YMMV / Mario Party 4

• Accidental Innuendo: In "Balloon of Doom", Bowser's grunting when you blow the balloon in question sounds pretty suggestive. "Bigger!" "Oh yeah!" "I can feel it!"
• Broken Base: Goomba’s Greedy Gala is either well liked for fully embracing the series’ luck factor by being a flat-out gambling themed board or loathed for the same reason, especially with how easy it is to get trapped in the left half of the board.
• Contested Sequel: The game is one of the more divisive entries made by Hudson Soft. It has some of the most popular minigames in the series (such as Booksquirm and Dungeon Duos), yet there are relatively few, and a large chunk of the 1v3 games are very unbalanced. The mini/mega mushrooms are either a fine gimmick or something that make board gameplay more luck-based. The boards are also frequently criticized for their dull appearance (every board is a set of whitish-grey walkways) and the actual board designs are very contentious. Additionally, unlike in other Mario Party games, where they are almost always the most common type of end-of-turn mini-game, the higher amount of non-blue spaces can lead to 4-player mini-games being less common than 1 vs. 3 and 2 vs. 2 mini-games^note except, ironically, on Bowser's Gnarly Party.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Warp Pipe. Upon use, you spin a roulette wheel, and swap places with whoever you land on. Previous forms of this item in earlier entries were balanced by it being totally random who you swap with, but this version has a roulette wheel which appears random, but the timing is possible to learn. This cracks the item wide open, allowing you to take advantage of your opponent's attempts for a star (or Boo). Even better if they try to Mega Mushroom to get closer, as they now burned an item to get YOU closer to the star.
  • This entry allows you to create custom minigame sets for each category of minigames with a minimum of 4 minigames for the 4-player category and 3 for all of the others. You can use these sets in Story Mode and break it even on Brutal difficulty by picking the easiest minigames from each category.
• Paranoia Fuel: The Bowser Mini-games are filled with Paranoia Fuel:
  • "Balloon of Doom" has the 4 players take turns pumping up a balloon, trying not to be the one who pops it. As the balloon gets bigger and bigger, the others not on the pump may suddenly duck, letting you know the balloon may pop in the next turn or so. Also, if you decide not to pump at all during your turn, you lose immediately and the game ends.
  • "Darts of Doom" is basically where everyone takes turn throwing 3 darts at a time at a board to not be the one to score the least amount of points, while the board itself is spinning. The Paranoia Fuel sets in with the bulls-eye space, which would be a good thing in other scenarios. However if you get a bulls-eye, you're automatically declared the loser.
  • "Fruits of Doom" is where everyone takes turns, having to select the right fruit to give to Bowser in order until someone messes up. However, as Bowser lists the fruits you need to get in order, the list will go faster and faster until you can't tell what he's trying to say. This mini-game can be extremely unnerving whenever you can't remember which fruit to give to Bowser, resulting in you guessing. There's also the fact when you do give him a fruit, he may take his sweet time examining the fruit, causing more tension as to see if you actually chosen the correct fruit.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Mini and Mega Mushrooms. The mechanic (replacing the skeleton keys from the previous games by having size changing mushrooms that open new paths — the Mega Mushroom allows you to skip board events, making it a borderline Game-Breaker, while the Mini-Mushroom allows you to go down smaller pipes while having a limited number on your dice) wouldn't be quite as bad if there weren't a number of mushroom spaces giving you the items, meaning that if you want to even have anything else in your pockets, you must use them to get rid of them, leaving you in either form most of the time.
• Special Effects Failure: Oh boy, the FMV intro. Mario doesn't quite walk to meet up with the rest of the group than he does skip or leap to them (with Luigi doing a weird turn as he waves to his brother). Peach's dress is elevated compared to Daisy's which manages to touch the ground. The facial expressions aren't quite up to par, so while everyone is supposed to be confused or scared upon seeing the cloud that summons the party cube, Wario looks oddly happy with it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: "Bowser's Bigger Blast" cuts out some of the suspense that "Bowser's Big Blast" had in 2, particularly the music, which no longer stops when someone is about to lose. Then again, it's a bit speedier than the original.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The game was one of the first 3D Mario titles to use the franchise's current art direction. While impressive at the time, many of the cutscenes involve the heavily stylized characters standing in realistically rendered environments and having incredibly lifeless expressions and janky movements (special mention goes to Koopa Troopa's dance, which is really just him standing in a pseudo T-pose and erratically moving his legs). Fortunately, the actual gameplay animation and graphics are far more expressive and cartoony.

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