Have a wonderful, silly, and just a bit spooky experience with Luigi’s Mansion 3

Will Luigi’s Mansion 3 give you a scare? Maybe not, but it’s still really fun and funny!

The Luigi’s Mansion series never felt like a top-tier Nintendo series, even though the original Luigi’s Mansion has been quirky and silly in a good way and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon was a really good 3DS game with adding 3D to amplify the scares. But the series never reached as far as the legendary Nintendo games like the Mario series, Metroid and the Legend of Zelda. Luigi’s Mansion 3 elevates the series, bringing it closer to Nintendo’s better known properties.

This was my first Luigi’s Mansion game, but I knew right away it was going to be a charming and funny game, and just a bit spooky. Nothing impressed me more about the game than its presentation. The animations are fantastic. Luigi is an incredibly expressive character. It is great fun to watch his quirky and terrified face while you guide him. 

At first I thought Luigi’s Mansion 3 was going to be a short game as the early puzzles were somewhat easy, but I was shocked by just how much was in the game. The cut scenes are brief and keep the player engaged in the fun gameplay. 

Luigi’s Mansion 3 feels like a playable animated movie–a goofy spooky comedy with ghouls and ghosts but never that scary.

The game takes place in a hotel, with each floor being its own level. It presents puzzles for you to solve and ghosts to capture. Some floors have hidden easter eggs and treasures that give you tons of money, and even if you clear floors you can revisit them to find what you missed the first time. You also have to revisit floors later to solve puzzles advance the main story. 

The puzzles are the best thing about the game. Luigi has a vacuum that sucks or blows objects, and with the new addition to the Poltergust G-00 (“goo,” get it?) Luigi can shoot a plunger that can stick onto some surfaces, and you can then suck the attached plunger to grab objects to move or smash them. For example, imagine you want to pull on a painting to see if there’s a secret treasure behind; use the plunger. He has another mechanic called the “burst” that clears out ghosts and propels Luigi over obstacles.

But some puzzles can’t be completed with Luigi alone. That’s why you can use another feature with the Poltergust G-00, Gooigi! In my opinion, this is the most creative and entertaining mechanic out there. Gooigi is a Luigi clone made out of goo (obviously). Summoning your gooey companion, Gooigi can slide between bars that Luigi can’t normally access. However, if Gooigi touches a slight bit of water, he melts away. But do not worry as Gooigi will come back to Luigi inside the Poltergust G-00 to continue helping Luigi open up new paths.

The boss fights are amazing. They are both intense and funny. You have to deal with a killer piano, a lazy maintenance worker, and an overconfident athlete that mocks you to name just a few. There are a ton of them. 

The one thing I didn’t like about this game was the final ending. It felt like the ending was anticlimactic and it didn’t feel worth it in the end. It was a letdown. The final boss is terrifying but it gets boring as the strategy is straightforward and tedious. If you mess up, you have to repeat a length attack pattern that isn’t a lot of fun.

While Luigi’s Mansion 3 is not as popular as Super Mario Odyssey or The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, it is one of the most delightful and funny games released on the Switch. It runs more smoothly than Super Mario Odyssey. Throughout the game’s impressive play time, I never experienced any frame issues. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a spooky yet funny and charming game that will keep you entertained each step of the way. Luigi finally saves his brother and gets the recognition he deserves. 

I will rate this game 9/10.

Image: Nintendo