The original is short if you know what you're doing, but can go pretty long on the first playthrough. It's more of an exploration-based adventure game with light sprinklings of Metroidvania. Dark Moon is a game you boot up while you're taking a dump, play a level, and then have to wipe your crusty ass because the levels are a little bit too long to be fun but you still feel compelled to see them through because there's just enough there that's decent.

Get the first one. It's got a great sense of humour, it's goofy in all the right ways and is chocked full of great little secrets and easter eggs to find. Dark Moon suffers from being mission-based rather than about exploration and it drags on far too long despite being chunked up into discreet levels.

The original is a fantastic game. It's goofy in all the right ways and pretty fun. Not very long though.

I fell off Dark Moon pretty quickly.

Absolutely wait for the 3DS version of the first one and get that shit!

And then don't hesitate to pick up the second one whenever you can. Both really good games

Both! With the original getting a remake on 3ds in the dark moon engine it’s a perfect time to play both on 3ds. I loved dark moon but have not yet played the original.

I have not yet played the original but I really loved Dark Moon. Can’t wait for 3!

Dark Moon is a much more fleshed out and fully realized game. The original was fun but a basic four hour tech demo that people are convinced is better than is better only because they don't like the mission structure in the sequel or this is another extreme case of nostalgia.

Put me in the camp of not liking the mission structure in Dark Moon. Instead of letting you freely explore it keeps pulling you back out of each mansion when you finish a mission, so only the last mission or two of each mansion really allows you to explore the whole thing. Also one or two of the mansions are just bad areas that are boring to look at.

Luigi's Mansion is definitely way more awkward to control and has older game design conventions and lots of weird half-realized shit in it, but I remember my time with it a lot more positively than the mostly bland memories I have of Dark Moon.

The thing the first Luigi's Mansion has over the second is it's persobality, the mansion is almost a character in itself and the metroidvania type way in which you explore it makes it really fun to get to know it. Also the portrait ghosts give the game a really quirky character that was kind of missing with the more generic ghosts from the second game.

I loved the original because it had a great aesthetic to it with memorable ghosts and rooms in the mansion. While Dark Moon is better in terms of improving the gameplay a bit and providing a longer experience, I felt it lost all of that. The ghosts are all bland and generic, the rooms are all interchangeable. It was definitely going for more of an arcade-y feel, where the mansion is just a backdrop for the gameplay. It reminds me a lot of the problems I (and a lot of people) have had with the more recent Paper Mario games; they took out all the originality and uniqueness while doubling down on the gameplay that it turns out isn't that engaging without that stuff.

Wait for the original to come out on 3DS. Dark Moon is suppose to be quite good on its own, but I remember looking at footage for it and thought the enemy design wasn’t as inspired as the original, where you are capturing actual ghosts of former humans. One of the bosses is a Ghost Baby!

Thanks for the feedback, guys! Looks like the original won pretty handily, so I'll be picking that one up and I can easily drop $20 on the sequel if I like it.

Now I just have to decide whether I'm picking up the re-release or jumping on this cheap copy of the Gamecube version I found for nostalgia's sake. Probably 3DS because portability and quality of life features. Anyway thanks again!

Dark Moon has serious pacing issues.