Will probably edit this as I remember/think of more stuff, but these are my thoughts thus far:

Pros:
- Good variety of classic boards with updated soundtrack and graphics.
- Modernized mechanics means holding up to 3 items on all boards with a good variety of items to choose from, as well as more powerful items only appearing at the halfway point.
- Everything moves much faster. You can speed up AI players and skip watching their item/duel mini-games. Longer cutscenes can be sped up by the player who initiates them.
- Item spaces and duels now select from a variety of games rather than a single one that fits the level theme.
- Online is here with a much more stable connection than Super Mario Party, and has matchmaking with randos. Although I frequently do still get one player disconnecting during a match, at least it doesn't end the game for everyone like Super Mario Party did. Edit: Ok it's actually getting really annoying that in a 4 player game the tendency is that one player will leave.
- For the most part, a great selection of 100 mini-games. Though who was asking for the return of Bowser's Big Blast and Honeycomb Havoc is beyond me.
- You can view potential star locations on the map and board.
- You can see how many spaces to the star and what space you'll land on in each direction of a crossroads without opening a map.
- You can make Wario say "Oh Baby!" ad infinitum.

Cons:
- Wario no longer says "Oh my God!" or "Oh I missed!"
- Peach no longer says "Bitches got it!"
- Penguin buttholes REMOVED!
- Fun costumes from Mario Party 2 gone.
- An abundance of luck spaces changes the economy drastically, making it much rarer for a player to not be able to afford a star. This could be good or bad depending on your taste.
- The custom dice blocks from Super Mario Party are gone. I'm sure most players won't care about this, but I really enjoyed the added strategy they brought to the board game part. It's much more engaging to think about the odds of your rolls and watch someone succeed/fail at them when they have more influence than one 1-10 dice plus items.

- Bizarre online design choices such as:
- No punishment for quitters.
- Once you start searching for a lobby, you can't leave aside from waiting out a 90 second timer or quitting the game.
- Despite this being a collection of boards from 1-3, which all defaulted to 20 turns, online defaults to 15 turns, which makes it difficult to find matches outside of that.
- Can only matchmake with randos while playing alone.
- Lack of a ranked mode makes skill levels vary wildly.

I've got to balance out this game's average rating 'cause y'all are brutal on this website. This game single handedly invented the genre of kart racers so it gets 5 stars from me for its impact. Took what could be a fun but rather simplistic genre and added things like items and a battle mode to make for a great party experience. The physics absolutely take some getting used to, but once you get used to them this is a lot of fun. I feel like a lot of people who are used to newer entries in the series are going to try this out once, think the physics are awful, and turn it off with a sour taste in their mouth. But back in the day this was it dude, this was the game like this, and you would play it over and over until you got it and it was fun! I mainly did this with Super Circuit on the GBA as a kid, but that skill set translated over to this game once I started playing it. Mode 7 is also dope, this game good.

I have to give this game credit for being a huge influence on my taste in music. Before this, I just kinda knew whatever music my family would listen to, or whatever I would catch on TV or movies etc. Then along comes this game with all these classic songs that I'd never heard, and a whole genre just clicked with me. I would only get more into it as sequels to this game came out, and I would eventually move on to Rock Band during the next console generation, and start looking up more and more classic songs that were new to me on a weekly basis as a neverending stream of DLC flowed onto the Microsoft store. But this is the game that started it all for me, so it fills a special spot in my game library.

So I played through all four Arkham games basically back to back last year, and I've got to say that contrary to popular opinion, this is the best one. Graphics on this still hold up today, and there are a lot more, for lack of a better term, cinematic moments in this one. I think a lot of people look down on this one because they didn't like the Batmobile but 1. It's not bad and 2. It's not really required all that much. Also the DLC racetrack for the 1960's Batmobile is one of my favorite bits of the game. Story-wise I can see being disappointed if you're a big comic fan and saw the twist coming a mile away, but as someone who only really experiences Batman through games and movies I loved it. Also the fact that the game has one strong central storyline focused on throughout made me much more invested than the previous games' greatest hits of villains approach, which primarily just served to get me going "Hey, I know that guy!" for a few hours. The whole gimmick of Joker being stuck inside your head the whole game, and never knowing when he's gonna pop up also really adds flavor to traversing Gotham, and also brings in the best setpiece moments in the entire series. Combat is Arkham combat, if you've played the previous three games in the series you know what you're in for and if you'll like it. I definitely feel like people have nostalgia goggles on for Arkham City because it was the more innovative game, bringing Batman into an open world Gotham and doing it well for the first time, but having played these all so close together I say fairly confidently that this game took that formula and improved on it.

Every now and then I think about how for a certain crowd of people, Spec Ops: The Line has grown out of favor and gotten a reputation of pretension, but this game is still viewed as an artsy masterpiece, despite them essentially doing the same thing.

shrug

5 stars, I like them both.

Base Game: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Fighter Pass 1: Super Smash Bros. Ultimater
Fighter Pass 2: Super Smash Bros. Ultimatest

Seriously though, each entry in this series has always topped the last one for me, and has consistently remained my favorite fighting game, and this is truly the ultimate version of it. I could nitpick little things, like I wish the online worked better, 3 player smashes suck when they tend to be 1 person getting picked on, I wish we had more mascots like Crash Bandicoot or Spyro in place of some of the anime swordsmen we got, but ultimately (ha) I can't deny how much enjoyment I've gotten out of this. Nintendo kind of created their own whole little sub-genre of fighting game with this series and nobody has been able to do it better. A great party game and also great competitively, it's one of a kind.