With minigames having varying difficulties and luck almost never on your side, you'll have a share of frustrations.
I got to fourth year to see that the need for another pass row spiked the difficulty, and that passing to the next year would take luck. Here's a breakdown: there are 9 minigames randomly picked and placed on a 3-by-3 grid. Winning earns a O, and losing gets and X. You have to get a certain row of O's to pass to the next year. When you get to 4th year, you end up needing 2 pass rows (the first three take 1), and 5th year takes 3. It ends up being a game of luck and hoping the minigames you're good at wind up in a good spot on the board.
Annoyances aside, the game has really fun minigames, such as a game where you bounce off the ropes of a boxing ring to punch your foe in the face, a fighting minigame, an air hockey minigame, and even a game where you rescue monkeys falling through the sky by giving them parachutes. There are some minigames that take a bit of trying to do correctly, such as a minigame where you balance a ladder of monkeys across the screen to get to a large bowl of bannanas, and a few "Enter The Monkey" minigames that force you to make it from point A to point B without getting hurt.
Some minigames will leave you wishing they made them longer, other minigames will have you wishing they never exsisted, but overall, fans of the series will have a decent time with this game.