As I'm craving more Mario Party (since The After Party (aka Friends Without Benefits 2) resumed uploads) I wanted to voice that rant somewhere.
The boardplay on it sucks for 2 independent reasons, each will get its section. It's not the same reasons as 1, 5, 9, or 10.
Written 23/07/2026.
There are 2 problems with items in Mario Party 4 which combine into something miserable. Granted it's not as bad as 5 because you still have item shops, but "not the worst" can still be bad.
You can only carry 3 items at a time, so what happens if you go to a shop or land on an item space? Since MP5 (or 6?) you can choose which item to discard (whether the new one or one you were carrying previously).
But before that (aka between MP2 and 4), you were just denied the new item.
And since you can't discard (most) items, this means in those earlier titles you are forced to use your items to leave yourself room. Normally this wouldn't be a big issue, however...
Item spaces in 4 can only give you one of 2 items: a Mega Mushroom or a Mini Mushroom. They respectively act as replacements for the Double Dice (or its equivalent in older titles) and Skeleton Key.
The Mega lets you roll 2 dices and steal 10 coins from any opponent you pass through, but you skip board events (such as shops or the star). Therefore there are many situations where you don't want to use it.
The Mini reduces your roll to 1-5 (instead of 1-10) and lets you pass through the gates (well pipes) on the board (and some little minigames but they matter less). This one sucks for multiple reasons:
Thus:
Result: you're forced to use these items in harmful situations and it fucking sucks.
This horrible situation comes from those 2 problems interacting with eachother. You can fix them by playing a more recent Mario Party without the inventory lockout,
and/or you can make the common items good, like what the previous and future Mario Parties did.
If you still want to be on 4 tho you could always install MP4DX which fixes problem 2 by having item spaces give any items and also having a much better item roster.
So at the start I said that the 2 big problems are independent: it's because fixing one (like with that mod I mentionned) doesn't affect the other. So big problem 2:
I hate every map in 4. I'm not talking visuals because to me, when you compare them to 3 and 5, it's clear that 4 didn't have enough development time (they came like 1-2 years apart). So let's explain them:
Unlike the others, Shy Guy's Jungle Jam has nothing egregiously wrong going on, it's just boring. There are many long stretches of nothing, and the only happening spaces on the board do nothing most of the time.
4 out of the 6 maps share a theme of junctions that don't let you choose where you go:
And then the "funny" part is that for most of those junctions, one of the options is just to loop you back around, thus making you stuck there until the junction cooperates.
TMM has an egregious starting section where you're forced into a teacup, one path sends you to the rest of the board, the other just loops you back around.
This means the 1st and 3rd player to reach it get to play the game, while the other two just loose 3 turns (the loop is 14 spaces long, with an average dice roll being 5.5).
But then, of the two stuck players, the first to reach the teacups again escapes, and the other is sent for another loop (not counting anyone else showing up in that area in the mean time).
The left side of the board, where the other teacups are, has the same problem: you're either sent up and escape (and get a shop and a Boo visit), or go right and you just loop on this part.
At least someone landing on the rollercoaster happening may kick you out, and there is a gate to ignore the teacups and go up. That still sucks because 1) no shop on the loop, only item spaces,
so no guarantee of getting a Mini in the first place; and 2) see first part on why even then it's not reliable.
Going out of order because BGP's bridges are very similar to TMM's teacups, and it has the same horrible first section. Except this time only the 4th player to get to the first junction gets stuck,
but they get stuck for 3 whole loops of 17 spaces each (so an average of 9.3 turns). At least they have a shop on the way to pray for mobility items.
The second set of bridges at the top of the map is also again like TMM: one way sends you out, the other puts you back in a loop (without shop this time); but gives you a gate to escape through.
Won't explain a second time why that also sucks.
I conceptually don't have an issue with GGG's roulette junction, the issue for me is the quadrants aren't connected enough and the random goombas.
The right half of the board is fine, green (bottom right) just sends you back to the roulette, and blue (top right) lets you either loop around or go back to start;
provided you dodge the happening that sends you to the left, and the goomba that may force you back to start.
The left half however... on purple (top left) you are stuck until the goomba forces you to start (random) or you land on the happening to send you to blue.
On red (bottom left) you are stuck until the goomba forces you to start, or you get a Mini to go through the gate (no shop on that loop either, only item spaces; so same issues as TMM/BGP) which puts you on purple...
KSS is straightforward: if at either monkey junction you are sent up, you're force to circle back to that same junction and also loose coins in the process (because of the koopa space on the way).
The left one has a shop on the loop, and if you get a Mini lined up correctly you can go swap to the right loop and get Boo on the way.
The right one has a pipe that lets you escape the loop, but it's right after the monkey junction so you have to 1) have a Mini (no shop on this loop), 2) be within range,
and 3) use it before the junction, meaning 50% chance of having wasted the item (not even considering not rolling high enough to reach the gate).
Boo's Haunted Bash sucks for the most complex reason.
The map is covered in bridges that get disabled if someone passes by the red boo at the center of the map. They can be reactivated by visiting that red boo again, then deactivated again and so on.
When the bridges are off, almost every junction only leads you one way, which makes the map linear and boring.
Additionally, when the bridges are down the ghost train at the top right of the board becomes active. Pass by it and you can essentially go to one of several destinations.
The issue is that one of these destinations, the top right, is the correct choice most of the time, because you get to pass by Boo before going back on the map's main loop.
It also just so happens that every path with bridges down that leads to the red boo (aka to turn back the bridges on so the map stops being linear)
requires you to skip a Boo steal (either by ignoring the ghost train, or, after arriving top right, going left instead of down (the direction that leads to Boo)).
The end result: either you forfeit your Boo visit to turn the bridges back on, or you get your Boo value and let someone else forfeit their Boo visit for the bridges.
But they're in the same situation as you are! So no one is incentivized to turn the bridges back on.
The one thing that can swing the decision in favor of you setting the bridges is if the star spawns either on the left side of the Boo junction; or after the leftmost bridge.
Any other star spawn you can either get it on the way to looping for Boo; or, for the one after the bottom right bridge,
you need to complete a full board loop after turning on the bridge, so no guarantee you'll even be the one to get it.