Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon on 3DS, sequel to the GameCube classic with five distinct mansions to explore. Luigi armed with the Strobulb against varied ghosts. Structured missions and fantastic multiplayer. An absolute 3DS must.
Your verdict
Category
Action Adventure1 player7+
Description
Luigi explores five thematically distinct mansions to retrieve the Dark Moon shards and defeat King Boo, who has made the ghosts hostile. Published by Nintendo, released in Korea in March 2013. Five thematic mansions, missions divided into objectives, Poltergust G-00 vacuum, ghost-hunting multiplayer mode. Korean edition.
Luigi's Mansion - Dark Moon review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
2/5
Story
★★★★★
"Classic"
Five houses, five vocabularies of objects. A greenhouse overrun with roots and steam, a clockmaker's workshop where everything is gears and brass, a chalet caught in frost with opaque windows, a mine propped up with rotten timber, a classical manor of portraits and drapes: every building has its own palette, materials and sounds. The game reads like a tour of five independent models.
The music follows the character's fear exactly. A nervous pizzicato moves when he moves, stops dead when he stops, races when a door slams, so that you hear his pulse rather than an accompaniment. The most endearing detail is that he hums along on top of it, under his breath and not always in tune, and that humming falls into line with whatever melody is playing.
The NTSC release of Dark Moon had a sizeable print, but collector interest crystallises on first pressings without the Nintendo Selects band and on early copies with the e3 sticker. The game holds a strong place in US 3DS memory as the official return of the Luigi sub-series on a handheld, a configuration the console did not see again. The cartridge stays accessible; quality of the original edition makes the gap.
Is Luigi's Mansion - Dark Moon still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2013 on 3DS and known in North America as Luigi's Mansion - Dark Moon, Next Level Games' project resurrects the ghost hunting with the Poltergust after over a decade of absence. Luigi, trembling and endearing, vacuums up the spectres after dazzling them with the flashlight, in mansions packed with puzzles and secrets. The humour filled art direction, the expressive staging and the mission structure cut for portable play make for a charming adventure. The mission segmentation divides fans of free exploration. An excellent action adventure game, recommended for fans of puzzles and humour.
