If you want to play a Mario Party game on the Switch you have had two main options up until now: the more modern Super Mario Party launched in 2018, and the remake Mario Party Superstars from 2021 that brings back classic boards and minigames from the past of the franchise. With the Switch successor around the corner, Nintendo has decided to throw the older console one last party in the form Jamboree that promises to be the largest, but does this also mean it’s the best?

Super Mario Party Jamboree claims its title as biggest yet in a few ways starting with minigame count. Jamboree claims to have more than 110 which the 2018 game only comes with 80. Superstars in 2021 did have more than 100, but remember that these were older minigames that had been remade. Jamboree, on the other hand, wants to offer players more than ever all while trying to be entirely new.

The 110+ minigames in Jamboree are spread across quite a few game modes, which you can see in the overview trailer below. There is, of course, the standard board game-esque Mario Party but it’s joined by a host of other modes which can be played solo, in co-op or competitively. Many of these modes can also be played online but not that for our review we were strictly playing solo and in local play across all modes.

With the promise of being bigger and better on our minds we booted up Jamboree and we were immediately disappointed by its visual fidelity. It seems that, in many places, Jamboree looks worse than the Super Mario Party in 2018.

As soon as we began our first game and we can see why this has happened: it’s a trade off for scale. The boards are huge in Jamboree with dozens of spaces to land on and so much happening on every turn. This new game looks much more on the plane side compared to the 2018 version but you get more to do and more to look at all without the aged Nintendo Switch slowing down or stuttering. With even small scale first party titles like the recently reviewed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom having relatively frequent performance issues, we can accept that Jamboree had to cut some visual corners to keep to the theme of going big.

But this does lead to another frustration in the fact that not all the boards for Mario Party are available right away. Instead these need to be unlocked through a system that works very similarly to a battle pass: play the game’s various modes to earn experience which goes through levels and eventually unlocks those boards.

Jamboree seems to be funnelling you towards the “campaign” called Party-Planner Trek. Here you help set up the boards used in Mario Party which acts as a way to familiarise yourself with their layout and unique mechanics. You’ll also be playing minigames throughout so they quickly become familiar too.

We’re torn on this entire system. On the one hand we really hate boards being locked away like this and it will ultimately result in the owner of the game becoming way too good at it as they try to complete the unlocks. On the other hand this adds a huge amount of content that can be enjoyed in singleplayer giving Jamboree much more value as a well-rounded game and not a digitised board game that you only wheel out for gatherings.

While we’re still torn now, we will admit to having a lot of fun. Chasing the completion of the “battle pass” gave us time to appreciate all the small details, smart design choices and unique content that we maybe would have never seen if we only focused on the multiplayer Mario Party.

For example: while we still think this game doesn’t look as good as the 2018 one, it’s still packed to the brim with detail. We played through most of our time as best Mario brother Luigi, and if you pay attention you can see the individual stitching in his overalls and the subtle out of breath breathing he does after an event.

This level of care in the actual minigames varies. Some minigames are extremely simple and over in a handful of seconds while others got a lot more time in the oven with complexities, better presentation and a greater sense of enjoyment.

Yes that does add to the overall feeling of variety as a whole, but after playing hundreds of minigames you will definitely come to dislike a few as they weren’t worked on enough.

Thankfully that’s something you can easily do. There’s a big emphasis in this game on player customisation and changing things to fit your needs. For example, as most will head straight for Mario Party, you can now choose between classic “Party Rules” (focused on being fun while unbalanced and goofy) and “Pro Rules” (more serious for those who want the focus to be on skill). Then there’s more customisation like NPC difficulty, game speed and handicaps.

If those settings don’t satisfy, simply head on over to one of the other many modes which cater for between one and four players to various degrees. Each mode even changes how many Joy-Con controllers each player needs and how serious the competition is.

We hope we’ve been accurately able to convey just how much content this is in this game and we haven’t even mentioned some smaller ones like the ability to customise the main plaza environment, the “reaction” emotes you can spam inside of the game and the Card Shop which gives you a limited photo mode to share cards with other players.

We hate to roll out the old chestnut of “there’s something for everyone” but it’s very true here. We can see a lot of debate coming up when this game releases about specific likes and dislikes for certain modes or individual minigames, but there should be more than enough to satisfy everyone regardless of when they jumped on the Mario Party train.

Super Mario Party Jamboree proves that sometimes bigger is better. Any small problems we have with it can be overlooked by by simply enjoying some of the other content it has to offer or by tweaking the options to maximise our enjoyment.

For right now this will become the new de facto party game to wheel out when friends and family are over. Only time will tell if that remains the case, or old favourites nab its spot. For now it comes with a firm recommendation especially with the holidays around the corner… just make sure whoever you’re playing with can deal with the purposefully and hilariously adversarial AI and RNG which can bring out the best laughs in some groups but some true anger in others.

FINAL SCORE: 8 OUT OF 10.