Luigi's Mansion 3 is officially out in the wild, and oof, it's a good one. The game takes the best of both of its prequels and mashes it into one fantastic title, all wrapped in a wonderful HD bow.
While most of the game is great, there are a few problems that could be fixed up. Today, we're going to be looking at five things that we love about the game and five aspects that aren't too great. Let's get into it.
10 Love: Gooigi
Gooigi may be a man with no clear origin, but we love him with all of our hearts. Gooigi is Luigi's little helper and, just in case its name was a bit too subtle, is a goo version of Mario's brother.
Gooigi is able to do things that Luigi can't, such as walking through metal bars, as seen above. He also just seems to kind of...take Luigi's soul when he's active? Luigi's died enough times, let the poor man live.
9 Don't Love: E. Gadd
E. Gadd is a fine character in Luigi's Mansion 3, he's always an important part of the games. However, he's a bit talkative in this one. At times, he is too talkative. E. Gadd can be relentless in his hints and telling Luigi what to do.
Fortunately, Gadd's hints can be turned down to a minimum in the settings, but it doesn't entirely cease his blabbering. After you turn him down, though, he's much less of an annoyance than usual.
8 Love: The Graphics
The Switch is often maligned for the poor performance it can have on certain games. However, first-party titles always look wonderful, and Luigi's Mansion 3 is no exception.
The game is absolutely stunning from front to back. The game looks great, animations are crisp and clean, it runs beautifully, and is a great showcase for what the Switch can do when a game is properly optimized for it. The game looks just as fantastic as other titles such as Super Mario Odyssey, which is obviously a massive compliment to the title.
7 Don't Love: The Slam Animation
Alright, this game is fantastic. There isn't a ton to dislike, so we're going to get into some nitpicks. To start, the slam animation. When you use the attack repeatedly, as the game prompts you to do, the ghost just snaps into position, there's no actual animation of the ghost moving to the other side of Luigi to get slammed again.
This is really just a small nitpick, of course, but it's noticeable. There's simply an animation missing on one of Luigi's most used attacks, which is just a small blemish on an otherwise polished title.
6 Love: Luigi
"M-m-m-Mario!" You can't have a Luigi's Mansion game without the man in green himself. As usual, Luigi is absolutely precious in this game, along with his wonderful little Polterpup. The two are both adorable on their own, but they are also fantastic together.
Luigi is just his cute little scared and dorky self, while Polterpup is always at his side, even helping him learn the controls to his new Poltergust, all while doing the usual cute dog things that dogs do. Luigi's Mansion 3 is truly bursting with charm, largely due to its namesake character.
5 Don't Love: The Difficulty
Of course, as you could probably expect, this game is pretty easy. That's no surprise, and it isn't really a huge disappointment. Still, it would have been nice to at least get some sort of difficulty slider in the game. It's a minor complaint overall.
Maybe Luigi's Mansion 3 will pull a Three Houses and add a Lunatic difficulty mode post-launch that is absolutely impossible to get through in any sort of capacity.
4 Love: The Cutscenes
The cutscenes are another great aspect of Luigi's Mansion 3. As we previously mentioned, the game is absolutely stunning and ripe for some beautiful cutscenes, which the developers deliver in spades, thankfully.
The cutscenes help thread the narrative together and allow for some funny moments to ensue as well. With a game this gorgeous and full of charm, it was only right that it would feature such great cutscenes. Considering Nintendo isn't always one for doing such things, they're a great addition to see in the game.
3 Don't Love: Some Of The Controls
One negative aspect of the game can be the controls. We're really getting nitpicky here, because it isn't that big of an issue, and the sensitivity can be tweaked, and gyro controls can be used if you'd rather play the game like that.
Sometimes the game can just feel like it's fighting you a bit, or the flashlight isn't properly lighting up what area it will stun ghosts in. As we said, this is overall pretty nitpicky and can be avoided for the most part. It's just never fun losing a battle due to some control issues.
2 Love: Multiplayer
One fun aspect of Luigi's Mansion 3 is that it has multiplayer functionality, both online and local. This really isn't something that the developers needed to do, as the game is certainly a full package without this part of the game.
However, the multiplayer just helps to strengthen Luigi's Mansion 3. All of the modes are a blast to play and feature both competitive and co-op action for players to enjoy. You can even just play the entire game in co-op if you'd like. Oh, and contrary to some of Nintendo's other Switch titles, the online mode actually works, so that's nice to see.
1 Don't Love: Ghost Variety
We're really grasping at straws here. The reintroduction of boss ghosts with their own design and feel is fantastic, a welcome return to the series. The rest of the ghosts are all fun and expressive too and are quite entertaining to watch when they aren't aware that you're there.
However, there likely could have been a few more styles of ghosts that require different strategies to take down. Either way, this game is absolutely fantastic. If you haven't bought it yet, that's a situation you need to fix.