Mario Party Jamboree Review - Best Switch Party Game
Super Mario Party Jamboree Review
Owning all three Mario Party games on Nintendo Switch, we can confidently saw that Super Mario Party Jamboree is the best offering on Nintendo’s hybrid console.
There are seven boards, including 5 news ones and 2 classic for Mario Party and Mario Party 2. You start with four, but you have to unlock the additional three. This is fairly easy and is just done by playing the game in any of the modes. You will earn points, which will go towards a battle pass with 50 levels of items, characters and boards to add to your collection.
Jamboree features 112 mini games, which is more than the 80 and 100 from the last two Switch entries. This includes the smart addition to be able to turn off motion games if you just want to play with normal controllers.
There are 22 characters including 2 new ones, which is also another record for the series as it is biggest roster that the series has seen so far. There is a single player campaign mode, which isn’t deep, but offers enough solo fun. There are two new online modes including a 20 player FFA Koopathalon and Bowser’s Kaboom Squad, where 8 players work together.
There is also three new offline co-op modes. Flight School is a 2 player motion only mode that requires 2 Joy-Con’s each and has hints of Pilotwings. Toads Item Factory is a fun 2-4 player marble puzzle mode with 30 different levels. Finally, Rhythm Kitchen, a 4 player mode where you cook 5 star dishes to the beat. The latter two were a lot of fun that offered something unique to the tried and true formula. Unfortunately, Para Troopa Flight School missed the mark. Although the idea sounds fantastic, the mechanics for the game didn’t feel like they worked properly, which lead to a lot of frustration and even worse, very sore arms.
The classic party mode has plenty of new features including the ability to change to pro rules, and even better the ability customize settings to finer details. Both of these rule features allows you to make the game more skill based and be less random, which essentially values your time more. There is also the new addition of a Jamboree buddy who shows up to help players during each match, but you only have a certain amount of time to find him and even then it requires a larger mini game to reward the jamboree buddy to the winning player.
Nintendo could've saved this game for the Switch 2 in 2025 as it would have made for an easy day one purchase. Nonetheless, there were enough new ideas, quality mini games and fun new modes to make 2024’s Super Mario Party Jamboree a great way to spend time with friends and family. Just going from quantity alone, Super Mario Party Jamboree is the best Mario Party game on the Switch, but the quality is just as good too and offers enough variety for anyone to find some fun.