IGN said, 'Mario Party: Island Tour’s rich multiplayer options are sullied by boring minigames and unfortunate motion control.' Nintendo World Report listed Island Tour's pros as being the game boards, 'extensive' single-player mode, and the fact that it utilizes almost all the Nintendo 3DS features, and the cons as the fact that the difficulty of Bowser's Tower is not changeable, the instruction screens, which they described as 'repetitive', and also that there is no online multiplayer. That said, there are definitely some missing pieces that keep it from being a memorable entry in the franchise.' GameSpot commended the game's usage of four-player local download play, great minigame designs, and also Island Tour 's single-player mode, but criticized 'a few bad games in the bunch', and the lack of online play. GamesRadar said, ' Island Tour isn't the Mario Party you remember, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Game Revolution praised the 7 new boards and boss minigames however, the repetitive gameplay, character voices and board music were criticized.
In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of all four eights, for a total of 32 out of 40. Island Tour received 'mixed' reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.
