Luigi's Mansion 2 HD - Switch Review

Nathan Rudge -

The year of Luigi was 11 years ago and during this time, we had Luigi's Mansion 2 released on the Nintendo 3DS. Now we have an HD coat of paint applied to the Nintendo Switch with Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, a faithful remake, albeit a bit too faithful with no new content to speak of. If you've never had the chance to play the original release, though, you now have the best available way to experience the hunt for the dark moon.

The Good

Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is more of the best Mario brother's adventures with his crazy scientist friend and ghost busting vacuum cleaner, the Poltergust. Genuinely, the gameplay of the Luigi's Mansion series has always been one of the biggest draws for me, and there is no difference here. The exploration and discovery of each location, while shining a light on those pesky ghosts to get rid of their nuisance, is just a level of fun that keeps you coming back for more. 

Breaking the game up into smaller, but still very unique mansions, left the development team room to explore different aesthetics. The first level has a very similar style to the first game, and the level design reflects that, albeit broken down into bite-sized pieces. While exploration is broken up due to the way the game was made for portability and shorter play times, you can still experience the wonder of solving puzzles on your way to watch the world change around you.

The music design is just exceptionally thematic, like always, and this helps set the mood for the creepy ghost-fighting adventure Luigi has found himself in again. Classic, spooky and unsettling tunes that I found myself humming throughout the day regularly. Although nothing can beat the original Luigi humming his tune in the first Luigi’s Mansion game, you still have that same eerie feeling.

TL;DR

  • Fantastic gameplay
  • Clever level design
  • Wonderfully thematic music

The Bad

I have the same complaints from the original release of Luigi’s Mansion 2; the ghost designs are just so generic and bland in comparison to the other titles in the series. This is especially noticeable with Luigi’s Mansion 3 also on the switch. It's just disappointing when you go from truly unique and interesting ghost designs to a small number of ghosts that are only unique to show how they behave.

The back and forth between the mansions and Professor E. Gadd’s lab is just tedious. Instead of each mansion having its own experience that you tackle in one expedition, they're broken up into individual levels within the mansion. This just results in a lot of loading screens that drag out an extended game session. On top of that, though, it feels like you're extremely limited to only exploring the sections of the mansions that the individual levels want you to explore. This is most notable with the hidden collectables that can only be found in specific levels; even if you go back to that area on a different one, they're not there.

TL;DR

  • Bland ghost designs
  • Tedious back-and-forth

Final Score: 8/10

The 3DS had limitations on performance, and this has come to negatively impact the remake of Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, especially in consideration of having their younger brother on the same system. While it's only showing up in how the levels are played and ghost designs, it's just enough to hold it back from an exceptional level. However, in saying that, there's still a really fun game here to explore, with a solid foundation of gameplay mechanics that were expanded on in Luigi's Mansion 3. I can't help but recommend picking up Luigi's Mansion 2 HD if you enjoy the franchise, even more so if this title would be the entry point for you.

Thank you for checking out our Luigi's Mansion 2 HD Switch review, thank you to Nintendo AU/NZ for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support: