Like many of Nintendo’s properties, Luigi’s Mansion has quickly become one of the company’s biggest series with Nintendo Switch. 2019’s Luigi’s Mansion 3 has sold over 14 million copies to date, surpassing some of the biggest games found on rival platforms. With Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD now available on Switch, Nintendo has breathed new life into Luigi’s second experience, and it’s one that might have been overlooked by fans on 3DS.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 brought lots of new ideas to the series from the original, with the biggest being multiple mansions instead of one. These are each themed, bringing new ghosts, puzzles, and surprises to discover. The story kicks off with King Boo destroying the Dark Moon, causing it to split into six pieces. The ghosts run amuck as a result, leaving Professor E. Gadd to call Luigi to his workshop for another round of ghost busting.
Luigi is tasked with tracking down the Poltergust 5000, a new device from E. Gadd that comes with a few major upgrades from the original Poltergust 3000. First, you can now charge up a flash to stun groups of ghosts with the Strobulb, which can also be used on light sensors to unlock doors and safes. There’s also the Dark-Light Device, a new type of light bulb that allows Luigi to uncover secrets that would otherwise be invisible in the environment. While you won’t find Gooigi or any of the Poltergust G-00 upgrades in this remaster, these gameplay additions make for a fun, refined take on the classic series formula of the GameCube original.
There are five different mansions to explore in the game, each with its own personality. Some of the mansions found in LM2 include Haunted Towers, which offer a greenhouse-like theme, Old Clockworks with a desert theme, and more. This approach allows for a much more varied level design when compared to the first game. It was a natural evolution of the single mansion design, and it’s clear how Nintendo pushed that formula further in Luigi’s Mansion 3 with the Hotel and its 17 floors.
One gameplay upgrade I greatly appreciated was the addition of the control scheme found in Luigi’s Mansion 3, which allows you to look around the corridors and rooms utilizing the right stick. This makes controlling Luigi much easier than it was in the 3DS original, even if it’s just a preference at the end of the day. The original game felt tight and challenging to control in certain areas, but this control scheme instantly alleviated any similar feelings from the get-go.
Once you wrap up the single-player campaign, the ScareScraper multiplayer mode offers loads of fun. You can choose the number of floors you’d like to tackle and then begin hunting ghosts with up to four players online. This was one of the best aspects of the original game, and it shines here as well. Although upgrades made in Luigi’s Mansion 3 aren’t here, this is still an excellent time in which you can easily spend well over a dozen hours.
Don’t be fooled by the ‘HD’ tag – this is a massive enhancement of the original title. Almost every texture in the entire game has been remade or tweaked to fit the Nintendo Switch hardware, creating an experience that looks quite good visually. Tantalus, the developer behind The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, was in charge of this remaster, and that team has once again done a terrific job. Lighting is also an area that was completely revamped, with all kinds of new reflections and shadows added throughout the game. I’m under the belief that this is an entirely new system, and it’s quite impressive for this remaster.
The game is locked at 30FPS, which might be a disappointment to some. However, I did not experience any dips whatsoever in my playthrough, offering an incredibly smooth and reliable experience. While the original game offered an uncapped frame rate ranging between 30 to 60FPS, this experience offers stability, which sometimes goes out the window in frame rate discussions. With the vastly improved resolution, textures, and lighting, I have no complaints about the performance of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. It’s exactly what I would expect from a Switch remaster.
While it doesn’t quite look as expressive as Luigi’s Mansion 3, many details that were almost unrecognizable on the 240p 3DS are now blatant. Each of Luigi’s animations is a joy to watch as he creeps his way through each of the mansions available in the game. The comedic elements of this series are often its strongest aspect, and the new visuals truly allow those elements to shine like never before.
If you experienced Luigi’s Mansion 2 on 3DS and have no desire to revisit it, you’re not missing much here. There is no new content in this updated version of the game. I would’ve liked to see Nintendo and Tantalus add new content for returning players, but I understand the teams opting to respect the source material. This was built as a handheld title, and the remaster retains that feeling. The result is the definitive version of Luigi’s Mansion 2 by far, offering a wonderful fresh coat of paint with new textures, lighting effects, and more. The intricacies and quirks of the level design made for 3DS are still here, making for a fun blast from the past in a sense.
First-time players might be puzzled by a game that is relatively stripped back compared to the latest title of the series, but that’s what makes this release so fun to me. It provides a clear picture of the series’ evolution and how the team at Next Level Games evolved the formula even further, paving the way for one of my favorite Nintendo series to become bigger than ever before. Plus, Luigi’s Mansion 2 is a blast with numerous puzzles and comedic bits to discover – what’s not to like?
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is a great effort from Nintendo and Tantalus, revitalizing a 3DS classic and breathing new life into its visuals like never before. While this release certainly won’t satisfy everyone, a lot of care has been put into the preservation of this title. It’s great to have another Luigi’s Mansion game on Nintendo Switch, and I can only hope that the first title in the series makes it over at some point to form a complete trilogy.
Nintendo provided Final Weapon with a Nintendo Switch copy of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD for review purposes.
