Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD Review – Good Bones, Modest Renovation

The Switch is home to more than its share of remakes and remasters, but despite having a hearty library of games worth revisiting, few if any Nintendo 3DS games have been up for revival. That’s about to change though, as the 3DS is finally getting a little love in Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (originally known as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon in North America).

Luigi’s Mansion 2/Dark Moon really pushed what the 3DS could do back in the day, but does it still bust with the best a decade later on more capable hardware? Or is it hard to scare up much enthusiasm for this latest Nintendo revival? Tip-toe onward for the full rundown…

If you’ve ever played a Luigi’s Mansion game before, you’ll be familiar with the basic setup here. That dastardly King Boo has escaped his bonds and shattered the Dark Moon which protects the Evershade Valley, causing it to become haunted up something fierce. Luigi is again recruited by friend/tormentor Professor E. Gad to don the upgraded Poltergust 5000 and cleanse multiple themed mansions of their pesky paranormal activity.

While there’s always debate about where the line between remasters and full-on remakes lies, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is unquestionably on the remaster end of the scale. While the game sports updated textures, character models, and improved lighting, actual level layouts and geometry doesn’t appear to have changed, with everything having a rather chunky, angular 3DS look. That isn’t to say the game is ugly, but it’s a solid notch below Luigi’s Mansion 3, which is one of the most visually polished first-party Switch titles.

Not a ton has changed in terms of core gameplay, either. As in all games in the series, Luigi uses his Poltergust vacuum to both interact with the environment and suck up specters. In battle, your goal is to stun ghosts with your flashbulb and then vacuum them up. Ghosts will try to break free from you, but pulling in the opposite direction fills a meter which allows you to unleash an extra burst of suction power. None of the moves added in Luigi’s Mansion 3, including the satisfying ability to smash ghosts into objects and each other, have been reverse-engineered into Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD – combat plays out like it always has.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The game was, unavoidably, a bit awkward to play on a 3DS owing to its lack of a second analog stick, but that’s obviously not a limitation Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD has to deal with. You can now move Luigi with the left stick and aim the Poltergust independently with the right stick, much like in Luigi’s Mansion 1 and 3. That said, continuing this series’ history of inexplicable control limitations, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD doesn’t offer a single-stick option where your vacuum always points the same way you’re facing.

The level design of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is largely identical to how it was on the 3DS, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Each of the game’s five themed mansions offer satisfying classic-adventure-game-style exploration, with plenty of goodies and secrets hidden around nearly every corner. While there are some surprisingly challenging brainteasers to be found here, the puzzles aren’t quite up to the same level of creativity found in Luigi’s Mansion 3, with solutions eventually starting to feel a bit predictable. Boss encounters run the gamut, with some, like the giant spider lurking at the end of the first mansion, feeling like complex puzzles in their own right, while others are more by-the-book and repetitive.

Unfortunately, Luigi’s Mansion 2’s generally impressive level design isn’t always well-served by the game’s mission structure. Unlike Luigi’s Mansion 1 and 3, which give you a degree of freedom to explore the world as you wish, Luigi’s Mansion 2 is strictly mission-based, with areas of a mansion that don’t serve said mission typically being blocked off. While the majority of missions you’ll tackle are interesting enough, serving up new areas to explore and challenges to face, others are pretty obvious fillers. Particularly groanworthy are the repeated missions that task you with tracking down a wayward Polterpup, usually by revisiting numerous rooms you’ve already seen.

Also frustrating is the game’s save system, which only records your progress after you’ve completed a mission, some of which can be 30 to 40 minutes long. Have to quit midway through a mission? Too bad, back to the beginning. Die during a mission? Unless you find a hidden golden dog bone item during a mission, too bad. While Mansion-ending bosses are standalone missions that allow you to start right back at the beginning of the battle when you die, there are multiple missions that place minibosses likely to kill you the first time around at the end of a lengthy stage. Overall, Luigi’s Mansion 2 has more annoying difficulty spikes than you generally expect from a Nintendo-published game.

While Luigi’s Mansion 2 may have started life on a small screen, it isn’t a small game. The main campaign will take you at least a dozen hours to complete, with additional collectibles, unlockable bonus stages, and ScareScraper mode to consider. A randomized four-player co-op dungeon hack with various game types, ScareScraper isn’t likely to take the world by storm, but it provides some quick-shot fun and, based on my hands-on time with Nintendo PR reps and fellow reviewers, the online play seems to be quite functional. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD might not be the freshest dish, but you can’t criticize the portions.

This review was based on a copy of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD provided by publisher Nintendo.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD

It’s easy to see why Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD stood out in its original form on the 3DS, and even today, there’s plenty of reason to like the green guy’s spooktacular sophomore outing. That said, limited efforts to update the original material, particularly some of the game’s more frustrating structural and design choices, makes this Mansion feel just a bit creaky.