Mario Party 7 takes the classic board game formula and attempts to spice it up with a cruise ship theme, 8-player minigames, and unique mechanics for each board. While the minigames are as fun and chaotic as ever, the new additions feel somewhat uneven. Some boards have interesting gimmicks, but others can feel unbalanced or frustrating. The addition of the microphone brings a handful of quirky minigames, but also some duds. Ultimately, Mario Party 7 is a solid, if not spectacular, entry in the series that's best enjoyed with a large, enthusiastic group of friends.

By this time, the series was pretty tired and should've been put out to pasture. Instead, the series soldiered on for another several games before finally collapsing under its own weight. Giving characters unique items sounds like a good idea, but makes the characters wildly unbalanced. Also, it was around this time that the series abandoned the classic 3 bonus stars (minigame/coin/happening) for 3 random ones drawn from a larger possible pool, making a series famous for rage-inducing RNG even less strategic and more random.

The last of the Mario Party games on GameCube that I’ve yet to revisit, this is another one I owned as a kid around the time it came out, and it’s one I have much fonder memories of than I do with MP5. I knew it carried over and expanded on a lot of ideas that MP6 introduced, and so I was excited to finally get to what’s effectively “Mario Party 6-2” x3. I played through all of Dual Mode to unlock the last map, played a game or two on all six maps, and unlocked every mini-game so I could get the credits by completing all modes on the King of the River mode. I did it via the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

The conceit behind Mario Party 7 is that the whole gang is going on a cruise! But all is not well, as Bowser (and his Koopa Kid minion) is intent on ruining everyone’s good time. It’s really as simple as that, and it’s more than good enough to give everyone an excuse to party it up. It’s a very fun theme, as it allows for a lot of fun maps themed around locations all over the world. Albeit, the design of those locations also allows for some casual racism here and there, but nothing particularly unique or noteworthy to this era, this console, or the company (the worst offenders imo are the Spear Guy Shy Guys, modeled after “tribal” warriors, and they’ve been around since Yoshi’s Island).

The mechanics and gameplay philosophy of MP7 are roundly advancements and iterations on MP6’s developments to the formula. This means that while we of course still have boards, mini-games (including still dual mini games), and orbs instead of items, we’ve taken a few steps in various directions regarding those things in attempts to vary things up. While I’d say mini-game design is easily some of the best it’s ever been, most of the steps taken in the realm of board design are steps sideways at best and backwards at worst.

Part of this is down to how orbs have been changed. You get orbs far less often now, and there are many more of them. Some have been nerfed, some have been buffed (some buffed far too much, imo), but the biggest offender is that playable characters now have unique orbs only they can acquire. This makes some characters just outright worse than others, and not in a more fun or interesting way like Super Mario Party does it with its varied dice types per character. Most of these unique orb types are at least similarly good to one another (save for my beloved Wario’s being easily the worst in the game), but the fact that everyone is outright not on a level playing field damages the game in a way that isn’t obvious at first when you’re picking your character. Even hard mode computers still won’t actually steal other player’s orb tiles, just as was the case in MP5 and MP6, but this is a far less significant problem than the aggressive unbalancing that the orb system in general has gotten since its MP6 incarnation.

It’s an issue tied to orbs, granted, but the biggest issue that MP7 reintroduces is that boards are just far too large again. While we do have a few cool and fun new board types (the windmill map where you invest in properties instead of buying stars and the China map where you go up one long path, avoiding everyone else’s traps and perils along the way being my two personal favorites), we also have some pretty weak new boards. The NYC random treasure board is just a bad idea for a game type, and the Egypt map is just a significantly worse version of the chain-chomp star-stealing map from MP6.

And from the best to the worst of these maps, they all have the issue of just being far too large. Completely gone is the territory-marking fun of MP6 where you’d slowly paint the board in your player’s colors as you grabbed and threw down orbs. Now, even in 35 turn games, orbs seem to always make up a disappointing minority of spaces on the board. I know that that’s not a universally beloved aspect of how MP6’s board game design philosophy, but it was something I enjoyed so much that I was really bummed to see it gone here. We avoid the enormous pitfalls that MP5 falls into, thank goodness, but I spent more than enough time with MP7 to feel comfortable saying that it has roundly weaker board design than MP6, and it’s a worse overall game for it in a way that it’s excellent mini-game design just can’t make up for.

Hudson Soft never being ones to disappoint, the presentation is very nice here. While it’s kinda a bummer that not all playable characters from MP6 have made it into MP7 (no more playable Koopa Kid), the additions of Birdo and Dry Bones more than make up for it. The graphics are pretty and colorful, with the mini-games and board locations in particular looking very cool this time around. The music is also nice, with some of the board map songs being very ear worm-y in just how catchy they can be at times x3. My only real complaint about the aesthetics is how spaces claimed with orbs have been changed. I think the appropriately colored silhouette of the player’s head that was used in MP6 was a much better indicator of who had claimed what space than the symbols in circle that are used here. While it’s never going to confuse anyone either way, it’s just easier to tell at a glance in a way I really preferred in the previous game.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Even if it isn’t the best Mario Party on the GameCube, it’s still damn close and a damn good game either way. Mario Party 6 is absolutely THE winner of the GameCube Mario Party race, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s hard to really go wrong with MP7 either. The 8 player mode is a fun and cool gimmick, and the other game modes and design is strong enough that it’s still good fun. Hudson Soft finished out the GameCube era Mario Party’s with a bang, even if the overall design loses out to its predecessor.