There's regular video game padding and then there's "you have to beat Story Mode eight times in order to get all the items for your special treasure room" Mario Party 4 padding. Why this Mario Party put such a focus on making sure you played with just the CPUs that many times is beyond me.

Decent Mario Party otherwise. Love Booksquirm. Hate the mega/minishrooms. Also I was very impressed with the water graphics in this game as a kid.