I have played 3 Mario Party games so far, this one, and numbers 4 and 5. Out of the three, I would definitley say that Mario Party 2 has the best mini-games.

The game involves rolling a dice to see how many spaces you can move, and different spaces do different things. It can only be played with four characters at a time, and if you play alone you choose the difficulty level of the computer characters (easy, normal or hard).

To begin with you have the following boardgames to choose from: Horror Land, Pirate Land, Western Land, Space Land and Mystery Land. Later in the game you unlock Bowser Land. What I liked about the different boards was that the character's outifts change to match the land they are in - which doesn't happen with either 4 or 5.

Each player rolls once, and after that a mini-game is chosen to play which can be a four player game, a two vs two game or a one vs three game. This is determined by the colour of square you have landed on (blue, red and sometimes you turn green and it is chosen randomly)

The object of the game is to collect as many stars as possible. You can also set bonus at the start which will give out bonus stars for the most coins collected etc. Coins are used to buy stars (20 coins a time) and items. You gain 10 for winning a mini-game, and whenever you land on a blue space you get 3 coins. Red spaces deduct 3 coins from your total.

Other spaces include the happening space (green with ? marked on them), where different things happen depending on which board you are on and the battle space (green with a lightening bolt) where a random number of coins are deducted from each player and then a special mini-game starts. The winner gets the majority of the coins collected, with the rest going to the player in 2nd place and ocassionaly an odd coin going to a random player.

There are different items on the game, such as the gold mushroom which gives you three dice rolls in one turn and the boo bell, where you summon Boo to steal coins or a star from another player. You can also use boo (there is a charge) when you land on his space.

There are a lot of mini-games to play, which after being unlocked on the boards and bought (with coins collected on the boards) can be played in mini-game mode. Four player games include Hexagon Heat, where players stand on 7 hexagons floating above lava. Each has a different colour, and you must go to the colour that is on the flag Toad holds up. The rest of the hexagons sink. Time to reach the right one gets less and less as the game continues. Another four player is Platform Peril, where there is a race to see who is fastest to jump over each platform and reach the end first. The platforms fall from the sky as you go along, so you must be quick!

Some two vs two games are Toad Bandstand and Balloon Burst. In Toad Bandstand, you and your partner must play your instruments (by pressing A) in the order that they appear at the bottom of the screen. In Balloon Burst, you must co-operate to blow up a giant Bowser balloon and burst it faster than the other team.

One vs three games include Filet Relay, where characters are dressed in penguin suits and must carry a fish to the little penguins at the end of the slippery race track. It can get quite tricky! Archer-ival involves one player having to shoot the other players who are moving wooden targets.

The mini-game mode is great to play alone, but even better with friends, while the board games get very boring when played alone. There is no option to miss out the other players turns, and all you can do is sit and watch until your turn or until the mini-game at the end of the turn.
However, it's great fun to play with even just one other person.

Overall, a great game to play as a multiplayer but not so good alone.

It's hard to find now, and really expensive to buy new. Some used copies are available for about £10 but it's usually more. I would recommend amazon or ebay, make sure the seller you buy from can be trusted.