Riaru's Reviews: Professor Layton and the Curious Village

This is a review of a game from what is planned to be a six part series, the first three are currently out in Japan, the fist two are out here in the states and the forth is currently in development. The story in a nutshell is Professor Layton receives a letter from Lady Dahlia the former wife of the now dead Baron Reinhold, in the letter she tells him of the Baron's last riddle, he has hidden the Golden Apple somewhere in the town of St. Mystere, along with the remainder of his fortune. Layton being the puzzle solving genius that he is decides to go and check it out along with his young apprentice Luke. Not one of the best stories, but the fact that this is a puzzle game with a real story and not just a string of math problems or riddles and there are reasons for you trying to solve these puzzles, and quite a few are either gained by talking to the villagers, or related to the story.

The gameplay is a basic point and click fair you use the touch screen for movement and to examine/pick up items, as well as to talk to people. When doing the puzzles you either have to write in a text or numeric answer, or circle an item, or maybe click something. It's all pretty basic but works and the way you do puzzles and what not is done well enough for the controls not piss you off.

The graphics are really good, they remind me of Persona 3 only with an old English cartoon instead of an anime, there fully animated and voiced cutscenes, in a DS game, that was pretty revolutionary I guess, and during the conversations there are no voices but there are slightly animated stills of the characters, which are very nicely drawn. Overall like Persona 3 the graphics aren't fantastic technically, but they do have a very good art style.

Sorry this one was a little short, but it is time for the closing thoughts. The game will take you about 10-12 hour just to beat it, but also there are over 100 puzzles and you can attempt to uncover them all after beating the game, you can just roam around talking to people and clicking on everything like mad trying to find those tricky hidden puzzles. Overall buy it, and buy the second one, support Level 5 they're great people who make great games.

TSIOO
Goodnight and good luck