Super Mario Party
I have completed almost every part of the game, which includes the Mario Party, Partner Party, River Survival, Sound Stage and the Challenge Road. For both River Survival and Challenge Road, I even beaten the more difficult stages so I can safely say that I managed to perservere through the toughest parts of the game. The only game that I haven't beaten is Puzzle Hustle, which I felt is best played with multiple people. While I have beaten this game earlier this month, I decided to get this out of the way as I am about to beat another game.
Mario Party is a traditional round of what we know and love about the Mario Party series, going back to the basics of the structure of taking turns moving on the board and playing a minigame after each round. Overall, the boards are smaller than what was found in the past games, but since the dice roll doesn't normally reach 10 spaces (only a handful of characters can achieve this), the size of the board didn't feel cramped. The optimal setting for the board is 10 turns, which might also sound like it's too short, but the game doesn't allow ways to speed up the board movements, so it's pretty much a 1-hour game, unlike past games where 20 turns is usually conducive for a 1 hour game. Even the maximum number of turns (20 or 30 in the last board) is probably going to last quite long compared to other Mario Party games with the same number of turns. Since I have played with the old Mario Party format several times, it's a familiar and pleasant feeling to play through a traditional board, and it's even better when the CPUs are dominated. This is not ragging on Mario Party 9 or 10's "everybody travels" mechanic which several players are wont to do, in case you are wondering. I would like to add that this game is surprisingly very tense since the game could very well have a turnaround for even the less-skilled CPUs. Once I played on the Megafruit Paradise, I lost to Goomba because the Star awards was not enough (I got both, but Goomba shared one of them), and that was when one of them is at Hard difficulty. I got some unlucky calls, like getting "0" with Shy Guy's dice block 3 times in a row, which was discouraging to say the least, so you can't claim that I got through this mode smoothly.
Partner Party does something different: while previous Mario Party games would use the traditional Mario Party board and have both partners travel separately, the game takes after Mario Party: Star Rush's grid-based board that emphasises free-range movement. Unlike the past Mario Party partner system (and similar to Mario Party 7's 8 player implementation), both players contribute to the dice block movement, but they still are allowed to take their own path. This system does feel like both players are actively contributing to the team since each player's actions matter, and is most conducive for better strategies since unlike Mario Party, Partner Party has overall higher movement rolls. It would probably be better with another player, but I like what I played.
In both Mario Party and Partner Party, there are items once again, and luckily, not only do the player/team get to carry 3 items, the selection of items is once again quite robust similar to Mario Party 3 and 4, which lends itself for quite a number of strategic plays. The games tend to have more than one item shop, and the tougher ones to reach tend to have the better items, which includes the Golden Pipe (brings player in front of the Star). The issue I can see is that many items are only available from the Item Space, which isn't a guarantee landing. The game also allows players to recruit more allies to not only have more options for dice blocks, but to slightly increase board movement. Having a party of characters to travel is just as pleasant as it sounds, even with characters I am indifferent to.
Super Mario Party has rhythm minigames, but it's this game that puts them in the stage, literally. There is a mode called Sound Stage where players play through 3 or 6 rounds of Rhythm Minigames, and they are all motion-controlled so it's not like Rhythm Heaven, which tend to implement button input instead. Personally speaking, my interest sparked with this game because of this type of minigames, and while there are only 10 of them and they are pretty much done once I beat them (both Normal and Hard varieties), it feels great to play rhythm minigames because I enjoy catchy music. The minigames that I have the most trouble in are Strike It Rich and Fiddler on the Hoof, especially the former.
River Survival on Normal is pretty easy even with CPUs, I felt, as they were very cooperative in the mini-games. The timer is quite generous too, as there are several moments to gain time, most notably when reaching new sections. They might be tough to cooperate when travelling through the flowing river, but overall they got the job done. It's funny how Donkey Kong was there during the third run, because to see him stand out in the more generic crowd is funny. I used almost every character for this mode so most characters don't miss out. Now Hard Mode is another story. Since that mode has fewer ways to regain time and in fact rewards less time, it's naturally quite tough. No longer are the AI able to cooperate well and I have to retry the levels more often than usual that I only managed to reach 2 estuaries. It was therefore that I got the epiphany to control two players at once, which allowed me more control and, true to what I theorised, I have a higher rate of success in getting the rest of the exits. I felt that River Survival is best enjoyed with multiple people than with AIs because it's tricky to figure out what they were thinking when they made certain moves.
And finally, there is the Challenge Road, which is basically beating every minigame in the game, with a goal or restriction in mind. This mode can only be selected once every minigame is unlocked, and luckily, the game always pick unlockable minigames in the roulette so it makes unlocking this mode less cumbersome. This is a mode that I wish every Mario Party game included, because it's always great to beat these minigames if a purpose is given to them. I felt that Mario Party 3 needed it the most since it has all-new original minigames unlike Mario Party 2. Anyway, the game has two types of challenges: one is the normal version and the other is the difficult version. The normal ones are usually about beating the minigame, but it's the difficult ones that are the devillishly tough ones. They can either have higher goals to reach, being on the challenging side of a 1 vs 3 team, a stricter time limit, avoiding any hits or having zero teammates in minigames (while the CPUs have more). They are quite a nail-biter for their requirements, but eventually I managed to beat them all, with the toughest being Train In Pain. One thing I like about Challenge Road is how characters dance when they are standing on a Rhythm Minigame space, which I have a few clips of.
Speaking of that, now I want to talk about the minigames. I love that they implement practice mode in the instructions screen, because now that's two less screen transitions to get the hang of the minigame. The minigame selection is also not bad: it has a good mix of Free-for-All, 1 vs 3, 2 vs 2, Team Minigames, Co-op Minigames and Rhythm Minigames. The minigames also provide a nice mix of button inputs and motion controls, and I think the motion-controlled ones are inspired, such as Sizzling Stakes and the Rhythm Minigames. There's even a Mariothon where 5 minigames out of 10 are selected to perform the best in. I do wish there is a Decathlon version where all 10 minigames are selected, because sometimes I want to see how well I can perform in every one of them. 80 minigames aren't all the minigames Super Mario Party offered, as there are also 4 more in Toad's Rec Room.
One of the issues I can see with Super Mario Party is that Toad's Rec Room minigames are best enjoyed with 2 Switches together, and of the four games, only "Banana, Split" enforces this. I felt that the developers should do what NAMCO did for NAMCO MUSEUM on the Switch. Basically, when said game was released, they also provided a free downloadable Switch app that allows players to connect to a Switch with this game, as that way, they were able to enjoy PAC-MAN VS without the hassle of requiring a game for each Switch. Sure it might be minor, but I felt that it's unprecedented for a Mario Party game to enforce two copies to enjoy all its content, and it's in fact a detrimental precedent.
There are also stickers which can be bought or rewarded, but I am yet to do fun stuff with it, so unfortunately I don't have anything to show. What I am surprised to see is how robust the system is, as backgrounds can be selected, and the size and angle of stickers can be adjusted to fit the image.
If there were to be a future update, and I hope there is, here are my requested features:
- Extra board(s), as 4 boards is not a lot. 1 or 2 would suffice.
- Decathlon version of Mariothon, where all 10 minigames are played through.
- Ability to play 4 player versions of Team Minigames in the Minigame selection.
- Allow human player configuration changes without going back to the title screen.
- A simple app that allows people to play on more than 1 Switch with a single copy (for Toad's Rec Room minigames).
The spirit of Mario Party has always been here, as like every previous game (including 9 & 10), we have pun-ridden minigames, catchy music and a colourful aesthetic. Even though I put this in the thread of games I have beaten, the Mario Party games is all about replayability, as the party never ends.
Thank you for reading.
(I wished I waited and bought the much cheaper Super Mario Party + Joy-Con bundle, though...)
. May also try getting any Boos from each level, but that's for another time.
