Luigi’s Mansion 3 Review - A Fun and Adorable Ghost-Busting Adventure

Written by Chris Woodside  on November 03, 2019

Reviews: With your trusty vacuum and a new companion at your side, ghost hunting in the Mushroom Kingdom never felt so good.

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It’s been nearly two decades since Nintendo debuted the original Luigi’s Mansion on the Nintendo Gamecube with the launch of the console. Even when it first released, the game felt as though your titular character in green was living in the shadow of his more famous plumber. As good of a game as Luigi’s Mansion turned out to be, many felt it was just a holdover for the launch of the Gamecube until Super Mario Sunshine was ready. While the franchise has always been a fan favorite, the series has not received the same love that the other subseries in the Mario universe have, with only three titles spanning the eighteen years since the launch of the first one. For those who felt that Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon did not quite scratch that same itch as the first game, the latest entry in the series proves to not only be a better homage to the original game, but also the best in the trilogy to date.

While the story may sound a bit contrived at this point (how many times can Luigi continue to fall for invitations to mysterious mansions that he was given for no good reason), things at least seem to start out a bit more cheerfully. Rather than arriving at a mansion that looks haunted long before Luigi and his pals arrived, you are initially presented with what appears to be a quite large 5-star hotel as Luigi, Mario, Peach, and three Toads all look forward to catching some well-deserved rest. As those with any prior knowledge of the series would guess, this quiet weekend quickly takes a turn for the worse as Luigi is awoken with screams from Mario and Peach, only to discover they are missing. Luigi discovers that he has been tricked by King Boo and that this hotel is actually haunted. To make matters worse, all of Luigi’s traveling companions have been sealed inside of paintings and it is up to the “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” Luigi to save the day!



Once you begin your adventure and visit Professor E. Gadd, you are immediately given a sense of just how large this game really is. With seventeen different floors to explore, based on the number of missing elevator keys, you set off to climb your way to the top of the hotel. Despite a nearly 12 hour campaign to make it through all of the floors, almost none of the tasks feel repetitive, and each floor of the hotel presents its own interesting and unique puzzles, all while providing ample space for humorous dialogue, charming characters, and exactly the type of magic you would expect from any game set in the Mario universe. The game may not be as massive or ambitious as other marquee games on the Nintendo Switch like Super Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild, but the time you do spend with the game might just be the most enjoyable and adorable hours you will spend with any game on the console thus far.

While your ghostbuster style vacuum makes a return as your main means of exploration and combat, Luigi is joined by a new companion this time around. Somehow, Professor E. Gadd has created a slimy doppelganger of Luigi, who is conveniently named Gooigi. Gooigi can do all of the same actions that his real-life counterpart can do, but his slime consistency allows him to pass through crevices and drainage pipes to open up the areas of exploration available to you in this hotel. Most importantly, Gooigi opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the series by allowing you to play the entire campaign (once you unlock him early in the game) in local co-op, with each player controlling either Luigi or Gooigi. During my time with the game I never was able to take advantage of this new co-op mechanic, but be warned, whether you choose to play the campaign with a partner or just solo, virtually every floor has puzzles that can only be solved with the help of Gooigi. As someone who prefers to play a game individually, this is perhaps my biggest complaint with the game. While it is very possible to solve every puzzle simply by switching back and forth between Luigi and Gooigi, many of the puzzles and boss battles are undeniably easier with a second player allowing you to control both characters simultaneously. It is a small annoyance, but it does start to feel frustrated that you are playing at a natural disadvantage if you choose to go it alone.



As you progress on your way up through the hotel, each floor has its own boss that creatively fits into the theme of the floor you are on, and utilizes all of the new mechanics or puzzles you learned to solve while on that floor. While all of the bosses are relatively fun to battle and make creative use of your vacuum and Gooigi, I certainly had hoped for the difficulty to ramp up as you move through the hotel. Some of the bosses do require a bit more patience as you get farther into the hotel, but none of them felt particularly difficult, with the exception of one boss that simply felt broken and was more of a chore to fight. You will never look at inflatable pool toys the same way again after that battle! Outside of that battle, I never died during my entire playthrough of the campaign. While games in the Mario or Luigi universe are not particularly known for their difficulty, having some more pushback from the enemies would have helped keep things fresh as you approached the later levels in the game.

Besides that one frustrating boss, there was virtually no aspect of this game that felt like it was a chore to play. I looked forward to finding each new elevator key, not simply to progress the story, but because I was genuinely excited to see what surprises awaited on the next level. Each floor had an amazing variety taking you from fighting sharks on a pirate ship, all the way to terrorizing a city in a classic Godzilla style battle. While nothing has been officially announced in terms of single-player DLC, I would not be surprised to see the hotel get a renovation in a few months with some extra floors that feature additional ghost hunting challenges.



In the meantime, for those looking for some more challenging aspects of the game, Luigi’s Mansion 3 gives you your money’s worth for your Nintendo Switch Online membership. The new ScareScraper mode brought back memories of the Pit of 100 Trials from Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door. While the challenges are not quite as difficult this time around, you still are given a fairly complex series of levels that can be completed in sets of 5 or 10 floors. These marathons through each floor of the hotel are timed as you must eradicate all of the ghosts from the floor. Thankfully, the difficulty far surpassed the challenges I experienced in the campaign and will be something I plan on spending a much greater amount of time in now that I have finished the story.

For those who still are hoping for some single-player action once the credits roll, there is a wide variety of collectibles to gather throughout the game that you can go back and complete once you defeat the final boss. There are boos scattered throughout the hotel that you must utilize your new dark light flashlight to locate before vacuuming them up. In addition, each floor features five or six smaller additional puzzles that can be solved to collect hidden gems on each floor. Each floor has its own design of gems that match the theme of the level, such as anchor gems in the floor with the pirate ship. As someone who always attempts to 100% complete a game, the additional collectibles are a welcome addition, but I was beyond thrilled to see an achievement list in the game. While these achievements are specific to the game and not tracked on your console like on the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, I still plan to collect all of the achievements that can be viewed in Professor E. Gadd’s laboratory. These provide an added incentive to not only complete harder puzzles but also to explore every nook and cranny of each floor for every trinket, coin or ghost that you can find.



Luigi’s Mansion 3 is not simply a great title in the trilogy of Luigi’s ghost hunting adventures but deserves to be talked about in the upper echelon of Nintendo Switch titles. It certainly will not occupy as much of your free time as the other heavyweights Nintendo has released for their hybrid console in the past 3 years, but it certainly will prove to be some of the most entertaining and charming hours that you will spend with your console this year. Happy ghost hunting!