Over the course of this month, I will be reviewing all of the Mario Party entries that have been released on Nintendo Switch, starting with Super Mario Party, released in 2018. This game marked a return to more traditional Mario Party gameplay after the experimental entries on Wii U and 3DS. While it gets some things right, it also misses the mark in a few key areas.

GRAPHICS: 8
Super Mario Party looks pretty good. The visuals are colorful, clear, and vibrant, which is exactly what you'd expect from a modern Mario game. The character models are sharp and expressive, and the board designs, while simple, are visually appealing. Overall, Super Mario Party doesn't push the Switch to its limits graphically, but it's a polished and charming game nonetheless.

SOUND: 8
Super Mario Party nails the audio presentation in typical Nintendo fashion. The soundtrack is upbeat and cheerful, matching the energy of each board and minigame. Every sound effect from the celebratory fanfare after winning a minigame to the brief character voice clips feels polished and purposeful.

The game's Sound Stage mode, a rhythm based game mode that heavily relies on timing and motion controls, showcases the game's audio design. Players play rhythm based minigames back-to-back while competing for the highest score. This mode features a good selection of minigames and tempo variety, with Normal following a relaxed pace, Remix introducing more complex rhythms and faster tempo changes, and Hard, which is the fastest pace and requires precise timing. Each difficulty level changes the feel of the music and motion rhythm, so it isn't just a simple speed increase–it actually changes how you interact with the beat and visuals.

Super Mario Party also supports HD rumble, which is best utilized in the game Rattle and Hmmm, where you have to listen to the vibration pattern 3 different enemies make. Once you've felt each enemy's pattern, one of the three is chosen randomly and you have to match the vibration pattern to the correct enemy. Other minigames like Sizzling Stakes, Nut Cases, and Rumble Fishing also utilize the HD rumble to a lesser extent.

ADDICTIVENESS: 5
Compared to past Mario Party titles, this one just doesn't have as much replay value in my opinion. For starters, you only have 3 simple boards to choose from when you begin the game and a 4th board you can unlock after playing on the 3 starting boards once. So from the beginning, your options are already very limited, but even after unlocking the 4th board, they all start to get stale pretty quickly. I personally didn't care for the fruit board very much, so whenever I played, I was pretty much limited to 3 boards. Having put around 240 hours into this game, I really questioned why this game only included 4 boards when the very first Mario Party released 20 years prior on the N64 had 8 (6 from the start, 2 unlockable), with most older Mario Party entries featuring 6…

A lot of the extra modes feel like fluff–something you might try once or twice, and then never again. I only played enough of Challenge Road and River Survival to get the gems for story mode, and haven't touched them since. The only mode I frequently played was Partner Party. Partner Party, without a doubt, makes up the bulk of my 240 hours of playtime. I play video games with my younger brother a lot, and we both prefer playing on a team against 2 CPUs over playing a standard game of Mario Party. We enjoy Partner Party because it changes the boards from a linear path to a grid configuration, which allows us to independently explore different areas of the board while scooping up allies, stars, and stomping on our opponents. Things start to get really exciting when we both have a couple of allies on our side and start reliably getting double-digit rolls nearly every turn. I think what I enjoy most about Partner Party is discussing our strategy every turn– "If I stomp on his head now, Donkey Kong won't be able to afford the Thwomp Toll to get to the star, and then you can Warp Box to me and jack up the price since we're rich!" This is just one of many discussions of strategy my brother and I have had during a game of Partner Party.

While the strategizing kept things fun and interesting, I certainly can't say the same for the game's rather basic item selection. Most item spaces usually give you either a Dash Mushroom (+3 spaces to your roll), a Golden Dash Mushroom (+5 spaces to your roll), a Poison Mushroom (-2 spaces from your opponent's roll) or a Coinado (which steals a whopping 5-10 coins, and is rarely ever game-changing after turn 2). Obviously, I'm oversimplifying the game's item selection to make a point. There are other items like the Custom Dice Block, Golden Pipe, and the Double Star Card, but even these items are handed out sparingly or are restricted to specific shops. The lack of variety in items really makes item use feel dull and repetitive over time. I can't even begin to imagine how many Poison Mushrooms I've thrown away in favor of something only marginally better. Past games had more interesting items like the Magic Lamp, Boo Bell, and the Bowser Suit–risky items that made for chaotic moments and could actually turn the tide of the game in a single turn. Super Mario Party plays it safer, which is fine for newer, more casual players, but the lack of variety in items combined with the limited board selection really reduces Super Mario Party's overall replay value for me.

STORY: 5
The "story" for Super Mario Party is more or less what you'd expect from a Mario Party game–barebones and silly. The game opens up with Mario and his so-called “good friends” (Wario and Waluigi among them?) all arguing over who is the Super Star. Mario suggests they have a party to determine who the Super Star is, with Toad and Toadette agreeing to be the judges. Right after everyone agrees to a party, Bowser and his goons appear out of thin air, and insists that he, his son, or one of his lackeys could be the Super Star too (I dunno, I can't really picture Goomba or Monty Mole being the star of anything to be honest). To make sure the judging is “fair” and “impartial" Bowser summons Kamek to judge alongside Toad and Toadette. After that, Kamek creates a venue for the party and then you have to collect a gem from each of the 5 modes the game offers. Once you collect all 5, they fuse to create a victory podium, which the newly crowned Super Star stands on. Overall the game's story is light, goofy, and forgettable, but it gets the job done for a Mario Party game. If you're expecting God of War (2018) levels of storytelling, you'll be sorely disappointed.

DEPTH: 5
Super Mario Party offers several different modes from the start: Party Mode, Partner Party, Challenge Road, River Survival, and a rhythm based Sound Stage mode. While this sounds like a lot on paper, most of these are shallow fluff modes. Once you've played them a few times, there's not really much reason to go back and revisit them. Again, Partner Party is the standout mode I spent the most time playing. If the game didn't have Partner Party mode, I would probably have half the play hours I do now, if that. It's honestly disappointing that this mode didn't make a return in Superstars or Jamboree. Even without "true" allies (Jamboree has buddies, but they work differently than allies and don't stick around as long), I think with some board redesigns that allow you to move around more freely, they could've brought it back in future entries. For minigames, Super Mario Party offers a total of 84, with most of them being pretty solid. However, some minigames like Pull it Together, Barrel Rollout, and Sizzling Stakes (among others) either suffer from slow, awkward motion control physics or being glorified button mashers that aren't very engaging. Despite a few bad apples, there's more than enough good minigames to enjoy either in free play or during a game of Mario Party.

You can also play online multiplayer for Party Mode and Partner Party, which was made possible nearly 3 years after the game's release…Before that update, you could only play an extremely limited selection of minigames in a mode called Online Mariothon. While the option to play online is welcome, it definitely came too late. By the time Party Mode and Partner Party finally became playable online, most people (and Nintendo themselves) had moved on, and the next entry, Mario Party Superstars, was already set to release just a few months later.

DIFFICULTY: 5
Having played my share of older Mario Party games, this game is definitely made with casual players in mind. It's easy to pick up and play, which is good, but Mario Party veterans might find it lacking in the challenge department. In this game, stars only cost 10 coins and everyone starts the game with 5, so if you win the first minigame, you already have enough coins to buy a star on the second turn. This is a noticeable change from older Mario Party games, where stars traditionally cost 20 coins. On one hand, this makes the early game more fast-paced, but on the other hand, this lessens the need for planning, budgeting your coins, and weighing the risk/reward when buying items since stars are cheap and accessible. As far as CPUs, go the difficulty can be adjusted to master level if you want more of a challenge, but even then, the CPUs don't feel as ruthless as they did in previous games, often fumbling in certain minigames and making questionable decisions when it comes to using items and navigating to the star. At the end of the day, Super Mario Party doesn't ask much of the player. Its friendly design and streamlined boards are great for newcomers or casual family sessions, but seasoned players will likely be left craving more depth and unpredictability. Even though randomness is a part of Mario Party's DNA and is always baked into the core mechanics, I think Super Mario Party plays it a little too safe. It lacks the degree of depth and chaos that made previous entries more intense and exciting.

OVERALL: 7.5
Super Mario Party feels like a step in the right direction after the more experimental entries that came before it, but for me, it still falls short of being a top-tier Mario Party game. With only 4 main boards, an underwhelming item selection, and extra modes most people will only play a handful of times, I can’t help but feel that this game just needed a little more time in the oven. In the end, Super Mario Party is a solid but flawed return to form. It can be a fun time with friends or family, but its lack of depth and long-term replayability keep it from being one of the series’ best entries.

Great review! I completely agree with your assessment here. It's definitely better Mario Party 9 and 10, but it still seems lackluster compared to some of the earlier Mario Party games in terms of replay value and depth. I'd much rather play Mario Party 5 or 6.