Masem’s Gaming Blog

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a mix of a puzzle and adventure game from Level-5 and published by Nintendo for the DS.  The game is basically 120 brain teasers of various difficulty, wrapped in a well-presented story that helps to encourage progression through the game. Though there are a few small problems with the game and it lacks some replay value, it is definitely a nice title that can appeal to a wide range of gamers.

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Story: A-

The game is based around Professor Layton and his young assistant Luke as they are called to the village of St. Mystere by the widow of a wealthy ex-Baron that lived in the village; he had hidden a “Golden Apple” somewhere in the village, and the person who was able to solve his riddles and find it would be able to claim to a valuable treasure; while many have tried and failed before, the widow believes Layton’s mental skills will help save the day.  The two find the village quaint, if not odd, as it holds many secrets and mysteries to be solved, and the villagers (for a good reason explained later in the game) keep themselves, and Layton and Luke, entertained through asking brain teasers.  However, things become more serious when the two find themselves amid a murder mystery and Layton identified as a key suspect in things, making the search for the Golden Apple even more important.

The game’s story is pretty well written, and feels (in association with the great graphics and appropriate use of animated cutscenes) feels like something from the brainchild of Hayao Miyazaki, director of several Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away; it’s seemingly normal yet fantastical enough to be interesting.  The main characters as well as the rest of the village’s inhabitants are well written, despite the annoyance of pushing puzzles at you.  The only part of the story that didn’t sit well with me was the introduction of the major villain in the story; it was necessary to include him in certainly, but a bit more backstory would have helped.

Gameplay: A

Professor Layton is based on a standard point and click adventure game which fits the DS perfectly.  Each screen is a section of town, and while some sections are initially closed off until you get to certain plot points or solve a number of puzzles, you can tap to talk to people, enter new areas, or just examine other things in more detail.  In this mode, the top screen shows you where you are in the village, but it’s not very large and difficult to get lost in.

Very very often, you’ll be posed with a brain teaser either from talking with someone or by exploring an object.  These teasers are presented as a question on top and, depending on the puzzle, helpful information or the playfield on the bottom screen.  For example, some questions may simply ask you to determine a number, which you just write in.  However, there are sliding block puzzles, matchstick rearrangements, glass-filling puzzles, and so forth that require more use of the touchscreen; however, these controls are given to you at the start of the puzzle so that it’s not a matter of guessing what to do.  Each puzzle has three hints available for it, each progressively more exact about the solution.  However, to get a hint, you need to spend a hint coin, and these are rather rare; you only get 10 at the start and more can be found around town, but there’s nowhere near enough to see all hints, so they need to be spent wisely.  There’s no time limit on the puzzles, which can be a good thing, and while some puzzles that involve a number of moves say they can be completed in a certain number of moves, this is never held against you.   If you answer and get the puzzle wrong, you can opt to try it again, though the value of the puzzle, measured in “picarats” is slightly reduced for subsequent attempts.

Depending on your background, a good number of these puzzles will be familiar, or at least share a similar solution approach to other common brain teasers.  However, not all of these are straight forward and in some cases require a small amount of algebra and geometric thinking to process (bringing into question the E rating this game has - not so much for anything offensive, but I don’t see children younger than 8 or so able to work through this, though this is a potentially excellent game for parent and child to work together on - and fortunately the game makes little concession to appease the younger crowd, making the game’s overall approach good for all ages).  One small annoyance for these types of puzzles is that the DS touchscreen would have made a great notable to work on the solutions to the puzzles; in most cases, you can write on the lower screen for notes, but you have to be able to distinguish between the background pictures and your notes; it would have been better to make a blank page for this.  At other rarer times, it was impossible to write on the bottom screen, which seemed very strange.  However, these issues only maybe occurred in 10% of the 120-odd puzzles in the game, so it was more an annoyance, and not a glaring problem.

Solving a puzzle earns you the picarat value for it, as well as at times special rewards for additional mini-games that when completed unlock additional puzzles.  You can get gadgets that you assemble to eventually make a robot dog that can help sniff out hint coins, scraps of a portrait to put together like a jigsaw puzzle, and pieces of furniture that you have to determine how to distribute between Layton’s and Luke’s rooms at the local inn to achieve maximum happiness.  These additional puzzles are very difficult, but build on previous puzzles in the game so should not be too unfamiliar.  In addition, a new puzzle can be unlocked each week by connecting to the Nintendo Wi-Fi service.   There is also said to be more in this game that will be unlocked once the sequel is released in the West.

The gameplay is pretty satisfying, as though I have seen maybe 40% of the puzzles or variations of those before, solving the new ones was a great moment (the reveal if you are right or wrong is done quite well, both starting with the same animation then leading to two different results, helping to build anticipation).  The major problem is that mystery of the game is really something that you’re just taken along with; you really do no gameplay that specifically deals with solving the mysteries present; only by exploring the right places and completing puzzles does that progress the plot.  In other words, there’s just a bit of disconnect between the main gameplay and the story.  However, it is a very minor point, and something I can’t see being easily fixed without having a much more non-linear story.

Value/Replayability: B

The game’s length is pretty good, taking me about 10-odd hours to complete the main game, though I was spending the time looking for puzzles and thus had solved most by the time I got to the end.  The number is just about right - too many more would have felt too stretched out.  Unfortunately, you can’t really replay the game until enough time has passed for you to forget the puzzles, and the one puzzle-a-week addition isn’t that great to keep the game always at hand to play.

Graphics: A

The game’s graphics are extremely well done.  The drawings and animation help to make the game feel unique and if out of a storybook, and while there are hunt-and-peck areas, notable objects are quite easy to pick out from the background elements.

Audio: B+

There’s just enough voicework to give some depth to the characters, but not that much given the limitations of the DS cart.  However, while the music is pretty good to start, the strains of accordion-based music gets a bit old after a while.

Overall: A-

Professor Layton is definitely a nice little game that is great for a large age range without dumbing down the game too much, and makes a different approach that the typical “brain training” games.  The story and graphics are very helpful to make the setting sufficiently fantastical but yet still grounded in reality, and the puzzles represent a good handful of classic and new brain teasers to keep the mind going.  As there’s already two sequels out in Japan with the first one being brought to the states, there’s hope they can tweak some of the minor problems to make the next games even better.

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