This is one of those games that's ruined by a single feature:

Bowser is OP.

I did not grow up with this game. In fact, I hadn't touched it until 2020. But now, I think that Mario Party 7 has some of the greatest boards in the whole franchise, and the minigames are quite good as well. But every single match runs the risk of Bowser completely ruining it.

Bowser appearing in the last five turns to shake things up is nothing unique to this game, but he's shockingly aggressive here. More Bowser spaces are added, and if someone lands on one, they have to complete a challenge to avoid a horrible consequence. Every single time any of us landed on a space, there were only two consequences that we got:

1. Everyone who loses at this minigame loses ALL of their coins

2. Everyone who loses at this minigame loses ALL of their stars

Out of 12 games that we played, 7 of them had all four of us lose everything we had in the final five turns, because these Bowser minigames are the most unfair and brutal in the series. Have a look if you're unfamiliar: https://youtu.be/5tLjiDWG6B0

It's a great game! But it is SO eager to rip all of your progress away from you, rendering the entire game up to that point a waste of time.

Mario Party 7 is my favourite of the GameCube Mario Party games. While there are things that make this distinct enough from the others to be memorable, in this case it may be mostly nostalgia. I do not recall if the ones before this one have a similar system, but this game has a system where you can unlock things using what is essentially a currency system where you get what some form of points that you can redeem to unlock new characters, a new board, the ability to taunt, and things like that. Mario Party 8 had. This system gives me motive to play the game even when there is no one to play it with, which may have contributed to further enjoyment of the game. This game also has a unique minigame type that makes use of the GameCube microphone, which was a peripheral that I don't think was used for anything outside of Mario Party 7 except maybe a select few other games. All in all. it's pretty good.

Mario Party 7's biggest strength is the variety is has on offer, with every board playing vastly different and the introduction of both map specific items and exclusive items for certain characters, matches can wildly differ without sacrificing important things like a sense of strategy or the general flow of the game. In fact Mario Party 7 along with Mario Party 6 may be one of the brisk paced Mario Parties to date. It's minigame selection is also top notch as it of of the largest lists of them in the series. The only negatives I have with the game is that it's variety often comes at a cost to balance, for example the character exclusive items range from completely useless, to incredibly niche, to extremely overpowered, and this can sometimes means players are at a disadvantage it they play as certain characters, but they are still rare enough to where that isn't a problem most of the time. Mario Party 7 easily stands as one of the best Mario Party games to date, only behind Mario Party 6 imo.

Around third and fourth grade I was a massive fan of Mario and wanted to get my hands on every spin-off I could in the franchise during the Gamecube era. Catching wind of Mario Party with the seventh game in the franchise came at a perfect time for me and I found myself loving every aspect of this game to death, mastering every single mini-game and playing countless parties with anyone who'd join in. One time I even handed my grandparents controllers which didn't go too great but goes to show how enthusiastic I was about this game.

There were a couple of unique features to Mario Party 7. One was the Gamecube mic, which came into play when you landed on certain spaces around the board. If you didn't own the peripheral you'd just move onto the next player's turn, but I managed to track one down at GameStop. The mechanics didn't work too great and was a pretty dumb gimmick but I still enjoyed it at the time.

Another major feature was the 8-player mode, which I pulled out quite a few times at family gatherings. Select minigames only required one shoulder button or one controller stick and two people who share a single controller. It worked surprisingly well and proved a lot of fun.

One thing I could've done with less of in this game were mini-games in Party Mode that only involved one or two players. DK and Bowser spaces were a big component of that and could really slow things down sometimes if you weren't involved. The boards in this one were especially good, though. I've always liked the investment-type boards so the windmill one is my favorite, but the theming of Pagoda Peak was also a lot of fun.

Mario Party 7 is an excellent entry in the franchise even if it starts with the awkward line "Mario was out for his morning constitutional" every time you boot it up. It's arguably the last great Mario Party before the series started to decline.