I'm very conflicted on Luigi's Mansion 2. It is a general improvement on everything the first game did, but it also has a ton more useless backtracking which I thought even the first game had too much of. Combine that with the fact that the 3DS wasn't the best console to put this sort of game on and you get kind of a mixed bag.

All in all though I think I prefer this one over the first one, mainly because it's a lot more interesting to play and even explore half the time. Too bad that a lot of the charm of the first one is gone but it was inevitable since Luigi's Mansion is now an IP and not just a one-off game. Either way I commend the developer for trying to do something different with the idea and expand on it, even though it not always works.

I have to say though, why was there no rank here? I get that money has another purpose in theory, but it would've been nice to keep that in to give you an excuse to still pick up the money even after you completely upgrade. Can't have my cake and eat it too I guess.

From the get go it's obvious this game was made with an arcade in mind and was frankensteined into a console game at the last minute. While what on offer here is fun, polished serviceable gameplay, it wears thin after an hour, and completing it takes well over 40.

The game surprisingly, but effectively, uses tank controls. Moving the Kaiju is very intuitive and these controls really add great sense of weight to playing as them. Each is move well animated and looks natural to these monsters.

Most Kaiju have unique movesets, but there are a few lazy clones. Godzilla has 3 with the only difference being damage output, Showa Mechagodzilla is a carbon copy with a different colored armband. Mothra and Battra's adult forms only have a different beam. But overall most Kaiju feel unique and their moves are ripped straight from the films mostly.

The main meat of the Game is god of destruction mode. You'll be spending the majority of your time here. And you'll realize that the criticism of the gameplay being very repetitive and monotonous from mainstream critics does hold water. Your goal is to destroy as much of a city as possible while maintaining a fury chain, this in turn grows your Kaiju and makes encounters with boss Kaiju easier. But fighting other Kaiju is when the gameplay falls flat on its face
The game does not have a Guard function. So you can very easily get combo'd to death if you try Melee attacks. This makes every encounter with another Kaiju a slow prodding beam spam fest. You'll be doing this for 90% of the stages regardless of the difficulty path you chose. And boredom sets in fast when you're grinding for upgrades.

The game is legitimately fun when you're just going on a rampage through the city zones, maintaining a high fury rating and feeling powerful. Maintaining a high fury count increases the amount of evolution energy your Kaiju stores, Which is used to buy upgrades and figures.

You buy upgrades with evolution energy and cells you get from beating other Kaiju. Mercifully. These upgrades are relatively cheap. Only Godzilla, Burning Godzilla and Godzilla64 have new moves to buy. The rest of the Kaiju only have charge cool down decreases and new energy gauges to buy. Even with these cheap requirements. It will take dozens upon dozens of hours to fully upgrade the cast because you will need to mix and match the Kaiju you play as to get certain cells. This becomes very boring and annoying very quickly and even hardcore Godzilla fans will be annoyed since they can't stick to their favorites all the way to level 12.


The other modes are King of Kaiju, Diorama and VS, King of Kaiju is a simple time attack mode where you pick a Kaiju of your choice, and earn one of that Kaiju's cells and a random cell from one you defeated after 6 fights. If the devs upped the amount of cells to 3 instead of one, this would make the upgrades much less tedious, especially since upgrades are applicable to all modes, This makes King of Kaiju pointless since God of Destruction gives you the most cells.

Vs is the online only VS mode in which you and a random or person on your friends list fight each other online. The netcode isn't great, and you'll have frequent lag depending on who you match with. I had very little trouble finding a match despite this being a very niche, rare game so if that's something you enjoy, you'll have something to do. The online is clearly tacked on and does nothing to fix the terrible Kaiju to Kaiju combat. You'll be mostly beam spamming and mashing R2 to push away opponents.

Diorama is the games photo mode. You essentially create film sets and make your own monster flick posters. It's a novel little mode and hard core fans should get a lot out of it. Unfortunately getting sets and figures for the photos requires you to get a 100% destruction rate in every god of destruction stage, and you have to buy figures in the skill trees for each kaiju with their cells. Exacerbating the already overly grindy gameplay.

The game runs at a mostly locked 60 FPS. It only drops when, occasionally, your R2 AOE attack is used in a area with a lot buildings. But the game runs very well barring that. With no screen tearing, no pop in and good texture streaming.

Visually. The game looks average, with the Kaiju being the main focus of the fidelity. The devs cleverly scanned SH monster arts figures instead of creating them from scratch. Each kaiju is exceptionally well modeled and detailed due to this and even have some great minor details like quivering lips when roaring, antennas twitching etc.

The textures and environments are passable. The PS4 up port allows the game to use clearer textures that while not fantastic, are much better than the smears of the original Japanese PS3 version. There is a neat little nod to the films when buildings are about to be destroyed in that they flash before blowing up. Adding to the Godzilla sim feel the game is going for.

The music is excellent, it's mostly original tracks that try to emulate the films, but two of Ifukube's songs are present in the game and play at appropriate times a hardcore fan would expect.
There really isn't a story here. The game centers around Kaiju invading or protecting generators, that's it really. The gameplay is interrupted by a very annoying G-force operator every minute or so, though you can thankfully change the audio to Japanese and deal with bland monotone instead of annoying, grating yelling. The final boss of God of destruction mode is either Legendary Godzilla, Burning Godzilla or Desotoroyah, which all play out like every other fight in the game. And you will be fighting all three a lot because only then will you get your kaiju's cells.

Unless you are a hardcore Godzilla fan like me, or you collect rare games. I'd pass on this. While the game does an admirable job of attempting to be a Godzilla sim. It has so little on offer here, and is so repetitive that anyone who isn't a fan will probably drop this after an hour. For hardcore fans though, I'd say go for it. No other Godzilla game actually attempts to replicate how it would feel to control a slow lumbering giant monster like this one does.

5/10.