Luigi’s Mansion 3 Review
Busting makes Luigi feel good, sometimes
Luigi is uninterested in following the norm set by other people, named Mario or otherwise. In this case, he breaks traditional trilogy rules of the second title being the best and the third being the worst. Luigi’s Mansion 3 takes everything that made Luigi’s Mansion special in the past and dials it in, elevating it. It feels like a modern GameCube game in a great way most of the time. It also isn’t paced super well and controls like a GameCube game.
Luigi and Mario must be complete idiots, right? It’s been a while since the last ghostly adventure but the fact that they just continually accept invites to weird places for free stuff. It’s the equivalent of believing the free cruise phone calls for a third time, after having your identity stolen twice. In this case, it’s an elaborate trap set by King Boo to exact revenge on Luigi for defeating him. The hotel owner Helena Graves has released King Boo after beating up Dr. E Gadd.
Luigi himself is very endearing in this version, displaying his personality frequently in cutscenes and never overcoming his fears. His relation with Gooigi is adorable. Luigi himself gives a strong sense of determination through fear that helps carry the story through. His interactions with ghosts and ghost bosses give enough story for the game to feel like it has a good through-line.
The game plays the same way as past titles, looking into the hotel in a dollhouse view which works fine the majority of the game without too many camera issues. Luigi does not feel amazing to control, even with motion controls off. He feels awkward and clunky, with a good amount of the in-game obstacles coming from being unable to perform the actions accurately. The game also gives default controls in the tutorial that put the action buttons on face buttons, meaning using the vacuum or other functions cannot be done at the same time as rotating Luigi very easily. These controls are also mapped to the bumpers, but that’s not stated in the tutorial.
While Luigi controls oddly the puzzles in the game are very good, even if they don’t start getting complicated until more than halfway through. The game does an excellent job of giving the majority of abilities early in the game and basing its puzzles around those, instead of just adding new mechanics every level and tossing out what was learned. While the puzzles don’t get hard until roughly halfway, the game is never hard if you don’t disable hints, which are on by default and just tell you how to do the puzzles which can be frustrating because solving puzzles is the hardest part of the game. Even boss fights are puzzles. Unfortunately, any regular combat in the game based around the basic flashlight and vacuum puzzle rarely pose any threat to Luigi, making them more inconvenient than anything else.
The game features some pretty interesting and innovative floors in the hotel but doesn’t do enough. The game consists of 15 regular floors and two basement floors, which doesn’t feel like enough with how many of those are just regular hotel floors. The game eventually branches out to Pirates, Egypt and a Medieval jousting arena, but some of these floors are way too short for the concept. Levels like the boiler room can last nearly 30 minutes when levels like the museum are done in less than 10 minutes. The game is a good length at roughly 10 to 12 hours but needs to be better spread out than it is.
The game features some collectibles in Hidden Boos and Hidden Gems on each floor. The gems feel like they are placed pretty smartly, with the majority coming from thorough searching of each floor. The boos are hidden and can be found through following vibrations felt in the control, which I only ever felt during the tutorial for the boos, which was the only one I captured during the entire game. I never felt as though I was feeling the vibrations the rest of the game and never sought out the boos because of this. The game offers the ability to purchase their locations but that defeats the fun of finding them.
Co-op works well and there are plenty of puzzles involving Gooigi in the game to justify having two people. The multiplayer mode exists for some reason. Not every game needs local multiplayer including this one.
The game embodies the boldness and oddity of Luigi’s Mansion but never commits to it fully. The game can feel pretty awkward to control at times but the puzzles are fun enough to drive the experience to its conclusion. Luigi brings a strong presence to the game with his terrified antics. The game nails it’s overall length but drags in some places while racing through other spots way too fast. The game is fun but doesn’t contain the boldness that Nintendo has occasionally shown on the Switch. I give Luigi’s Mansion 3 a 3.5/5.
