Mario Party 3 (Review)

Yeah...I never owned Mario Party 2, just rented it multiple times. Funny since from what I recall, MP 2 was the best in the series. I did manage to nab the third game upon it's release. Mario Party 3 was the final game in the series to be released on the N64 and with it the series ends it initial run with a pathetic whimper. I just have to wonder exactly what went wrong with this game. I enjoyed MP1 and (recall enjoying) MP2 quite a bit, but there’s just a lot of minor flaws that simply add up to a mess of a game. The gameplay is basically the same as the all the other entries as you pick a Mario character and move around a board trying to gain more stars than your competition and at the end of every turn, you play a mini-game.

There's a couple new additions this go round. Waluigi and Dasiy and make their debut as playable characters, there's a new two player duel board feature that's interesting but not worth playing in the long run, and most importantly (and most unfortunately) this game starts the trend of having a god awful single player story mode to plod through. The story has to do with the Millenium Star falling down by the castle, and Mario and friends argue over who gets to keep it which leads to playing the board games to determine who gets it. You get a card with seven attributes on it and after every board you win, you get a stamp corresponding to each attribute. Before you’re officially awarded that star, you’re forced to face a character claiming to be better than you in a Duel Map to earn the star. The story is terrible and the gameplay gets excruciatingly monotonous, I found myself getting bored of it after finishing only a couple of stages.

As for the mini-games themselves, their mostly a mixed bag. Most of the mini-games lack innovation or simply fail to be interesting. Worst of all is in increase in games of luck, which have no place in a board game where simply getting around the board is a matter of luck already. The single worst thing about this game is the Game Guy space. Once you land on one of these spaces, all of your coins are taken from you and you have play a mini-game which, naturally, relies entirely on luck. If you somehow manage to win, you’ll get at least twice your coins back. But if you lose, and there's a really good chance you will, all of your coins are gone. These events really makes no sense and ruin the game entirely since you have no choice but to endure them. Hell, when I was playing this with my friends, even they agreed that it was unfair bullshit, even though they were they were given an advantage from someone's failure of it! Even though I haven't played all the Mario Parties yet, I have no doubt in claiming the Game Guy spaces as the single worst idea in the entire franchise. Upon recollection, I actually didn't like Mario Party 3 when I was younger and time has certainly not sweeten the deal. I would only recommend this game to the die-hard fans, otherwise this is without question among the worst of series.