Super Mario Party Review - IGN (2024)

Party Mode

The main Mario Party mode has one to four players rolling dice and moving around four board game-like levels with branching paths. As you make your way towards spots to purchase stars, the currency of winners in Mario Party, you thankfully end each turn with a minigame. This is not how Mario Party 10 worked: It significantly limited minigames to spaces you had to land on. The more minigames, the merrier, I say.

Above: A game board in Mario Party mode.

The boards are also less linear than before, with branching paths and an ever-changing end goal as the star space moves around. The boards are fun, but still simpler than those of the best Mario Parties ( 5 and 6, for my money). There are also only four to choose from, which means if you don’t like one or two (I found the unlockable board, which I won’t spoil here, to be pretty dull) Parties will get stale fast.

Because I also run the strategy guide team here at IGN, I’m going to give you a great tip: recruitable Allies are incredibly important in Super Mario Party. This has three big advantages that really change the way you play: First, for each Ally you get bonuses for your dice roll. Second, the Allies appear in some minigames, too. Yes, they get in the way with their crappy AI, but that can potentially help you overwhelm an opponent. In some games they row alongside you on a boat, or linger just long enough after you get knocked out of a violent clash to clinch a victory. It’s great when you win, but nothing hurts worse than losing to your human opponent’s mindless drones.

The third big advantage Allies give you is a unique dice block to roll. Each character (including yours) has a different-numbered block: Mario’s gives you more chances at 3s (The faces read: 1 3 3 3 5 6), while Wario’s can give you a 6 two-thirds of the time -- but the other third of the time you might not move at all (The faces read: -2 Coins +2 Coins 6 6 6 6). You can freely switch between a regular dice block, your character’s special block, and your Allies’. This makes for an extra layer of strategy I really enjoyed. Rolling big or little can make all the difference, and now there’s something (in addition to items) to help you even the odds. Unfortunately, you can’t see characters’ unique dice blocks on the character select screen, which is an oversight.

Above: Koopa Troopa's dice roll can give you a 10, but it's a big risk.

The mode I ended up liking the best is Partner Party, which recycles the four maps from Mario Party but adds a co-op partner and converts the gameplay area to a grid in which you can choose your own path. You and your partner can tackle different things around the board, scooping up Allies, gathering stars, and stomping on opponents. Each turn requires a discussion, and my partners would plan several turns in advance. Playing with a friend ramped up the competitive vibe of the Party, which I loved, and added complexity, which Super Mario Party needs to keep from feeling like a simple roll of the dice.

In both Mario Party and Partner Party modes, minigames really matter because you need to beat your opponents consistently to win coins. Pair this with some light strategy and you should come out ahead... but winning is not guaranteed because there’s a random element that keeps the most skilled player in your group from dominating every game. You can still get a really bad dice roll, Kamek will award the losing player(s) with extra items near the end, and bonus stars are awarded at the end that can change the tides. This time, these bonus stars can be well-deserved, like getting rewarded for having the most coins or the most minigame wins. But this is random, too, so you never know what you’re supposed to be going for: Sometimes the bonus stars are given out for the most times you’ve stomped on another character, or landed on an event space (spaces that change the level layout). In the latter scenarios, it’s just dumb luck that will decide who gets the precious star. Even worse, you can’t turn this off, or adjust the settings in any way.

There are two other Super Mario Party modes I didn’t feel like returning to. One is River Survival, a co-op game with its own set of minigames. The “Everyone Wins!” vibe here will probably go over well with young children, but the Mario Partiers I roll with are out for blood and found them boring. Another set of unique minigames is framed around a rhythm game mode called Sound Stage. The rhythm games are fine, but there are just a few, and most use the Switch’s motion controls, which aren’t known for their precision, and thus felt inconsistent. I would have preferred button controls, but I don’t think this mode would’ve really grabbed me anyway, as it is just a handful of mode-specific minigames strung together that get old, fast.

Crowd Control

While the Joy-Con’s unique properties make for some fun minigames, the hardware presents some pretty serious problems as well. For example, for a four-person game you’ll need four Joy-Con, the little wrist strap attachments, and a lot of charging time. If you have just one Switch that means you’ll have to carefully plan out your charging, since you can only charge two Joy-Con on the sides of the Switch, and you can only do it while you’re not playing. The shortest of the Party mode games mentioned above is an estimated 60 minutes for 10 turns -- if any of your Joy-Con loses its charge during that period you’ll need some additional charging accessories or additional Joy-Con at the ready, or the Party will have to be suspended. This is the first Mario Party that couldn’t be continued with AA batteries, and that’s a big deal considering Joy-Con cost about $40 a pop.

If You Have Two Switches

• Mini League Baseball - A stripped-down baseball game that shows the pitcher’s view on one screen and the batter’s view on the other. But the two-screen setup doesn’t add anything to a dull game.
• Puzzle Hustle - With the two screens lying flat, players push pieces together to assemble an 8-bit puzzle. There is no reason to play this on two Switches – it could easily work as a split-screen game.
• Banana, Split - This is a pretty astounding tech demo: The naked Switch screens can be pushed together on a desk to solve puzzles across both screens. It works really well, and, but there’s no competitive mode, and the challenge doesn’t evolve in an arcade-y way or anything, so the fun evaporates quickly. Warning: Your Switch is going to get knocked around and potentially scratched as you slide it frantically into position.
• Shell Shock Deluxe - This is a top-down versus mode with up to four tanks on a battlefield. The twist is that you and your opponents can manipulate the battlefield by moving the Switch consoles around on a table, potentially giving your side an advantage. Adding competition makes this more fun than Banana, Split, but it’s still just a mixup of the simplistic gameplay that’s been around since Atari’s 1978 hit, Combat.

With the two game/system setup you can also just play all of the other Super Mario Party modes on two screens with two players assigned to each. But even with two Switch screens, the split-screen minigames are pretty cramped, not to mention the text, which is so small it’s difficult to read. Putting the Switch in portable mode requires you to get pretty intimate with other partiers, and I wouldn’t recommend it over using the Switch in docked mode on the television.

Miniature Games

Super Mario Party’s biggest win, and the best surprise, is its top-notch batch of 80 minigames. It’s easily the best in years, and I can’t think of any that were so stupid or boring that they were worth warning you about. Here are some of my favorites:

• Dash and Dine - In this shameless but fun Overcooked clone, you and a partner jostle for ingredients in a busy kitchen where toads and your opponents get in your way.
• Sizzling Stakes - Using Joy-Con motion controls, you slide a cube of meat around a wok to try to fry all six sides.
• Slaparazzi - Four players jostle and punch their way to the center of a photograph as it’s being taken. The photos are always great.
• Nut Cases - Using the spookily tuned HD rumble of the Joy-Con, you shake boxes of nuts and try to identify which have the most in them. (This idea is rehashed from one of 1-2-Switch’s better games.)
• Candy Shakedown - You must shake oblong pieces of candy out of a jar with a tight end. You have to get pretty creative with the use of the Joy-Con’s motion sensors to get every piece out.

Above: Meat cubes in HD.

Quality and Quantity