Review Summary
Dark Moon offers all of the ghost-wrangling and puzzle-solving that the Luigi's Mansion franchise is known for, and is still an absolute blast - though it falls a bit flat in comparison to its successor.
Pros:
- Good action - getting your ghostbuster on is a blast every time.
- Loads of new mechanics to tinker with.
- Enjoyable puzzles.
- Scarescraper provides a fun, endlessly repeatable multiplayer experience.
- Decent replayability.
- Beautiful, and fabulously detailed environment - especially in the HD version!
Cons:
- Forced to choose between dated 3DS graphics or a full-price port.
- The game gets bogged down by its structure at times.
- The bosses just don't feel as unique as the Portrait Ghosts from the original.
- It's...honestly really easy.
- The game is designed around the 3DS' limitations, and it shows.
Full Review:
With the HD version having me pulled back into this game for yet another playthrough, I figured this is as good of a time as any to write down my thoughts. I loved the original Luigi's Mansion, and remember being thrilled by the prospect of a new entry over ten years later. My initial impressions back in 2013 were a bit dampened by how much I'd loved the original title, but I still loved it - and have since warmed up to many of the changes that Dark Moon brought to the franchise, especially after picking up the HD version. Dark Moon brings quite a few changes and upgrades to the formula set by the first entry. Right out of the gate, it's obvious that the game's story takes a much bigger role. The original game's story was extremely straightforward: put the portrait ghosts back in their paintings, and find Mario. The uniqueness of the portrait ghosts and the constantly-evolving setting of the mansion, thanks to their presence, kept the game flowing enough to keep the shallowness of the plot completely out of mind. Dark Moon throws a few more twists and turns into the narrative, with the player's progression having visual changes on the world itself. While still nothing to write home about, Dark Moon has a much more detailed storyline that it uses to help keep the player moving forward. In addition, the game brings tons of charm to its characters. Luigi himself is a constant source of entertainment. Watching him get startled by a mouse, or fumble around with a lever, or get bored and start humming along to the music is always funny. The ghosts are constantly up to something as well, and are constantly spotted goofing around or messing with things they shouldn't. It's a level of detail that adds some real personality to the game, and I love every bit of it.
The action has been improved as well! Ghost-catching feels more involved but satisfying in Dark Moon, and the various ghost enemies add their own unique touch to the encounters Luigi finds himself in over the course of the game. Boos are back in force, and each level has one of King Boo's little lackeys hidden in it for you to track down. The process of finding and catching these boos is heavily dependent on the Dark-Light Device, the most impactful new addition the game offers. I wouldn't really say that catching boos is better or worse in Dark Moon compared to the original, it's just...different. The boss fights, on the other hand, have a lot of pros and cons compared to the portrait ghosts of Luigi's Mansion. The battles are fun and inventive, with more action than most of the portrait ghosts found in the original title. But...with that said, they just don't have the same level of charm. The portrait ghosts all felt like they had their own personality and charm, with the fights serving as their own tiny puzzle as you try to figure out the ghosts' weaknesses and crack them open. Dark Moon's bosses are much more action-packed, granted, but there's not much else there. Sometimes this was enough - a few of the bosses have a fun buildup that makes the fight all the more exciting, and I didn't really need much else. Usually, though, I just found myself wishing that there was some more character and charm to the big baddies.
Dark Moon isn't just an action game though, it's got puzzles and exploration too - and it is here that the game absolutely comes into its own. Though the size of the areas you can explore are blatantly restricted to allow it to run on the 3DS, the depth of these areas is beyond anything the original Luigi's Mansion ever had to offer. Each of the game's areas look stunning, and have an incredible amount of detail packed into them. The (honestly impressive) visual upgrades in the HD version really opened my eyes to just how much stuff Nintendo managed to pack into each and every room. In addition, the addition of hidden loot and collectable gems hidden in all of the different levels encourage the player to scour each level for every little secret - and some of these aforementioned gems are hidden WELL. This secret-hunting is amplified even more by the addition of the Dark-Light. Suddenly, you find yourself not just looking for suspicious objects in the levels, but the suspicious lack of them as well. And this is without even mentioning the actual puzzles built into the levels! I really did love cracking all the little puzzles and obstacles that the game places in your way as you progress. They're usually not very difficult, but they are inventive and quite clever. The puzzles really did put a smile on my face each time I worked through one. The care and attention to detail that Nintendo put into this game is the most obvious here.
Unfortunately, one real problem slowly became more apparent as I played. It is an aspect I've mentioned already: the levels. The game is rigidly divided into small levels that are each accessed and played separately. It's not all bad - the levels improve replayability by allowing you to jump back to any point in the game for a second run, and trying to get the best rating on each level provides some genuine challenge at times - but it really disrupts the flow of the game. It's a necessary evil, I'm sure, but it really does seem like these levels are just there to help handle the load that the game would otherwise put on the console. The flow of the game feels constantly interrupted as you constantly go through the same process. Go to the menu, get a little debrief from E. Gadd. Play through the level, E. Gadd pulls you right back to the menu. Rinse and repeat this over, and over, and over again. Combine this with the lack of a checkpoint system, and the game puts itself into a Catch-22-esque level of frustrating design. The levels aren't as much of an annoyance when the levels are long; you're interrupted less frequently and it actually begins to feel a bit satisfying getting a level clear screen after a particularly long series of puzzles and fights. However, there are no mid level checkpoints in this game. While the difficulty is low enough that it honestly feels quite hard to get booted back to the level select, long levels can become very stressful nonetheless. There is NOTHING WORSE than spending half an hour on a puzzle and then dying, because it means that now you have to go and do the entire puzzle AGAIN. Plus, the lack of checkpoints means you can't shut the game off in the middle of a long level without having to start all over again. The rigid structure of these levels really are the biggest problem I have with this game. Thankfully, if nothing else, it's an issue that does not exist anywhere else in the series.
To wrap all this word vomit up, I'd like to touch on Scarescraper just a little bit. It's a pretty simple concept: grab a few friends (or random people online), and hop into a series of procedurally generated minigames that progressively get more difficult as you progress. However, there's a shocking amount of replayability here. The minigames, though simple, can be challenging at times and are always frenzied enough to be exciting. In addition, the ramping difficulty makes it fun to see how far you can climb, and I found myself sinking hours into the multiplayer back in the day trying to break my record in endless mode. On top of it all, Scarescraper's boss fights feature roughly 40 ghosts exclusive to the mode, often being a fun twist on existing baddies. Trying to encounter all of them for my collection kept me playing for a LONG time.
All in all, Dark Moon is a gem of a game that I would absolutely recommend to fans of the other games in the series, or to anyone looking for a game with fun puzzles and a bit of action. It's a bit held back by a few design choices, and doesn't quite live up to the same standards as Luigi's Mansion 3, but it's still a perfectly solid title in its own right.
