Help Mario and his friends restore peace to Dream World while racing around all-new game boards and finding new surprises.
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My personal favorite Mario Party. I know the luck-based style of play is not as balanced as say 6 or 7, but I still really enjoy what this game brings in terms of boards and capsules.
Probably the GameCube MP game I feel the most "meh" about. Or at the very least, one that stands out very poorly in my mind having not played them all recently. I'm sure its minigame selection is fine & I remember the dream motif for the boards being way more interesting than MP4. This & MP6 are just perfectly fine, I'd say. Fun to revisit but not often the ones friends & I would gravitate toward if given the choice.
In my opinion, the weakest of the GCN Mario Parties. The orb system is poorly thought out, the minigames are a very mixed bag, the boards are fine but not great, and on top of that I just think it's really ugly. Everything has this "plastic toy" look to it that makes me long for the sweet release of 7th-gen brown shooter graphics.
They got the Star Spirits, though. That's pretty cool.
They got the Star Spirits, though. That's pretty cool.
It's okay for a Gamecube Mario Party, better than Mario Party 4, but doesn't reach the highs of Mario Party 6!
Played for the Tarvould's Quest Mario Party League, viewable here.
DIY Mario Party, basically. Hudson went all-in on the Capsule system, and the consequence is that the boards themselves end up feeling pretty dry. Few central gimmicks, little personality inherent to the boards, no major NPCs, nothing like that. Heck, even the unifying theming is pretty lackluster, with everything just being a generic "dream" of a given thing, not a dream ascribed to anyone in particular. The Star Spirits are really cool to see here, one of the few times Mario RPG characters were allowed to exist outside the RPG subseries, but Eldstar can only do so much to elevate the experience.
But the boards themselves are so bland to facilitate the Capsule system - a complete overhaul of the traditional Item system that lets players remodel board experience on the fly. It's certainly an intriguing idea, but it's definitely a rough first draft here. Not all of these should be functions accessible to the player at any given time (goodness sakes, making a Chance Time Item just lends itself to certain abuses), and not all of these are compelling outside of the fact that the player can throw them wherever (you probably should never use Hammer Bro Capsule on yourself). Also, the fact that the player has no agency in which Capsules they receive... kinda sucks?
Also booooooo this is the game that removed playable DK as well as Boo as a board function. I guess having a nice equivalent to Bowser is interesting, but it's a big bummer that it comes at the cost of one of the main series regulars!
I honestly have to say that the writing is pretty noticeably devoid of personality, too. Usually I don't think a ton about Mario Party's writing, but a lot of it reads like placeholder dialogue, so generic and unremarkable a lot of it is. There's even a bit where the narration for DK quickly switches tense to the first person! Has to be stock.
Having said all this - because Mario Party 5 places so much of its design into the players' hands, games become as interesting as the people playing the game. This is true of Mario Party in general; if there's one thing I've learned from Mario Party League, it's that Mario Party is at its most engaging once politics filter into the standard gameplay loop. But this is at its most apparent when it comes to Mario Party 5. This is probably why 5's singleplayer experience is as lopsided, as my friends have observed (me, I've never played this with fewer than two other players) - hard to create compelling politics and intrigue with CPU opponents. But when you have a full crew, and ESPECIALLY when you have the Miracle Capsules in play? Now you're on to something.
DIY Mario Party, basically. Hudson went all-in on the Capsule system, and the consequence is that the boards themselves end up feeling pretty dry. Few central gimmicks, little personality inherent to the boards, no major NPCs, nothing like that. Heck, even the unifying theming is pretty lackluster, with everything just being a generic "dream" of a given thing, not a dream ascribed to anyone in particular. The Star Spirits are really cool to see here, one of the few times Mario RPG characters were allowed to exist outside the RPG subseries, but Eldstar can only do so much to elevate the experience.
But the boards themselves are so bland to facilitate the Capsule system - a complete overhaul of the traditional Item system that lets players remodel board experience on the fly. It's certainly an intriguing idea, but it's definitely a rough first draft here. Not all of these should be functions accessible to the player at any given time (goodness sakes, making a Chance Time Item just lends itself to certain abuses), and not all of these are compelling outside of the fact that the player can throw them wherever (you probably should never use Hammer Bro Capsule on yourself). Also, the fact that the player has no agency in which Capsules they receive... kinda sucks?
Also booooooo this is the game that removed playable DK as well as Boo as a board function. I guess having a nice equivalent to Bowser is interesting, but it's a big bummer that it comes at the cost of one of the main series regulars!
I honestly have to say that the writing is pretty noticeably devoid of personality, too. Usually I don't think a ton about Mario Party's writing, but a lot of it reads like placeholder dialogue, so generic and unremarkable a lot of it is. There's even a bit where the narration for DK quickly switches tense to the first person! Has to be stock.
Having said all this - because Mario Party 5 places so much of its design into the players' hands, games become as interesting as the people playing the game. This is true of Mario Party in general; if there's one thing I've learned from Mario Party League, it's that Mario Party is at its most engaging once politics filter into the standard gameplay loop. But this is at its most apparent when it comes to Mario Party 5. This is probably why 5's singleplayer experience is as lopsided, as my friends have observed (me, I've never played this with fewer than two other players) - hard to create compelling politics and intrigue with CPU opponents. But when you have a full crew, and ESPECIALLY when you have the Miracle Capsules in play? Now you're on to something.
I think there is a very persuasive argument to be made that capsules are objectively poorly designed. They take autonomy away from the player by removing any choice of what items you can get, there's little that you can do to directly benefit yourself and even less you can do to hinder other players without exposing yourself to risk, it makes the boards have fewer unique spaces and thus less interesting things can happen on them, and overall way more risk with way less reward. More often than not all that strategy amounts to is having the chance to screw over your opponent, putting you ahead by association, rather than doing something that will put you ahead.
With all that said, I still like the capsules. There's so much fun and chaos that can come from how much is thrown onto every board, and there's still plenty of strategy that can go into them. I think the strategy comes a lot more from adapting, both to what capsules you have and what events everyone lands on, and I think each game is unpredictable and interesting because of that. And pretty much every board is really good, all except Rainbow Dream. They're all interesting aesthetically and thematically, they're the perfect size and the paths are well laid out, and overall a huge improvement from Mario Party 4.
I think the mini games took a hit though. There are a lot of stinkers, with many that aren't interesting like all of the coin collecting ones, and many that are just not fun like Dinger Derby or Fish Sticks or Berry Basket. The 1vs3 minigames are often VERY unbalanced, with many that feel like it's impossible for the 1 to win and even more that feel impossible for the 1 to lose. The rumble minigames are lame, there are too many button mashing ones.
But there are some good ones, Pushy Penguins being the easy standout, but I also like Hotel Goomba, Leaf Leap is also good I'm just bad at it, and all the ones where you're trapped in an arena and beat each other up are a good time.
With all that said, I still like the capsules. There's so much fun and chaos that can come from how much is thrown onto every board, and there's still plenty of strategy that can go into them. I think the strategy comes a lot more from adapting, both to what capsules you have and what events everyone lands on, and I think each game is unpredictable and interesting because of that. And pretty much every board is really good, all except Rainbow Dream. They're all interesting aesthetically and thematically, they're the perfect size and the paths are well laid out, and overall a huge improvement from Mario Party 4.
I think the mini games took a hit though. There are a lot of stinkers, with many that aren't interesting like all of the coin collecting ones, and many that are just not fun like Dinger Derby or Fish Sticks or Berry Basket. The 1vs3 minigames are often VERY unbalanced, with many that feel like it's impossible for the 1 to win and even more that feel impossible for the 1 to lose. The rumble minigames are lame, there are too many button mashing ones.
But there are some good ones, Pushy Penguins being the easy standout, but I also like Hotel Goomba, Leaf Leap is also good I'm just bad at it, and all the ones where you're trapped in an arena and beat each other up are a good time.