Next Level doesn’t understand what made the original game so memorable. Dark Moon may have been a step back, but at least it attempted to flesh out the combat with the Strobulb and power surge. The puzzle gimmicks were also spread across multiple, cohesive mansions. Even if they never touched the first game’s mansion, they were believable as places. When fans wished for a return to a single mansion after Dark Moon, I believe what they really wanted was a return to a cohesive setting.

Despite Luigi’s Mansion 3 taking place in one hotel mansion, it has no sense of cohesion. Expected setpieces like a shopping mall, exercise room, and sewer exist alongside a prehistoric museum, Egyptian tomb, pirate cove, and a magic show. The mansion is a series of unrelated levels taped together, an unsatisfying compromise of the first two games’ design philosophies. Top that off with extremely repetitive combat against the same few enemies, cat chases that exist to pad the runtime, a gimmick that doesn’t enhance the puzzles as much as you think (Gooigi), and a lack of worthwhile items to spend gold on, and you have the most overrated Switch exclusive. The only reasons I’m not giving this one star are because most of the boss fights were interesting and the film studio was both conceptually neat and starred a ghost who isn’t hostile.

Given the strong following Next Level has, I’m fully expecting them to develop Luigi’s Mansion 4. But given their track record with the series, I doubt it will feature the best elements from all three games. The atmosphere and cohesiveness of 1, the combat of 2, and the bosses of 3.