Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD Review — ‘a welcome return’

Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Poor Luigi – Mario’s hapless brother is famed for his cowardice, so being trapped in a haunted house populated by a host of rampaging spooks is probably one of his worst nightmares. Even worse? This is the second time it’s happened! A delightfully spooky adventure originally released on Nintendo 3DS, Luigi’s quest to reclaim the fragmented Dark Moon and restore peace to the spooky Evershade Valley – by snatching up a variety of mischievous spirits in the Poltergust 5000 vac-pack – has been locked to the classic handheld since 2013. With Nintendo shutting down the 3DS eShop in 2023, it essentially became lost media, making this Switch remaster a welcome return.

However, if you were expecting a full-bore remake to bring the handheld favourite up to par with 2019’s Luigi’s Mansion 3, well, the hint is in the name – Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is just that, a faithful recreation of the 3DS original, in HD. None of our reluctant hero’s upgraded abilities from the more recent game, such as area attacks to push back groups of enemies or slamming tougher ghosts into the floor, are retroactively included here, and his ectoplasmic clone Gooigi is still half an idea in crackpot inventor Professor E. Gadd’s deranged imagination. This is, almost to a fault, that 2013 game with a digital do-over. A disappointment, then? Not at all.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 – known as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon in some regions – was a highlight of the 3DS, pushing the hardware to its limits with some of the best visuals the portable console ever saw. In hindsight, that still meant plenty of jaggies and blurry background details, all of which are now distant memories thanks to a glorious overhaul. With revamped character models, improved animation – Luigi’s panicky run is adorable – and contemporary lighting effects that allow the searching flashlight beam to beautifully interplay with more advanced shadows, this really feels like playing a cartoon.

The 3DS version leaned into the portability of the platform, with slices of ghost-busting fun perfectly sized for on-the-go play. Rather than having a single vast mansion to explore, Luigi is roped in by Gadd to explore five derelict domiciles, each in turn broken down into smaller, more focused missions. That structure remains here, and continues to work well for the Switch, particularly in handheld mode. It also adds a nice element of replay value, with each mission ranking you on time taken to complete its main objective, number of ghosts caught, and how much damage you took. As you progress and unlock a dark light attachment for the Poltergust 5000 that reveals hidden objects, there’s also a Boo – one of the Mario series’ famously shy spectres – to be found in levels, too.

Luigi’s Mansion 2’s locations remain a real treat, and also benefit from the visual upgrade on display. Each mansion is built around a particular theme, such as Haunted Towers, full of creeping plants and inviting comparison to a Little Shop of Horrors deleted scene, while Secret Mine is less a mansion, and more a family friendly take on claustrophobic cave-in creeper features. They’re packed with secrets to uncover too, which makes that smaller mission structure a bit of a trade-off – portability and quick play is fine, but more time and freedom to explore would have been welcome.

One aspect that remains a problem in 2024 though is the control scheme. Although controls are, overall, vastly improved on the 3DS thanks to the Switch having two fully-featured thumbsticks, actually aiming the Poltergust is still fiddly. The combination of Luigi’s free movement, a fixed camera in third-person perspective, and 360° rotational control for the device all-too-often means that coordinating where you are and what you’re aiming at is tricky. It’s made worse by typically having to pull away from the ghost you’re trying to suck up, which can really throw off your aim, particularly against the stronger spooks that take several attempts to defeat. There are a few options to mitigate this – a setting to switch the right thumbstick’s controls from omnidirectional to horizontal-only helps – but it still never feels quite right. Still, this has been a problem for the Luigi’s Mansion series from way back in the first game on the GameCube – fans may have to just accept that this is as good as we’ll get given the format of the series.

The ScareScraper multiplayer mode (originally named Thrill Tower in European releases of the 3DS version) also makes a return and is similarly mostly unchanged beyond the graphical enhancements. Split across three modes – Hunter, where players work together to catch a swarm of ghosts; Polterpup, chasing down ghost dogs; and Rush, a timed escape from the current floor of the tower – these make for a nice addition to the package, and progress made here feeds back into the single player, with unique ghosts recorded in the professor’s vault and money going towards upgrades.

Unfortunately, while they now support both local and online play there’s no way to play any of the ScareScraper modes solo – for example, filling the other slots with bots, for practice – and you can’t even launch that section of the game until reaching a certain (thankfully early) point in the campaign. More frustrating, the local multiplayer requires each player to have their own Switch and copy of the game, with no option for splitscreen play on a single console.

Ultimately, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD may not offer all the bells and whistles some fans may have hoped for of a Switch upgrade to a 3DS title, especially for a full price release. Its upgraded aesthetic truly is fantastic though, elevating the entire experience and making for the definitive way to experience an enduringly brilliant game.