Super Mario Party Jamboree Review
It’s party time in party plaza with Super Mario Party Jamboree, and what promises to be the biggest Mario Party game ever. Following the ups and downs of their last few attempts, before the fan-pleasing throwback of Mario Party Superstars, Nintendo Cube is sticking to the tried and true. That doesn’t mean there isn’t space for new ideas, and modes that answer some niche requests from the community, though.
The basics of Mario Party are here. Dice roll up to 10, Stars cost 20 coins, and some of the boards – there’s five new and two remakes – can initially boggle the mind with complex routes and events that completely upend all your plans.
Wiggler’s Tree Party is a nice and simple beginners board, leading pleasantly into the twinned routes and karting theme of Roll ’em Raceway. It gets much trickier for Goomba Lagoon, with high and low tides that can trap you in a corner of the map going in the loop – this is a really frustrating point on this map, to be honest – and the shopping mall themed Rainbow Galleria is a maze of multiple levels with a half-price shopping event, stamps to collect and more. That’s my favourite.
Western Land and Mario’s Rainbow Castle have been remade as unlockables, and then there’s a seventh map to make this the biggest Mario Party since the first one!
All of the fundamental Mario Party gameplay tropes are here, with a familiar core set of items. But there’s also a bunch of new and returning items, such as the Bowser Phone and Cellular Shopper from Mario Party 3, a cheaper regular pipe with random movement, payday dice that give you coins to match your move, and trap items that can steal from your opponents. I feel there’s a good balance here that gives more options to quickly get somewhere else, though without always having control over where you go.
New for this game are the Jamboree Buddies, adapting the Ally system from Super Mario Party. These characters will randomly appear on the map and will give a major boost to any character that gets
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