Super Mario Party Jamboree review: one last Switch party

While there’s a mountain of new modes this time around, the core of Mario Party Jamboree is still the series’ signature board game. Nintendo keeps returning to that format for a reason: It remains fun as heck with friends. Like the last two entries, Jamboree doesn’t overburden itself with gimmicks. The goal is to move around a board, get stars, and win bite-sized minigames. If you haven’t clicked with that loop since its creation on the Nintendo 64, you still won’t be won over by the at times glacially paced rounds. That doesn’t mean that the formula hasn’t evolved, though.

Jamboree finds Mario Party at its most strategic, with way more to do during a round than simply racing to the star. That’s thanks in large part to some of its excellent new boards. There are seven in total, including two throwbacks and five original maps. The latter are some of the best in the series’ history thanks to their multifaceted designs. Take one as seemingly simple as Goomba Lagoon. At first, it looks like a straightforward beachside romp, but it’s filled with attractions and nuances. The tide changes every few turns, occasionally drowning players left standing on a sandbar. There’s a coin-fishing diversion, a treasure chest guessing minigame, zipline shortcuts, and a volcano that can spew lava on spaces. With several moving parts, it becomes a more dynamic play space full of risks and rewards.

The maps especially lend themselves to longer 30-turn battles where players have more space to chase their own side goals during a round. Rainbow Galleria best models that design philosophy. The stage is a three-floor mall filled with vendors. A round there becomes more about finding ways to stay flush with coins and spending them wisely at each shop to both get ahead and mess with other players. That can partially be accomplished by visiting stamp stations in one go around the board and returning as much as possible to the starting kiosk for extra coins (gathering all four stamps gives extra coins). A flash sale activates every few turns, which creates a mad dash to shops.

The end goal is still to get the most stars, but each map gives players way more space to achieve that goal in clever ways. There’s strategy in amassing a ton of coins and then targeting Boo spaces to steal stars from opponents. New trap items let players place down an item that can steal coins and stars from friends who land on them. If one player is closing in on a star, another could saddle them with low-rolling “creepy” dice to keep them from getting there, warp to their position to beat them to the punch, or move the star’s position entirely with a Chain Chomp Whistle. Ideas like this have always been part of the series, but Jamboree’s wealth of twists means that a savvy player could win with devious planning rather than lucky rolls.

The best new feature is Jamboree’s namesake buddy system. On occasion, another character appears on the board. Whoever wins this Jamboree Buddy in a long-form challenge, all cleverly themed around the character, gets a temporary bonus for a few turns. Waluigi, for instance, can steal coins from players when passing by them. Having a buddy also allows players to buy two stars instead of one, so grabbing one can really turn a game on its head if players act fast. The twist is that buddies can be easily stolen if a player passes by the one who currently has it. That adds a fun bit of hot potato to games that can make rounds even more cutthroat.

With so many little systems, Jamboree’s limited rule customization really sticks out. Aside from changing the number of turns or toggling motion minigames off, I don’t have much to tweak in standard party mode. A new Pro ruleset provides a great competitive alternative, one that features evil twists like limited item quantities at shops, but that mode is locked to 12 turns for no discernable reason. With more moving parts than ever, the core board game could really benefit from letting players create custom rules.

While the new boards and core gameplay are a peak for the series, Jamboree’s all-important minigames don’t rise to the occasion. Yes, on paper, the package features the most minigames ever in a Mario Party game (112, to be precise). That’s a deceptive stat, though. Those games are split between several different contexts and modes. There are quick item minigames, versus battles, buddy challenges, and more. Beyond that, though, external modes like Koopathon and Bowser’s Kaboom Squad have their own specific minigames that don’t appear in the board game, but still make up that final count. At times, it almost feels like there’s fewer mainline minigames than recent entries, as I tend to repeat the same few games a lot.

It doesn’t help that the games made specifically for the board game are disappointingly uninspired. There are few surprises or new ideas here. Several minigames boil down to “run away from something while dodging obstacles.” A lot of uninspired quizzes, match games, and button mashers appear here. Even the handful of motion-control games don’t do much with the concept; two even rehash Super Mario Party’s dreaded Trike Harder.

Very little reaches the heights of even recent favorites like Super Mario Party’s Slaparazzi, but a few stand out. Hot Cross Blocks has players building bridges across lava by selecting different-shaped blocks. Four options appear on the screen at once and players have to press a face button to select one. If two or more players pick the same piece, no one gets it, so there’s strategy in going to smaller pieces rather than risking it with longer shapes. Gate Key-pers is another strong logic puzzle where players take turns trying to match a set of keys to the gate that they open. The more players miss, the more information everyone has to deduce which key opens what door and escape first. There are still glimmers of creativity to be found, but it often feels like Nintendo has hit a wall after decades of releases.

I don’t think that’s exactly the case, though. While the core minigames underwhelm, the ones featured in other modes are often excellent. The buddy challenges, for instance, are all longer challenges that pay tribute to each character’s history. Donkey Kong’s is a full bongo rhythm game reminiscent of his Donkey Konga days, while Waluigi’s takes place in a pinball machine, a reference to his signature Mario Kart DS board. They’re long games that drag out rounds even more, but they’re consistently delightful.

Bowser’s Kaboom Squad, an eight-player side mode, features its own set of large-scale multiplayer challenges that rank among the best games in the package. One has seven players repairing a leaky pipe while another cleans off Chain Chomps with water. Another splits players into a three-part juice assembly line, where some players gather fruit while others squeeze it, and the rest deliver the final products. All of those games feel inspired, playing outside of the confines of the same four-player formats.