You could arguee that Luigis Mansion 3 has boring gameplay and therefore the game is bad. But to me, luigis mansion 3 isn't about the gameplay, it's about little details and enviornments. The sound of the poltergust absorbing everything in its path, all of the different boss ghosts and their personalities, the funny ghost dog, etc...
The enviornments on each floor are unique, wether you're in a pirate room, Egyptian room, 80s discotheque, greenhouse, museum, or a film set.
In short, the game is a lot more fun looking and appreciating the visuals instead of powering through the story.

No amount of charm can make this game fun.
Luigi's Mansion 3 has frustrating level design, annoying encounters, slow movement speed and unskippable cutscenes. The joy up sucking up hidden money and coins soon wares off when you realise there is little purpose to collecting it.
I especially hate the cat enemy that maks you backtrack to previous floors and locks you out of progress until it is defeated multiple times.
This game does everything in it's power to waste your time and I would not recommend it. However I must say it does look gorgeous and it is nice to hear Luigi's whimpers of fear as you roam spooky hallways and corridors.

Excellent game. there's a wide variety of levels, all unique and interesting. This is one of the prettiest and most polished-looking games on the switch and the mechanics are pretty sound. it's really just a refinement of the Luigi's mansion formula.

minor spoilers ahead:


where i felt the game could use some improvements are:
- bring back the scariness factor. the original had a good eerie feel to it, with lots of very dimly lit rooms, many areas in this are too brightly lit, and the ghosts don't invoke the same fear when they pop out. I looked back at the original just to see and it still definitely feels more tense and foreboding(as far as a mario title goes anyway).the tension is more palpable and exemplified by the setpieces, environmental and sound design
- there is pretty much no replayability. the game is good, and it kinda gets hurt by this. I have not really felt like playing throught it again because it's easy enough that i'd just breeze through again, and there's no kind of postgame or new game plus with anything extra. you can play multiplayer i guess.
- needs more interconnectedness and backtracking. the original had a section of the game which required revisiting old cleared rooms, and it felt more like one cohesive connected world than individual levels like this does. there is some but not a lot.

Luigi's Mansion is an adventure puzzle game, not really about capturing ghosts or mashing the A button, the appeal have always been the creativity of its level's puzzle design, and this one had just that, until it didn't. For the most part, almost every level was engaging and fun to figure out, until the end levels proved to be no more than just a free pass to the next floor, now you are just mashing the A button. Last level was good again tho. Bosses were alright, game controls were fine and level's design were more often than not the best part of the game. This is the first Mansion I got to complete but I feel the previous ones felt somewhat more "scary" and engaging.

To call this a step up from Dark Moon would be a gross understatement, and while I don’t think this quite captures what made the first game stick out in people’s memories it more than makes up for it by being a fantastic game in its own right.

Unlike the current dev team behind Paper Mario since Sticker Star, Next Level Games seemingly took a lot of the gripes people had with Dark Moon to heart, between the return of bosses more akin to the first games portrait ghosts and the complete axing of the mission structure, which overall makes for a better gameplay cycle. The game autosaves quite frequently anyways so the devs still found a work around to accommodate for the Switch’s portability which is a welcome addition.

The few new additions to exploration and combat also help to spice up the gameplay enough that it avoids some of the repetition that Dark Moon and even the first game suffered from at points. I did initially think Gooigi would end up as really gimmicky and little else, but it’s implementation did actually make for some humorous moments during cutscenes, on top of a lot of cool new ways for puzzle solving that the first 2 wouldn’t have been able to achieve.

Speaking of cutscenes, good God is this game a technical marvel. Between the many great lighting and particle effects to the phenomenal character animation it almost puts other big Switch titles like Mario Odyssey to shame in some regards.

While a Luigi’s Mansion sequel more in line with the original in tone and atmosphere would certainly be really nice, I’m more than happy if this’ll set the precedent for any future sequels, which given Nintendo’s recent acquisition of Next Level Games is almost inevitable at this rate. Regardless I excitedly anticipate the next paranormal romp with my favourite Mario brother with great enthusiasm, here’s hoping it’ll be able to top this.

9/10

🧾 Summary:

This is my first experience with Luigi's Mansion series and I absolutely loved this game. I couldn't put it down and not once was I bored. Everything about this game is fun. I love the levels are bit size, creative, somewhat linear so you can't get lost, and i loved the puzzles and boss battles. This game has some of the most creative boss battles I have ever seen. Its more about figuring out the trick about the boss than it is repetition and skill. Nothing in this game is overly hard but its executed so well. It knows what it wants and goes for it. I feel this game is a sleeper hit and needs to be talked about more. The only issue i had with this game is somewhat clunky 2.5d twin stick aiming. I have issues with that in other 2.5d aiming games as well so this is no different. Play this game now!! Its one of the best feel good games i ever played.

📚 Full Review:

🎮 Platform: Nintendo Switch
⌚ Time to finish - 13.5h
🏆Trophy completion - Did not go out of my way to get any.

🤬Difficulty - Not at all very hard and I appreciate that. I never got lost, the puzzles were a little bit of a reach but not too much of a reach, the boss battles were so fun to figure out. Its a tiny stretch and when you get past something it feels so rewarding!

🌄Graphics – A+
Nintendo first party games are absolutely beautiful. This game is no exception. It invokes a sense of silly scared feeling than any other game i played. All the characters look so good and fluid.

🌦 Atmosphere/Music – A+
Amazing score!!! I sometimes would just stop the game to hear the score. The atmosphere is perfectly nailed.

📚 Main Story / Characters – A
I realllly liked Luigi here and can't just help but feel for his scaredy cat nature. I feel in this game you actually get to fully feel his personality. I won't spoil it but at a certain point of the game they juxtapose what Mario does with what Luigi does and its so funny! Despite all that, Luigi conquers and if not does more than mario in this game. Thats a great message for kids!! Main story is fun and exactly what I expected. :) The real gem is every character you come across has their own personality and quirks, including the bosses.

🤺 Combat – A
Boss battles amazing! Even kill regular trash ghosts was fun! Ghosts drag you and you have to pull the other way. It was always engaging and fun even after the 100th ghost. I think they should be commended for even making trash mob killing fun. They also mix up combat every so often to break the routine, that force you to appraoch battle in different ways. FOr example poltercat.


🧭 Side Activities / Exploration – B
I did a few of them but alot of it comes down to going through hidden pipes, sucking up items etc. Its ok. Wouldn't go out of my way for it. Its a fairly linear game so not much to explore.


🚗 Movement/Physics – B+

Over all its great. But the twin stick aiming in mention in intro can be clunky and has gotten me killed in boss battles because he didn't aim in the right direction in time. The worst offender was the final boss battle where the timing is very short.


📣 Voice acting – A
Minimal but great.

🥇 Best thing about the game - Everything. Its charming, its fun.

👎 Worst thing about the game - Twin stick control aiming.

[ if you liked the review throw me a like! ❤️ ]

Played from – to: (2023-07-20 – 2023-08-02) – Nintendo Switch.
‣ 4/10 – Luigi is a muppet.
‣ Thoughts: I can’t believe how much I despised playing this game. On almost all levels this felt unbearable and I’m sure that’s all me and the type of games I enjoy. On a slightly positive note, each floor of the mansion that is not a mansion but a 15-floor hotel (why call the game Luigi’s mansion?) is unique. They all have their own themes and theme fitting boss fights and enemies. Sadly, the enemies don’t have any variety besides the clothes they wear and the boss fights gameplay wise are trash. I enjoyed the pianist fight, but everything afterwards became a mundane slog. This is because Luigi only has a few and very limiting responses when it comes to dealing with ghosts. He can suck, he can push, he can pull, and he can stun that is it. Every fight is figuring out the appropriate reaction to the boss and repeating it 4 to 5 times. This is absurd because some puzzle solutions are bizarre. Doctor twat glasses gives useless hints and when you do finally realize what has to be done the game forces you to do it multiple times with barely any variety. On top of that you must wait half a millennium for the boss ghost to stop flexing all its moves in the arsenal until you can attack again. I’m not saying the puzzles in this game are hard, but the way to solve them is just accidental at times, because of the god-awful controls. I could go on how the sewer level is one of the worst sections of any game I have ever played and how the perspective of the camera makes some items feel closer than they are making puzzles feel unsolvable without google and so on. However, I think it is pretty apparent I hate Luigi’s Mansion and I could give you hundreds of reasons why, but that does not mean the game is bad for some of you. To me this is a bloated, boring, and poorly put together melting shit pile that gives the player zero satisfaction upon completion and should not have been made.

Luigi's Mansion 3 is one of those games that's gassed up by so many people that I was afraid (lol) it might not live up to my expectations and BOY do I feel stupid for ever doubting this game. This trilogy topper is so perfect in nearly every way that the only things I've seen people bitch and whine about are the lighting being too bright and the some of the backtracking segments being annoying. While I agree with the backtracking, I don't even think it's THAT bad (Paper Mario TTYD still has it worse). As for the lighting...uuuhh, no??? Every single room in the game has perfectly moody lighting. Are y'all blind? Anyways, literally everything else, to the atmosphere, to the puzzles, to the game mechanics, to the cutscenes, to the boss fights, ALL OF IT IS HAUNTINGLY PHENOMENAL. Luigi's Mansion 3 is a modern masterpiece and it needs to go down in history as one of the best video games Nintendo has ever made. I can now confirm that the Luigi's Mansion trilogy is one of the best trilogies in all of gaming.

Loogy's mansion is pretty fine. It's main hook and what will dictate how you ultimately feel about the game is its visuals and animations, which are very well done but couldn't carry the entire game to greatness for me. Honestly if the game got rid of the dark light mechanic, and just made the game exclusively controlled by the twin sticks and shoulder buttons while the face buttons could just have Luigi shout bullshit and make him piss his pants I'd have liked the game a lot more but c'est la vie. Also fuck the shitty aiming reticle that's barely visible at certain times give me a fuckin Call of Duty lazer sight on my vacuum pls jesus christ the final boss can eat my ass.

Next Level Games takes another crack at the Luigi's Mansion series, with mostly successful results. The pacing is greatly improved over 2, the game generally doesn't overstay its welcome and it's constantly throwing different things at you (the 17 floors/levels are all wildly different in theme and all have something worth remembering them for, making it more similar to the first one in this regard).

The inclusion of Gooigi was great as it allowed for really interesting puzzles and even a couple of really good bosses, the second to last one being my personal favourite. Having to manage both Luigis at the same time is something the game does fairly often and it's always clever.

Clever is a good way to describe the entire game, as everything here has a very specific purpose and there's very little in terms of filler or padding. Really the only issues I have with the game are that there's things I wish it did, like having a bit more backtracking (considering how interesting every level this time around I'm surprised it only happens around 3-4 times) and generally the game not having a lot of unlockables, meaning that unless you're going for 100% there's not much reason to explore this game. Which is a shame as this is one of those games where it's really fun to interact with everything and see every nook and cranny of every room.

Also kudos to the developers for managing to make a game this good looking on Switch while also having a physics engine running in the background, which I thought really enhanced the game. It's just really satisfying to vacuum objects and throwing stuff at stuff, I could do that for hours.

And ranks are back! They're not as interesting as they were in the first one but I'll let that slide. All in all, this game is very much a worthwhile experience for anybody who is looking for a unique game to play. Very interested to see Next Level Games do more with the series in the future, which I imagine will happen eventually

Charming but frustrating. The idea of this game is better than its execution. I would love to be a Ghostbusters Luigi, and the co-op is great in theory.

The game design and controls feel like relics of the GameCube era. Discovering how to damage many bosses and mini-bosses is an exercise in patience and experimentation that rarely feels rewarding.

The act of pointing Luigi at a target to shoot/blow/suck/grab is nothing short of torture. I understand the desire to keep the camera perspective as-is to retain that dollhouse graphical vibe, but they need to modernize controls atop that somehow. Maybe you could overlay a reticule on-screen and have Luigi automatically aim at it? I don't know.

The graphics and art direction are great, sound design is fantastic too.

But ultimately the combat is too hit-or-miss, and exploration feels nearly meaningless since the only things you can buy with money are more lives (the game isn't too hard, especially in co-op) or hints for... more meaningless items to gather?

Sometimes cracking the puzzles was fun, but other times you were left wondering why you should both.