Game review: Super Mario Party (Nintendo Switch)

The Mario Party series is now a 20-year-old veteran of the industry, with the first title hitting the Nintendo 64 back in 1998. With 10 console entries and 5 handheld titles, the series has become a staple of Nintendo's catalog.

In recent years it seems that the series has fallen out of favor with fans, with gimmicks and unpopular changes to the primary mechanics. From motion controls to the vehicles that force everyone to move together, there's been a lot of feedback from fans who want the series to return to its roots.

The latest iteration of the series just landed on the Nintendo Switch a few weeks ago, going simply by the title of Super Mario Party, signifying a change in the franchise. Does this most recent entry bring the series back to glory, or does it continue the pattern of missteps and blunders?

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Super Mario Party can be played by up to 4 players, like the other games in the series, where you and some friends take turns exploring a game board designed after characters and themes from the Mario franchise.

The primary objective of Super Mario Party is earning stars. Stars are what are counted at the end of the game to determine the winner. You earn stars by finding or purchasing them.

Each 'board' is completely different than the last, with unique hazards, paths, goals and challenges, but the basics remain the same -- roll a die to see how many spaces on the board you can move. The space you land on may add coins, steal coins, award you with items, or trigger events. The items you are awarded (or which you can sometimes purchase from characters you encounter) can give you special one-use abilities from adding more dice to your dice roll to dropping yourself right next to a star.

Many of the gimmicks of the past few entries have been reigned in, as you're now in control of your own character's movement on the board. One interesting change to the Mario Party formula lies in your choice of character. In every other game, the character you played as was simply cosmetic. In Super Mario Party each character has a custom die, so when its your turn to roll you can pick a standard 1-6 die or your custom die that has different patterns of numbers. For example, Peach's custom die might be 3,3,3,4,4,4. Each character's numbers on their custom die is different and allows for more strategy when you need to move a certain number of spaces.

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A fun new addition to this entry is the addition of allies. Land on a certain space and you'll gain a teammate from a roster of 16 possible characters. These allies add an additional, smaller roll to your initial dice roll that lets you add and extra 1 or 2 to your total. In addition, you're able to use your ally's custom die for your main roll. Some of these are crazy die, like Koopa Troopa's die that features 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 10! Great for someone willing to gamble. In addition, you can even add more than one ally. We played one game where someone ended up with three allies!

After each character has moved around the board, everyone is thrown into a minigame. These might be every man for himself, 2 vs. 2 or even 3 on 1 matches. The types of mini games in Super Mario Party should feel right at home to long time fans of the series. It amazes me that Nintendo is still able to create new ideas for mini games 20 years into the series.

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The variety of minigames is decent, with games testing your reflexes, memorization, precision and teamwork. One game utilized the accelerometers, asking you to tilt and flip a frying pan in order to cook each side of a steak. Another used the HD rumble feature in a fishing game, where you had to feel for the strongest vibration before reeling in your catch. Nintendo did a great job with the creativity and variety of mini games, which keeps things fresh and levels the playing field for people with different types of skills. Apparently there are even additional mini games when you play with multiple Switch consoles, but I don't have anyone to test that out with.

After you've played every round, the game ends with the awards ceremony where bonus stars are handed out which can turn the tide of a game you thought was settled. Extra stars are handed out to players based on random criteria, from who travelled the most spaces in a game to who won the most minigames. These bonus stars are added to your total and the winner is announced. In the event of a tie, the player with the most coins is named the winner.

The minimum game is 10 turns, which takes about an hour to play through. Initially, only three boards are available, but after you play the first three a fourth is unlocked. A fifth is still waiting for me to unlock it.

In addition to the main game, there are various other modes you can play. A new addition to the series is a rhythm game challenge, that throws all the players into a rotating set of musical challenges that require you to keep beat with the music. These were really fun and a nice diversion from the main game. Beyond that, there are a few other modes to tinker around with and plenty of stuff to unlock.

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Super Mario Party doesn't stray from the norm in its presentation. The game features the same aesthetics that have become the norm in Mario games. The visuals are bright and colorful at times, dark and rich in others. The characters feature more animation and personality than before, with subtle animations that bring them to life. Character models look great and there's a lot of great texture work that caught me my surprise. The shiny metal of the frying pans, for example, looked almost photorealistic. The courses are well designed and creative as well.

Music and sounds are pretty much par for the series. You don't want music that stands out so much that it gets annoying after you spend an hour on a specific board, so its pleasantly subdued. Sound effects are exactly what you'd expect at this point -- well done with no surprises.

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Super Mario Party feels like the series slipping back into its groove. After some questionable choices in Mario Party 9 and 10, it feels good to not only return to what worked best in the past, but to make some tweaks that improve gameplay rather than fundamentally changing it.

At the end of the day, this is a great return to classic Mario Party gameplay with welcome additions and improvements. I think this will be our new go-to Mario Party game in the future, replacing Mario Party 8 -- our previous favorite entry.

Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!

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