mario Party comes as an easy recommendation to re-experience the magical chaos of luck and laughs that only a Mario Party can provide.  And should more content in fact be released for the game, it could quite possibly make this the definitive version to then own.

If you have any questions or thoughts about this game, please feel free to comment and discuss below.  Thanks.  And happy gaming!