Unpopular opinions about the Mario series

Mario Party: Island Tour was a good game.

I could just as easily say this for Ultra Smash, Yoshi's New Island, Mario Party 9, or Mario Party 10, but I felt like picking Island Tour out of these. It doesn't deserve a Metascore of 57.
 
I like Island Tour, but I think its criticism is well-justified.
 
Star Rush is better
 
Star Rush is the best 3DS Mario Party title and was the best Nd Cube Mario Party title until Super Mario Party.
 
Mcmadness said:
Star Rush is better
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Sorry, I disagree.

Island Tour has more minigames, real boss battles, a story mode, and unique boards. And they really are unique; each board has an entirely different set of rules. It may be a bit luck-centric, but if you're playing multiplayer, does that really matter? It doesn't quite match up to the console installments, but it is by far the best of the 3DS Mario Parties.

Star Rush has much fewer minigames, those "boss battles" from MP9 and MP10, no story mode, and a lot of bland boards that are incredibly similar. Toad Scramble was great, but the only other main mode, Balloon Bash, isn't that entertaining. And all the other modes are hardly worth playing more than once. The soundtrack was okay, but pales in comparison to Island Tour's. It's not a bad game, but ultimately it qualifies as "mediocre" in my book.

Although both are better than the good-but-very-overpriced "Mario Party Ultimate".
 
Island Tour's boards feels like it doesn't matter what you do in-between sessions, and there's always a single ridiculous gimmick in nearly all of the boards that make them far too heavily reliant on luck for, I feel, like players to put in any actual effort to winning the game. I mean, I get that it's Mario Party and there's always going to be luck involved but I feel like Island Tour ramped it up to extreme levels to, like, why do I even bother trying to win minigames any more when the rewards aren't that great or there's luck-based elements that hold it back (and many boards don't even feature minigames to begin with).

Perilous Palace Path, in theory, you should be able secure a lead by winning the minigames, getting Gold Dice Blocks, and earning items, but the random events in the board like the Thwomp and Goomba Tower equalize it out far too much in favor of the lucky person.

Rocket Road lets you roll zeros when you least expect it and eat up all of your boosters and otherwise lasts far too short to have any significant impact on you. If you roll a single x5 Booster on the higher numbers, you win the board, that's how short it lasts.

Banzai Bill's Mad Mountain has you praying someone doesn't roll a Banzai Bill or land on the Banzai Bill space at the wrong moment. That's pretty much the entirety of this board.

Kamek's Carpet Ride is probably the best one with its Power Precision and Precision Cards but it's still heavily luck-based.

Shy Guy's Shuffle City isn't even available to single-players, subtracting board count total.

Star-Crossed Skyway, the one board that could good use of minigames every turn and an item system, doesn't feature minigames and items and instead relies again on luck to reach there where desired, either first or last (or land on the swap spaces) to get the most Mini Stars from the Mini Star Stage stuff.

Bowser's Peculiar Peak lets players be safe when you roll doubles, actually placing first in minigames in a round of four players is actually pretty bad since you avoid rolling doubles. There's also a lot of luck-based board elements too like the bomb blowing up the wall thing and the final Bowser challenge.

I do agree the quality of the minigames is much better in Island Tour, but Star Rush also had Coinathlon and a much stronger board gameplay mode, something I feel contributes to a stronger experience with the expense of fewer minigames. Balloon Bash and Mario Shuffle is both pretty ass yeah.



EDIT: If you want an Island-Tour style race to the finish board done right, look no further than Mario Party 5's mini-game circuit in the Mini-game Mode. That mode awarded you items when you win minigames. No extra frills or nonsense attached to it like in Perilous Palace Path. No Goomba Tower junctions or Thwomp switches.
 
But doesn't Mario Party 5's version have Bowser spaces that can screw you over?
 
It does, but from rereading the article, you can move only when you win minigames to begin with so.
 
Paper Mario becoming self aware was a good idea.
 
Even when Bowser mentioned that he can't keep up with plot threads that complicated?
 
I more meant them being aware of being made of paper.

That's the type of goofy shit I'd expect from Mario
 
The writing in general I'd say, which Huey is a part of.
 
"You mean we could have avoided this entire game...
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And made a better one...

In all seriousness, I agree with Mcmadness on this one. TTYD tried to be more papery with the transformations, but somehow SS and CS did it better, and even incorporated it into the dialogue.
 
What if Paper Mario and Yoshi's Epic Yawn Crappy Yarn Crafty World collided?
 
I do not feel that Mario Party has "lost its way" for a certain period of time even though its use of vehicles to move everybody is considered the low point of the series. On the contrary, I like that the series is not afraid to innovate, since there isn't any other game series quite like Mario Party in the market so I appreciate that they could do some things differently even if it didn't work out. When Mario Party 9 was first revealed back in 2012, I was honestly intrigued with the new method of playing the boards, because in some ways, it was a fresh take when one of the criticisms was how much reliant the Mario Party is to the standard formula (which wasn't a bad formula, mind you), so they did something new with it, even if not everybody agreed with the new take. Besides, the minigames in Mario Party 9 are still an overall great package since it does motion controls and button controls properly, so that's also something they still got the touch.

Besides, Mario Party Star Rush is also another way they modified the structure of how the board gameplay worked, and it's one that players generally took a liking to, that it eventually made its way to Super Mario Party, so although the latest Mario Party is considered a "reboot", it never felt like a reboot to me because it adapted a board style that was used in a previous game, and kept the qualities from past games that made Mario Party an appealing series.

If there's one thing I do agree with Super Mario Party, it's that the game is a return to form. If I were to figure out why the Mario Party series didn't really feel up to the standard, I think it's partially because the company had to also work on the Wii Party series at that time, which has its share of good qualities, particularly the board aspect (who doesn't want a Mario Party board where characters dress up in costumes, or a Mario Party board where characters race to the finish in a long winded course?), and of course the minigames. In fact, I felt that making the development teams focus on differentiating both series have an effect on especially Mario Party, so now that the Wii Party series didn't have a reason to continue is a blessing for Mario Party overall.

Why did I post this in the "Unpopular opinion" thread? The reason I think my view is unpopular is that I felt the series did NOT lose its way.

Thank you for reading.

(I predict that even by the standards of unpopular opinions, this is SUPER unpopular so I am bracing myself for the incoming disagreements)
 
With Super Mario Party being so dependent on a single Joy-Con controller per player, it's sad that you can't just play the game like you would in the previous Mario Party titles; no motion controls used.
 
winstein said:
I do not feel that Mario Party has "lost its way" for a certain period of time even though its use of vehicles to move everybody is considered the low point of the series. On the contrary, I like that the series is not afraid to innovate, since there isn't any other game series quite like Mario Party in the market so I appreciate that they could do some things differently even if it didn't work out. When Mario Party 9 was first revealed back in 2012, I was honestly intrigued with the new method of playing the boards, because in some ways, it was a fresh take when one of the criticisms was how much reliant the Mario Party is to the standard formula (which wasn't a bad formula, mind you), so they did something new with it, even if not everybody agreed with the new take. Besides, the minigames in Mario Party 9 are still an overall great package since it does motion controls and button controls properly, so that's also something they still got the touch.

Besides, Mario Party Star Rush is also another way they modified the structure of how the board gameplay worked, and it's one that players generally took a liking to, that it eventually made its way to Super Mario Party, so although the latest Mario Party is considered a "reboot", it never felt like a reboot to me because it adapted a board style that was used in a previous game, and kept the qualities from past games that made Mario Party an appealing series.

If there's one thing I do agree with Super Mario Party, it's that the game is a return to form. If I were to figure out why the Mario Party series didn't really feel up to the standard, I think it's partially because the company had to also work on the Wii Party series at that time, which has its share of good qualities, particularly the board aspect (who doesn't want a Mario Party board where characters dress up in costumes, or a Mario Party board where characters race to the finish in a long winded course?), and of course the minigames. In fact, I felt that making the development teams focus on differentiating both series have an effect on especially Mario Party, so now that the Wii Party series didn't have a reason to continue is a blessing for Mario Party overall.

Why did I post this in the "Unpopular opinion" thread? The reason I think my view is unpopular is that I felt the series did NOT lose its way.

Thank you for reading.

(I predict that even by the standards of unpopular opinions, this is SUPER unpopular so I am bracing myself for the incoming disagreements)
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Fully agreed. I actually liked the car mechanic, anyway. And if anyone here didn't like it, be grateful that they changed it up, because if not you'd get tired of Mario Party.
 
Change for the sake of change is not a good thing. Execution matters. If you innovate in an area, it has to be fun to play in as well. People are more likely to harp on bad execution of mechanics than they are going to praise a new direction of a franchise.

Additionally, I've seen these drastic measures to change up franchises occur many times not only within the Mario series, but within this industry. Reception to Sticker Star was poor in comparison to the previous first two Paper Mario games because of a bad execution of a new mechanic. Same thing with Mario Party: Island Tour. The Sonic series is filled with experimentation, and rarely do they turn out good. Sometimes, it's really better to stick with what you're good at and refine and continue tuning those concepts than throwing out the bathwater altogether in favor of a new, yet very rough game.

Sometimes, yeah they do play too safe, but I'd really rather have a safe game than a game with a bad execution of a new concept.
 
If there was a separate Car Mode, it'd be different. It'd be fine. But they made the whole game revolve around that mechanic.
 
Russian Baby Luigi said:
Sometimes, yeah they do play too safe, but I'd really rather have a safe game than a game with a bad execution of a new concept.
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I was with you up until this point.

Personally, after all the New Super Mario Bros. which were very similar/nearly exactly the same, I can no longer hold this opinion. While it is true too much experimentation is a bad thing in its own right, too little is also just as bad, if not even worse.

Safe games are disappointing.


Sticker Star's problem isn't that it has a new idea, it's that the new idea doesn't gel well with the genre. Stickers could easily work well as an interesting battle mechanic if given some tweaking. The problem with Sticker Star revolves around the fact that battles are no longer rewarding; participating in them only uses up the stickers you're using, and you don't really want to use them up. If battles still awarded you exp and you got something out of that, it could still work.
 
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