After having just beaten Super Mario Bros U, NLU was a fun change of pace, despite its much shorter levels. You only have 100 seconds to beat every level, thus making their lengths much shorter than the original game where you commonly had 400-500 seconds to beat them. Combine this with the fact that Luigi (and possibly the other characters(?) I never had a chance to try that out) controls like he does in SMB: Lost Levels/SMB2 (i.e. he can jump higher, has lower falling acceleration) and you get really fast paced and manic levels, because this game is HARD.
All of the levels are new, with none being taken from the original game, but just because the levels are short, doesn't mean they're easy. Granted you usually will get a mushroom early on if you enter a level small, but they basically cram 500 seconds worth of enemies into a 100 second stage. With Luigi's crazy jumping, I was fairly frequently crazily jumping around trying to avoid the onslaught of enemies flying around me, or trying to avoid the lava/acid/spikes which threatened below my feet. The secrets are also immensely well hidden. Despite many run-throughs, I didn't find a single secret in the first four worlds, where in the main game I'd found them all.
The difficulty is one of the few small qualms I do have with the game. Considering that the game is technically playable with 4-people at once, the speed at which you have to complete levels really makes it so one player is constantly leaving the other person behind. That said, the addition of the Nabbit character really makes it a little easier for the second player given his immunity to enemies, but that still doesn't save you from the screen scrolling or pits to kill you.
Ultimately, I feel the game is good, but far too short a novelty to warrent the $40 price tag which the physical release shares with the main game's physical release. I'd say defeinitely keep an eye out for the New Super Mario Bros U + New Luigi U pack that I got, which tends to be a much more reasonable $45-$55. Still, it was super fun, and still comes very recommended to any Mario fan if you can pick it up at a good price.
All of the levels are new, with none being taken from the original game, but just because the levels are short, doesn't mean they're easy. Granted you usually will get a mushroom early on if you enter a level small, but they basically cram 500 seconds worth of enemies into a 100 second stage. With Luigi's crazy jumping, I was fairly frequently crazily jumping around trying to avoid the onslaught of enemies flying around me, or trying to avoid the lava/acid/spikes which threatened below my feet. The secrets are also immensely well hidden. Despite many run-throughs, I didn't find a single secret in the first four worlds, where in the main game I'd found them all.
The difficulty is one of the few small qualms I do have with the game. Considering that the game is technically playable with 4-people at once, the speed at which you have to complete levels really makes it so one player is constantly leaving the other person behind. That said, the addition of the Nabbit character really makes it a little easier for the second player given his immunity to enemies, but that still doesn't save you from the screen scrolling or pits to kill you.
Ultimately, I feel the game is good, but far too short a novelty to warrent the $40 price tag which the physical release shares with the main game's physical release. I'd say defeinitely keep an eye out for the New Super Mario Bros U + New Luigi U pack that I got, which tends to be a much more reasonable $45-$55. Still, it was super fun, and still comes very recommended to any Mario fan if you can pick it up at a good price.