Review: Professor Layton and the Curious Village

I have a confession: I bought Professor Layton and the Curious Village when I bought my DS Lite back in November 2008.  Yet it was only until recently that I finally finished it, partially spurred on by the upcoming sequel’s U.S. release in August, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. Don’t be fooled, however. The fact that I procrastinated for nearly a year with this game was not a result of any fault on the game’s part, but rather my own, partially out of a desire to stretch out my experience as much as possible, relishing every puzzle to the fullest, not wanting it to ever end.

For those of you who may not be familiar with this best-selling title, Professor Layton is a puzzle game at its very heart.  However, unlike Tetris and other traditional puzzle games, the Layton series (currently touting two full trilogies in Japan) combines puzzle prowess with point-and-click adventure gameplay. As a result, you get a full story to play through as you try to unravel the various mysteries of the village of St. Mystere. You play as Professor Layton, puzzler extraordinaire, and his sidekick, a young boy named Luke. You must explore the village, interviewing the villagers, many of whom will make you solve their puzzle before divulging any information they may know about the mystery at hand. You can also search the scene for hidden puzzles (many of which are much harder than the average puzzle a villager will give you) and uncover hint coins.

One of the things that lifts Layton above a ho-hum puzzler with a story added on is the quality of the puzzles. Unlike Puzzle Quest, where, despite occasional variations in gameplay, you are always playing the same match-three puzzle, in Curious Village, you will encounter all sorts of brain teasers. Many of these have a riddle quality to them, where you must pay careful attention to wording in order to succeed. Some you may recognize, such as the familiar “cross the river with the wolf, lettuce, and sheep” puzzle, while many will be fresh. The variety of puzzles means you will never be bored, and while some puzzles are repeated, succeeding variations amp up the difficulty so that having previously passed its predecessor won’t necessarily guarantee you an easy way out on the new version.

A nice element is the hint system. As mentioned before, you must search the environment (by clicking on different places in the scene) to find hint coins, which you can then redeem if you get stuck on a particular puzzle. Each puzzle has three hints that escalate in helpfulness, costing one hint coin each. For example, the first hint may just give you a clue of how to read the puzzle instructions, the second may give you a bigger hint, perhaps suggesting a starting point, whereas the third can vary from giving the solution away entirely to merely a second hint of “hint-level-2″ quality. However, the game does flex your brain and train you how to think in many ways, and although the puzzles generally increase in difficulty as you progress through the game, you may find they become easier in the sense that you have learned how to approach these problems. Having enough hint coins, however, is never a problem, as there are at least 100 to find.

Each puzzle has a difficulty level indicated by the number of “picarats” it is worth. For example, an easy puzzle might be worth 20 picarats, while a very hard one might be worth 70. Each time you enter a solution for a puzzle incorrectly, the number of picarats decreases (by how much usually depends on what the puzzle was originally worth, and after a certain point, it will not decrease any further). Once you successfully solve the puzzle, you will be awarded the number of picarats left. So, if you guessed wrong a few times on a 40 picarat puzzle, you might end up with 32 picarats instead of the full 40. These are totaled up as you progress, giving you a score of sorts and a way to mark your puzzle prowess. Personally, it was a little disappointing that the score is relatively meaningless: although almost treated as a currency, you cannot do anything with your picarats but admire them, or perhaps compare with friends. Another disappointing element is the fact that the game does nothing to prevent you from guessing away, then resetting and solving the puzzle correctly the first time to get the full picarat score. However, while some reviewers considered this a major fault of the game, the fact that the score doesn’t really matter doesn’t give you much reason to restart in the first place, unless you are really OCD.

Each time you solve a puzzle, you may be rewarded with a scrap of a painting or a piece of a gizmo; the first is a jigsaw puzzle mini-game, and the second will help you build something (I’ll try to not give anything away). In addition, you may also get, instead, a piece of furniture to decorate Layton’s and Luke’s rooms in the inn in which they are staying. Although you can tap on their portraits to figure out which character prefers which items, I couldn’t see any really purpose to this minigame other than creating a nice diversion or break from the story and the puzzles.

One thing I really, really liked about this game was the fact that it will give you a brief story recap whenever you start it up again, to refresh your memory as to where you are in the mystery, in case it’s been a while since you last played. While those who play straight through may find this tedious, for someone like me who would go for long stretches without playing, it was a good way to get right back into things as if you’d never set it down. Another element that adds to the quality of this title is the Puzzle Shack, where you can visit to play any puzzles you may not have otherwise found in your travels.  It also will store any puzzles you may have tried but decided to complete later.  While you don’t need to solve all the puzzles to finish the game, it is a nice touch for completionists who may have otherwise missed some of the game.

The graphics are beautiful, with a characteristic and unique art style all its own.  Each of the villagers is unique, and you really are drawn into the experience. Controls are well-done overall: you spend most of your time in individual frames, using the stylus to interact with villagers and to find hidden puzzles and hint coins. To progress beyond the current screen, you can press the “shoe” icon and arrows will indicate the directions in which you can travel. The stylus controls are also well-integrated into the puzzles themselves, as you might find yourself drawing a path on a map, or writing in a number or letter. Personally, I found the handwriting recognition a little wonky at times (you may find you have to draw the strokes of a number or letter in a particular order for it to be recognized correctly), but nothing that prevents the game from being enjoyable.

Although the game does include a few cutscenes for pivotal moments (that are fully voice-acted), these are limited, and you will be spending a lot of your time reading.  However, you aren’t overburdened with text, and I never felt like dialogue was excessive (as it can often become in point-and-click adventure titles). Personally, I really dislike the voice actors for both Luke and Layton, but that is a matter of personal preference, and I played most of the game with the sound off, as the music, while not bad by any means, was repetitive and not terribly inspiring in my opinion. Still, these “faults” (if you can call them that) certainly did not detract from the enjoyable puzzles and interesting mystery.

I know I’ve revealed very little of the story in this review, but at least half the fun of Professor Layton and the Curious Village is discovering the story for yourself. What starts out as a simple hunt for a family heirloom soon turns into a murder mystery involving kidnapping and mysterious goings-on. I was definitely drawn in to the story, and though I had pretty much figured out most of the mysteries before the game revealed them, they were still surprisingly original and refreshing.

Like most puzzle-based adventure games, Layton has limited replay value. The story mode includes approximately 100 puzzles (including hidden puzzles), but you can download approximately 30 more, if your puzzle fingers are itching after you’ve completed the main game. However, while some puzzles have replay value (try to solve in the minimum number of moves possible), most do not. As a result, once you’ve finished the story and the additional puzzles, most people won’t find much motivation to play through again.

With the sequel finally hitting North American shelves in less than a month, puzzle and adventure fans definitely should pick this one up if you haven’t already. It is certainly well worth your time, and is a good way to flex those brain cells.

Doin It RIGHT: - Around 130 puzzles in total, including downloadable puzzles once you complete the story. -Brief re-cap when you load up the game refreshes your memory if you’ve set the game down for a while. - Good variety of puzzles keeps things fresh.	Doin It RONG: - Once you complete the story mode and downloadable weekly puzzles, replay value is limited. - Point system is relatively meaningless; no penalty for resetting to get perfect score. -Handwriting recognition can be wonky.
FINAL SCORE: 9 / 10