I have been going through the library and playing as many different Mario Party’s as i can. I have to say 3 and 6 are pretty awesome. I don’t like 7 or 10 that much at all since they changed so much about the game. What’s your favorite Mario Party games?
A related question: What is the least random Mario Party? We often end up playing this when friends come over since I guess I’m the only one who feels like it’s too random for anyone to meaningfully “win.”
Not to rain on anyone’s parade or anything, I’m glad you all and others have fun with it, I just would like to see if there’s a version that’s more like it’s a game of skill than chance.
Or maybe I just want WarioWare…
I love the random. Its the best part of it. I kick everyone’s ass every mini game then the game says “lol u loser” and someone else wins. They get their win so they want to play again, they get their chance to rub it in, but underneath it all, unspoken, is the fact that I definitely won.
I’ve seen that, so yeah, I get it. But I’ve also see the game award bonus stars or other random finger-on-the-scale benefits to the player in the lead, which can be even more demoralizing to those that lose. I don’t think it’s Mario Kart rubber band mechanics, unfortunately.
If you want it to be more skill based, turn off bonus stars and adjust the difficulty of the minigames to the harder ones. The bonus stars are notorious for ruining your run if you were playing great all game, but someone just got awarded 2 stars, and now you are in 2nd place. Mario Party 6 has these options, so that would be a good start.
Disabling bonus stars is a good point. For the difficulty, not sure if that would work well: The problem is some of the players are inevitably casuals, so increasing the difficulty just means the very narrow part of the game that isn’t as random - the mini-games - becomes not fun for them. And the Monopoly-style turn-based board play takes sooooo long, you can’t really strategize where to go.
I really do think a Mario Party game with only mini-games so everyone plays all the time would be incredible. But again, maybe I’m just describing Warioware…
I completely forgot about these options, that’s a great point.
From my understanding the least random one would probably be Mario Party 10. You move around as a group, which in my opinion, takes the fun out of the experience. That’s all I really know about it though, haven’t played it myself for that exact reason. It still has mini games from what I understand. Hoping someone else here can provide more feedback on this, as I wouldn’t mind more info on it.
Which version of Mario Party are you and your friends playing out of curiosity?
If we’re also including more recent games, the first Mario Party for the Switch might fit the bill a bit from how the joycons have to be used. That should be Super Mario Party if I remember right. There’s still a good amount of luck involved, but movement is key so that definitely includes skill.
We mostly play Super Mario Party and tried Jamboree as well on Switch. I haven’t really played other ones even though I lived through those prior generations. So maybe I’m just an irredeemable grumpy buzzkill.
Ah, so you’ve already played that one then? Hmm, the only other thing I could think of would be what one of the other comments said about turning off bonus stars and upping the difficulty for mini-games.
It could also be that you want to find a different type of party game like you mentioned. A few friends of mine have occasionally talked about a game called Donkapon Kingdom (think I spelled it right); I don’t know if that’s more luck or skill based though.
I relate to this quite a bit. I dropped off Mario Party after the second game had come out because at the time, I’d had my fill of it. Didn’t play any of the GameCube games or MP3 until this past decade. I would recommend playing MP6 from the GC if you decide to try it. You can get trap based items to set on the board; some temporary, others permanent. Definitely becomes more strategic IMO. It’s why I like it so much honestly.