Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD – Game Review

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD

(available for Nintendo Switch only)

So, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD was announced alongside a bit of a filler lineup for what will probably be the final calendar year of the Nintendo Switch, since Nintendo has promised to reveal the console’s successor within the fiscal year, meaning the latest we will see it is March 2025.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD comes into a very crowded market, Nintendo has now shown up with a much bigger lineup of first- and third-party games that are coming out for the console later this year- so how does Luigi’s Mansion 2 stack up amongst them? Considering that this is a port of a 3DS game, granted, it’s one that has been cleaned up quite a bit, so much so that you could call it a remake instead of a remaster- but it is still trying to remake a game that is often considered the worst of the trilogy. It’s also being put alongside the third of this series on this console, which I think is the best one.

If you’ve played the original Luigi’s Mansion 2, it’s pretty much the same deal. You’re doing these Ghostbuster style levels and solving various puzzles with a bit of basic combat. The big difference this time is unlike Luigi’s Mansion 1 and 3, the game is divided into a mission structure, which are often quite short- you’re looking at about 15-to-20-minute missions, which is because it was originally made for the 3DS and was taking portable playing into account.

However, the Switch is part home console, so sometimes you’ll be playing this on your couch. In that sense, I don’t think it has worked very well.

PROS

• Graphics and Art Style

I’ll give praise where it is deserved, Tantalus Media has done a great job updating it for the Switch. Nothing against Next Level Games who developed the original, they did a great job at working with what they had, but Tantalus has upgraded the game extremely well.

It doesn’t look as good as Luigi’s Mansion 3, but it does stand up with various other Switch games.

The one big problem it has though, is because it doesn’t look as good as Luigi’s Mansion 3, it does fail to impress in other regards. The main issue is the lighting, which was one of the biggest complaints it had when it came out- it felt like they had lost some of the atmosphere that the original had. I think when you blow it up to HD, it’s even more noticeable.

That being said, there are some good aspects to it also. I do think that the ghosts look slightly better this time, and they fit in a bit more than the designs in LM3. Though I don’t think the mansions look very good in the update. There are 5 mansions in total, and personally I don’t think they look that great in the update. They don’t look bad though, and I commend the team.

• Soundtrack

Luigi’s Mansion games traditionally have great soundtracks, and this one is no different. Personally, I think with all things considered, they’ve done a very good job updating the sound quality- some of those 3DS games really required headphones to get the most out of them, so getting an updated soundtrack is pretty good!

MIXED

• Gameplay

I will give credit that in every sense, this is a Luigi’s Mansion game. I do enjoy the combination of light combat and puzzle solving that the games provide. They also have very fun environments to explore!

However, I don’t think that the mission structures work. They work while I’m on the go- but when I’m at home, the tediousness really sunk in, especially considering that there’s not that many of them. They’re very repetitive, so you don’t necessarily want to go back and redo any of them unless you want to 100% the game. I just didn’t really enjoy it a lot of the time as a result.

Some of the missions were really good, but I didn’t feel the need to redo them, even if I enjoyed them, and the bad ones were really a slog.

CONS

• No Checkpoints

This one really got on my nerves. I know the missions aren’t very long at all, but I found that most of them had little to no checkpoints, and that meant that I had to do the missions from the start every time! That made me put the game down on several occasions- this could have been an added quality of life improvement.

If they wanted to make it so that dying would affect your score, then they could have made it so that the timer keeps going when you come back from the checkpoint.

The only way you avoid it is to collect the Golden Bones that Polterpup provides you (yes, this is the game he was introduced in), but I only found that on a few occasions.

It also doesn’t help that upgrades are tied to collecting money in game, so you could be repeating levels to get more money for those upgrades. Which again, if you die on them, you’ll be repeating them a lot.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is not a bad game, it’s above average. But I don’t see why anyone was really wanting this one to come back. It’s a fine game, but the mission structure makes the game feel broken up too much. But I did enjoy the main aspects of the gameplay, the controls were fine enough (although I don’t think the gyro is as good on the Switch version), but I don’t understand why it exists, other than for Nintendo to have something to release in June because they couldn’t find a third-party game to publish.

I could get behind a remake collection of Luigi’s Mansion 1 & 2, because then you would have the entire trilogy on one console, but as it stands, I don’t think there’s a point of getting this game when Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a lot more beginner friendly.

FINAL SCORE: 6.5/10