It's always a great time for Mario Party! (Super Mario Party Jamboree in review)
Grab Some Buddies, Time to Jamboree!
Mario Party as a series continues to be just the way it has been for quite a while. You roll a die, run around the board, collect coins and stars, play minigames, and whoever has the most at the end of the game wins and is declared the Superstar. If the past few games have felt a little slim on content, this game has 7 boards, versus the 4 and 5 for Super Mario Party and Superstars respectively. They've added quite a few little tweaks and changes this time around, I have to admit. Many of the boards here have contextual items that change that board, and as such, they don't show up on others. For instance, on Mega Wiggler's Tree Party, there's a giant Wiggler sleeping in the middle of the board, which will move from time to time if you ring a bell (which can either be triggered by an item or by landing on the event space and ringing the bell already mounted there). On Roll 'em Raceway, where you're all driving cars and you can get the Turbo Dice, which allows you to roll 4 dice blocks, but you're going so fast that you don't stop for anything other than to choose which path you're taking on a fork in the road. I haven't played all of the boards yet, so I'm not positive if all of them have special effect items like this, but at least the vast majority of them do. In addition to these, a huge gameplay mechanic that they introduced comes in the forms of Jamboree Buddies.
Every now and then, another character that none of the four players chose will ride in on a balloon, and the players have three turns to get to them. If someone reaches them before they leave, it will trigger a Showdown Minigame which determines which player gets to keep them as a Jamboree Buddy. These are really cool and do a great job of showing the different personalities of many different characters, since all of the minigames are character specific. Donkey Kong has a rhythm game where everyone has to copy a beat on his DK Bongo Drums, Mario has a set of three minigames that convey his love of adventure, as well as just paying good homage to previous games in the franchise, but my favorite has to be Waluigi's Pinball Arcade, as a reference to one of my favorite Mario Kart tracks, Waluigi Pinball. such a fun and interesting idea. It should be said that whoever gets to the buddy space first gets an advantage in the minigame, so there's definitely some incentive to getting there first. Once you have a Jamboree Buddy on your side, all of them do different effects, such as Peach allows you to purchase stars at half price and Wario gives you 3 to 8 coins at the start of every turn. On top of the character specific features, they allow whatever space you land on to be activated twice, as well as the ability to buy multiple things. If you get to a star, you can buy two of them, two items can be bought at the store, and if you land on a blue space, you get twice as many coins. That can backfire on you, however. I've seen a few instances of landing on a Bowser space, and then having to do that twice. It's not fun, but it is funny for everyone else playing. Along with all of these additions to the main Mario Party mode, we have several brand new areas and new modes to go along with them.
Motion Island has a few activities, and they're all a pretty good time. If you like Rhythm Heaven or really any kind of rhythm game, you'll be pretty happy with this, it's a short gauntlet of rhythm based minigames that four players work together as a team to complete. If you're by yourself, that's fine, three computers will tag in and help out, then three Yoshi judges will grade your performance out of 5 stars. Toad's Item Factory is a motion based puzzle game where you're trying to get balls into holes in order to help Toad create the different items for the game. Paratroopa's Flight School is probably my least favorite of the three, but the basis is really cool. You move the joy-cons around like wings and you do a variety of different games with that concept, or just fly around at your own pace. Once I get a bit more experience in it, I think I could definitely turn around on this one, but so far the movement is a little awkward.
There's also the Bowser Kaboom Squad where 8 players have to defeat a giant Imposter Bowser rampaging through a city with the assistance of different enemies which change based on what map you pick. You run around the map, avoiding Bowser and his goons and picking up bombs to throw into the cannon. Once there are 20 bombs in the cannon, it will shoot at Bowser and take out a chunk of health. After a certain amount of time, the round will end and all 8 players have to work together in a mini-game, the rank that you get determines how many good items you'll be able to use in the next round. If you don't take down the Imposter Bowser in 5 rounds, then you lose. I was surprised by the amount of strategy and content that was included in this mode alone, and it is a lot of fun!
There's actually something of a campaign, which is pretty cool, since we very rarely get those in Mario Party games. The theme of this story mode is that you're helping Kamek get all of the boards ready for the party, so you choose your character, and then run around the map at your leisure, stopping along the way to complete side quests for characters and playtesting different elements of the board, as well as Minigames. It's a really fun idea, for every board you need to get 30 mini stars to power it up, and you get the mini stars by doing all the quests, and then once you get 30, it triggers something akin to a boss fight, though it's really just a more in depth mini-game than the usual ones. There is a lot of charm to this mode and I honestly found myself laughing a lot at some of the responses that the characters say on the board as they're getting ready for the festivities.
A lot of content in this game is to be expected, but a shocking amount has been added onto this game, and I think they've done a great job with it from top to bottom. The four boards that you begin the game with are great fun, and the three that are unlocked through different methods definitely add to that, especially considering two of them are old boards from the first two games in the franchise. I would love to see a board return from Mario Party 4, 5, or 6 someday, but what we have here is good, and it seems like they're only returning to the first three games as far as boards are concerned. We do have some good callbacks in the mini-games, with Granite Getaway being one of my favorite games from Mario Party 6, so that's always nice to see. Mario Party had some rough times in the past as I said towards the beginning of this post, but if this series continues to be as consistent as the last few games have been, I say let the good times roll.
Thanks so much for reading this review, friends! Have you played this new Mario Party yet? What do you consider your favorite in the series? I would love to hear from you somewhere online, and spicy takes are totally welcome here. I know Mario Party 9 and 10 were pretty widely hated, but I never played them for myself, maybe you really enjoyed them! Thanks again for all of your support, and I hope you'll have a great week! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Mario Party fan, and I'll talk to you again soon!
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