A new installment to the Mario Party series has finally arrived on Nintendo Switch with Super Mario Party. Bringing in a new set of game modes and mini-games for party fun. One of these modes is the returning traditional Mario Party that has 4 players traveling separately on a game board to collect stars. If the previous entries in the franchise have disappointed you, this latest entry brings back a lot of the old Mario Party. Along with a lot of new that certainly help this party feel super.

THE GOOD: Traditional Mario Party is back. If you didn’t like having all players traveling in the same car and rolling spaces together, you’ll be happy to know that the 4-player board game setup has returned. It’s as you remembered too. Roll dice to get to the star space, win mini-games to earn coins, and use those coins to earn stars. Collect the most stars in order to win. Very familiar, but there are some new twists mixed in to change things up. One of those is the boards themselves. They’re much smaller in design this time. Along with the smaller design, stars are discounted from 20 coins to 10 coins. Also, the 50 turn option is no longer present, showing a larger focus on shortened and quicker paced experiences. For example, a 10-turn game of Mario Party will take one hour or less of play time. I think this is a good change up and helps prevent things from feeling too dragged on.

One other new mechanic to the party is the addition of character dices. This feature was seen in Mario Party Star Rush on 3DS, where every character had a unique dice tied to them. It works the same way in Super Mario Party. You have the regular six-sided dice with numbers 1-6 on it, but you can also choose to spin the character dice instead. These character dices vary from character to character and each will have their own set of sides on it. These can feature the same number on multiple sides, or even faces that give or take away coins. There are even characters with dices that have sides that are higher than six, with 10 being the highest. So depending on the character you choose, you may have an advantage or possible disadvantage depending on how the roll goes. These character dices certainly bring their own set of risks to the already randomness of the game.

The next twist mixed in is the ally spaces. If you land on an ally space on the board, you’ll be randomly given a character who will become your ally. When you gain an ally, you also gain their character dice. So you will then have the choice of the regular dice, your own character’s dice, or the dice of your allies to use. Not only that, but along with your dice roll, your allies will roll a dice of their own from 1-2, that will get added to your amount. With the ability to earn up to four allies in total, your dice rolls can reach very high amounts and may potentially change things up in your favor. These additions to the traditional board game setup help make the game familiar but also new. Adding in more randomness and risks to the chaos. There are even mini-games that will have your groups of allies working alongside you for an added advantage. I should also mention that because of these additions, there’s actually a big cast of characters to choose from this time around, which is quite nice.

While the traditional mode makes a return, a set of new modes also get a large focus in this new package. There’s Partner Party, which is a mode that has players partnering up for 2v2 play. The game board is set up similarly to the Toad Scramble mode from Mario Party Star Rush. It’s a wide open map, with every square being available to move on, instead of branching linear paths. Collecting the most stars is still the main objective. By partnering up, players will share their dice rolls with their partner. So if you roll a 5 and your partner rolls a 4, you both will be able to move 9 spaces. Allies are also available in this mode and will appear in random spots on the map. By moving up to them, you’ll obtain the ally, and have their dices available for use just like in Mario Party mode. So high dice rolls can certainly be had in this mode too. That’s not entirely a good thing in this mode though, since you have to land exactly on the star spot in order to obtain a star. When you move spaces, you must use all your available movement fully. So if the star is 9 spaces away, but you have to move 10 spaces, you won’t be able to land on the star spot. It’s an interesting take on Mario Party and brings its own twists to a familiar setup.

Then there’s River Survival, which has all four players playing cooperatively. In this mode, all players will need to guide their boat down a river to the end before time runs out. Multiple branching paths can be taken and each path will bring their own set of obstacles. Like a path full of boost pads or a path full of whirlpools being made by bloopers. There will also be pickups along the way that can be grabbed to increase your time limit. The best way to increase time though will be by grabbing a mini-game balloon. For this mode, the mini-games are all a group effort, and doing well in these mini-games will earn you more time to travel down the river. This is another neat and interesting mode added to the mix, and the cooperative mini-games were quite clever and fun to play through.

Sound Stage is another mode, and is a free-for-all mini-game medley. All the mini-games featured in this mode though are rhythm based. As you play through each game presented, you’ll earn points for how on beat you are. The player with the most points at the end of it all will be the victor. It’s a quick and simple mode, but the mini-games featured are fun to play. They really give off that feeling of a Rhythm Heaven game, which is a huge plus for me.

Once you unlock all the mini-games in Super Mario Party, you’ll then unlock the Challenge Road mode. This can be seen as the single-player of the game, since only one player can go through it. Every mini-game is featured here, and the lone player will be tasked with not only winning the mini-game, but to fulfill a certain objective. It lives up to it’s name, and offers up quite the challenge to the mini-games you’ve already played. With 80 mini-games featured in this title, it’s a long and challenging road ahead. A nice way to return to all the mini-games, and something to do if you’re a lone player.

Another unique mode is Toad’s Rec Room. This mode is pretty sparse in comparison to the other modes in this game, but it has an interesting concept. That concept being the ability to play with two Switch consoles in order to expand the play field. If you’ve seen the Super Mario Party trailer, this is the mode that had the tank game where you could change up the battlefield by changing up the orientation of two Switch consoles. In addition to the tanks, there’s a baseball game, a puzzle game, and a banana split game. Even though this mode can utilize two Switch consoles, only one of these games requires it, and that’s the banana split one. All the other games are fully playable on one Switch. Having two Switches is a neat way to experience these games, but they’re quite enjoyable on one. Also, to make use of two Switch units, you will need two copies of the game.

Rounding out the modes is the ability to free play mini-games, with a couple modes that act as a hub to play these mini-games that isn’t on a game board. One of these mini-game modes is Mariothon, which has you choosing from three different cups that feature their own set of five mini-games. Play through all five mini-games in the cup and the player with the most points in the end is the victor. The mini-games featured in this mode revolve around time and survival. Finish the objective quickly or survive as long as you can in order to earn the most points. The reason I bring up Mariothon is because it features a first for Mario Party. That’s the ability to play online. So if you’re up for some Mariothon, with no one nearby, you can take it online and play with others from far away. It’s an enjoyable mode and works nicely in online play.

As you can see from the amount of modes featured in this game, there’s plenty to enjoy. This is a party game, and as expected, it’s best enjoyed with a group. That’s always been the case with Mario Party, and that continues with this game. The range of having group and free-for-all types is a good mix up and a nice alternative from the traditional Mario Party.

Even though I praise the party aspect, Super Mario Party is actually not that bad for single-players too. The Challenge Road is a good way to do just that, but there’s also a main objective to Super Mario Party. That objective being to explore everything there is in this game. So if you’re one who likes to 100 percent things, you’ll have a nice road-map present. And with games of Mario Party and Partner Party taking one hour or less of play time, it doesn’t sound like such a grueling task to play by yourself compared to past Mario Party games. Still a time consuming task, but I actually had a good time going through Super Mario Party alone and reaching the ending.

A big part of why each mode was enjoyable is due to the mini-games. As mentioned, there are 80 new mini-games to discover and play. When dealing with that much, there are sure to be ones that are lacking. However, I feel the group this time around is possibly one of their best. Many feel fresh and unique, which is thanks to the focus on the mini-games being controlled solely by a single joy con. So you’ll have many mini-games that make use of the motion controls and even ones that utilize the HD rumble. Because of the joy con focus, you can’t play the game in handheld mode when the joy cons are attached to the Switch and you can’t use a Pro controller. May be disappointing for some, but it makes a lot of sense when you see the group of mini-games present, and the games are simple enough that even playing on a small joy con is very doable for people with large hands. Also, the mini-game setup has been vastly improved with the ability to practice the actual mini-game while in the tutorial screen before jumping into the real thing. It’s a simple quality of life improvement, but a very welcomed one.

THE BAD: There’s plenty that Super Mario Party did good this time around, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some odd decisions mixed in. One of which is with the online features. When it was first revealed that online was finally coming to Super Mario Party, a lot of expectations were for the traditional board game mode. Unfortunately, it’s only tied to the Mariothon mode, which was disappointing. The Mariothon Mode is neat, but it doesn’t feature all the playable mini-games, so you can’t even play every mini-game online. Also, many didn’t want for some random mode to be online. They all wanted Mario Party itself to be online. In this age where Nintendo is charging players to play online, the decision to not fully dive into online play for Super Mario Party is an odd one. You’d think Nintendo would increase their efforts for more multiplayer experiences in order to validate their service, but they continue to fail with possibly one of the most requested games that Nintendo fans want for online play. It’s a step in the right direction that online is at least present, but it’s definitely a missed opportunity that they didn’t make this Mario Party entry the game where they do full online play.

Another odd choice is with the overall content of the game. There’s plenty of modes available, but each mode can feel somewhat lacking when viewed individually. This is especially so with the traditional Mario Party mode. Only four game boards are present, with the fourth needing to be unlocked. This amount is small when compared to the amount of boards that are available in previous games. Also, these boards themselves are smaller. It allows for quicker play, but it also doesn’t take long to really experience everything on the board. Even at 10 turns, you’ll easily see everything on the board. Mainly due to the high rolls possible with allies and character dices. You’d think that with these new additions that make high rolls possible, some thought would have been put into bigger boards. This is also further disappointing when you see that the boards in Partner Party are the exact same as the ones in Mario Party. So not only is the amount small, but the variety is lacking in between modes too. More modes is nice and I found each one fun in their own right, but it certainly feels like the depth of each mode took a hit in the process. Hopefully DLC, preferably free, can be offered to further expand these modes. Especially the main Mario Party mode.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Super Mario Party offers up a fantastic party experience. Bringing back the 4-player board game many have come to love with a set of new mini-games that make nice use of the joy con. This is the return of traditional Mario Party, but with some neat additions that mix things up without completely changing everything. With a lot of fresh ideas brought in with the various game modes available. It feels like a much better balance this time around compared to previous entries. There are the issues with board content feeling a bit lacking and online being tied to one mode. So, if you were hoping for a fun online party experience, this isn’t the one. However, as a local multiplayer game, this is easily one of their best entries yet. So get some friends and family together, and enjoy this Super Mario Party.