Super Mario Party

Pre-Review PSA: You can only play this with the Joycons. Unable to play with Switch Pro Controllers. Entertainment Value - So my 4.5 YO daughter (we'll call her "Rosalina") loves this game and we played it quite frequently (until I got her Luigi's Mansion 3, anyway). We got this game after she had just turned 4 and it took some time (a month or two in som cases) to understand what to do on many minigames. Luckily, the game has a practice mode before every minigame that you can take the time to show your child before going the real thing which helps a lot. She now has her favorite minigames, modes, and maps. We've definitely gotten our $60 worth out of this game. Replay Value - As far as game modes, there are 4 modes and all 4 modes are playable with up to 4 people. But you can always substitute in computer players if you don't actually have 4 people, so you do not need an online subscription to get the full benefit of the game. All the modes are fun and enjoyable. The real fun with this game is the minigames. Some of them are an absolute blast. My favorite is probably the Paparazzi game and Pie Hard. We've also had a few really good laughs at the penguins minigame. There's enough to do in this game that as long as your switching maps or modes with some regularity, the only time it gets boring is when the game randomly selects the same minigame modes back to back or within a few turns of one another. Hand/Eye Skills and Critical Thinking - On the board games, you will have to help strategize for your little one, which mine was happy to let me help. She understands she needs to get the star and what the different spaces do, but I often have to show her the best way of going about getting stars (and when necessary, why one fork in the map is better than the other). If s/he has the motor skills to play Mario Odyssey or can play reactionary games on a smart phone (i.e. temple run, fruit ninja), s/he should be able to grasp the beginnings required to play Mario Party and take the next step at fine tuning some of those gaming skills and adding to it. Bottom Line: If you have the patience and don't care about winning, while your little one may not provide a ton of assistance, s/he will excel at some things quicker than others and will pick up on the game quicker than you think. This game has provided hours of fun and can promote real teambuilding and strategy (that you the parent will often need to prompt/direct if child is not quite old enough to strategize). Only reason this didn't get 5 stars is because a small portion of the minigames (3-4 games out of 80 total) are really just fillers and/or not much fun and I wish there were more than 4 maps.