Super Mario Party (Switch) review "Kinda jank, but fun."

Super Mario Party might just the most experimental, imbalanced sure-as-jank title in the entire franchise. It’s got polish, boy howdy, but the Allies mechanic makes for some controller tossing entertainment, which might not be your jam. Especially if that purchase is wasted when no one wants to come back to play it again.

The Mario Party games play like any board game, with dice to roll, moves to make, consequences to deal with and one objective: Collect those stars! There are a few modes to toy with, but most of your time will be spent in this pursuit. Let’s look at a typical play.



The opening screen sells excitement, and the soundtrack is a synthetic affair of memorable tunes that won’t grate on your nerves in loop. That’s not easy to do. Once you tap in, so to speak, you’re greeted by the cutscene that introduces the paper-thin story to you that justifies all the star chasing you’re about to do.

It’s well animated and gets the point across, but so many games deep into this franchise I wonder just why we’re bothering with it. Fortunately, the next step is character selection, and there’s a healthy roster of the popular characters to choose from. Choose wisely, though, because every character has their own custom die in addition to the regular six-sided die they’ll use in the party game modes.

Why NDCube decided to hide this behind their poorly implemented party point system is anybody’s guess. There’s a layer of information hidden behind points you’ll earn playing mini games that give you what a manual would have provided in decades past, but hey, I guess that’s a chance to stew in much needed annoyance and frustration, right?



Let’s move on. The party plaza gate is where things start, and I suppose having four players on tap means you don’t have to wait to choose CPU players from a range of three difficulties, but I wouldn’t know about that. You see, my wife and I play for Partner Party, which is a variant of Mario Party proper. On that note, we have a few game modes to consider.

These include River Survival, with multiple routes that you traverse on a timer that you boost with minigames and various collectables. Sound Stage has you motion control-dancing your way through some challenges that quickly become boring. Challenge Road becomes available once you unlock all of the minigames, which can be played directly if you want to skip all the fluff.

Then there’s the Online Mariothon, Toad’s Rec Room and Stickers. Mariothon does what it says on the tin, and the last two strike me as include the stuff that didn’t have a logical place anywhere else. My wife and I didn’t spend any time playing online against anyone else. As I’ve mentioned, Partner Party is our jam.
It’s got issues, though.

Hey, this is a competent game. Even though there are only four available Party maps, they do double duty in Mario Party and Partner Party. With some layout adjustments, naturally. Four is not many maps to play around with, though I believe that NDCube hoped players would be content with the many different modes they’ve provided. Unfortunately, there’s a certain point at which trying to serve everyone means serving no one.



Let’s look at the good: As I’ve mentioned, the music is absolutely solid and does its job admirably. Energetic and unoffensive, even on loop with synthesized instruments. So help me if they aren’t catchy, because they are. Character animations and expressions are interesting to look at and capture the personality of the roster of heroes, baddies and nobodies. My wife and I prefer Shy Guy and Monty Mole, the latter of whom may have the best die in the entire game.

Meanwhile, the party maps vary in quality. Instead of heaping full-bore experiences on the uninitiated, each map has a difficulty rating, and they all have differing levels of complexity and variety. It’s a valid approach, and typical of Nintendo’s other Mario centric games. This gives you the option of how much you’re dealing with in addition to the time consideration, as some maps offer the ability to play for as long as three hours. That works out to 10 turns in 60 minutes, approximately.

The usual trappings are here. You’ll roll a die and land on a space which will grant you coins, a roulette block of items, or a number of event spaces. These include Event, Good and Bad Luck, which can shift the probability curve of play, though maybe not as much as you might like. You see, NDCude uses these spaces as an opportunity to balance the game for fairness.

In my experience there are limits to how effective this is. For instance, a player—or team—with zero stars might find a hidden block or get a hidden block card that has a chance of granting them a star. If not, then at least they will be given some coins, and that could be just what they need to stay in the running.



In some maps, once you’ve gained enough of a coin advantage, gameplay suddenly resembles real life. No matter how hard the game tries, your shot at winning is locked behind your inability to afford the cost of gates that stand between you and Toadette, who would happily sell you a star.

Likewise, be prepared to suffer if you can’t gather some allies in Partner Party. Each one has a die that can add 1 or 2 moves to your roll, and that’s after your roll is combined with that of your partner. Two or three allies can seriously augment your movement ability, though all is not lost if you’re competent in the minigames.

Overall, the selection of minigames is top notch, and their quality is exceptional. They’re genuinely fun to play, though the random number generator needs some serious polish. Each round we would watch the RNG feed us the same games instead of accounting for repetition. I can’t avoid the suspicion that Super Mario Party was rushed.

Everything is a tad familiar. Super Mario Party does very little to diverge from the established aesthetic of past games, and seems to take its time with transitions. Somehow the lack of an end game transition to the star stadium awards robs play of any pageantry. We get the good ole cloud sendoff between turns for the minigame roulette, but that’s all.

The difference that Nintendo’s attention to deal makes here is the cost of entry, and the value thereof. If you’re a fan of Super Mario Party, then I can understand why. There’s a lot here to enjoy. I don’t expect my wife and I will tire of Partner Party anytime soon. Regrettably the whole thing let down by its flaws.



My wife and I have increased the difficulty periodically, which was a little nervous making at first. But then we figured out how predictably the computer plays, which allows us to maximize our communication and planning. For us that leaves our skill with the minigames, which only requires some practice.

If nothing else that’s a worthwhile pursuit, because development of those skills will have positive knock-on effects throughout your life. Nintendo’s efforts to get people to work together are good, and I’m quite content to get out of my comfort zone in that way. Super Mario Party definitely has some jank in its implementation, but making the best of an imperfect package has its real-world benefits.

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Community review by hastypixels (February 04, 2026) Retro, and moreso all the time.