Mario Party 8 had a lame storyline. Let’s just get that out of the way. Anyone over the age of 5 can understand that the storyline is nothing to get excited about. Nobody would do all that hardcore Mario Party and Bowser fighting just to get rotten teeth and a few extra trips to the dentist office. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s actually analyze the story mode for this game:
The start board for your story mode adventure requires you to buy 2 stars before your opponent does. This first board might just be the most difficult board to pass. I know I personally had to take a few tries to beat it. Star location can kill you plus the coin blocks can be very advantageous to the CPU. It being hard is not in a terrible way but it can get frustrating when the CPU manages to just make money off of a Vampire Candy or by getting 10 coins from coin blocks.
This one-way board asks you to take 50 coins to the end of the board to the big Goomba in order to win. The board is condensed so you may find yourself making 2 trips up the boardwalk. Overall this board can be pretty easy if you can just manage to make your own money. Making money is not a hard thing and the CPU tends to be a bit dull when it comes to strategy on this board.
The board I personally dislike the most requires you to buy 2 10 coin stars before your opponent does. Of course like in Party Mode the star location and board design are completely random so you just have to hope you’re going the right way. You’re gonna wanna get your hands on some twice and even thrice candy if you can. Other than that just cross your fingers really.
Just like Goomba’s board, you need to get 50 coins in order to win. Except this time you have to take it to Holly Koopa, who resides in her respective train car. The different happening spaces such as the kitchen and the Kamek moving trains spaces can play a big impact on what happens. Like Goomba’s board it shouldn’t be too hard to gather up 50 coins before the CPU does but the CPU can easily grab some coins when you aren’t looking. Movement candy is given out a lot at this board so make good use of it.
A new concept is finally introduced in the story mode adventure on the penultimate board. This time in the investment board you must get 4 stars before the CPU gets 4. Each hotel is worth 1 star until you put in 20 and it becomes 2 stars and then 50 for 3 stars. There are only 3 hotels on the condensed board though. The best strategy is to try to just focus on 2 hotels and let the CPU take one hotel. You’ll also wanna trick the CPU into bidding money into a hotel to help make it a 2 or 3 star hotel for you, but you have to make sure you can outbid them which shouldn’t be a problem.
This board can be pretty quirky. Each player starts off with 3 stars and you must make your opponent lose all of their stars before you lose yours. The odd mechanics of this board along with the 2 different candies can be a little tough to handle. The best thing is to try to just get Bowser candy so you can take more stars. This board is practically another one way board since you don’t have a choice of intersection to make so you just gotta depend on the dice roll once again.
Now this has the potential to be a hard boss battle. But that all gets thrown out of the window because Nintendo and Hudson decided to give everyone unlimited attempts at beating Bowser even after you die. It makes absolutely no sense for you to come back with full life and have Bowser already damaged. It makes a challenging boss battle into a complete joke. A 3 year old could probably beat this boss with the unlimited tries. Big fail.
In the end, the story mode was pretty unimpressive for the most part. They basically took the same idea from Mario Party 7 of having one-on-one objectives and fixed it up so it’d fit with the boards in the game. That doesn’t mean it’s terribly bad though. Somehow it is possible to have fun with this. Hopefully you manage to find the silver lining in story mode because I struggle to.