A comic-book styled game in a steampunk era is certainly not something you see every day. The fun ideas don't stop there, as the leader of your group is Abraham Lincoln himself, and half the cast of playable units (or maybe even all of them and I just don't get some of the references) are famous literature characters, like Tom Sawyer or the cast of Wizard of Oz.

The story unfortunately isn't quite as zany as the set-up would have you think. Outside of a few instances (like escorting the Queen of England through Buckingham Palace, or using a giant mechanized Abe Lincoln robot) the game is largely just a generic alien invasion story.

I think the gameplay is generally quite fun, and each character comes with their own weapon focused on a different playstyle, like close-range, long-range, enemy distraction, healing, enemy stunning, and more. Unfortunately there's a couple of huge issues with the game that just make it a frustrating time.

Every action in the game costs steam. It costs 1 steam to move a space, and X amount to use your weapon, changing depending on said weapon. The enemies also have their own steam counter, and much like Skinner and his aurora borealis, no, you can’t see it. If you save enough steam on your turn you can perform a counter-attack (called an “overwatch”) on the enemies turn, and this likewise applies to enemies and their invisible steam. Thing is, with an enemy they’ll counter you the literal second you get into view, which based on the camera and map design, means they spot you 99.9% of the time before you spot them, and they will then proceed to do another counter every single time you so much as nudge the control stick. Your own overwatch on the other hand seems insanely inconsistent, as half the time enemies are free to just walk up to your face and slap you without your character doing anything about it. I know I’m using the right weapons with enough leftover steam (as indicated by a bright green gun icon on the character screen), so I have no idea why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Much like another Overwatch it’s something that sounds very good in theory, but was utterly ruined in implementation by the developers.

The other big issue I have is the way the camera works. It's a cramped over-the-shoulder view, meaning you have very little visual information at any one time (which is especially annoying on a small 3DS screen). This means that all the action and enemies happening outside of any characters view are impossible to see, which makes it pretty hard to plan around corners and whatnot. This combined with the above issue is what makes it truly awful. I could accept the insane enemy reaction time if the game had some kind of birds eye view so you could see what's going on at all times. I could accept this regular third person view if enemies didn't stun you the second a pixel of your character pops around a screen, before you could know they were there. But having them both together is just messy.

Speaking of keeping enemy actions blind to the player, on an enemies turn you still don't get to see them. Instead your view is solely locked on your character(s). It will generally point in a direction of the enemy movement, but that could be anywhere from right behind the wall to on the other side of the map. When an enemy attacks a character the camera will instantly switch to the attacked character...sometimes. Sometimes that just doesn't work, so you'll see someone losing health and have no idea how it happened.

I find that the game was generally better once I got long-range characters (seriously The Fox is OP) because trying to get close enough to enemies that can shoot your nipple off your tit from another continent is hell.

Also this is one of those 3DS games that you can still find for under £5 brand new and sealed, so if you're one of the 5 people who still buy 3DS games, it's a good deal.

I love the job system in this game, the potential to set a secondary job moveset for every character, and select any unlockable ability from any job, not only encourages trying out multiple jobs on multiple characters, but ends up giving you so many ways to mix and match the traits from them. There's "only" 24 jobs in the game, but the decisions the game gives you for how to use the DNA of each job results in hundreds, or even thousands of combinations.

The titular mechanic adds a small bit of extra strategy, use bravely to risk a burst of power to end a boss fight, or even slice through mobs easily, or default to skip a turn but save the action for next turn, while acting as a regular block in an RPG. In fact even some classes are built on using turns for their move cost rather than MP or some such.

The soundtrack is fantastic, if a little repetitive.

Many of the towns look absolutely fantastic, though dungeons can be somewhat bland in appearance.

Gotta give the game credit for making the tedious part of JRPG's (grinding) so much more player friendly. Either the ability to set random encounter rate to 0, or the ability to fast forward battles and use "auto" mode, which will repeat the last actions each character was manually commanded. The latter includes the use of brave so you can just brave x4 attack everything with every character when going through generic enemies.

The story of the game is a way too close to how JRPG's are represented in basically any parody ever. Protagonist whose small childhood home was destroyed, with an obvious romantic connection to the leading female, who has a unique role in this worlds religion. Story is centred around crystals. Last boss is some kind of universe-destroying being. It's all some of the most derivative plot I've ever seen.

Luckily the characters make it all worth sitting through. I enjoyed all most of them. And each job even has a corresponding villain, each with a memorable personality and a variety of roles in the story. The biggest problem I had with the characters was the 2 who spent 90% of their dialogue being perverts. Luckily this trait does kind of fade away as the stakes are raised, but it takes way too long. What really saves them is the fact that both of these characters have some of the better backstories in the game.

The elephant in the room is the Groundhog Day portion of the game. In theory I think it would be fun, but they do so little with the idea. Every old boss is fightable again as a side-quest during these portions, but there's only very brief dialogue that changes how these encounters happened the first time, and by the third loop sometimes they don't even change the dialogue at all, and your player characters are reacting in shock to things they've already been told 2 loops ago. Loops 4 and 5 do change things up a bit more by moving the bosses around and teaming them up together, but that mostly just results in a small cutscene where you get to see charatcers interacting who never did so in the first part of the game, and then a harder than usual boss fight. Not the worst extra content, but it really shouldn't have been 4 extra rewinds long just for that.

At least if you don't care about these optional rematches you can do the entire section in just a few hours, with the main story beats at least offering more palpable progress. It's pretty much due to this that I didn't lower the rating any more, because I could honestly have given the game a 10 at first, even with its unoriginal story, I found the rest of the game extremely fun and addicting. But the latter half was too drawn out and did way too little with the concept.

The hotel in Luigi's Mansion 3 doesn't really start out all that special. The first 4 or 5 floors you'll explore really are just a haunted hotel. The bosses are so vanilla and simple that I honestly didn't even realise the first 2 bosses I fought were bosses. It was an almost return to form, removing those more Mario-styled themed settings in favour of a kid-friendly horror game in an actual place.

Then we get to the music floor, and from that point onwards every single floor in the game is unashamedly a theme park attraction with every room on the floor being decorated like a museum, or a beach, or a music club. And the bosses creativity ramp up in just as drastically and consistently.

Whether this change is good or bad is obviously subjective. I like the straight spooky vibe of the original game, but I don't know how well they could have managed a 17-floor hotel like that. Personally I loved looking forward to seeing what crazy aesthetic the next level would take.

One thing I had heard a lot of about this game was that it brought back the portrait ghosts, which is only 30% true. At least for what I considered portrait ghosts, which was much more human-looking ghosts that felt like they really were people who died at one point. The "portrait ghosts" in this game (actually called boss ghosts) are a little more detailed than the average regular enemy, but still feel very cartoony and blend into the fantasy world much more naturally. And that's when they're actually human, some bosses possess things (think similar to Luigi's Mansion 2 boss fights) and one of them, even in base form, is a pirate shark.

But don't get me wrong, while I absolutely love the creepy vibe the original portrait ghosts gave off, there's no doubt that the boss battles in this game were by far the best in the series. After that initial few floors of very simple battles, every boss in this game is full of clever ideas and fun use of their theming. It's something I'm not sure you could accomplish if they did go for the more realistic approach of their designs.

In terms of gameplay this seems to be a lot more puzzle focused than before. Having the full Poltergust arsenal of the last game, along with new additions like the plunger and whatever the "shockwave" move is called add even more layers to interacting with the environment. Though weirdly, after Dark Moon removed elements from Luigi's Vacuum, and just had environmental fire puzzles scattered all over, this game further removes almost any trace of elemental stuff at all except for maybe one or two small fire based stuff.

Controls can be a bit awkward though. Using face buttons for most things is generally harder since you can't naturally use the right joy stick while pressing the buttons. Luckily the game offers the use of shoulder buttons to do pretty much any action you can do with those face buttons. But to use the light-dark light you need to press L+R together, but with a timing so awkward that it often just has you using the plunger (L) instead. I get that there's only so many combinations you can add to the shoulder buttons, but why is a function that has you constantly spinning around the room to search for hidden objects relegated to this double button press, rather than the plunger which generally just has you aim in one direction and shoot? And there's no button remapping!

Also speaking of controls, there's no dedicated run button now. Luigi just starts running faster after a couple seconds of build up. Not really the worst thing, but why? The B button isn't doing anything except allowing you to move with the left joystick without actually turning Luigi around. Maybe someone found this useful, but personally I'm not sure I ever found myself wanting Luigi to walk backwards while facing forwards.

The power of the vacuum has seemingly improved a lot too. It'll now be able to devour anything the size of a small dog, which lets you tear through rooms. Going to town on a whole shelf worth of random junk feels so satisfying.

Likewise the "press A to suck in ghosts faster" function from the second game returns, but now instead of just draining a lot of the ghosts health at once, you get to literally slam the ghost around for a few A presses at a time before they die or break loose. It is so much fun to slam ghosts into other ghosts, or even just the environment to destroy tables and the like.

I can't go without giving props to the incredible graphics and animations in this game. I'm not sure the Mario-verse have ever been so expressive.

As for Gooigi, I was initially worried that a mechanic that seemed designed for co-op would be a huge pain in the ass for single player, but I think they managed it well. I can't say for sure having not played co-op, but it feels like they balanced him around single player, and I guess just made co-op easy mode.

Not for the first time in recent memory I have to talk about collectables. This game features the exact same ones as Luigi's Mansion 2 - Boo's, Gems and Cash. The first 2 literally only give you a small aesthetic change to one of your Poltergust functions and only when you've collected 100% of them, so you'll literally only be able to change your plunger to a crystal skin in the final 10 minutes of the game. Yay?

But the cash is what baffles me the most. In Luigi's Mansion 2 money was used to get periodic upgrades to your equipment and was used as part of calculating your rank for each level. In this game there are no upgrades (except for anything you get automatically as part of the story), instead there's a store for money, in which you can buy...bonus lives (the same golden bones you got in Dark Moon, but which in that game were found by searching objects after getting 200 coins in a level), or hints as to where to find a Boo or Gem. They're pretty lacklustre options, especially as the main use is for completionists only. Except... money is also used in this game to calculate your overall rank at the end, like in the first game. And it only counts the money on hand at the end of the game, so any money spent is not counted.

That means the only thing you can really spend money on, except for bonus lives if you're really bad at the game, is stuff that helps you collect everything, but saving money is also important for getting that arbitrary top rank which would count as a completion criteria for most people who care about getting all gems and Boo's in the first place. Do you see the problem here? Why do the only 2 uses for money in this game work completely against each other??

Also I know that getting an ending rank was the only purpose of it in Luigi's Mansion 1 too, but there's some huge differences. That game was very short, so it was easier to do a run where you decide to get as much gold as you can without getting fatigued. Sure getting "A rank" isn't an amazing reward, but for a small amount of extra effort in a 5 hour game, it's fine. But also money in the first game is almost always just naturally thrown into the main ghost catching quest. There's like half a dozen times I can think of where you have to go out of your way to get large amounts of money. In this game there are so many puzzles and even full rooms that only really exist to give you more money. You spend probably 70% of your time in this game exclusively sucking things up to find money, solving puzzles to find money or otherwise gems (assuming you don't just skip past every non-mandatory thing).

I realise this is a lot of paragraphs for an issue that barely registers to most people, but it's just a design decision that makes no sense to me. You'd think between this being a longer game, and so much of the dev time being put into making hiding spots for $$$$ that they'd give you more use for it than a letter at the end. They could have made your Poltergust stronger at certain milestones like the last game, or even just extra costumes for Luigi's or something.

But with that long, yet small issue out the way I still loved the game and have mostly just praise for it.

I'd say it's a hard decision if I were to pick between this or the original as my favourite. This one definitely has by far more ideas and bells and whistles, but the original just had a tone that feels unbeatable in a very tight package. Luigi's Mansion 1 feels like an anomaly in the Mario franchise, something that doesn't fit the franchises image. This game (or I guess technically the second, with this expanding on it) takes the idea of Luigi's Mansion and fits it into Mario's world. Both are fantastic for different reasons.

This might be the first of these games where I actually think the story was better than just mildly entertaining set dressing around the puzzles. It actually explores into Layton's past, gives recurring characters more roles (except for poor Flora who is still useless, but luckily actually gets to hang around this time) and it ends on a real emotional moment that doesn't try to soften itself. Professor Layton has been an enjoyable character throughout these games, but depth hasn't really been his strong suit. His rarely shows his emotions, he never seems to let anything get him down, he has the answer for everything, and even when things are bad he sums it up with something like "oh dear". So to see this game end with him genuinely shedding tears was really impactful.

The story isn't without flaws though. It's a mystery story where there aren't enough pieces for the player to put together themselves beforehand, which could bother a lot of people. Personally I'm just happy to be along for the ride in this kind of game, but even then the game does do some fun subversions with its own formula, like having some of the 10 core mysteries that each game revolve around have secondary plot twists within them.

The climax in particular is far removed from anything else in the series thus far. It doesn't feel like that fairy tale-esque whimsical atmosphere, but instead turns into straight up cinematic action movie tension. This can make those final string of puzzles feel way more out of place than they used to, because what's more immersion breaking than watching the gang desperately trying to drive through a crumbling fortress in immediate danger, only to be stopped and asked to do a block puzzle?

I think the puzzles themselves were better here than the last 2 games. I noticed less reusing the same ideas. There's also some tiny changes to the memo function, namely the ability to change the size of your pen and change the colour of the ink, allowing more versatile note-taking. It still feels too messy whenever you have to draw lots of overlapping lines or tracing multiple paths, but it's still an improvement.

The game also now has "super hints", a 4th hint that costs 2 coins instead of one. Very nice for people who don't want to look up puzzle answers, but still want to finish them all. There did seem to be more coins in the overworld to compensate for that too.

The overall game feel is exactly the same as before, for better or worse. You can jump right in to this from the previous game with zero learning curve, but it can also feel too stagnant in design, like you're just playing one long game rather than the second sequel in a series.

They really made controls for Luigi's Mansion work on the 3DS in 2013 then messed it up on the remake of the original game 5 years later? The only problem here is the lack of being able to turn fully left and right when using the vacuum, dark-light device or strobulb.

Anyway, to fit being on a handheld the creators went for a mission based approach in this game. It does add a bit of repetition as this is used as justification to make you traverse the same rooms over and over, but the majority of missions have end up in new areas at least. It also means they can make 5 completely separate mansions, each with its own style and personality. It is more gimmicky than the original, but it's exciting to unlock a brand new mansion to explore.

There's a complete lack of portrait ghosts in this game, which is a huge shame. It's somewhat made up for by an increase in variety of regular ghosts. But while areas 1 and 2 slowly introduce new types, it kind of just falls of fast from there. Anything introduced after this point is just a variation of the most basic ghost which has an extra element (usually they'll have something to shield their eyes so you have to wait for the window to be able to stun them), then area 4 and 5 just gives us the exact same ghosts we've been fighting and makes a powered-up form, which is the same thing but with more health.

There's weirdly only one instance I can remember with a unique non-boss enemy, which happens in the 2nd mansion. Why this happened here and never again I have no idea.

The bosses themselves are generally more involved this time. Though the first boss sets a standard that isn't fully followed up on. I swear the order is messed up. Boss 1 is pretty much a full on puzzle/timing boss with quite a lot of moving parts. Boss 2 on the other hand is as basic as it gets with a simple "dodge their attacks then use vacuum to suck them up" mechanic. Bosses rarely ever reach the level of complexity as that first boss again. Though boss 4 is a very memorable fight which changes things up completely.

I briefly mentioned it earlier, but a big extra mechanic in this game is the dark-light device. A method for finding hidden objects in the areas. it's used for either optional bonuses or mandatory progression. The boo hunting mini game is almost entirely placed behind this mechanic. What I like most about it is how they clue the player in to where to point the strobe light. It can be either via context clues (a series of items in a uniform pattern with an obvious gap), an item that was present in past missions but is suddenly missing now, or in some cases the seemingly only atmospheric lightning can light up hidden objects in the room.

What's great about this game is that money is used for more than just a bragging rights reward rank. Now the cash you collect will power up your poltergeist at various milestones. This does max out far too quick though, as I found myself at the full upgrade only half way through the game, meaning any further cash I collected was useless if I wasn't going for max rank for each mission.

Speaking of, another thing the mission-based structure allows the devs to do is create a lot of reasons to replay levels. Either for max ranks or collectables. Not a bad idea at all, though I think Luigi's Mansion isn't the best game to try and force this type of replayability on, given that it's slow paced, and many things which stop the action cannot be skipped in a mission.

There's an extra arcade-style mode which can be played solo or multiplayer. It's obviously designed for multiplayer (the fact you can even play it alone is easily missed), but it's still worth a go or two by yourself just to test it out. While I think this mode would be fun with friends, it's definitely just a bonus feature that you could make use of if you had friends who owned the game - no one is going to be going out of their way to buy this game to play this extra mode with friends.

A great game which introduces many new concepts to the existing formula, while unfortunately removing a few too (along with portrait ghosts, elements are also gone - except fire which is used in different ways for some levels).

My ranking of the mansions goes: 4 > 3 > 5 > 1 > 2.