Luigi’s Mansion 3 Review

When Luigi’s Mansion was released as a GameCube launch title in 2001, it was an interesting little oddity in the Mario franchise. A small excursion starring the lesser Mario brother taking on a house full of spooks and specters in Ghostbusters-like fashion. It was fun and unique, but short-lived. And for over a decade it seemed that Luigi’s Mansion was to remain a one and done affair. It was surprising then, that a sequel was released on the Nintendo 3DS almost twelve years later. Though it lacked the atmosphere of the GameCube original, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon proved that the concept of Luigi doing his best Peter Venkmen impression still had a lot to offer. It may have taken the timeframe between an original Pixar movie and its sequel, but Dark Moon turned the once isolated Luigi’s Mansion experience into a viable franchise of its own (it even spawned an arcade spin-off).

Developed by Canadian studio Next Level Games (who also made Dark Moon, as well as the Mario Strikers games and the Wii installment of Punch-Out!!), the bluntly titled Luigi’s Mansion 3 was released on the Nintendo Switch on Halloween of 2019. Taking the best bits of the GameCube original and the 3DS sequel, Luigi’s Mansion 3 proved to be the best entry in the series yet by some margin.

Though the game still houses the word “mansion” in the title, the action this time around actually takes place inside of a hotel. This high-rise hotel, The Last Resort, is the vacation spot for not only Luigi, but also Mario, Princess Peach, and a group of Toads. Because Mario and the gang are never allowed a proper vacation, the whole thing ends up being a rouse. During the first night of their supposed vacation, Luigi awakes in the middle of the night to find that Mario, Peach and the Toads have gone missing, and the seemingly luxurious hotel has transformed into a dilapidated, nightmarish tower filled with ghouls. It turns out the hotel’s owner, Hellen Gravely, is actually a ghost, working under Luigi’s recurring foe, King Boo. King Boo has successfully captured Mario, Peach and the Toads and trapped them in portraits, and almost does the same to Luigi, before the younger Mario brother makes an escape (perhaps King Boo should try capturing Luigi first next time… and maybe he and Bowser should work together, because King Boo seems pretty adept at capturing Mario, so together they could get a lot done).

Luigi soon finds that his mentor in ghost-catching, Professor E. Gadd, has also been captured by King Boo, and is in the hotel. Luigi finds an extra ghost-catching device left by Gadd, and soon uses it to rescue the mad scientist. From then on, Gadd takes refuge in his ‘ghost-proof’ bunker, and provides Luigi with different gadgets and abilities along the way (including “Gooigi” Luigi’s gelatinous doppelgänger) in the quest to save Mario, Peach, the Toads, and to put an end to King Boo and Hellen Gravely’s plans.

Being a Mario game that isn’t one of its RPGs of yesteryear, the plot of Luigi’s Mansion 3 is of course simple stuff. But the action becomes something truly memorable by how much personality and character shines through. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is one of the most vibrantly-animated video games ever made. The game is bursting at the seams with charm and humor, particularly physical comedy, with Luigi’s Mansion 3 being on a level of its own in that category.

Not only has Luigi’s anxious, trepidatiously-heroic personality never been more on display, but other characters, and even enemies, are filled with exaggerated movements and expressions (Next Level Games, perhaps realizing that Professor E. Gadd had never previously been seen walking more than a few feet, gave him a decidedly hilarious running animation). While Mario games have often had fluid character animations, they’ve never been so innately humorous as they are here, with Luigi’s Mansion 3 evoking Loony Tunes at times.

The gameplay is an utter delight. The basics are still the same as they’ve always been for the series: stun ghosts with a flashlight, catch them in your vacuum, dwindle down their hit points until they finally get sucked up. The Dark Light from the second game returns, and is used to find/solidify invisible and spectral objects, as well as release your friends (and coins) from portraits. But there have been a few fun little quirks added to the proceedings: the Poltergust vacuum can now let out a burst to keep large groups of enemies at bay, should Luigi find himself overwhelmed. Luigi can now slam ghosts that are caught in the vortex of the vacuum, which depletes larger chunks of their health with each slam. The Poltergeist can now also fire a plunger, which sticks to objects for Luigi to pull and drag them.

The biggest gameplay addition is the inclusion of Gooigi, who works as a second playable character. Once Gooigi is obtained, the player can switch between Luigi and his gooey clone by the press of a button (or a second player can join in to take on the role of Gooigi for some fun co-op). Gooigi mostly controls identical to Luigi, but has some pros and cons unique to him. Being the slime-like creature he is, Gooigi can sink into drains, squeeze into narrow spaces, walk passed spikes, and pass through cages like Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean. On the downside, Gooigi cannot move in bodies of water or come into contact with fire, or else he dissolves and retreats back into Luigi’s Poltergust.

Although on their own, these additions may seem small, when you put them all together, they really add a lot to the classic Luigi’s Mansion gameplay. In particular, the puzzles that require both Luigi and Gooigi to step into action really bring out the game’s creativity.

One of my complaints with Dark Moon was its mission-based structure. The first Luigi’s Mansion had a unique atmosphere and sense of place for a game set in the Mario universe. It may not have been truly frightening, but the titular mansion of the original game felt like like a set place and, relative to the series, was appropriately eerie. Dark Moon removed that atmosphere in favor of a mission-based structure, which made the experience feel fragmented and episodic. The first game felt like you were scouring a haunted mansion. The second game simply felt like levels in a video game.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 finds a nice compromise between the two. The Last Resort houses 17 floors, each with a different theme or motif. Because things no longer begin and end with a set mission, you have more freedom to explore and go at your own pace, like the first game. But with every floor featuring a different theme, Luigi’s Mansion 3 has a stronger sense of variety, closer to the second game.

Each floor houses its own collection of special treasures to find, as well as Boos to catch. The game is progressed by defeating a floor’s boss and acquiring the elevator button they’re holding, which then allows you to go to the matching floor of that button (though they aren’t always in sequential order, which is a nice little touch).

The boss fights are a lot of fun. While the first two Luigi’s Mansion games could admittedly get a bit repetitious, the boss fights alone in Luigi’s Mansion 3 bring out so many fun ideas out of the series’ gameplay that you’ll always be wondering what’s around the next corner. And while the boss ghosts may not capture the same (relative) scariness of the Portrait Ghosts from the first game (thus resulting in not quite the same unique atmosphere of the GameCube title), they are a definite step-up from Dark Moon, which had no Portrait Ghost equivalent.

Players who just want to complete the story can do just that, but for completionists, you can always backtrack and hunt down every last treasure from every last floor of the hotel. And if that’s not enough, Luigi’s Mansion 3 even features multiplayer!

Luigi’s Mansion 3 not only houses a series of local multiplayer mini-game modes, but also builds on the “Scarescraper” online mode introduced in Dark Moon. This cooperative online mode sees up to eight players (four as different colored Luigis, and four as their corresponding Gooigis) brave the Scarecraper by completing one randomly-generated floor to move on to the next (up to ten floors). Most floors will ask players to exercise them of all their ghosts, while others will task players with collecting a certain amount of treasure, having everyone gather in a specific room, or finding lost Toads and escorting them to a teleporter. When all floors are completed, the Luigi-centric team then comes face-to-face with a boss fight in the form of Boolossus.

Scarescraper is a simple multiplayer mode in concept, but insanely addictive in execution. As the clock keeps ticking and you desperately try to find the last ghost/Toad/lump of cash, it becomes a hectic scramble that requires real teamwork to overcome. And while Nintendo’s lack of voice chat is usually a hindrance, this is one instance where the feature isn’t exactly missed. If a player gets caught in a trap and requires another player to rescue them (as getting yourself out of a trap takes considerably longer and exhausts the time limit), they press a few buttons to alert the other players of their whereabouts, hoping their team can get rescue them in time. Again, a lack of voice chat is normally a big problem with Nintendo multiplayer games, but here, it may have made things too easy. It’s difficult to describe, but the Scarescraper is somehow more fun by forcing teams to work together while giving them minimal tools to do so.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 isn’t perfect: the controls can take a little getting used to (especially if you’re not playing with the classic controller), I feel like there could have been some additional incentives for completionists other than a few (often easy to find) treasures and Boos, and there are a few annoying puzzles here and there (sadly, the movie-themed floor, perhaps my favorite in the game, possibly contains the most cryptic puzzles). And while the idea of a multiplayer-exclusive boss fight in the Scarescraper is really cool, it’s kind of a bummer that it’s always the same boss fight (just a couple more would have added a lot).

All things considered, however, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is an extremely fun experience that is always at the ready to throw something unexpected at the player. There’s something new seemingly around every corner, some of which might truly catch you by surprise (which is why I haven’t gone into too much detail on what the different floors of the hotel have in store). And it does so with some of the most exuberant and hilarious animation in the history of video games.

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