Luigi has spent decades as the second player. In Luigi’s Mansion 3, he finally gets the hotel suite, the spotlight, and the panic attack.
The game came out in 2019, seven years ago, and it remains the high point of the series. Developed by Next Level Games with Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 6, it sends Mario’s brother to The Last Resort, an Art Deco hotel in a mountainside area. The invitation is a trap. King Boo and the hotel’s ghostly owner, Hellen Gravely have imprisoned Mario, Princess Peach, and a trio of Toads inside portraits. Luigi escapes down a laundry chute and spends the rest of the game climbing back up.
Trailer, via Nintendo of America.
Stolen buttons and a vertical hotel
That structure is the whole game. Each floor of the hotel carries its own theme, and each one is locked behind a button stolen by a powerful ghost. Luigi recovers them one at a time, which turns the hotel into a vertical anthology of ideas. A floor can be anything. The elevator is the table of contents.
This is a smarter design than it sounds. The Last Resort gives Next Level Games permission to change the scenery whenever a joke or a mechanic runs dry, and the game rarely repeats itself. The ghost-catching loop stays constant underneath: stun with the Strobulb, snag with the Poltergust, drain the health bar down to zero. The rooms around that loop keep moving.
Gooigi does the work Luigi cannot
The best addition to Luigi’s Mansion 3 is Gooigi, an ectoplasmic duplicate of Luigi who can reach places the real one cannot. Gooigi dies on contact with water. He slips through grates and gaps. Puzzles and combat both bend around the two of them, and co-operative play lets a second player take the green doppelgänger directly.
It is a small idea with a long tail. The game never lets Gooigi become a gimmick that only appears in tutorial rooms. He is load-bearing from the moment Professor E. Gadd hands him over.
The expanded multiplayer is the other new piece. Cooperative and competitive modes run both locally and online, with split-screen support for players in the same room. None of it is the reason to buy the game. All of it is more generous than the series has been before.
A portable laboratory in the parking garage
The story is thin, and it knows it. Luigi wakes in the night, finds the hotel transfigured, and learns the vacation was arranged as revenge for King Boo’s previous defeats. He finds the Dark-Light Device in a safe and uses it to free E. Gadd, and the professor sets up a portable laboratory in the parking garage. From there, the goal is simple: reach the upper floors and free Luigi’s friends before King Boo’s plan succeeds.
What carries it is Luigi himself. He is reluctant and cowardly, and the game treats that as a feature rather than a flaw. His fear is the comedy and the engine at once. A hero who does not want to open the door is funnier than one who does.
Polterpup, Luigi’s pet ghost dog, avoided capture and helps him explore the basement. The Toads serve as Peach’s entourage before the portraits close over them. The cast is thin but well used.
Where the hotel runs thin
Luigi’s Mansion 3 won Best Family Game at The Game Awards 2019. Nintendo has reported sales of 14.25 million copies as of March 2024. The critical reception was warm across the board, and the aggregate sits at 8.9 out of 10 across 14 outlets. That number holds up.
The fixed third-person perspective keeps the hotel readable. It is a large setting, but the camera never fights the player, and the ghost-catching verbs stay legible from the first floor to the last. The game teaches a short list of actions and then spends hours finding new uses for them.
The weak point is the multiplayer, which is competent but weightless compared to the story mode. The competitive modes in particular feel like a separate product bolted onto a very good one. They are not why anyone stays.
The stronger critique is that Luigi’s Mansion 3 is not frightening, and never tries to be. Its themes list horror and science fiction alongside comedy, but the scares are gentle and the tone is warm. That is a choice, not a failure. It does mean the game is a family adventure wearing a haunted-house coat, and anyone arriving for dread will leave unsatisfied.
What the climb is worth
What it delivers instead is craft. The Last Resort is one of the best settings Nintendo has built in the Switch era, and the elevator structure lets the game end before the hotel runs out of ideas. Gooigi is the rare second-character mechanic that makes the first character more interesting. And Luigi, finally, is the lead.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is the best entry in its series and one of the most confident games Nintendo published on the Switch. It is not scary, and it is not a multiplayer game. It is a long, generous, funny climb through a hotel that keeps changing its mind, and it earns its place.
KEY FACTS
- Title: Luigi’s Mansion 3
- Release year: 2019
- Developer: Next Level Games, with Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 6
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Platform: Nintendo Switch
- Genre: Action-adventure
- Modes: Single player, multiplayer, co-operative, split screen
- Perspective: Fixed third person
- Critic aggregate: 8.9/10 (14 outlets)
- Sales: 14.25 million copies as of March 2024
- Award: Best Family Game, The Game Awards 2019
- Preceded by: Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (2013)
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