How Long to Beat Luigi’s Mansion 3
Luigi's Mansion 3 takes roughly 10-15 hours to complete the main story, depending on your pace and experience with puzzles. For players seeking 100% completion, including collecting all gems and boos, the game can take around 15-20 hours. It's a fun, atmospheric adventure with moderate replayability!
Luigi’s Mansion 3 - The Perfect Cozy Halloween Game
It’s actually great that Nintendo found a unique niche for Mario’s younger brother Luigi! Since 2001, he is no longer a simple palette swap with a name change, or living in his older brother’s shadow. No. Not anymore! In fact he has moved on and is now enjoying the limelight as a ghost hunting expert.
Despite the name, Luigi’s Mansion 3 doesn’t place in a mansion, manor house or even bungalow! Instead he, along with Mario, Peach and the Toads, are invited as ‘Special VIP’ guests to a very suspicious hotel.
I mean, the hotel itself is lovely. Very top notch. Classy, however, it’s the characters there who are very bizarre and suspect. Eventually intentions from these said individuals are made clear and with everyone captured in sepia-toned paintings, it’s up to Luigi to save the day…. Again!
As you could have guessed, the overall premise of this game is very simple. To rescue Mario and friends, you clear every floor of the hotel, obtaining elevator keys which have been stolen, and venturing through each themed floor, solving plenty of fun puzzles and defeating some very unique bosses.
Along the way you’ll even be able to suck up gold and cash with your trusty Poltergust 3000, as well as attempt to collect all six unique gems assigned to each floor. What do you do with all this cash and gold you collect? Honestly, I have no clue. In the previous game, you use the gold you collected to upgrade your items, but in this game you buy three ‘useful’ items, like Golden Bones, but apart from that, there isn’t really anything worth splurging on.
It would have been nice for Nintendo to have put in the option for currency to be used on additional costumes or cool upgrades for your Poltergust 3000, just like how Mario can have several wardrobe changes in Mario Odyssey.
In regards to the gameplay and general mechanics, not a lot has changed since the previous instalments, but nothing feels stale or repetitive, and with the introduction of Goo-igi, the game feels very fresh and exciting.
Goo-igi is a green, flubber-like substance that takes on the form of Luigi and is used to reach certain areas that Luigi himself can’t pass through, like grates, as well as being used to help solve puzzles. He controls exactly like Luigi, however he only has a max health of 25 and can dissolve instantly in water. So be careful!
If you’ve played any of the previous Luigi’s Mansion’s games, then it won’t take long for you to familiarise yourself with the basic control scheme again; however, if this is your first time; a) Stop what you’re doing right now and play the previous instalments first! And b) It’s very simple, once you’ve got the hang of it.
The controls themselves are very responsive for the most part, however there were a few moments where Luigi would automatically latch onto something with the Poltergust 3000, despite it not being an integral part of the puzzle or even relevant to what I was wanting to do. After replaying Luigi’s Mansion 2: Dark Moon on the 3Ds recently, it’s not something that has happened in previous instalments, so it’s a new feature to this game specifically.
Whilst I’m briefly skimming across the negatives, there is another thing that I disliked and that was Professor E.Gadd’s ‘helpful tips’. They were far from it and it was more like pointing out the obvious- but to be fair, I know that he has always been an annoying pain in the backside. Fortunately enough, there is the option to finally shut him up in this game!
Yet, that is my only complaint, as the game itself provides hours of entertaining fun and engagement, with graphics that are absolutely endearing and nice to look at. I never really have a complaint with Nintendo and their artistic approach to their games- even if the quality of the titles have drastically slipped in recent years!
As a whole, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is an amazing title in a small series that has a huge cult following, capturing cartoonish horror perfectly in a cozy game that even the most horror avoidant person will enjoy! Myself included- I typically hate intense horror, gore and threat, so that is perfect for my anxiety.
So if you’re looking for a cozy Halloween title, I highly recommend starting with Luigi’s Mansion 3!
*Game was a gift for review purposes. All opinions are my own. All images belong to Nintendo.
