Savannah Bulman

I haven't played the Mario Party games since Mario Party DS so I had a lot of biased Nostalgia going into the game. I believe that the issue is that with each installment of Mario Party, they try to reinvent to have it stand out, but instead, with the amount of changes the credibility of the series is diminished, one doesn't know what they're in for when they get the game, which can be good, but not when they are seeking out the Mario Party experience they had with a previous installment. First, the idea of each character having their own dice is a fun idea, but then we have a tier list for the dice, and actual strategization going on from the character selection which I believe should not exist. Secondly, I will admit I am biased from Mario Party DS, but the maps in this game aren't as explorative, for example in Womp's map, if you manage to land on an event space, it was to move the Womps, boulder, or get the chests, in contrast Wiggler's garden had different routes you could go that within those routes had choosing which flower for more coins, shaking a bulb for coins, places that bounced you elsewhere on the map, the pirhana plant on top. The interactivity gave the event spaces a lot of both excitement or fear depending on where you were in the map, but with the minimal uses in this game it just leaves a mundane feeling when you happen to land on one. Thirdly, the shop in this installment is very minimal compare to the one in the DS, If the shop updated randomly to hold things like the shy guy ticket to steal items, or rarely have things like the ally phone, it could spice the gameplay between players and even NPCs some more. The idea of star pipe farming from the get-go should not be an available strategy in the gameplay, at least not within the first few rounds, if I recall correctly, the DS shop had different items periodically and within the last few rounds it provided star pipes for players. Finally, one of the things I miss the most, and would really help get out of the, the player who is in first place stays in first place curse, would be to have duel spaces where you can challenge the player for coins and or a star, I know lakitu is available but it can be hard to get to him on some maps and it doesn't fufill as much as when you overcome them in a minigame or otherwise, when you win and manage to keep your gains. I do still enjoy the game when playing with friends and family but it's more because I am playing with friends and family, I can't really enjoy a compettitive time playing this game just with my brother like we did on the DS Mario Party because a lot of this gameplay seems purely up to random number generation instead of compettition.