I think Mario Party 5-8 are real bummers, because they get rid of the item shop.
Instead, there's an item capsule machine, and every time you pass it, it just gives you a random capsule for free. Since the capsule itself is free, the coins are spent to activate the capsule when you actually have someone to use it on. I feel like it makes the game significantly more random, because you can't even convert a coin lead into a Magic Lamp or Boo Crystal Ball (item shop usually has one of these in Mario Party 4), because the capsules are random as shit, and the good ones are ridiculously rare. To be fair, they make it easier to ditch items you don't want by letting you just throw any capsule onto the board, and if someone lands on that space you threw it on they get the effect of the item. Also, Mario Party 5 has like 4 or 5 different items that just steal/rearrange/destroy the capsules other players are holding, which would be nuts in Mario Party 1-4 where they might actually have a good item, but in all likelihood the capsules you're holding at any moment in Mario Party 5 probably suck, so it doesn't matter.
Seriously, prepare for every fucking item to be "other players lose 10 coins, swap places with another character, etc.", because you almost never see any of the really power item effects. If you ever end up with like 150 coins, there is almost nothing to actually spend it on, and all it's good for is the end of the game for a tiebreaker or maybe you'll get the bonus star for most coins.
Given that Jeff already hates that even 49 turns in, minigames only reward a trivial 10 coins, I expect him to hate that there are very few ways to actually make use of having a 100+ coin lead in Mario Party 5. Winning the minigames (thus getting coins) becomes almost irrelevant, as all you really need are the 20 coins to buy a star.
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