Well it’s about time I got around to this

Luigi’s mansion 2 or Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon in North America is one of the most unexpected sequels to a Nintendo game in the history of the company, the original game was released in 2001 as a day 1 release for the Nintendo Gamecube, as much beloved as the game is now at first it didn’t sell many copies and only gained it’s popularity a long time after its release, this could be the reason why Luigi’s Mansion 2 while an unexpected release was much different to its predecessor.

After Luigi captures King Boo in a painting at the end of the first game, Professor Elvin Gadd foolishly sold the painting in a garage sale and not long after this King Boo managed to escape from his prison.

A magical moon shaped crystal which floats above Evershade Valley is used to keep the ghostly residents friendly and harmless towards the living however King Boo destroys the crystal and leaves the pieces in the hands of powerful ghosts in various different mansions, after the destruction of the dark moon crystal all of the ghosts become hostile and dangerous and with the professor being too scared too fix the problem himself he sends Luigi to all of the different mansions with the hope that he can bring back peace once more.

The gameplay here is quite different to what many fans of the original game would expect

Instead of allowing fans to explore the mansions freely the game uses stages with specific missions for players to finish.

Boos are back but they are captured much differently, each stage has one hidden and they can only be revealed using the dark light expansion of your poltergust 5000 once the boo has been revealed Luigi must grab it’s tongue and fling it across the area causing it large amounts of damage and once it’s health is completely depleted the boo can be captured, if you collect all of the boos in a mansion you will unlock a bonus mission where you must clear out all of the ghosts as quickly as possible, another collectable are gems each stage had a few gems hidden inside and collecting all of the gems in a mansion will unlock a Luigi statue which players can collect.

The bosses are really fun and some are actually rather difficult however as creative as these can be they lack the charm and personality of the portrait ghosts in the original game.

The graphics are really good, I won’t compare them to Luigi’s first adventure as I find that a bit unfair due to the release gap between the two but here the graphics are smooth and charming with fluid animations and a fantastic use of light and dark colours to help make up the atmosphere of the game, the ghosts are more comical in their design this time around which is a nice change of pace but even though this is a family friendly game they could have added a few more scares.

The controls are not fantastic I found general movement felt great but sucking up the ghosts really strained my thumb as you need to pull the circle pad back quite hard, it actually made me worry a little bit that might be damaging my brand new 2DS

Luigi’s mansion 2 is a great game and was a nice return to the 3ds library for me however it never felt like the Luigi’s mansion sequel I really wanted as it lacked in a lot of be things I love about the first game but even with that said I think it is well worthy of 6.7/10 I wanted more but what I got was still a really good game and it was a lot of fun so bring on the third game if it ever gets made

I hope you enjoyed my review of Luigi’s Mansion 2 for the Nintendo 3DS

Want me to review a specific game/movie/product or do you have a general question you would like me to answer? if so please email me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com