edit: this article sucks and is way too long
If you’ve paid attention to the series for awhile (or even if you aren’t an avid fan, actually), you probably know a bit about how after the release of Mario Party 8, the series strayed from its usual gameplay and took on a new style involving all players riding a car, which was a system that was generally disliked by fans, despite the high sales of the titles that used it. There were also a few handheld entries that ranged from awful to “It’s good, I guess.”
Over a decade since Mario Party 8’s release, Super Mario Party makes a return to the original formula. As someone who’s been hoping for something like this to happen for a long time, I was naturally excited about the game when it was first revealed. Of course, there have been many, many Mario Party games and the series has gone through nearly ten years of refinement, so simply returning to this beloved style won’t be enough to make it a worthy successor.
In this piece, I plan on analyzing Super Mario Party in great depth. Classic Mario Party has a very basic formula, but it can be messed up, so it deserves to be analyzed as much as any other game out there. I’m going to look at how it compares to its predecessors, how it improves and expands on the foundation, and also in what ways it falls short of the series legacy. Note that I will be using acronyms in the majority of this piece, but Mario Party games usually have names that are so straightforward that you don’t exactly have to wonder what those acronyms mean. Although the regular board mode is the most advertised part of Super Mario Party, the game also has other modes that I will discuss as well. This will be a long read, but I hope you enjoy it regardless. Now, to start...
The “main” mode in SMP (simply titled Mario Party) steps away from the car system used in MP9 and MP10 and returns to the classic system from the older games. It’s the same well known formula of rolling a die to move forward a number of spaces as you collect Coins to make your way to the primary collectible that is the Star, which lies at a certain spot on the board and moves each time it’s purchased. After every turn is a mini-game that will reward you with Coins upon victory, there’s items you can buy from shops to mess with your opponents, and so on. The player with the most Stars wins after a specific number of turns; this is all stuff that should be familiar to those who have played it before.
There’s a few twists this time around, though. In Mario Party Star Rush’s Toad Scramble mode, you would play as the character Toad and could encounter characters (called allies) on the board and take them with you, and they would have unique dice blocks with different numbers on them. Princess Peach’s dice block, for example, would cause you to roll a 0, 2, 4, 4, 4, or 6, compared to the standard dice block that rolls a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Every single character had their own dice block, adding a layer of strategy in deciding which allies to go for.
SMP integrates this on a more fundamental level. Since you are allowed to choose which character to use at the start of every round instead of being limited to Toad, this also means you can choose the dice block you want from the get go. There’s an entertaining blend of risk and reward, where you can choose from characters with safe rolls and low returns, or characters with enormous gains, but also a notable chance of rolling zeroes.
Not only that, but the mechanic of picking up allies scattered around the board is retained as well, letting you switch out dice blocks at will. Even if you don’t change dice blocks, each ally you’ve collected will automatically give either a 1 or 2 space bonus to each of your rolls, so it’s favorable to collect whoever you can find regardless. However, you also have to consider the extent that you’re willing to go for allies, since your main mission is still to collect the Star. You have to make sure to avoid letting other players snatch up all the allies from you while not straying too far from your primary objective, and it ends up becoming this neat balancing act as you manage all the factors together.
My favorite thing about the dice blocks is how they allow you to use the playstyle that you enjoy most. There’s such a wide variety of combinations, and it encourages thorough experimentation as well. There’s even strategies where you can intentionally try to roll for zeroes, since doing so counts as landing on a space again, allowing you to theoretically perform actions like getting items over and over again (since if you land on an item space and roll several zeroes from there, it’ll keep counting as “landing” on the space even if you never actually moved). Nothing is obviously guaranteed, though, and each dice block has its own pros and cons. It’s a thrill.
One thing that’s honestly pretty amusing is the fact that because characters are no longer cosmetic and can affect the outcome of a match, there exists tier lists for SMP. No, that’s not a joke, there are several actual tier lists online. For a Mario Party game. There are people actually ranking the effectiveness of these characters by an objective standard in an attempt to list the characters from best to worst. It’s wild.
Some people have been laughing at this fact, many are surprised, and some are even upset that there are people turning what is otherwise such a casual game into something serious. While it is funny that a tier list exists, it seems natural enough that it happened. I think its existence proves that SMP does have more depth than previous entries, even if it is ultimately luck based in the end. It really does show how much character dice blocks are a worthwhile addition, and it’s something I hope to see in the next game, maybe even expanded upon.
I do wish that there was a way to separate dice blocks from characters, though. For example, I love Wario’s dice block due to its fairly consistent high numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to play as him every time. On the contrary, there are characters who I do like, but they have absolutely awful dice blocks, which makes it hard to commit myself to playing as them. It’s one of the least intrusive problems the game has, but it is still a missed opportunity nonetheless.
I do wish that there was a way to separate dice blocks from characters, though. For example, I love Wario’s dice block due to its fairly consistent high numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to play as him every time. On the contrary, there are characters who I do like, but they have absolutely awful dice blocks, which makes it hard to commit myself to playing as them. It’s one of the least intrusive problems the game has, but it is still a missed opportunity nonetheless.
The character dice blocks are an awesome addition, but outside of that, there’s... not a huge amount going for the gameplay compared to the intense refinement and polish of the formula in previous entries. The gimmicks on each board are rather unexciting, doing little to deviate from the usual gameplay. Other installments (especially later into the series) would usually give most boards some kind of defining feature, like how Faire Square in MP6 would allow you buy Stars in bulk, or how MP7 had the Windmillville board where you played the role of a tycoon and bought up “estate” that counted as Stars, which could then be stolen by other players if they paid enough to take the estate for themselves.
The closest SMP gets to this is in the Kamek’s Tantalizing Tower board, where the Star is always in the same place and regularly changes its price. Even then, this is essentially a tweaked copy of the mechanic from the Pagoda Peak board from MP7. Board gimmicks in older installments often got carried between entries, but they regularly introduced new gimmicks in other boards too so that it wasn’t the same game every time.
The most embarrassing part is that not only is there just a single board with an actually distinct idea, but SMP only has four boards period. Other installments generally had six boards, sometimes even more, and the boards themselves were varied enough to stand apart from each other. It’s true that the small number of boards in this game is likely due to the fact that SMP has multiple other modes which is where a lot of the development time probably went to, but it’s still disappointing.
Then again, it’s not too big of a deal that the boards are both small in number and traditional in fashion if said boards are well designed enough to make up for it, right? But even then, I don’t find them nearly as engaging as they should be. We’ve already had a large number of traditional boards in many of the oldest games, so if SMP is going to insist on sticking to not giving its boards game-changing gimmicks, then it needs to have some of the best traditional boards in the series to make up for it. Otherwise, why wouldn’t I play the older entries instead? The allies and dice blocks are interesting, but they can only stay that way for so long.
It doesn’t help that one of the boards is essentially a modified version of a board from MP1. SMP’s Whomp’s Domino Ruins is practically a remake of MP1’s DK’s Jungle Adventure, so not only does SMP have a lack of boards, one of those boards isn’t even original. This isn’t even me looking too deep into the similarities, because it was absolutely meant to be a homage; both boards are jungle themed, both boards have whomps you must pay to access some paths, and both boards have you go through various forks as you make your way through the upper right part of the board, then upper left, then bottom left, and then bottom right to get back to the start again. Both boards even have a boulder trap at the top part of the map, seriously.
I also have other problems with SMP’s board design in general, such as how there’s a lack of spaces that can have dramatic effects on the status of the current match. The infamous Chance Time spaces are nowhere to be seen, for example, and Battle mini-games don’t have nearly as much game-changing potential as they used to. Duels were a mechanic that could turn the tide of the match, but there’s none of them here. Bowser spaces would have huge consequences if you landed on them (which could even affect other players, both negatively and occasionally even positively), whereas Donkey Kong spaces would give you large bonuses instead, yet neither of those spaces are there. There is a replacement of sorts, but its effects aren’t nearly as substantial as what they’re based off of.
As a result, matches just aren’t as exciting as they used to be. The tension of approaching a Bowser space and hoping you can avoid it, the invigoration of trying to score a giant bounty for defeating your opponents in a Battle mini-game, the last hope of trying to land on a Chance Time space while in 4th place during the last few turns... it’s all gone. SMP is much more methodical than its predecessors, but it’s also not nearly as dynamic or tense.
I know it sounds silly to complain about matches being more skill-based, and in a lot of other games it would probably be a good thing, but luck is an integral part of Mario Party. It’s what creates the memorable moments, the sense of excitement for even skilled players, and it acts as the counterpart to the skill elements. Mario Party is at its best when you’re clashing with friends, trying to see who can screw each other over the most. SMP does definitely still have luck as an important factor, but it comes more in small bursts instead of huge shifts to the playing field. Mario Party is often described as a friendship destroyer, but SMP’s pace is so lukewarm and fixed in place that it’s hard to imagine the enthusiastic screams of anger and hilarity occurring like in other installments. It definitely isn’t going to lead to moments as amusing as this anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIJJTI-oODQ
There is actually one area that’s more luck-based than usual, though: the bonus Stars. In the first six mainline Mario Party games, three different bonus Stars would be awarded to the players who excelled over others at certain criteria, like having the most Coins at the end of the match. These Stars always used the same criteria every time, so even if you had several instances of bad luck, it was still possible to make a comeback with enough skill.
Irritatingly, MP7 made the criteria for bonus Stars random, so it was much harder to predict what you should pay special attention to while playing. SMP had a chance to fix this by returning to the old system, but it instead opts to make the problem even worse. Not only is there a bigger pool of criteria than ever (nine different categories!), but now just two bonus Stars are awarded at the end of each game instead of three unless you play 20/30 turn games. This makes them both impossible to predict, but they also have less of an impact overall. It was made more luck-based, which you would think would benefit the gameplay considering the previous point I brought up, yes, but this is going luck-based in the wrong direction. I think it would’ve been better if bonus Stars were skill-based again, but other areas of the gameplay were made to allow for more major events influenced by luck--again, Chance Time is one example.
Some Mario Party entries had an item that would warp you directly to the Star, and there’s one in SMP as well, named the Golden Pipe. The difference is, though, in other installments buying that type of item costed a decent amount of Coins (15 Coins in MP DS, 20 Coins in MP3 and 5, and 30 Coins in MP4 and 6. It was also 30 Coins in 7, but 7’s discount system was broken allowing you to get it for a trivial 10 Coins, and it was rightfully criticized for that flaw), plus there was the fact that Stars already costed 20 Coins. This meant that deciding whether or not to buy that item could sometimes be a difficult decision, especially in games where it was especially expensive. Do you have enough confidence to earn enough Coins to afford both the item and the star, or would you rather play it safe instead and come up with other ways to gain an advantage over your opponents?
In SMP, that decision does straight up not exist in any capacity whatsoever. The Golden Pipe costs a mere 10 Coins, and Stars themselves only cost 10 Coins as well. This means that it costs 20 Coins to warp directly to a Star and buy it, an amount that can be obtained extremely fast. It is no longer a question of “Should I buy the item that warps me to the Star”, it is a question of “How fast can I get to the shop so I can buy the Golden Pipe?”
Granted, that second question is still a question that you will have to answer while playing. It is still a layer of depth that adds a degree of strategy, but in a different way than before. I just think it’s a far less interesting decision to make than deciding what to buy in shops, especially in games like MP3 and 4 where each shop had a huge selection of items to pick from. It doesn’t help that the economy in SMP is broken in general. The fact that Stars cost only 10 Coins mean that it is incredibly easy to buy them, and that there will almost never be an instance where you can’t afford one. Even if you’re not skilled at mini-games it doesn’t really matter anymore, since mini-games now reward you with Coins even if you lose.
These changes add up and have a tremendous effect over time, because think about any of the previous games for a moment. Getting 5 Stars used to cost 100 Coins, but in SMP it only costs 50, which isn’t hard at all to save up. I imagine this choice is related to the decision to make the boards smaller and more compact, but I still think that Stars should cost at least 15 Coins if nothing else.
On a more positive note, a highly appreciated quality of life addition is that when you roll the die, the map will tell you how far away you are from each fork on the map, and also how far away you are from the Star. While it was technically in MP9 and MP10, it was never used in the context of the traditional board gameplay before, so I would consider it new in that regard. It makes a large difference in accelerating game flow, since you can make decisions much quicker, cutting down on excess time. Counting out the number of spaces in each path was never challenging, it was tedious, but in SMP that problem is cut out entirely. It’s great that it’s here, and I hope it stays in future entries.
There’s also another quality of life change in SMP that was long overdue. In certain previous entries late into the series, each board would have a tutorial explaining the mechanics of that board. This tutorial was optional, but it was always the default choice when it asked if you wanted to hear it or not, which means that you’d have to click off of it every time you played a round to avoid it. In SMP, after you’ve played a board for the first time, the default option on subsequent playthroughs will assume that you don’t want the tutorial instead, which is a small change that is massively appreciated.
Which makes it even weirder that the game then proceeds to take a giant step back and will give you a board tutorial even after you say no. You can skip the initial tutorial, sure, but there’s still a second tutorial that pops up every time you open up your map for the first time during a match. There is no way to turn this off, no way to skip it, nothing. This is such a glaring oversight that I can’t believe exists, because it seems so obvious that this should’ve been optional.
An interesting change in particular from the older installments is the fact that boards in SMP have a vastly limiting amount of max turns. Ever since MP1, you could have up to 50 turn rounds (the single exception to this in the whole series was in MP DS where the limit was 30), but that number has been drastically reduced now. The max number of turns allowed in both traditional mode and Partner Party is 20, except for Kamek’s Tantalizing Tower which can go up to 30 turns. I have no idea why KTT is the only board that allows 30 turns, because it’s no larger than any of the other boards.
I fail to see why there wasn’t more customization available in this regard. Is there really any harm in giving players more options? People who don’t want to do 50 turn rounds aren’t forced to do them if they don’t want to, so I see literally no downside to implementing that option. Although I am not a programmer, I don’t imagine it would take a terribly large amount of effort to put in, and they already bothered giving KTT specifically more options, so it’s not like they’re entirely opposed to going beyond a 20 turn limit anyway.
It’s possible to justify the lack of options by arguing that Mario Party is at its best in short bursts, or by pointing out that turns in SMP take longer than in other entries. However, I find both of these arguments to be flawed, and I will explain why. Firstly, what the most appropriate number of turns is for a Mario Party round is entirely subjective. Some people will prefer 10 turn matches, some will gravitate towards 20 turns, there are those who like going up to 30, and so on. I may not usually go above 20 turns, but that doesn’t mean others don’t too. Even as someone who prefers shorter rounds, I occasionally attempt longer matches just because the sheer chaos of a 50 turn Mario Party game can be truly spectacular. It’s unfair to assume that just because one person doesn't like long rounds means that nobody else will either, or that the option shouldn’t be there in the first place.
The other argument is that turns in SMP are lengthier than the other games, and this is true; turns do take longer in SMP compared to any other entry. The thing is, this is actually an indicator of a gigantic problem with SMP in general: long animation times. Previous Mario Party installments made an effort to make sure that basic actions were speedy to cut down on the amount of time spent watching the screen. MP3 even had an option to speed up all walking animations, which was helpful for obvious reasons.
SMP goes in the opposite direction. Everything feels as if it’s been slowed down, and while I could list several examples of this, the easiest way to convey my point is to observe the amount of time it takes to buy a Star. In MP5, from the moment you land on the Star space, it takes approximately 20 seconds to go through the dialogue, buy the Star, watch the animation of buying the Star, look to see where the next Star is located, go through the last bit of dialogue, and then resume the gameplay. For that amount of successive actions and animations, it’s nice that it takes this little time to perform. If 6 Stars were obtained from Star spaces in a single match, this would be 2 minutes of waiting. Although it would be appreciated to have an option to speed this up, it’s still not too bad.
Compare this to SMP, where it takes around 45 seconds to mash through dialogue, buy the Star, watch the animation of buying the Star, watch the animation of the Star moving, watch the leaderboard update, look to see where the next Star is located, go through the last bit of dialogue, and then finally resume the gameplay.
There’s a reason I laid out the whole process again, because there’s an extra animation in SMP that doesn’t play in the other games. That is to say, you’re forced to watch the leaderboard update every time you buy a star, which is a pointless addition. The leaderboard already shows up at the start of each turn, and there’s also a real time leaderboard available that is always on-screen during gameplay.
I listed five actions during the process of buying a Star in MP5, and it took 20 seconds. In SMP, I listed six actions, and it took 45 seconds. Only one more action (which doesn’t serve any real purpose as mentioned earlier), yet the animation length adds up to it taking over double the amount of time to get back into the game. If 6 Stars were bought in a single match of SMP, this would be 4 minutes and 30 seconds, which is frankly inexcusable. This problem gets amplified the more Stars that are obtained, and the smaller board design and lenient economy does indeed mean you’re going to see many, many Stars purchased throughout your time spent playing.
By the way, I wasn’t cherry picking when I used MP5 as my example. It applies to other installments as well, which I also tracked the Star purchasing process of. Here is the full chart of the amount of time it takes for every traditional entry in the series, in order of release date.
Mario Party: ~24 seconds
Mario Party 2: ~27 seconds
Mario Party 3: ~20 seconds
Mario Party 4: ~22 seconds
Mario Party 5: ~20 seconds
Mario Party 6: ~20 seconds (It varies from board to board, but it’s 20 seconds for Towering Treetops which is the most “normal” board)
Mario Party 7: ~24 seconds (Again, it varies, but that’s how long it is for the most standard board, Grand Canal)
Mario Party 8: ~30 seconds (Same logic as above)
Mario Party DS: ~16 seconds
Super Mario Party: ~45 seconds
Some games have longer animations than others, but none are as egregiously lengthy as in SMP. It could be argued that tracking the traditional boards specifically for MP6, 7, and 8 is inaccurate since it’s ignoring the gimmick boards which could potentially take longer (some gimmick boards actually have shorter animations than on traditional boards, but I digress), but I also only tracked the traditional boards for SMP and ignored its gimmick board, so it’s an even comparison. If I tracked the length of SMP’s gimmick board (KTT), I have the feeling it wouldn’t be any more desirable.
In retrospect, it makes sense that SMP doesn’t allow for 50 turn playthroughs, or even 40 turn ones. I think the reason for why this is the case is awful, because it highlights the extent of how excessive the animation length is. There should be options to adjust the text speed and various animations. There should be options to turn off the second tutorial at the start of each match. It was already irritating when other Mario Party installments lacked certain options, but it’s outright unacceptable when this is a franchise that has been consistently receiving new releases for nearly 20 years. This isn’t solely a matter of animations, but a lack of options overall. I have no idea why bonus Stars in particular can’t be disabled, for example, especially since you were allowed to previously.
And that’s the big takeaway, isn’t it? Mario Party games should be timeless, which is why they’re designed to be replayed for years--if not decades. For the sake of longevity, it is essential that there are as many customization options implemented as possible. There’s no reason not to add options, and the lack of them in these recent Mario Party games has contributed to the franchise feeling like it’s been stuck in a perpetual loop of “one step forward, two steps back.” I feel very strongly about how options affect Mario Party’s lasting appeal, and the lack of customization in SMP is perhaps is the biggest disappointment of them all, because it so easily could’ve been remedied.
Thinking about it, SMP’s board mode actually feels noticeably similar to a mode from Star Rush, called Balloon Bash. Lots of the items are the same (which is unfortunate, since the item selection this time is dull compared to something like MP3), almost identical Duel system, same Star cost, same small turn limits, and a general lack of substantial board gimmicks. I can’t help but wonder if this actually started out as a sequel to Star Rush, honestly.
Overall, SMP takes a decent knock at the old gameplay style we all know and love, but it could be much better. It would greatly benefit from having more boards with compelling ideas, a more exciting balance between luck and skill, more unique items, etc. If all that was tweaked while keeping in the character dice blocks and allies idea, we could get some killer boards that would stick out as some of the best series. As it stands now, though, I’d rather play one of the older games instead. SMP’s attempt was fun at first, but it wore off quickly.
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The next most notable mode, Partner Party, is actually much more enjoyable than the main attraction itself. It’s a 2v2 mode that transforms all the regular boards into large grids, where your team moves in pairs as you collect Coins and gain allies in your quest to buy Stars. It sounds similar to the regular mode, but what makes it unique is that while you and your partner move at the same time, you can actually move separately from each other. Because the boards are non-linear (due to them becoming grid-based), you can tackle objectives in whatever order you’d like.
This opens up such a great number of cool possibilities and strategies. You can have your partner try to collect allies while you go for Coins, you can have your teammate collect a key while you head towards the treasure chest it unlocks, and so on. You are also allowed to buy two Stars at once if both you and your partner land on the Star space at the same time, so you have to carefully weigh your options and make a plan that will allow you to optimize your route. Not only that, but during the last few turns, you can purchase two Stars at once, and if you and your partner buy a Star on the same turn when this is in effect, you’ll double that number again, which means you can buy a total of four Stars in a single turn. This can lead to some thrilling scenarios that are sorely lacking from the other mode.
The next most notable mode, Partner Party, is actually much more enjoyable than the main attraction itself. It’s a 2v2 mode that transforms all the regular boards into large grids, where your team moves in pairs as you collect Coins and gain allies in your quest to buy Stars. It sounds similar to the regular mode, but what makes it unique is that while you and your partner move at the same time, you can actually move separately from each other. Because the boards are non-linear (due to them becoming grid-based), you can tackle objectives in whatever order you’d like.
This opens up such a great number of cool possibilities and strategies. You can have your partner try to collect allies while you go for Coins, you can have your teammate collect a key while you head towards the treasure chest it unlocks, and so on. You are also allowed to buy two Stars at once if both you and your partner land on the Star space at the same time, so you have to carefully weigh your options and make a plan that will allow you to optimize your route. Not only that, but during the last few turns, you can purchase two Stars at once, and if you and your partner buy a Star on the same turn when this is in effect, you’ll double that number again, which means you can buy a total of four Stars in a single turn. This can lead to some thrilling scenarios that are sorely lacking from the other mode.
I also feel like character dice blocks are an even better fit for this mode, and the same goes for allies. You have to ask even more questions when choosing a character in partner party, since your team has two people in it. Do both of you go for high rolling characters so that you potentially can land some massive distance, or should you both go for characters with safe rolls instead to go along at a guaranteed steady pace instead? Allies also exclusively give the bonus roll to the person who picks them up, so you also have to negotiate the process of who will get what ally, all while considering how it’ll affect your current character’s dice block. There’s so much planning, and the fact that you’re making these tough decisions with another person makes it that much more difficult yet rewarding.
Partner Party is a blast. The long-term strategy element keeps it constantly engaging, it works wonderfully with all the different dice blocks and allies, there’s countless ways to approach each board, and it’s intense enough to always keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s such a wonderful mode, and I honestly wish that it had the most development time put towards it, since with some refinement it could end up being one of the best things Mario Party has ever done. I think it’d be easier to improve and expand upon Partner Party than it would be to do so for the main mode, at least at this rate.
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If you’ve played a decent amount of MP1, you’ll probably get some deja vu from one of SMP’s new modes, River Survival. In this mode, you team up with three other players to raft your way through treacherous waters in an attempt to get to the end of one of several different paths. Two players sit on one side, and the other two sit on the other side, and which direction the raft is rowed in is dependent upon how often each side rows. Complicating matters further is the fact that you’re on a time limit to get to the end, which can be extended by rowing your raft into balloons, at which point you’ll need to play a mini-game.
If you’ve played a decent amount of MP1, you’ll probably get some deja vu from one of SMP’s new modes, River Survival. In this mode, you team up with three other players to raft your way through treacherous waters in an attempt to get to the end of one of several different paths. Two players sit on one side, and the other two sit on the other side, and which direction the raft is rowed in is dependent upon how often each side rows. Complicating matters further is the fact that you’re on a time limit to get to the end, which can be extended by rowing your raft into balloons, at which point you’ll need to play a mini-game.
The mini-games you play are exclusively made for this mode, and are completely cooperative. One mini-game has the four players trying to light all the candles in a mansion, for example. You’re actually graded on everyone’s performance during these mini-games, and the better your team does (“better” depending on either how quickly you clear the game, or how many points you score before the game ends), the more time your team will get added to the time limit. The default time limit isn’t nearly enough enough time to finish the mode, so completing mini-games is imperative.
This mode has two fatal flaws: one that can be worked around, and another that you unfortunately have to live with. The first problem is that the mode is far too easy, even if you’re on a team of terrible players. You can miss several balloons and frequently crash into rocks and your team will still probably finish with plenty of time to spare--in fact, that’s exactly what happened the first time I played it. The requirements for getting max rank on mini-games are also generally too lenient, making it a simple task to get the S rank bonus on every one. The mode only gets even easier when you know what you’re doing.
Luckily, River Survival does actually have a Hard difficulty setting… after beating the mode five times normally. My sister didn’t want to play it anymore after just one time. It’s a shame that the requirements feel so tedious, because Hard mode is actually quite the challenge. Balloons are smaller, and completing mini-games with an S rank doesn’t give nearly as much time as the normal difficulty, and these two things make a gigantic difference. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s what the default difficulty should’ve been, but I do think it’s the most exciting way to play the mode.
The other huge issue with River Survival is that the mini-game selection really isn’t large enough to remain fresh. There are only ten mini-games in this mode, and they get old very quickly. It’s even common to have to play mini-games you already played earlier that round, which makes the mode exhausting at times. Perhaps if they had more depth and took more skill to get S ranks in, this wouldn’t be such a noticeable problem, but that isn’t the case.
Interestingly, the last Mario Party game before SMP had a mode quite similar to River Survival, but executed the idea much better. Mario Party Star Rush took the concept of having to play a small selection of mini-games with rewards based on performance level and used it in its Coinathalon mode, where you would play a special mini-game and have to collect as many Coins as you can before the time limit expires, at which point a new mini-game will be swapped in. The process repeats, and whoever gets a certain number of overall Coins first is the winner.
Not only does Coinathalon have a larger selection of mini-games (12 vs. River Survival’s 10), but each one has multiple difficulty levels, and with the fact that each mini-game has a higher skill ceiling (the limit to the number of Coins you can collect is pretty high even if you’ve practiced a lot, whereas in River Survival getting S rank is a static goal each time), you always have room to improve. There’s a lot more to reach for compared to River Survival, which has mini-games that can be mastered way too fast.
While I wouldn’t call this detrimental enough to count it as one of the “fatal flaws” I discussed earlier, one last giant annoyance River Survival has is one of its mini-games, Suit Yourselves. This is essentially a memory matching game where you’re shown a laid out deck of 18 cards with different suits on them, and you have to memorize the positions of four cards of the same suit. Once some time has passed, the cards will flip over so you can no longer see the suits, and your team will then need to pick out the 4 cards you were shown earlier. This repeats multiple times until the mini-game eventually ends.
The first problem is that it is far, far too easy. If it were one person having to memorize four cards at a time, it would be harder, but since your team is comprised of four players, you only have to memorize one card per round. Sometimes the cards will be shuffled around, but this is done at such a pathetically slow pace that it’s impossible to be fooled by it.
This issue is compounded by the fact that the mini-game takes forever. All the other mini-games are brisk enough to never hurt the pacing, but Suit Yourselves takes nearly two full minutes, even in an S rank run. It’s such a jarringly bad pace breaker, and I groan whenever I have to play it. It’s mindlessly easy, but tediously long--the worst combo possible.
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| suit yourselves more like i hate video games |
As a whole, I like the idea of River Survival, but the execution of it leaves a lot to be desired. It’s honestly been done better before in Star Rush, leading to the mode feeling even more lackluster. It’s not an awful mode, but probably the least enjoyable one in the game for me. I wouldn’t mind if they still went back to this at another point, but it seriously needs more depth to justify its existence. Otherwise, I’d rather stick with the other modes instead.
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Every Mario Party comes with their own new set of mini-games, and SMP is no exception, bringing 80 new ones to the table scattered across all the modes. There’s even a few bonus ones in their own menu section like in other entries. The mini-games in Mario Party/Partner Party mode are notably shorter than before, but I don’t see this as such a bad thing since it keeps the pace going. That said, it does cause the longer ones to stand out that much more; Rattle and Hmmm is an absolutely terrible mini-game because it takes over two full minutes each time, compared to the vast majority of other mini-games that aren’t even a minute long--probably most of them only take 30 seconds, even. There should really be an option to take out individual mini-games from the selection pool, a feature that I hope future Mario Party games adapt (although it’s fair to assume that’ll probably never happen).
Team mini-games in particular are a fascinating idea. Basically, the allies you collect on the board map can be taken with you into these specific mini-games, and they’ll aid your attempts to win. The more allies you have, the bigger your advantage. This is a great idea because it directly acts as a reward for your efforts on the board map, and gives you more things to keep in mind as you plan out your long-term strategy. There’s a surprisingly high number of Team mini-games too, making it even better.
Every Mario Party comes with their own new set of mini-games, and SMP is no exception, bringing 80 new ones to the table scattered across all the modes. There’s even a few bonus ones in their own menu section like in other entries. The mini-games in Mario Party/Partner Party mode are notably shorter than before, but I don’t see this as such a bad thing since it keeps the pace going. That said, it does cause the longer ones to stand out that much more; Rattle and Hmmm is an absolutely terrible mini-game because it takes over two full minutes each time, compared to the vast majority of other mini-games that aren’t even a minute long--probably most of them only take 30 seconds, even. There should really be an option to take out individual mini-games from the selection pool, a feature that I hope future Mario Party games adapt (although it’s fair to assume that’ll probably never happen).
Team mini-games in particular are a fascinating idea. Basically, the allies you collect on the board map can be taken with you into these specific mini-games, and they’ll aid your attempts to win. The more allies you have, the bigger your advantage. This is a great idea because it directly acts as a reward for your efforts on the board map, and gives you more things to keep in mind as you plan out your long-term strategy. There’s a surprisingly high number of Team mini-games too, making it even better.
One change I absolutely adore that’s spread across nearly every mode is the change to the mini-game instructions screen. In previous games, there would be a tutorial screen explaining how to play (along with a picture of what the mini-game looks like, eventually including a short video clip of the mini-game in motion in later entries) and you had the option to either start the mini-game, or do a test run to become accommodated to the controls instead. In SMP, the tutorial screen has been split into two sections: one for the instructions, and another for a practice screen. This means that you can practice the mini-game while reading the instructions, which is sheer brilliance.
The practice option in previous installments was nice, but it did take a bit of time to get to since you still had to go through the introductory animation at the start of each test run. This introduction is already skippable in SMP--in fact, during practice runs, the animation is skipped automatically--which means that you can instantly get around to checking out the controls and mechanics, and when the mini-game is on the same screen as the instructions, why not? There’s not only no room for misinterpreting the instructions, but you don’t have to spend a pace breaking amount of time doing a practice run either. In fairness of the older games, once you learned all the mini-games there was no need to practice, but this is still such a cool addition, and I’ll be disappointed (if not surprised) if it’s not in every new Mario Party game from this point on.
It's worth talking about the controls in general while I'm on the topic. To prevent players from having to spend $240 on controllers in order to support four person multiplayer, each player is limited to using a single Joycon each (instead of a set of two), meaning that you’ll be able to play with at least one other person right out of the box. At first it may be disappointing that there’s no pro controller support, but it does make some sense once you’ve actually played the game. The controls require very specific motions and rotations of the controller, which, while possible with a pro controller, would probably be awkward to use; some mini-games require you to hold your controller vertically instead of horizontally, for example, meaning you’d have to rotate the controller 90 degrees and keep it there for the whole mini-game. It still would’ve been nice to have the option to use the pro controller, but I don’t see it as a giant loss in the grand scheme of things.
It’s interesting how SMP works around the biggest flaw in relying on a single Joycon set-up: comfortability. A single Joycon has plenty of buttons (4 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, the +/- button, the home/capture button which isn’t used during gameplay, 2 side buttons, and the ability to click the joystick), but the issue is using them in a way that doesn’t feel unwieldy. I’ve tried using a single Joycon set-up in other games and it always felt off, but in SMP it’s basically second nature. I think this is because most of the buttons are neglected during gameplay, meaning that you don’t have to uncomfortably fumble your way around one of the smallest controllers ever made for a Nintendo console. It was common in the Gamecube era for Mario Party mini-games to use four different buttons plus the analog stick, which worked out because the Gamecube controller felt natural to hold. A single Joycon doesn’t get that same luxury, but I’m glad the developers decided to work around that and make good use of the Joycon’s other capabilities to compensate while still feeling good to hold.
An element of the single Joycon control scheme I quite like is how motion controls are handled. MP8 was the first game in the series to introduce motion controls, and it didn’t pull it off particularly well, Shake-It-Up in particular being one of the more infamous mini-games in the franchise for its hilariously awkward looking motions required to play it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBxW4bDI1rU).
SMP’s motion controls, though, really show how far we’ve come, both technologically and in terms of design as well. There are a few mini-games that require a huge amount of actual precision, one of my favorite examples being Sizzling Stakes, where you have to cook all six sides of a meat cube by flicking a frying pan to toss the cube into the air and change the side that’s being cooked. You cannot waggle your way through this, because there is a specific nuance you need to get the cube to land on the side you want it to. Not all of SMP’s motion control-dependent mini-games are this deep, but their inclusion is still worth it.
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Sound Stage is another new mode, and while it isn’t fleshed out enough to be worth playing more than a few times, it’s enjoyable for what it is. The mode is entirely rhythm based, having you perform various tasks to the beat of a song (similarly to the Rhythm Heaven franchise), like hitting baseballs or skewering fruits. I still don’t find it to be a fantastic mode, with its greatest weakness being its overall lack of mini-games, but it’s a nice distraction nonetheless. I do wish all the Sound Stage mini-games were present in the other modes as well for variety’s sake, though, maybe with a toggle to turn them off?
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I've gotten most of the modes out of the way (excluding two I'll talk about later, so think of this as sort of a break), so I'll talk about some miscellaneous aspects of SMP now.
The AI for computer players in the Mario Party franchise were never terribly complex, being easy enough to predict and react to (outside of the occasional awkward move), but in SMP it doesn’t feel like there even is AI. Again, I’m not saying the AI in previous installments was particularly smart, but I swear the computers in this one don’t even try sometimes. They will go out of their way to make bad choices, picking decisions that offer no strategic advantage whatsoever. I’m almost wondering if the difficulty settings affects only their mini-game skills and not their behavior on the boards, because it can be ridiculous at times. They are also terrible at River Survival, sometimes trying as hard as possible to avoid the mini-game balloons.
One neat feature in SMP is the addition of a fully explorable hub. It’s admittedly quite small and doesn’t have much to do in it (you can even choose to ignore it completely and choose the mode you want to play from a regular menu), but it is a nice touch that adds a piece of personality--something this game desperately needs. There’s a surprising amount of unique dialogue when interacting with other characters, too, like if you talk to Bowser while playing as Bowser Jr. I do find it weird that the game doesn’t actually tell you that other characters can be talked to, though; there’s no button prompts whatsoever for starting a conversation, and you aren’t ever told that you’re able to communicate with anyone else. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it won’t take long before players find out they can talk with characters in the hub, it’s just strange to see in a Mario game.
One neat feature in SMP is the addition of a fully explorable hub. It’s admittedly quite small and doesn’t have much to do in it (you can even choose to ignore it completely and choose the mode you want to play from a regular menu), but it is a nice touch that adds a piece of personality--something this game desperately needs. There’s a surprising amount of unique dialogue when interacting with other characters, too, like if you talk to Bowser while playing as Bowser Jr. I do find it weird that the game doesn’t actually tell you that other characters can be talked to, though; there’s no button prompts whatsoever for starting a conversation, and you aren’t ever told that you’re able to communicate with anyone else. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it won’t take long before players find out they can talk with characters in the hub, it’s just strange to see in a Mario game.
On a somewhat related note, SMP has what is by far the largest character roster in any Mario Party game, containing 20 playable characters. This is an impressive number compared to previous entries, but the selections here are honestly a bit underwhelming. No Toad or Toadette, Birdo is missing despite being in the hub, yet they decided to put in Monty Mole and Goomba? This feels more like the character roster for a Mario Baseball game, not Mario Party. I’m assuming that Toad and Toadette aren’t playable due to being the game’s hosts, but why not just replace them with a different colored Toad when someone’s playing as either Toad/Toadette? It’s honestly kind of hilarious that they’d ditch Toad when he’s been in so many games and was the main playable character in Star Rush, but I digress. Not a huge deal since nobody is playing this for the character roster, but still lame.
Most Mario Party installments have had a shop of some kind in a menu outside of the actual modes, allowing you to spend currency on various items and even new features. SMP also includes a shop, and it’s sadly one of the worst iterations of one in the entire series. The only items that are purchasable are tutorials (which are useless because by the time you’ve bought them you already know the info they’ll tell you), music, and stickers that you can place down in a photo editing mode. This is a shockingly shallow selection compared to other entries which allowed you to buy new characters, difficulty settings, and even entirely new boards. While previous installments also had their fair share of mostly meaningless shop items, there was always still enough to make the inclusion of a shop feel worthwhile, but in SMP you could remove it and all the content it includes from the game and it wouldn’t really matter.
It could be argued that gating appealing features behind an arbitrary currency was a bad approach in earlier installments, and that’s certainly a reasonable notion, but I don’t think it applies as well when you look at how this was actually executed before. There was no grinding involved when it came to just unlocking the most important content. By the time you’ve played all the other boards in MP9, you should already have enough currency to unlock DK’s Jungle Ruins. If you want to unlock Brutal difficulty in MP6, it only costs 30 Stars, which really doesn’t take that long to get--especially when the single-player bonus mode is an excellent way of obtaining Stars. It only takes a few matches in MP7 before you’re off to the Duty Free Shop with enough points to unlock a new character, and so on. I do think Eternal Star in MP1 took too long to unlock, but that game had 7 other boards anyway. Even if you removed characters/boards/modes from the shops in other games and unlocked them from the start, the more useless items that remained would still be more interesting than stickers. The pop-up book dioramas in MP6 are infinitely more entertaining to look at than stickers, to give just one example.
I also take issue with how SMP’s currency is awarded. Installments such as MP7 had precise, specific formulas that calculated how much currency you would get based on all your actions in each round; every action would contribute a certain number of points, which meant you were always getting rewarded for your performance. The currency systems weren’t always designed like this, but one thing they all had in common is that they were flexible, dynamic processes.
SMP handles its currency acquisition in a much more rigid manner. Completing a round gives you 500 points by default, winning gives 2,000 points, collecting a certain number of Stars in one round gives 2,000 points, and getting an even higher number of Stars gives 2,000 more. There is also a bonus for playing against Master difficulty computer players. The problem with this is how the fixed numbers are detrimental to the sense of being rewarded; for example, let’s say the first Star bonus on one board is 3 Stars in one game. If you get 5 Stars, you will still only be awarded with 2,000 points, even though you got more than what was asked of you. If the extra Star bonus on that same board is 6 Stars, then you can collect 9 Stars and still only get the extra 2,000 points. The Star bonuses are so easy to get, and the requirements aren’t raised when you play a match with a higher turn limit, so it feels like you’re being cheated when you get 13 Stars in a single round but still only get the bonus points for collecting 9 Stars.
While I don’t insist that SMP needed the in-depth system MP7 had, this still should’ve been easily fixable. One potential solution is that each Star could award 100 points on top of the already present Star bonuses. So, if there’s a 3 Star bonus on a board, and the player collects 4 Stars, they could receive the 2,000 point bonus, plus an extra 400 points. If this would make gaining currency too easy, then either reduce the current Star bonuses, or reduce the extra points gotten per star. It wouldn’t have been a huge deal either way, but it would’ve prevented the currency system from feeling like a step back from the other installments.
In terms of presentation, SMP is sorely lacking in visual flair. The first thing that sticks out as soon as you boot up the game is that there’s no new mascot like in most of the entries, as the opening cutscene is a carbon copy of MP1’s intro. This goes along with the fact that there’s no main theme in SMP either, once again unlike the majority of the games. At first you may be thinking that the plot doesn’t matter, but it goes a bit deeper than that.
Almost every Mario Party game before the NDCube era began (NDCube was formed after the release of MP8 and they developed all the Mario Party games from there) had a distinct theme that the aesthetics were designed around. MP5, which is one of my favorite instances of this, dedicated its aesthetics to a dreamlike theme. All the boards in that game are supposed to take place inside of dreams, so you get whimsical concepts such as a toy-filled land, or varied islands that inexplicably float in the sky on top of clouds and are connected together by rainbows. They’re framed in this bizarre and mystical way that adds a lot of charm and ties everything together, and these boards wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without this theming.
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| A portion of the Toy Dream board from MP5. |
It doesn’t even have to go the extra mile that MP5 does, either. MP7 didn’t tie its board design into its main theme, but that theme itself was unique in its own way, being based on a cruise ship getaway. All the menus, UI, and so on were based around this, so even if the boards didn’t connect to that, MP7 still feels charming in its own way. Touches like these that may seem small in hindsight can go a long way in giving a game personality.
With SMP, I can’t tell if no attempt to do this was made on purpose, or it’s because they want to avoid creating new Mario characters. I wanted to avoid going into this topic for as long as possible because it’s so speculative, but I wonder if they went out of their way to stick to pre-established Mario characters because Nintendo wants to avoid introducing new characters in the Mario spin-offs, similar to how Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam and the recent Paper Mario installments have turned out.
Even if for whatever reason they didn’t want to create any new characters, I still think more could’ve done. MP5 was also a case where it didn’t have a new mascot, but instead used the Star Spirits from Paper Mario. It was a clever idea, taking infrequently seen characters from the Mario franchise and repurposing them in a cool way that even made sense with the theme of the game. The way that SMP just copy pastes everything over from MP1 feels so lazy, because it didn’t have to be this way.
With SMP, I can’t tell if no attempt to do this was made on purpose, or it’s because they want to avoid creating new Mario characters. I wanted to avoid going into this topic for as long as possible because it’s so speculative, but I wonder if they went out of their way to stick to pre-established Mario characters because Nintendo wants to avoid introducing new characters in the Mario spin-offs, similar to how Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam and the recent Paper Mario installments have turned out.
Even if for whatever reason they didn’t want to create any new characters, I still think more could’ve done. MP5 was also a case where it didn’t have a new mascot, but instead used the Star Spirits from Paper Mario. It was a clever idea, taking infrequently seen characters from the Mario franchise and repurposing them in a cool way that even made sense with the theme of the game. The way that SMP just copy pastes everything over from MP1 feels so lazy, because it didn’t have to be this way.
There’s a reasonable argument to be made that this was handled the way it was because SMP is supposed to be a soft-reboot for the franchise, and they may have wanted to play it safe for that reason. This would be a valid justification for this decision, but I’m sorry, I simply don’t think it’s a good decision regardless. I’m not going to give a free pass for such sloppy execution, because as far as I’m concerned they’ve been playing it safe for a decade now.
But back to the actual board designs. They’re disappointingly forgettable aesthetically, and with no main theme to offer even a semblance of overall cohesion, it contributes further to the lack of memorability. Perhaps the biggest sin, however, is the change to how the layouts are constructed. Boards in previous entries would frequently curve and twist and later on would allow you to interact with the environment through movement. Take MP7, where in the beautiful Pagoda Peak you would be climbing ladders, swinging on tree branches, and jumping across stalks of bamboo, which resulted in a great sense of liveliness.
Comparing this to SMP’s boards leads to an alarming contrast. All the boards in SMP are rigidly designed, with barely any curves at all. Any sense of verticality is almost entirely gone, leading to some jarringly flat board design. Even Kamek’s Tantalizing Tower, which has the largest vertical terrain variations out of all the boards, still feels like it emphasizes the horizontal elements more than anything else. It's so uninteresting.
For what it’s worth, the height part makes sense. The boards are much smaller in general, whereas boards in previous entries were far larger, so it was easier to have more verticality. Having smaller boards isn’t inherently bad either, so it’d be unfair to judge it on that--plus, Mario Party boards didn’t even have vertical elements until MP5. However, this still doesn’t excuse the lack of curves or memorable set pieces. I can’t help but wonder if the rigid aspect was done to give off a sense of cohesion, but whatever the reason, all it accomplished was making the boards feel dull.
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This article has gone on for awhile now, but I can only put off the elephant in the room for so long. Even if you aren’t a huge Mario Party fan, chances are you might already know what I’m about to talk about: the online multiplayer. Being able to play with friends online has been a long requested feature, and for good reason. Sometimes your friends aren’t always able to make it over to your house, maybe you don’t have enough controllers, or maybe your friends live far away from you. Whatever the reason, online multiplayer is common feature in lots of modern games, including other party games, so it seems reasonable to expect it to be present when it’s been over a decade since the Wii came out… right?
As it turns out, SMP does actually have online multiplayer! Except not in a form anyone actually asked for. SMP introduces the new Mariothon mode, where you compete against other users in a set rotation of mini-games. There is no online multiplayer of any kind for the main board modes, only the mini-games. Ignoring that the few times I tried this mode it ran horribly (my internet is fine, for the record), the fact that it’s structured like this in the first place is absurd and tone-deaf.
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| lol |
Mini-games are a great part of Mario Party, but they’re incredibly shallow on their own--more than ever in SMP’s case due to its simplistic control scheme. They work well because of how they affect the board gameplay, not because they’re expansive, deep masterpieces.You can’t separate two cogs from a machine and expect it to function the same way when they aren’t put together. Limiting yourself to the mini-games is never going to stack up to the full board experience.
In that respect, the limitations of it being just mini-games really does baffle me. NDCube (and by extension, Nintendo in general) knew that full online multiplayer was a highly requested feature--there’s no way they simply weren’t aware of it. It’s this which begs the question of why there isn’t full support, and I’m not totally sure of the answer to that myself. People have come up with numerous reasons as to why there’s no full online, though, and they’re all reasons I disagree with. It would be pointless for me to bring that up, say I don’t agree, and then not bother to elaborate, so I’ll be going into more detail on why I feel how I do.
The most common justification I’ve seen is that people would rage quit when they’re losing a match. While this may happen, this would not be a problem if you’re playing with friends, and not randoms. Even then, it’s not as if the game would have to end then and there if someone quit; simply replace the missing person with a computer player. After all, there’d still be three human players in the match, which is enough to have a good time. The game should also penalize the player who intentionally disconnected, discouraging them from doing it again; yes, sometimes disconnects are out of the person’s control, but that applies to any online game ever (plenty of online games also indiscriminately penalize disconnects, even in other franchises made by Nintendo), so a penalty is a necessary evil. As I mentioned, though, this still wouldn’t be a problem either way as long as you only played with friends.
Alongside that line of logic, I’ve also seen the reasoning that players would attempt to troll by stalling as long as possible by not taking their turns. The solution to prevent this is as simple as creating a timer that forces you to take your turn, and if time runs out, it’ll take it for you. If this happens too much in one match, kick out the player and penalize them. When playing with friends (where trolling wouldn’t even be a thing, but I digress), offer the option to remove this timer in case your friend needs to go to the bathroom or something.
Then there’s the concern that games would last too long to work in an online setting, but I think that’s a rather arbitrary reason not to have it. There are plenty of online games that take far longer than a game of Mario Party that are able to coexist alongside the single player. Even franchises like Civilization can have multiplayer matches that last entire weeks, so I disagree with the notion that a few hours would be too long to warrant online games of Mario Party.
The least compelling justification is that Mario Party isn’t fun unless you do couch co-op, and I don’t agree with this at all. What’s the difference between playing with a friend in your room as opposed to playing with a friend over voice chat? Physical presence doesn’t define enjoyment in multiplayer games, it never has. It can enhance the experience, but that definitely doesn’t mean there’s no purpose in having online. If we were talking about using online to play with randoms, then that would be different, but when someone says “I wish Mario Party had full online,” there is a 99% chance they’re saying that because they want to play with friends, not strangers.
Proof that Mario Party works well in an online environment already exists. Mario Party Netplay allows people all across the globe to play the series with each other through netplay, and it works quite well. I’ve even tried this myself in the past, and it was a blast. Despite not having a person sitting next to me in real life, it still offered a wonderful, chaotic, and hilarious time, so it’s not as if full online is something that doesn’t work--it absolutely does. It’s the biggest missed opportunity this series has ever seen.
The lack of online multiplayer isn’t nearly enough to ruin SMP, don’t get me wrong. I’m fortunate enough to have other people close to me who are willing to play local multiplayer, but not everyone has that luxury. Even as someone who does have that luxury, I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be nice to play with people who don’t live by me. I’d be putting way more hours into this game if there were full online, but I doubt it’s going to be implemented any time soon. What a waste.
In that respect, the limitations of it being just mini-games really does baffle me. NDCube (and by extension, Nintendo in general) knew that full online multiplayer was a highly requested feature--there’s no way they simply weren’t aware of it. It’s this which begs the question of why there isn’t full support, and I’m not totally sure of the answer to that myself. People have come up with numerous reasons as to why there’s no full online, though, and they’re all reasons I disagree with. It would be pointless for me to bring that up, say I don’t agree, and then not bother to elaborate, so I’ll be going into more detail on why I feel how I do.
The most common justification I’ve seen is that people would rage quit when they’re losing a match. While this may happen, this would not be a problem if you’re playing with friends, and not randoms. Even then, it’s not as if the game would have to end then and there if someone quit; simply replace the missing person with a computer player. After all, there’d still be three human players in the match, which is enough to have a good time. The game should also penalize the player who intentionally disconnected, discouraging them from doing it again; yes, sometimes disconnects are out of the person’s control, but that applies to any online game ever (plenty of online games also indiscriminately penalize disconnects, even in other franchises made by Nintendo), so a penalty is a necessary evil. As I mentioned, though, this still wouldn’t be a problem either way as long as you only played with friends.
Alongside that line of logic, I’ve also seen the reasoning that players would attempt to troll by stalling as long as possible by not taking their turns. The solution to prevent this is as simple as creating a timer that forces you to take your turn, and if time runs out, it’ll take it for you. If this happens too much in one match, kick out the player and penalize them. When playing with friends (where trolling wouldn’t even be a thing, but I digress), offer the option to remove this timer in case your friend needs to go to the bathroom or something.
Then there’s the concern that games would last too long to work in an online setting, but I think that’s a rather arbitrary reason not to have it. There are plenty of online games that take far longer than a game of Mario Party that are able to coexist alongside the single player. Even franchises like Civilization can have multiplayer matches that last entire weeks, so I disagree with the notion that a few hours would be too long to warrant online games of Mario Party.
The least compelling justification is that Mario Party isn’t fun unless you do couch co-op, and I don’t agree with this at all. What’s the difference between playing with a friend in your room as opposed to playing with a friend over voice chat? Physical presence doesn’t define enjoyment in multiplayer games, it never has. It can enhance the experience, but that definitely doesn’t mean there’s no purpose in having online. If we were talking about using online to play with randoms, then that would be different, but when someone says “I wish Mario Party had full online,” there is a 99% chance they’re saying that because they want to play with friends, not strangers.
Proof that Mario Party works well in an online environment already exists. Mario Party Netplay allows people all across the globe to play the series with each other through netplay, and it works quite well. I’ve even tried this myself in the past, and it was a blast. Despite not having a person sitting next to me in real life, it still offered a wonderful, chaotic, and hilarious time, so it’s not as if full online is something that doesn’t work--it absolutely does. It’s the biggest missed opportunity this series has ever seen.
The lack of online multiplayer isn’t nearly enough to ruin SMP, don’t get me wrong. I’m fortunate enough to have other people close to me who are willing to play local multiplayer, but not everyone has that luxury. Even as someone who does have that luxury, I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be nice to play with people who don’t live by me. I’d be putting way more hours into this game if there were full online, but I doubt it’s going to be implemented any time soon. What a waste.
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SMP has an exclusive single player campaign mode like the majority of Mario Party games, with this one having you go through all 80 mini-games while requiring you to complete additional challenges in each mini-game to progress. This mode, named Challenge Road, is very similar to MP1’s Mini-Game Island, but this is one of the few instances where I actually don’t mind them grabbing concepts from MP1 and plopping them into this game. The reason for this is because while MP1’s mini-game roster was questionable in certain areas, the idea of Mini-Game Island certainly wasn’t a bad one.
SMP has an exclusive single player campaign mode like the majority of Mario Party games, with this one having you go through all 80 mini-games while requiring you to complete additional challenges in each mini-game to progress. This mode, named Challenge Road, is very similar to MP1’s Mini-Game Island, but this is one of the few instances where I actually don’t mind them grabbing concepts from MP1 and plopping them into this game. The reason for this is because while MP1’s mini-game roster was questionable in certain areas, the idea of Mini-Game Island certainly wasn’t a bad one.
The problem with single player modes in almost all Mario Party entries is that they’re basically nothing more “win matches on all the boards except you can only play with computer players.” This wouldn’t have been as irritating if it weren’t for the fact that boards and eventually characters were almost always locked behind the single player modes. Not only that, but these modes sometimes even had ranking systems that judged you on how well you played, but isn’t that unfair when luck plays as big of a role in these games as it does? Everything about these single player modes, especially in MP3 (which required you to get S ranks on 8/12 boards in order to unlock certain content) was antithetical to Mario Party as a whole.
Challenge Road is a much more balanced way to go about it. Mini-games are the most skill based portion of Mario Party, so it makes sense to judge players on that specifically instead of throwing luck into the equation. In Challenge Road, you have to go through and complete SMP’s wide array of mini-games, but the twist is that each one has a special challenge attached. Some of these challenges are fairly interesting, like winning the aforementioned Sizzling Stakes in a certain amount of time without ever dropping the meat cube. Unfortunately, the large majority of objectives are no more complex than just “get first place”, or “get a designated amount of points that’s so low you can aim for 1st place and you’re guaranteed to pass anyway”, and so on. For most missions you’re going through the motions, which doesn’t make for a memorable experience.
I think it’s an unfortunate consequence of the fact that many of these mini-games simply don’t have enough depth to make a cool challenge out of them. That’s fine in a normal context, since they aren’t supposed to be deep, but when you frame them like this their shallowness shows. I want to reiterate that this is still a much better approach to a single player mode than what was offered in most of the previous installments, but it’s still not engaging enough to serve any motivation to beat it other than for completion purposes. There is a more difficult version of the mode unlocked after beating it normally, though, so there is that going for it.
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Perhaps one of the worst mechanics introduced in SMP is also one of the smallest. There are a multitude of instances in almost all modes where you will be forced to do a high-five with your partner(s) by physically shaking the Joy-con. This isn’t simply cosmetic, however, as you usually earn Coins by doing this. You can opt out of doing it, but ignoring a high-five takes an annoying amount of time, and the Coins you lose by opting out piles up over time. High-fiving is an irritating pace breaker that adds literally nothing to the gameplay--not a single thing and I have no idea why it’s even there, because it gets tedious very fast. It seems the intention was to get you to bond with your partners, but the only bonding I got out of it was telling my sister “ugh, don’t forget to high-five” after each 2v2 mini-game. There is no way to permanently turn it off and get the bonus Coins; it’s such a bizarre mechanic that serves no purpose, nor does it even require any skill to perform. You could remove it from the game and lose absolutely nothing.
I'm almost done now, but if there's one design choice that can only be described as bizarre, it’d have to be how some of the unlockables work. Whereas every other Mario Party game has only had static unlocks (“Get this number of stars to unlock a new board”, “Get this much currency to unlock new characters”, and so on), alongside its already present static unlocks, SMP has a few random unlockables: in particular, the hardest difficulty setting (Master), and a new character.
The former can be found without spending too much time in confusion. If you speak to Kamek in the hub, he may (I say “may” because the conditions for this aren’t entirely clear; it’s assumed you have to play a couple of matches first, presumably with computer players on the Very Hard difficulty setting, but it’s never really stated whether that’s actually the case?) bring up a “mini-game master” you can talk to. If you then go around the hub and talk to everyone in sight, you’ll eventually find the character in question, who will unlock the difficulty setting when you accept their proposal to let them play a match with you. The fact that you’re never told you have to speak to Kamek to unlock this difficulty is a little strange, but not a huge deal since you’ll probably talk to him soon enough anyway.
But then you get to the unlockable character, Dry Bones, and it becomes frankly ridiculous. This character is unlocked similarly to Master in that it’s obtained by talking to characters in the hub, but in the case of this character, you unlock Dry Bones by talking to him specifically. The problem is that whether he shows up is entirely random. Seriously, nobody knows how to get this character to appear in the hub! There’s been several theories floating around online, like that unlocking him depends on the time of day, or that it requires you play each mode once, and so on. None of these theories have been definitively proven, though; they’re all guesses.
I can’t say I understand why Dry Bones (and maybe even Master difficulty) isn’t simply unlocked through currency. He’s not impossibly tough to unlock, but because the characters in this entry are more than just cosmetic this time around, I do think that the unlock requirements should’ve been much clearer. It’s not a big deal either way, but it sticks out as such a strange decision, and I don’t think it benefited the game in any way.
The former can be found without spending too much time in confusion. If you speak to Kamek in the hub, he may (I say “may” because the conditions for this aren’t entirely clear; it’s assumed you have to play a couple of matches first, presumably with computer players on the Very Hard difficulty setting, but it’s never really stated whether that’s actually the case?) bring up a “mini-game master” you can talk to. If you then go around the hub and talk to everyone in sight, you’ll eventually find the character in question, who will unlock the difficulty setting when you accept their proposal to let them play a match with you. The fact that you’re never told you have to speak to Kamek to unlock this difficulty is a little strange, but not a huge deal since you’ll probably talk to him soon enough anyway.
But then you get to the unlockable character, Dry Bones, and it becomes frankly ridiculous. This character is unlocked similarly to Master in that it’s obtained by talking to characters in the hub, but in the case of this character, you unlock Dry Bones by talking to him specifically. The problem is that whether he shows up is entirely random. Seriously, nobody knows how to get this character to appear in the hub! There’s been several theories floating around online, like that unlocking him depends on the time of day, or that it requires you play each mode once, and so on. None of these theories have been definitively proven, though; they’re all guesses.
I can’t say I understand why Dry Bones (and maybe even Master difficulty) isn’t simply unlocked through currency. He’s not impossibly tough to unlock, but because the characters in this entry are more than just cosmetic this time around, I do think that the unlock requirements should’ve been much clearer. It’s not a big deal either way, but it sticks out as such a strange decision, and I don’t think it benefited the game in any way.
I think I've gotten most of the stuff on my mind out of the way, so it's time to wrap this up.
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I’m conflicted about Super Mario Party. It feels like it’s torn between two sides: a desire to be like the old games, but also a desire to be a successor to the Star Rush style of adapting several different modes at the cost of not fleshing out its main mode. I mentioned earlier about how this could’ve started development as a Star Rush sequel, but really, who’s to say this isn’t Star Rush 2 but with Toad Scramble replaced?
I don’t feel like this is the return to form that so many had hoped for. It’s an enjoyable romp, but without the lasting appeal of its timeless predecessors. The fact that the traditional board style was the most advertised mode makes me question if it was included solely for marketing purposes, since it would explain the small number of boards. As I have said before, I’d rather play older installments than this one as far as the traditional style goes.
Partner Party is by far the best mode. The other modes besides it are okay, but I wouldn’t mind sacrificing them to give Partner Party more attention from the developers. A few incredibly strong modes are much better than several forgettable ones, and while I think that Star Rush was a fine game (an underrated one, in fact), I would’ve been fine with SMP ditching that structure since I think its use of it only hurt it in the end.
I do think it’s possible to fix many of SMP’s problems, though, thanks to the fact that we live in the age of DLC and patches. I believe it’s extremely likely (if not guaranteed) that we will get new content including more options, boards, and maybe even mini-games. While it’s unfortunate that this would even have to be the case in the first place, I can accept it as long as it improves the game in the end.
If you read all the way up to this point, then thanks for sticking with me. I know that writing a 12,000 word piece on Mario Party isn’t a common thing, but I’m passionate about this series and wanted to share that with others. Hopefully you enjoyed reading this.
(...And if you did enjoy reading this and would like to see more Mario Party content (not like there’s a lot on the internet), KingK recently released a very well put together and in-depth retrospective on the first Mario Party game. If you’re interested in checking it out, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myFJWtcoCH4)
Thanks for reading!
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I’m conflicted about Super Mario Party. It feels like it’s torn between two sides: a desire to be like the old games, but also a desire to be a successor to the Star Rush style of adapting several different modes at the cost of not fleshing out its main mode. I mentioned earlier about how this could’ve started development as a Star Rush sequel, but really, who’s to say this isn’t Star Rush 2 but with Toad Scramble replaced?
I don’t feel like this is the return to form that so many had hoped for. It’s an enjoyable romp, but without the lasting appeal of its timeless predecessors. The fact that the traditional board style was the most advertised mode makes me question if it was included solely for marketing purposes, since it would explain the small number of boards. As I have said before, I’d rather play older installments than this one as far as the traditional style goes.
Partner Party is by far the best mode. The other modes besides it are okay, but I wouldn’t mind sacrificing them to give Partner Party more attention from the developers. A few incredibly strong modes are much better than several forgettable ones, and while I think that Star Rush was a fine game (an underrated one, in fact), I would’ve been fine with SMP ditching that structure since I think its use of it only hurt it in the end.
I do think it’s possible to fix many of SMP’s problems, though, thanks to the fact that we live in the age of DLC and patches. I believe it’s extremely likely (if not guaranteed) that we will get new content including more options, boards, and maybe even mini-games. While it’s unfortunate that this would even have to be the case in the first place, I can accept it as long as it improves the game in the end.
If you read all the way up to this point, then thanks for sticking with me. I know that writing a 12,000 word piece on Mario Party isn’t a common thing, but I’m passionate about this series and wanted to share that with others. Hopefully you enjoyed reading this.
(...And if you did enjoy reading this and would like to see more Mario Party content (not like there’s a lot on the internet), KingK recently released a very well put together and in-depth retrospective on the first Mario Party game. If you’re interested in checking it out, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myFJWtcoCH4)
Thanks for reading!
i should really get a life
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