If Mario Party 1 is the rough draft, and Mario
Party 2 is the final draft: Mario Party 3 is a new draft entirely. The original Mario Party was
rough, and Mario Party 2 was a clear admission of that. It got rid of the harsher punishments
present in both the mini-game and board layouts, while still offering something new in the form
of items and duel mini-games. Where Mario Party 2 could mostly be forgiven for its recycled content,
Mario Party 3 had to stand on its own. Waluigi and Daisy were added as new playable characters,
more mini-games were added than ever before, and an entirely new substantial side mode
was added. Mario Party 3 seems to bill itself as "more Mario Party than ever before!"
It even says so on the box. At the very least, another Mario Party means another video where
we endeavor to find the best games in the series based on how they balance their core three
elements: luck, skill, and strategy.
Welcome, to Chance Time.
--the boards--
Before we get into the boards themselves,
we need to discuss what’s changed about the base mechanics. All your normal spaces return:
happening, bowser, chance time, the bank, battle spaces, you know what to expect there. However,
there’s a new addition in the form of the game guy space. Landing on this space, or being forced
into it with a Game Guy coin from another player, will see the player forfeiting all their coins,
with the promise of potentially winning back more than your original count. If you end up winning
the mini-game, you can decide whether you want to quit while you’re ahead, or press your luck
for further multipliers. Every time you do so, though, you have to give up all of your
coins, and but a single loss will devastate you. You’ve got mini-games where you have to
roll high enough to stay ahead of game guy, but not far enough that you’ll fall off the steps;
one where you have to pick between two boxes, one with a toad and the other with baby bowser;
one where you pick between a big chain chomp with a more standard coin multiplier, and a small
chain chomp with a ridiculous coin multiplier; and finally a full on roulette with a
multitude of different multipliers. So, my opinions on Game Guy are quite complicated. I
think I like it in concept? The idea of being able to decide whether or not you want to throw caution
to the wind and keep gambling for an insane lead overall is interesting; buuuuuuuut, the problem is
that the first time you play a Game Guy mini-game, you’re forced to at least do one round: and
the mini-games are entirely luck-based. You can just lose coins through no fault of your
own. It’s easier than you might think to lose even the easiest mini-games, especially the
one that is literally a 50/50 shot. It can be a real bummer if you have an outstanding lead
that you earned. Maybe if game guy didn’t take all of your coins I would appreciate it more
as a risk reward mechanic, but as it stands I’m not a huge fan of its implementation.
If they were simply skill-based challenges, it might not even have that problem in
the first place, but then it wouldn’t really be gambling either, so I understand
where they were coming from with that.
Additionally, the way items and item spaces work
has been tweaked a bit. You can now hold up to three items, which is cool in and of itself,
but the more important change is that you can now throw items away! You won’t have to worry
about a skeleton key anchoring you anymore and can better develop strategies around that. Item
mini-games return, but this time they’re not based on the board you’re playing, which is
probably a change for the better. I’m not a huge fan of specific mini-games being locked to
specific boards. I’ll save the discussion of the actual mini-games for the mini-game section.
Item spaces now have a secondary use: there’s a chance you’ll get either Toad or Baby Bowser.
They’ll ask you a question, and your answer will determine the items you get. Baby Bowser will ask
you yes or no questions like “do you study?” and you’ll have to give him an answer that he would
like to get better items from him. Of course, Baby Bowser would not like studying, so you would
answer “no” for a better set of items. Toad works in the exact opposite way, where he’ll ask you
what kind of items you desire, and answering more reasonably will net you better items. Most of the
time. See, this is all still mostly luck-based, so you can technically just answer whatever you
want and see what happens, there are just some answers that will give you a better chance than
others. I like that there’s a little more going on behind the scenes here, but since it is so
luck-based, it can be hard to figure out if the game even has a correct answer in any of these
scenarios. I had to look it up on the Super Mario Wiki to make sure it wasn’t just entirely random,
because I’ve answered wrong plenty of times, but still ended up with amazing items. I don’t hate
them, but I definitely prefer getting a mini-game, especially since talking to Toad or Baby Bowser
can fill up your inventory all at once with rare items, which seems just a little unfair.
Speaking of, there are a lot more items this time around. For the sake of time, I’m not going to
go over all of the items that were in the second game. With the exception of the Bowser Bomb, they
all return. The new additions are as follows: The Cellular Shopper, which is basically just
a mobile shop; the Bowser Phone, which can essentially bring a Bowser space to a player of
your choosing; Boo Repellent, which will protect you from a single use of Boo; Poison Mushrooms,
which can be used on any player to limit their dice rolls from 1-3; the Lucky Lamp, which will
change the location of the star space; Item Bags, which will hold three random items and can be
purchased for 30 coins; and the Reverse Mushroom, which can be used on any player and forces
them to roll backwards. These are simply the normal items in rotation, and already they add
so much to normal board gameplay. On top of the excellent items that were in the second game, and
stacked with the ability to hold three at once, each play session is going to be a hell of a
lot more hectic. Poison Mushrooms and Reverse Mushrooms are a highlight of this new sense of
strategy. You might initially think that you’re supposed to use them on other players to keep them
from reaching a specific space, and they can still be used that way effectively. However, in some
situations, you’ll notice that it might actually be beneficial to use either of those mushrooms
on yourself in order to delay the inevitable, or to reach a space you might have otherwise
passed. Not only is there now a higher degree of choice present during each of your turns, it
can make everything feel far more unpredictable, without necessarily feeling frustrating, which in
my opinion is the key to a good Mario Party. You want at least some of that craziness so you can
laugh about those stories later on. Some of them, like the Bowser Phone, feel a little too
punishing, but it’s balanced well by how hard it is to trigger a Baby Bowser item shop.
Besides buying it there, you have to just hope you’ll get one during an item mini-game. The odds
are proportional to the usefulness of each item. The only thing I’ll say is that changing the Magic
Lamp from a 30 coin purchase to a 20 coin purchase is maybe a little too cheap. I prefer when it
was more expensive so people couldn’t just hoard Magic Lamps for little to no cost. It is only
a 10 coin difference, but that can mean a lot in the long run, and I really don’t think Magic
Lamps should be quite that easy to come by.
There are four items I have yet to talk about,
as they’re basically in their own category. Rare Items can only be obtained through an item space,
hidden block, or inside an item bag. They include the Wacky Watch, which will set the game to five
turns remaining, no matter what the current turn count is, meaning you can increase or decrease
the amount of time in a game to your benefit; the Barter Box, which can swap entire sets of
items with another player of their choosing; the Koopa Kard, which will allow you to take all
the coins in the bank if you pass it with this item in your possession; and the Lucky Charm,
which can force any player to immediately play a Game Guy mini-game. Hooh boy. Now, as you’d
expect, these items are extremely rare, so you probably won’t see them used all that often. In
fact, getting footage for all of these items is next to impossible without playing 500 hours of
Mario Party 3, which is not necessarily beyond me, but uh… no, we won't be doing that. Nevertheless,
I adore these items. They do sound a little crazy, especially the Wacky Watch, but their rarity
balances out their extremity. When a player gets one of these items, the tensions will
instantly flare up to absurd degrees. That kind of excitement is exactly why I love Mario
Party, and to be honest, I don’t think this set of items has been topped since. They create
memorable scenarios, encourage players to think up unique strategies, and are balanced well
enough that you won't often end up overpowered.
With that out of the way, why don't we get into
the boards themselves? Mario Party 2 had a mostly fantastic set of boards that all had a main
gimmick or two as their draw. They could get a little crazy sometimes, but not enough to make
them frustrating. Mario Party 3 is very similar in layout: each board, for the most part, sees you
running in a circle, with various branches along that circle. Board difficulty returns, hurrah,
and it seems like it serves the same purpose as it did in two. Chilly Waters and Deep Bloober
Sea are relatively simple, while Creepy Cavern and Waluigi’s Island are more complicated. The
main difference this time around is Action Time, where you interact with a board event. Chilly
Waters will see you jumping over a snowball that would otherwise push you further down the board;
Spiny Desert sees you jumping over cacti that would otherwise blast you across the map; Woody
Woods will see you choosing between two items in a limited window; etc. I mostly enjoy this idea,
especially when skill is involved. Jumping over the cacti is fairly challenging, so it adds a
bit of skill to the board gameplay itself that is usually exclusively tested by the mini-games.
However, even when they aren't that difficult, as is the case in Chilly Waters, you do still
get to make a decision here. Do you go back, or do you stay where you are? It may well depend
on where the star is, or where you're hoping to be in the next couple turns. Action Time can
test both skill and strategy depending on what's going on. I actually really like this
system, and it provides each board with more identity than they'd otherwise have.
Let's use Chilly Waters as our first prime example of Action Time in motion. This board
has two central gimmicks: the first is an Action Time where you have to avoid a large snowball.
Jumping over it will maintain your position, while idling will push you along the path the
snowball is travelling, which can either push you forward or backward on the board. This occurs
on the outskirts, which as you'd imagine takes a lot longer than going through the middle; however,
travelling through the middle has its own risks. If two players are standing in the middle of the
board, specifically on the icey section, it will crack and they'll be sent back to the start space.
So, you have a lot of conflicting strategies here: you could move through the middle as a shortcut
to the star, or you could go the long way around and hope to activate a snowball to make your own
shortcut. In most cases, even if you need to enter a side path through the middle for a star, you can
bypass that with a skeleton key, so it really is a never ending decision between which of these
two paths you'll decide to take. Boo is on the right side of the board, so you'll always need to
make a full circle in order to use him, unless of course you have a skeleton key and can reconcile
using the middle as a shortcut. I find that Chilly Waters in particular has great incentive for
players to hold onto and use their skeleton keys. I really liked the idea in Mario Party 2, but
very rarely did I find myself actually using the skeleton key for anything specific. In this case,
you can use it as a massive shortcut to Boo, and a way to avoid the dangerous middle section to nab
a star on one of the side paths. Unfortunately, there's one aspect of the board that I feel went
a step too far: exiting the middle is luck-based. Everytime you go to leave the middle, you'll need
to climb up some ice, with a random chance that you'll even clear it. So, you could theoretically
be stuck there forever through no fault of your own, all the while leaving more opportunities
for other players to completely ruin your place on the board and set you back to start. See,
I thought this was enough: the idea that other players could sabotage the middle intentionally.
Sure, it would hurt the player in question, but it also hurts the other player on the ice with
you. In my opinion, that's enough of a deterrent, but they decided it wasn't enough. As a result, I
often don't find myself using the middle section very often. With the random chance involved,
on top of the potential of being stuck and immediately sabotaged, it's hard to even view
the middle section as a viable shortcut anymore, especially since the outer pathway has the
snowball Action Time that can push players pretty far through the board. I wouldn't
say it ruins the board as a whole, but it certainly hampers its potential. Often I find
these small details harm the boards overall.
For example, Spiny Desert has an interesting
spin on the traditional objective. In this board, there are two star spaces: one real, and one
fake. The trick is, you won't know which is which until one player reaches either space. I
really like this idea, since no one will really know which path is correct until the mirage is
found out, at which point it's a rush to the real star space. You can still use every tool
to your advantage as if it were a normal board, there's just an extra risk factor involved since
you don't know which one is real. Ultimately, someone's going to have to take that 50/50 plunge,
and it can lead to some memorable reactions depending on where players might be located. The
action time in the middle of the board serves as a great general shortcut for players to zip around
depending on which cacti they choose to hit, or which they choose to avoid. Skeleton keys feel
useful, since one of them cuts through the middle of the board, and the other is the only way to
access Boo. It's a really solid board with a cool luck-based twist: and then there's the happening
space. On the top and bottom of the board, there are quicksand pits. If a person lands on
the happening space, everyone in the circle will be transported to the other circle. This
in itself isn't really that big of a deal, but when you consider there are 4 happening
spaces on the bottom one, and 5 on the top, this event occurs way too frequently. It can
shake up the totals in a really annoying way, since entire groups of people will suddenly either
be really close or really far away from the star at the drop of a hat. The mirage star already
adds enough luck-based risk factors to the board, and then there's even more piled on top with the
quicksand pits. Again, I still think the board can be fun, but there's a smidge too much going on
for it to ever fully come together. Unfortunately, these are the only two boards which
I can genuinely say I fully enjoy.
Deep Bloober Sea is far more mixed. There isn't
much of an inherent strength, as much as there's just a weird mixture. You're funneled to the left
of the board, with various decisions to circle back to start. At the left middle, there's a
junction that will decide whether you circle back to start, or access the top of the board. This
is done with a Peach's Birthday Cake-like system, where you choose from four buttons, three of which
let you pass, and one of which sends you to the other path. Not only can you choose which path
to take, It does reset upon an incorrect choice, which differentiates it from the lotto in Mario
Party 1, but it doesn't really fix the core issue. The only other way to make it to the other side is
by using a happening space to bridge the canyon. A blooper will carry you across, whether you
want to or not. Sure, maybe there are a lot of opportunities to cross between the top and bottom,
but they all require you land on a happening space, or that you try your luck at the very left
of the board. Now, since you can choose where you want to go, the probability of where you'll end up
is all over the place. You can game it however you like depending on how many buttons are left,
but there will always be a chance that you'll select the incorrect one, especially when only
two buttons remain. It isn't too uncommon to be stuck at either the top or bottom due to really
bad luck, and something about that rubs me the wrong way. Your happening space count also tends
to balloon alongside your heightened mobility, since both types of happening can launch you
across the board. Likely the person with the most stars is gonna be the person who's landed on the
most happening spaces. One of them gives you the option of travelling across the entirety of the
map, a very, very high probability since there are 6 happening spaces in a row. I do like the idea
of the Action Time, since again it gives you and everyone else present a decision to make, but I
don't like how much of that is left up to chance, added onto the already worrying idea that all of
this stuff is locked to the top of the board.
Woody Woods is one of the most disorienting boards
I’ve ever seen in a Mario Party game. There are a series of junctions around the board, and the
direction you take is dictated by the arrow held up by monty mole. Every turn, this arrow
changes direction no matter what. Additionally, you can pay to have it changed, and you can also
change it with a happening space. In my opinion, this is a tad overkill. It’s already hard enough
to predict what’s going to happen when the arrows are switching every single turn, it’s even
more confusing because the players themselves can alter that direction at any moment. It isn’t
even necessarily about rolling higher than other players, it’s about rolling the precise correct
amount to be pushed where you want to go. There are only two parts of the board where you can
have the arrows switched, and neither of those areas are easily accessible. In fact, they could
technically never be reached since the aim of the board is to push you wherever the arrows decide,
and since both huts are behind arrow junctions, you may just never have that opportunity. You
can land on a happening space and completely screw yourself over, you could pass one of the
gates only to realize that you won’t reach the arrow in time, so many things can happen here.
It feels like everything you do on this board is up to chance, outside of the nearly meaningless
action time where you pick between another roll and more coins. Thankfully, acquiring reverse
mushrooms can remedy this confusion a bit, which is a strength the entire game has even in
its worst boards. However, even this places a bit too much into the hands of luck, since reverse
mushrooms are not exactly as common as your everyday regular mushroom. Luck can be exciting
in Mario Party when used in moderation, not when it’s the entire crux of the board. At that
point you may as well be playing monopoly.
Creep Cavern has the exact opposite problem: it is
suffocatingly confined. Action time is initiated when you’re stopped by a Thwomp and decide to
ride over to the other side. This can also be triggered via a happening space. Unless you have
a skeleton key, this is the only method you can use to travel to the other side. Even if you have
a skeleton key, the Whomp King may ask for one of your skeleton keys anyway. The only other way to
get him to move is to trigger a happening space. This board is potentially separated into four
different sections, each of them a little too cumbersome to rely on. If someone uses one
of the Thwomps to cross to the other side, you will literally be stuck there until someone
comes back or lands on a happening space. This is because the Thwomp will travel with the
player, and where they end up is dependent on who last used the Thwomp. Getting trapped on
either side is a very likely possibility, which means that players can just end up running around
in circles. It is an incredibly similar problem to Luigi’s Engine Room, in which many of the
players just won’t be able to get anything done, because the means by which you traverse the board
are unreasonably obtuse. It’s conceptually solid, in that Boo is relatively uncommon when the Whomp
King is blocking him, there are various sections of the board with multiple pathway decisions, and
the layout itself is appealing upon first glance. Really, if you didn’t need to use the minecarts,
and could simply travel along the tracks as if they were spaces, the board would be a lot more
interesting. It could then focus on the Whomp King as its central gimmick. The way the board
is setup, he could act as a semi-shortcut system, encouraging you to use skeleton keys to make your
own shortcuts. As it stands, there’s once again just a little too much added into the equation
to make it unnecessarily cumbersome to play.
Finally, perhaps the biggest disappointment of
all: Waluigi’s Island. Alright, maybe I had a bias going in: I love Waluigi, I was so excited
that I could start playing as him again, and I was even more excited to see what they’d do with his
board! Well… they basically did everything. Now, I kinda like the idea that Waluigi just cobbled
a bunch of shit together and called it a day. Nothing makes sense from island to island,
there are a bunch of different gimmicks, and all the pathways jut out incoherently. Warp
pipes lead to random places, nothing makes sense: and in a way that fits Waluigi as a character.
Unfortunately, this does not make for compelling board gameplay. Firstly there’s a bomb near the
middle of the board activated by happening spaces, when it reaches zero everyone in the radius will
lose all of their coins. The center is a four way Action Time that decides which direction
you’ll go. One island has a set of 17 spaces that all share the same properties, and will
change with each turn. As you can imagine, this can be the most insane location on the entire
board. There are drawbridges linking this island to the circle around back to the middle. There’s a
skeleton key door on the bottom left that seems to only serve the purpose of slightly delaying your
visit to the bomb circle. Boo’s path is behind a two way junction, one of which is booby trapped
and will send the player back to the start space. This happens all the way at the top of the board,
by the way, so if you manage to get up there and trigger a booby trap, you’ll have to travel all
the way back again. Each red pipe also leads back to start. Alright, so this seems a little daunting
right? But, hey: some of these ideas sound cool, so what gives? Well… you can’t exactly control
where you’re going to go. At least, not always. The Action Time is very unreliable, as the speed
it moves is completely random. It could be moving so fast that it is impossible to time your jump,
or it could be moving so slowly that you’ll practically be picking which direction you want
to go anyway. This only serves to benefit some players and not others. As is a frequent problem
in some of the worst Mario Party boards, it is entirely possible that you’ll be stuck doing loops
around the board just trying to make progress. Way too much of the board is decided by luck: how many
people have landed on the bomb happening space, what the spaces are in the top left island, which
pathway is booby trapped, which island you’ll even end up on in the first place. Waluigi’s island is
both disorienting and suffocatingly restrictive. I guess if you’re into telling crazy Mario Party
stories, or getting drunk off your ass before a play session, this completely unpredictable
board will be a dream come true! But in terms of a fun balance, there’s just too much left up
to chance. Mario Party 3 boards in a nutshell: you might as well roll a dice.
--minigames--
Where the boards might be a
bit too luck-based and chaotic, the mini-games have returned stronger than
ever! On top of being entirely original, almost all of them make for intense skirmishes
in between rounds. We've got the usual 4v4, 1v3, and 2v2 spread, with a couple
battle minigames thrown in. However, this time we have duel and item minigames selected
on a roulette instead of being board specific, which I definitely prefer. While it may have
given the Mario Party 2 boards more identity, it also pronounced their negative qualities
and could get pretty repetitive. This time, you get a set of fairly solid item mini-games that
are hard to time, but not impossible. Dorrie Dip, Swingin' With the Sharks, and Winner's Wheel
are particularly difficult, and they make for perhaps the best of the bunch. Hey, Batter Batter
is a little too difficult in what it asks of you, though. It is incredibly hard to gauge when you're
supposed to hit the ball, and maybe that's the point: but since it's practically luck-based for
most players, it just feels like you could skip the mini-game entirely to save time. In that
sense, the purpose of item games is once again called into question, especially when you have
a chance of just triggering Toad or Baby Bowser instead. Duel mini-games are a little better off.
This time you have a set of full-fledged games to play, instead of simple micro games. Each of them
are also really solid tests of ability: you've got Crowd Cover for observation, Motor Rooter and
Tick Tock Hop for reaction timing, Popgun Pickoff and Silly Screws for precision, Vine With Me and
Bowser Toss for specific button timing. Really, the only duel mini-game I wouldn’t consider fun
is End of the Line, which is a series of 50/50 guesses. You can technically steal the correct
answers from your opponent, but that doesn’t add much to the minigame itself. I wouldn’t even
mind if it was as intense as Bowser’s Big Blast, since at least the RNG in that game is terrifying.
Still, that’s one duel mini-game out of ten that’s less than desirable, and the rest I’d argue are
really great head-to-head challenges that test your skills in a reasonable manner, while
still facilitating a tense atmosphere.
Battle mini-games make a return, and they’re
similarly great! WIth two notable exceptions, the battles are balanced and, once again, test
crucial skills. Three Door Monty and Slap Down test both your observation and reaction
timing simultaneously, Locked Out and All Fired Up test your platforming and movement
ability when pitted against other players, Eye Sore is a brilliant ring around the rosey
that ramps up in challenge the further you go, dropping fireballs that are genuinely difficult
to avoid while still keeping a quick pace. Once again, the only disappointing battle mini-games
are the ones that rely on luck: Merry-Go-Chomp is just a less stressful Bowser’s Big Blast,
removing the tension from the random elimination; and Stacked Deck is a waste of everyone’s time,
asking you to pick from a random selection of cards and just wait it out. You might as well put
everyone’s coins through a sorting machine and see who gets what at the end of it all. Much like the
Game Guy mini-games, it can really suck to have someone land on a battle space, have almost all of
your coins sucked out of you, only for you to lose them all in one of two luck-based mini-games.
Sure, I do have a soft spot for Bowser’s Big Blast, but when you can’t even replicate that
same tension, I’d just rather these mini-games not have a luck element at all. Especially
since the other mini-games are so well-designed around testing player skill sets.
Thankfully, I do think the rest of the regular mini-games are fairly well-balanced. The
1v3 mini-games, usually the toughest to iron out, are almost all well-made. Boulder Ball is a
test of avoidance for the three, and a series of decisions for the one about where they’ll throw
the boulders to potentially catch the three off guard; Ridiculous Relay tests a variety of button
inputs for the three, and an intentionally stiff glider for the one. While it can sometimes feel
impossible for the one player to avoid everything, I’m not sure if you were ever supposed to be
able to avoid everything. The obstacles are in place to keep the one player from dominating the
competition. Thwomp Pull is about reaction timing, where the three have to coordinate well, and the
one has to keep his eyes on all three thwomps to keep ahead of the three. Crazy Cogs is, in my
opinion, an even better rendition of Shock Drop or Roll. The latter always felt a tiny bit lopsided,
as fun as it was. Whenever I would be stuck rotating the cylinder, it was next to impossible
to eliminate everyone, partly because it’s hard to fake them out with the lag on turning. Crazy
Cogs is a lot more hectic, and as a result feels more balanced. Bullet bills fly across the screen
and leave shadows on the rotating platform. It’s your job to guide each player into the bullet
bill shadows, which is a lot easier now that there’s no noticeable lag on your ability to
turn the platform. This only works because it’s technically been made harder for the one
player to eliminate the other three. Turn lag was implemented in Shock Drop or Roll because, without
it, the one player would completely blindside the other three in a manner of seconds. In this
case, however, the players can’t simply fall off, so giving the one player a freer range of movement
feels both justified and better implemented. I especially enjoy the mini-games where the three
have to work together, since teamwork is stressed more than ever before. You can actually get in
each other’s way during Coconut Conk, where you have to ground pound the palm trees to hit the
one player with a coconut. It seems imbalanced until you realize that the three players all
share a space, and need to coordinate their ground pounds to trap the one. Boulder Ball and
Crazy Cogs both play into that spatial awareness, requiring the three work as a team to clear each
challenge. I’m only really skeptical of a few of these: Hide and Sneak is a little too luck-based
for my liking. There is no way for either team to strategize at all, unless the one player
chose no one in the beginning. In this case, the group of three can openly strategize because
the one player only has two turns to catch three players. It just feels a little aimless for my
liking. Spotlight Swim drags a little because it feels weighted towards the group of three. It’s
just too easy to line up all the spotlights, and the one player doesn’t have enough tools to
avoid them easily. Going underwater means that when you resurface you’ll be unable to move for
a while, and there’s a bubble trail to indicate the direction you’re traveling. This means that
the group of three can stay trained on the one like a hawk with virtually no repercussions.
2v2 mini-games are usually the best, and in this case that remains remarkably consistent. In fact,
I would be willing to play all of these mini-games were they on a roulette. Baby Bowser Broadside
is a test of precision aiming when moving along a circular track, with the camera perception
changing constantly. Cosmic Coaster, Log Jam, Pump, Pump and Away, and Slot Synch are all
timing-based challenges, ranging from timing a block, button, or pump. I will say, the amount of
mini-games where you actually have to communicate aren’t all that common. Puddle Paddle requires
communication to figure out where you want the raft to go, Etch ‘n’ Catch requires communication
about which direction you’ll both move, and Eatsa Pizza ‘potentially’ requires communication about
who will handle which part of the pizza. Every other mini-game is mostly reliant on both players
doing a good job individually, in which case: why can’t they just be 4v4 mini-games instead? Again,
they’re all rock solid mini-games, but it is worth noting that not many of them really take advantage
of that team-based gameplay that 2v2 mini-games imply. The 4v4 mini-games this time around are
surprisingly lacking the most: Chip Shot Challenge is a messy golf mini-game, where you each take
a turn swinging for the hole. It’s hard to gauge what angle to hit the ball with the weird arrow
trajectory they give you unless you’ve either played the mini-game before, or are going last.
Yeah, I don’t think they entirely thought this one through: whoever goes first has no idea where
the ball will end up, but the fourth player just has to simply copy other trajectories and change
them ever so slightly to their advantage. Frigid Bridges is kinda fun at first: you have to make
it through a winding path, carrying a block on ice physics. But the game gets a little repetitive
since you have to travel there and back on the same, simplistic track three times to finish,
which usually just means the person ahead of everyone else is going to stay ahead of everyone
else. After all, they’ve already demonstrated mastery over the unchanging layout. M.P.I.Q
is a neat idea, but there are several problems with its implementation. Firstly, for players who
have memorized every possible question, they can eventually buzz in before the entire question has
even been laid out and answer immediately. Second, while some of the questions are really challenging
and fun, like “who currently won the most coins in mini-games” or “The current total of coins
one player has” there are other questions that are… less than stimulating. “What is the color
of Luigi’s hat” “The initials on Donkey Kong’s necktie” “What button to press when hitting a
dice block.” Yeah, this is a novel idea for a mini-game, but it usually ends up feeling like a
waste of everyone’s time, and drags on if every player is on equal footing. Speaking of dragging
on, perhaps the worst mini-game in Mario Party 3, and a contender for one of the worst
mini-games in the series, The Beat Goes On.
Unfortunately, this mini-game deserves its own
section. The idea, of course, is novel. You start with a combination of buttons that you then
have to add to. Then the next player has to repeat those buttons and add another. The Beat, quite
literally, goes on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And
on. And on. And on. And on. It goes on about as long as this unnecessarily repetitive section of
the script. I am not exaggerating, this mini-game can go on forever since the list of beats just
gets larger and larger and larger. Yeah, it can be tense, but for players who have a good memory,
there really isn’t much of a challenge to be had. You have a choice of three different buttons,
after a while there are really only so many combinations. Mini-games are supposed to be short,
simple distractions from the board gameplay that serve to elevate your coin total and potential
bonus star rankings. They should never last this long. That’s not even the end of it, though: the
absolute worst part about this mini-game is that it has an endpoint. When both lines have been
filled with beats, and there’s more than one player standing, the game ends in a draw. The
remaining players get absolutely nothing for their trouble. So, you either: give up and give
somebody else ten coins toward the coin star and mini-game star, or you all battle until the bitter
end and nobody gets anything. It really sucks, because the idea for this mini-game is solid:
adding onto a beat and trying to remember it as it gets larger. In fact, if this was converted
to a duel mini-game or something, it would cut the time in half, and add more tension to the
proceedings, since there would presumably be a lot more on the line than ten meager coins.
As it stands, though: it is easily one of the worst mini-games the series has ever seen.
Thankfully, the rest of the 4v4 mini-games pull their weight. Messy Memory is a really cool
fake-out memory game, where you have to arrange a set of objects back on the shelf according to a
brief image you’re shown at the beginning. Each player has their own screen, so you can either
cover it up with a curtain when you’re done to prevent cheating, or you could even screw with
other players attempting to cheat on you. It’s a memory match with a cool, psychological twist.
Pipe Cleaners is a simple series of button inputs, Cheep Cheep Chase is button mashing broken up by
an occasional separate button press, Curtain Call is MPIQ done right with a series of on the spot
questions you have to answer based on a movement of characters. Ice Rink Risk, Bounce ‘n’ Trounce,
and Snowball Summit are all really cool twists on Bumper Balls: one where you can battle in the
air over falling platforms, one where you have to build a giant snowball to knock other players off,
and one where you have to contend with ice physics and avoid several spinies. I guess that last one
isn’t technically the same as Bumper Balls, but it’s the same concept of avoidance being tested
with other players. There’s even a surprisingly good puzzle game thrown in there. It’s a bit
like a more simplified version of puyo puyo, where you have to match two colors and chain
them together for a combo. There are quite a few others, but going over them all would get
a little old: they all test similar skills, and most of them are fun distractions, even
if a select few are especially grating.
While there are a few more glaring misses
this time around than in Mario Party 2, this game also redid duel and item mini-games
in a way that I appreciate far more. Plus, the mini-games this time around, while taking
inspiration from previous ideas, are all original, as opposed to the ones that were recycled or
remixed in the second game. As a result, while the results of three are a little more mixed, I think
I prefer the selection overall, if only for the originality and quantity of the new mini-games.
--Duel Mode and other distractions--
Believe it or not, Mario Party 3 boasts an
entirely new side mode: Duel Mode. You can go head to head with 1 friend or CPU on one of six
exclusive duel boards. Which means we once again enter the board analysis… don't get your hopes
up though. See, I could run through all of these boards back to back, discussing their highs and
lows. But I'll be real with you: the mode itself is painfully frustrating, and the quality of each
board can't really change that. You’re both placed on a board and have to duke it out by walking
past each other. You use allies to attack from both the front and behind. They range from Piranha
Plant which has high attack power and low health, with a high salary; to Toad, with low power and
health, but a really low salary; to Thwomp, which has no attack power, but a lot of health. You get
allies by making it back to your start space and spinning the roulette. If you defeat an ally, it
will disappear permanently, and if you can’t pay the combined salary of both your allies every
turn, they will disappear too. It sounds fun, until you realize a majority of the match is just
both players running in circles until they get a good roll. These boards aren’t very big, and a lot
of their gimmicks serve to confuse and disorient the player. There are very few pathway decisions
to make, and you can land on Game Guy spaces at complete random. Whether you catch up to your
opponent, or they catch up to you, is completely dependent on dice roll luck, and partner roulette
luck. In essence, the entire mode becomes about dice roll luck: if you roll high every turn,
you’ll get more allies than your opponent; if you roll enough to land on your own space, you’ll get
ten coins; if you roll enough to land on an enemy space, you have to give them 10 coins; if you roll
super low and nothing happens, you’ll lose both your allies because you’ve become a walking coin
sink with no way to regain that lost income.
It’ll go back and forth like this for a pretty
long time no matter the board. Gate Guy is even more of a coin sink slog, allowing the player
with the coin lead to access a board bisection shortcut for a potential massacre; Arrowhead has
practically no decisions other than “loop me back to my start space quickly for 10 coins and a
new partner” so not a lot ends up happening confrontation-wise; Pipesqueak has a warp pipe
in each of the four corners they can choose to go through, which will spit them out one of the
other three at random; Mr. Mover has a central choke point with a conveyor belt that switches
direction every turn, meaning that one unlucky player can just get blocked from the start space
over and over again through no fault of their own; and Backtrack is a goddamn nightmare where
practically nothing happens, because there are no pathway decisions and each player will just
walk in whatever direction the board is currently in. The only way to even attack on this board is
to hit a reverse tile to move backwards, or just get really good rolls: neither of which is in your
control. Blowhard is perhaps the only passable map, simply because there’s a level of choice here
that benefits both players no matter the position. If you go through the center, your partners will
be shuffled from front to back and vice versa; however, this middle portion also functions
as a significant shortcut. Sometimes you’ll be confronted with the question of whether or not
you chance going through the middle and shuffling your partner positions so you can glide in on
your opponent and get some damage in. Even then, though, this is highly reliant on rolling high in
the first place. This isn’t even to mention that you can land on a reverse tile, sending you away
from the opponent, or get warped to the middle of the board for passing Belltop too many times.
That’s right, it isn’t enough to simply play a duel mini-game when he reaches 0, the opponent
also has to be warped directly to your location, destroying any potential strategies you may have
built up. Honestly, the only fun part of duel mode is triggering a duel mini-game, and at that point:
you have a mini-game room where you can select which duel games to play without going through
any of this extraneous nonsense. Duel maps are a waste of everyone’s time and have practically
no redeeming qualities: I have tried my damndest to find something fun about this mode, I’m really
not trying to sound hyperbolic. It just sucks.
Speaking of a useless mode: there’s a story mode
now… I guess. You basically just play a round of Mario Party with some CPUs, and then you play a
duel map with one of the characters. Rinse repeat until the end. There are… “cutscenes” in between
all of this, and a … “story” wrapping it all together? I guess. So: usually Mario Party games
have a story of some kind to set up why Mario and friends are having a party. Mario Party 1 is
about everyone disagreeing on what makes a “Super Star” and then throwing a competition to see who
has what it takes; Mario Party 2 is about them all arguing… again, over what to call their… new
land? That they created? Whatever, they just have to defeat Bowser, that’s about it. Mario Party 3
is significantly more story-driven. At the center of the universe, a star was born: the Millenium
Star. Whoever possesses it is said to become the “Super Star of the Universe.” He then crash lands
next to Mario and friends, and tasks them with a test to see who is worthy of him. He transports
them into a toy box and they go to town. Again, you have run-ins with every character in
the game, with… strange dialogue about how the Millenium Star might be stricken by Daisy’s
feminine charm? Bowser appears often, but usually gets bodied. I applaud their effort, I really do:
there’s even a semi-decent final boss fight where you have to maneuver slippery terrain and throw
stars. But at the end of the day, this is simply a way to disguise the fact that you’re playing
single-player Mario Party. It’s better than if they’d done nothing at all for single-player, but
it’s also nothing unique. You could look up the cutscenes on YouTube and be done in 15 minutes, if
that. The toy box theme is admittedly pretty neat, though. Every board is arranged like a diorama,
with pop-up 2D trees, rocks, and hills. It’s harder to immediately identify when compared to
the costume party, and honestly isn’t even as diverse or standout, but I commend the effort.
In regards to CPU AI, the difficulty has actually been tweaked. Not only have they added a Super
Hard mode, they’ve also made the AI a little more challenging across the board. It’s actually
better to put the CPUs on Normal instead of Hard, or you’re in for some truly brutal mini-games.
Even on Hard, some of their inputs are near TAS-level, so you can only imagine what it feels
like playing against Super Hard CPUs. For many reasons I’ve already discussed in my previous
two videos, making CPUs “harder” doesn’t really solve much of anything. The difficulty level was
frankly fine before, and all Super Hard mode does is create an unfair challenge for a solo player,
or simply for players without a full party of four. CPUs can’t make long-term strategic
decisions on the boards, so they just end up going for and using the best items they can
find, and then they trounce everyone who isn’t 100% familiar with all the mini-games. The options
menu from the first game still hasn’t returned, so no special blocks to customize this time around,
just regular ol’ hidden blocks that you have no control over. Progression-wise, you can unlock
Waluigi’s Island by beating the story mode, and can unlock Game Guy’s Room by earning the
Miracle Star rank in story mode. This requires you win each board with two or more stars ahead
of the player below you in the regular boards, and having three or more hit points than your opponent
in duel maps. Then you have to beat the final boss as quickly as you can. All of these luck-based,
nightmarish requirements so you can… freely play the game guy mini-games? Which is just aimless
gambling outside of the context of a Mario Party board? I do actually like some of the cosmetic
secrets, like getting character heads on the Mario version of Mt. Rushmore on the title screen.
You can also unlock extra sound effects and songs by beating the story mode. Other than that, you
can replay the final boss in the mini-game room, go through a completely random new mini-game
called Dizzy Dinghies, where you race through an elaborate water track and try to best your times.
Finally, if you really like Mario’s Puzzle Party, you can play a score attack version of
it for earning 1,000 coins in the Game Guy Room. Needless to say: progression systems
in Mario Party feel as pointless as ever.
I find myself… conflicted. The boards
are hit or miss, sometimes incredibly so; while the mini-games are great overall, and offer
even more variety than in the second game. Even though the boards miss more often than they hit,
I also can’t overlook that there are tweaks to the overall board gameplay from the second game
that add more strategy. The retooled item system, being able to carry more than one item, item and
duel mini-games no longer being board specific, etc. Where Mario Party 2 is a refined, consistent
improvement on a flawed foundation; Mario Party 3 is a flawed new foundation, with strengths that
exceed those of its predecessor. At the end of it all, I have to ask once again: does this game
have an enjoyable balance between skill, strategy, and luck on both a micro and macro level? I
do think it strikes an acceptable balance, with a notable skew in the direction of luck-based
play. Many board events and layouts are reliant on high or precise rolls, which can often kill their
enjoyment. Despite that, the overall systems that coat the boards means that the game just about
rises past its many shortcomings into one that is certainly more enjoyable than the first, even
if it isn’t quite as consistently enjoyable as the second. In terms of board rankings, I’m not
fond of them overall, but here’s how I’d end up placing them from worst to best. Waluigi’s
Island, Woody Woods, Creepy Cavern, Deep Bloober Sea, Spiny Desert, and Chilly Waters.
Next we’ll be covering Mario Party’s jump to the Gamecube: Mario Party 4! What will the jump to
the Gamecube add to the Mario Party formula? How will the balance be affected? What new board and
mini-game ideas did they manage to come up with? Until next time, my name has been KingK, and
I hope you have some well-deserved fun today!
King K is a true Legend.