2.5/5 ★ – Rig2Big's review of Mario Party 2.

“Mystery Land” has gotta be the most dogshit map that I have ever seen in a party game before. It is essentially a carbon copy of “Wario’s Battle Canyon” from Mario Party 1 (which on its own wasn’t very good), being that both boards are split into several different areas. But here’s the genius of Mystery Land: whereas, in the Battle Canyon, players just needed to PASS by specific spaces to move into different areas… in Mystery Land, players must DIRECTLY LAND on a “?” space. Expectedly, this transforms the entire match into characters running around in circles, hoping the next roll will be the one which will finally allow them to exit the fucking loop. Here’s the best part… you only exit THAT loop to enter ANOTHER. The entire board is a series of loops, that is the gimmick. It is practically un-fucking-playable. Dude, also, when I played through the Bowser board (the one you unlock after playing once through all of the others), 2 stars had been reached within just a few turns. But then, THE STAR MOVED TO THAT LITTLE CIRCLE AREA… THE ONE YOU CAN ONLY REACH BY LANDING ON ANY OF THE THREE “?” SPACES IN FRONT OF IT. I shit you not, 16 turns went by where nobody was able to reach the star… SIXTEEN FUCKING TURNS. How is that even possible??? Why wouldn’t the devs remove that as a possibility? Who, in their serious, unbiased opinion, thinks this is an improvement upon Mario Party 1? They may have patched a few unsightly features, added some new mini-games… but in doing that, they also removed the main hub, and replaced it with some lame-ass wooden board. Why would they do that? The hub was such a memorable aspect of the first game, and carried immense weight at refining MP1’s entire aesthetic identity.