Top 10 Biggest Problems With Super Mario Party

Mario Party is one of my favourite spin-off series from the Super Mario franchise. Wether we're freely roaming boards, driving a car, recruiting allies, or..., climbing a tower, Mario Party has always been a series about friends hanging out together and having fun playing a little game, either agianst or with each other. Super Mario Party is the newest Mario Party title but boy is it also one of the most overrated. I enjoy the game, but it sure isn't without its many flaws.
The Top Ten
1 Lack of content

Mario Party, Partner Party, River Survival, Sound Stage, Challenge Road? Yeah, there's not much to do in any of these game modes, and they all fall flat once you've tried them a couple of times.

It's about the only stuff that's available in this game. No boss battles, no story mode, no interesting minigame side modes like in Mario Party 9 (I loved High Rollers and Garden Battle). It's just hollow. Like seriously, why couldn't we have had at least bosses? I don't think anyone complained about them in the other games.

2 It gets old quickly

A problem Mario Party: Star Rush somewhat suffered from too. The game revolves around getting five gems or something by completing everything in the game (like the level system in the prior game), but after that, there isn't much to do.

The mini modes are only really fun the first few times, and the main mode has too little to it for any replay value. The only thing that keeps me playing it is the super fun Partner Party, but that's it.

3 Overly complicated to choose your COM players

You're stuck between three randomized groups of COM players (Recommended, Hard, or Very Hard), but the COM characters are randomized. If you want to change exactly which characters to party with, you need to go back to settings after you've started the game, and it's just a chore. Why?

4 Lacks a proper identity

Mario Party 1, 3, and 4 kinda did it too, but since this is the 11th game, you'd expect there to be more to it.

Mario Party 2 had different outfits. Mario Party 5 had a dream concept. Mario Party 7 was around the world. Mario Party 6 revolved around day and night. Mario Party 8 was a carnival. Mario Party 9 had a bit of a space theme to it (plus the obvious car). Island Tour was about bubble cloning. DS had the big house theme. Mario Party 10 was about Bowser. Star Rush had many game modes and a star theme.

What does this game have that makes it stand out? Uh..., instandingness (whatever that means)? Sure, there's the HD graphics and being the only one with HD graphics that has the main mode, but that won't matter at all in a few years when the sequels come out.

5 Forgettable soundtrack

I'm sorry, but there isn't a whole lot of interesting music in this game at all. Most of it is just generic jazz, and that's it. The hub world theme makes me want to fall asleep.

6 Recieved no DLC

This, combined with the fact that it has so little content, makes the game quite boring. The one update the game did receive was a bug patch, and that's it.

Yeah, I wish Nintendo added something else... more boards maybe? What's with the newer games having fewer boards?

7 Bad online mode

I can only play a total of six different minigames against people, and that's it. No party mode, no river survival, just a total of six minigames against each other, and it's always the same ones! It's hollow at best, and it wouldn't have made a difference to not have online.

Yeah, it was underwhelming at best. Why did Nintendo not let us play a modified version of the main party mode?

8 It played too safe

Want to know what they added that was different? Oh LOOK, we can do group clapping. Oh my, how I've always wanted to do that in MARIO PARTY (sarcasm). No, but seriously, it's pretty lame how everything in this game is just taken from previous titles, with minor alterations.

Mario Party is just a stale classic formula with no actual tension.

Partner Party is Toad Scramble from Mario Party: Star Rush but without bosses or toads.

River Survival is one of those paddling minigames stretched out into its own thing.

Sound Stage is a short version of Coinathlon from Mario Party: Star Rush with no levels.

And Challenge Road is the same as in The Top 100.

Granted, this isn't that bad. I mean, all modes besides Mario Party are still fun. Originality isn't the most important thing. It's important that the modes are fun too, but it makes the game feel lackluster and a little bland. It ties with #1 in the lack of content. The problem with the other modern Mario Parties wasn't that they were unique. It was that there wasn't much content. This game is that plus it plays safe.

9 Few and boring boards

We only have four boards when every Mario Party game before it had at least five to make it feel generally fresh. Not to mention, they're bland and uninteresting.

Whomp's Domino Ruins is too cramped, and the routes are way too linear. Megafruit Paradise is just four squares connected by pipes, making it unlikely to get any stars. The Powderkeg Mine is just 4-3 from Star Rush reimagined. And Kamek's Tantalizing Tower is DK's Stone Statue gone poor. None of them are particularly interesting or fun in the main mode.

The Partner Party mode does solve most of these issues, namely in Domino Ruins because you can move much more freely (similar to Star Rush), but it doesn't excuse how boring the main mode is because of this.

10 Can't be played in handheld mode

This defeats the whole purpose of it being on the Switch, a console meant to play wherever you go, anytime. You can only play using Joy-Cons sideways, which is just uncomfortable.

Granted, you can take out the Switch system and use its screen, but the lack of being able to connect my Joy-Cons to the system is just annoying.

The Contenders
11 Lack of 50 Turn Mode

Yeah, it was disappointing. Sure, most of us won't play for that long, but it was still a nice feature. What was the point of removing it? It can't be that hard to just implement more turns.

12 Stars only cost 10 coins

Like, dude, this removes all difficulty because as long as you win a minigame at least once, you just hit the dice until you get to a star. Whatever happened to good ol' 20 coins?

13 Horrible name
14 Bringing back the old formula

Instead of evolving the grid-based mechanic further, they chose to cut half and make that the original formula, which ended badly and poorly, all because of the toxicity of the fans.

15 No Miis
16 People sometimes get hit when they do not touch anything bad
17 Toad and Toadette are unplayable because they are the hosts of the game
18 Bowser is playable
19 Birdo is unplayable
20 No rewards
21 Too easy
22 No minigame mini stars
23 No boss minigames
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