If you’ve ever played a Mario Party, you already understand the bulk of the gameplay. You pick a game board for you and up to three friends to play on, taking turns rolling dice as you race towards stars and then you play mini-games every now and then. There is a bit more to the game than that which I’ll get into shortly, but if that doesn’t sound like a good time, this game will not be for you. Now let’s get more into the weeds.
When you look at the core aspect of Mario Party gameplay (aka the board game part), then Jamboree boasts seven different boards and 110+ mini-games. The mini-games come in a variety of free for all, 2v2, and 1v3 varieties and most of them have been fun to play. Each board has a difficulty rating as well which I assume is more of a complexity scale.
The 1-star board is fairly simple with about 2-3 loops you can enter but higher ratings have many more ways to traverse the board and hopefully beat your foes to the stars. The odd thing to me is that you start the game with three or four boards unlocked but the difficulty scores are scattered.
You have the 1-star, but you have to level up in order to unlock the 2-star. I would have just assumed it would have started you out with the 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star boards with higher levels unlocked later. This is not a problem, just something that seemed odd to me.
One thing that I’m not a fan of though is how the game likes to put the first star of a level really far out there. If you are playing a 10-round game (the shortest possible), I found that the earliest that someone would typically get the first star was the fifth or sixth turn because of how big the boards tend to be.
Combine that with the fact that coins are meaningless once someone has a star and I really get annoyed at the scoring system in the game. I just wish that either boards were smaller in shorter games or that stars spawned a little closer to players to generate more competition.
Another frustration that’s connected is the new Jamboree Buddies. This is a character that you can pick up with you and they provide some special bonus or ability for a few turns. Overall, I actually do like Jamboree Buddies. However, because of the size of the boards, there have been multiple games where no one was able to get a Jamboree Buddy because of where they spawned. It just feels self-defeating.
Of course, the classic gameplay isn’t all that Jamboree has to offer. There are seven other game modes to play. Some of these are fun and some were just boring to me, but I’m sure some people still enjoy them. My least favorite game mode is Paratroopa Flight School.
Basically, you hold to Joy-Con in your hands and flap your arms to fly around for three possible minigames. It was boring and really wore my arms down. Toad’s Item Factory is a little better. Each player (up to 4) has a Joy-Con and they move them up and down in order to get marbles to the end of the track.
Most of the tracks are easy, but there are some moments when you really want to take advantage of the physics engine. Next is Rhythm Kitchen where you use Joy-Con to complete rhythm-based mini-games. This one is pretty fun but can be harder for younger kids who haven’t established a sense of rhythm yet.
Of course there’s Minigame Bay which is perfect for when you just want to play the minigames. You can select from over 110 possibilities and skip out on the board game portion of Mario Party.
That brings us to the last two multiplayer game modes that are a little different. These are both modes designed to be played online with only one player per system. The first is Koopathlon where you compete against up to 19 other gamers in a variety of minigames and score points based on how far you make it. You’re trying to complete a predetermined number of laps around the track first.
I really liked Koopathlon and think it’s one of the highlights of Jamboree. The other mode is Bowser Kaboom Squad. You’ll work with up to seven other players to bring down Imposter Bowser by finding bombs and using a cannon to fire them at the imposter. Every so often, the team completes mini-games for the chance to get items to help you bring the big guy down. It’s fun, but not my favorite.
If you’re looking for some single-player goodness though, Jamboree does have the Party-Planner Trek. This has you traverse five special game boards to help out various NPCs and collect mini stars. As you do, you’ll unlock decorations for Party Plaza, play mini-games, and more.
As crazy as it sounds, I did enjoy my time in this game mode. I am not one that really plays Mario Party for single-player experiences, but this wasn’t bad and I could see myself coming back if I had like 15 minutes here and there. It should be noted that progress is tracked per character.
The crazy thing about Jamboree is that it finally introduces a feature on the Nintendo Switch that I’ve been begging for since launch. Jamboree allows other accounts on the same console to login and track rewards. This is the first game that I know of that will do that on Switch and it’s a major win!
I could be playing Jamboree on my profile and then my wife and kid could join and link their profiles to their control spots to track progress. Then, the next day they could go to play on their profile and all the stuff they unlocked while playing with me was still available to them! Why did it take Nintendo so long to get this sorted out!?
One feature of Jamboree that I actually quite enjoy are the reactions. These are simple emotes clearly designed more for online play to communicate to other players, but some of them are just really fun to bring up even in local games. Plus, as you play, you are able to purchase additional reactions. This is a small thing that isn’t a selling point, but some of them are just inexplicably funny and they’re almost all cute.
At the end of the day, your mileage will vary with Jamboree. If you and your friends are looking for a fun Mario Party game, Jamboree is a good one. My main problems with the game are really just core aspects like the scoring. I would have preferred more energy to go into tweaking that then have the Paratroopa Flight School if I’m honest.
Jamboree does have some fun other game modes though to help you find different ways of having fun. As long as you recognize that this game is really meant to be played with friends with the best single-player content (Koopathlon) requiring a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, then this is a fine purchase.
It does remind me though why I don’t need more than one Mario Party per generation though. While it is probably a 7 for me personally, overall I would say that for fans of the genre, it gets a higher score.
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