Do yourself a favor and Buy one of the newer Mario Parties. This isn't fun at all. It's only boring and cruel.
Let's begin with boads. Board gaming is boring, and very, very cruel. You try to get them stars, that lie somewhere in the board. You roll a dice, and so on. Bad luck is always annoying in Mario Party games, and they punish hardly for having a bad luck. However, in this game you get punished so very cruelly, you are likely to cry. For example: On the island board, you are going to the star, then somebody lands on a green space, and the star is replaced by bowser who steals a stunning 30 coins! AARRGGHH! And that depends on luck. Way too cruel.
On the cloud board you have to travel a loong way to the star that costs 20 coins, then someone lands on a green space and surprice surprice the star is replaced by bowser, who just steals a disturbing 40 coins for nothing and you are also sent to the very start of the super long road! Double ARRGGH! This game is just way too cruel at the player. That's so cruel, it makes one weep. Also what makes this game's board playing so bad, is that there are no items spicing up the action, and the characters move oh-so slowly on the boards. No items means that the board gaming is shallow and boring, and characters' slowness doesn't help. The cruelness makes it totally unplayable. The minigames are okay. Some of them involve rotating analog stick at crazy speeds. Not only these minigames are lacking fun whatsover, the possiblily that analog stick breaks is scary. Controllers aren't cheap either. Some minigames are hard because of clumsy controls. There is a mode in this game called minigame island. You travel the island, playing minigames. It's a pretty intresting mode, as proceeding is alot like mario platformers. You walk on the map, and enter a minigame, like entering levels in platformers. Win the minigame, and new paths open on the map and you can proceed. If you lose the minigame, you lose a life, lose all the lives and you get game over and you have to continue where you last saved. It's just like platformers! As I said, most minigames are okay, so this mode is pretty fun, except some stupid minigames. Minigames are the only good parts of the game, but the minigames alone don't make a game good. Music is pretty "meh", as there are no good melodies, but nothing awful either. Graphics are OK.
I really recommend you to avoid this awful garbace that Hudson calls a game. Buy one of the newer Mario Parties.