Review: Professor Layton and the Curious Village

When I first started playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village, I expected it to be a series of brain-strengthening logic puzzles strung together by a weak story, something similar to Brain Age and the other Touch Generations titles. If anyone else expected that and passed up Professor Layton as a result, go back and take another look; there’s more to this title than meets the eye. The meat of the game may be logic puzzles, but the presentation is something else entirely.

The Professor Layton series is actually created by developer Level-5, responsible for series such as Dark Cloud, Rogue Galaxy, and White Knight; this game marks their first fully self-funded and self-published venture, as well as their first foray onto a Nintendo system. As such, this game turns out to be a lot more than I initially gave it credit for, employing not only entertaining puzzle gameplay, but a fun storyline, entertaining characters, and fantastic artwork and cinematics.

The story sets out with a fully animated, fully voiced cutscene of Professor Herschel Layton, and his apprentice Luke, driving toward the village of St. Mystere. They’re there by the invitation of Lady Dahlia, who wants their help in finding the Golden Apple, the key to the inheritance of a wealthy baron. This opening cutscene sets a tone for the rest of the game – hand-drawn art, puzzle-themed gameplay, occasional animated cutscenes, and an overdose of xylophone and accordion in the music. Unfortunately, the full voice acting seen in the intro doesn’t persist for the rest of the game, which is a shame, because this game’s voice acting is comparatively very good. The story, however, does persist in its quality, and while it dies down a bit in the middle of the game, it picks up speed near the end, and guarantees that you’ll continue to be surprised by certain elements, through the time-tested practice of not quite telling you everything you need to know. The ending is a satisfying one.

There are two major aspects to the gameplay. The first, of course, is the puzzles, and the second is the adventure game besides. Professor Layton plays like your typical point-and-click adventure title; you walk from one static background to another, tapping parts of the screen to talk to people, find hidden puzzles, or search for hint coins. For a good two-thirds of the game, virtually anything noteworthy that you investigate will have a puzzle in it somewhere, and there won’t be much else to it since you’ll be directed from place to place. As the story starts to open up, however, you’re left to explore a bit more on your own, and while you’re still finding hidden puzzles, the story and investigation really start to take shape around then. As such, most of the cutscenes are going to take place closer to the end of the game.

The puzzles themselves are myriad and varied in design; you’ll do things such as spot a liar, get a ball into a hole by moving blocks, ferry chicks and wolves across a bridge, place queens on a chessboard, draw squares on a field of dots, and much more. Each one goes into your Puzzle Index for you to solve again later, and any riddles you miss during a chapter head to one place for you to solve later if you please, for your convenience. Depending on how many tries it takes to solve the puzzle, you’ll get more Picarats, which I guess is sort of your score because I can’t find anything else to do with them. Additionally, as you progress through the game, there will be points where you’ll have to have solved a certain number of puzzles to proceed, though if you’re overzealous like me this and talk to everyone this won’t be any problem.

Overall it’s a fairly well done system, but it feels a little like a missed opportunity in one way. As you start out the game, you’re solving puzzles related to the story, which is very clever, but through the vast majority of the game, it’s more like "Oh hi here solve this random puzzle kthx" from a lot of the characters. If the puzzle contents themselves were more integrated into the story I would be more pleased with how this game turned out.

Thankfully, there’s more than just the puzzles and adventure to keep you occupied. As you solve more puzzles, you’ll be rewarded with things like strange gizmos, painting scraps, and furniture, which you can then utilize in a couple of fun and distracting ways. Since Layton and Luke are forced to stay in empty rooms, you’ll be using the furniture to fill up your rooms, giving items to either Layton or Luke in order to improve their satisfaction. Painting scraps are to be put together in a giant picture frame, and the strange gizmos eventually build an electronic dog who can sniff out hidden coins or puzzles. Such items are fun distractions that help build up the game to something more.

One of the most important elements of the game’s charm is Professor Layton himself. The character is just charming, from his appearance to his manner of speaking, and it helps give the game its feel and sense of direction in a town otherwise populated by random (though interesting) misfits. He feels like a friendly Sherlock Holmes. It helps that they managed to get the perfect voice actor for him as well, which makes the cutscenes that much more enjoyable.

Once you’ve finished with the main storyline, that’s thankfully not the end of the adventure. There are still puzzles to go back and find, as well as new, highly difficult ones that you’ll unlock in the Bonuses section. You’ll eventually unlock the sound test, movie gallery, character bios, and other things. In addition, for a little while you’ll be able to use Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to download weekly puzzles to your game. There’s even something called the Hidden Door, which utilizes a password that you’ll find in the upcoming sequel to Curious Village.

If you’re looking for a change of pace, or something to stimulate your brain, or maybe a cleverly told storyline with good presentation, Professor Layton is all of the above. What it does well, it does very well, and the problems it does have aren’t enough to overcome the fun factor of this game. I say Yay! to Professor Layton and the Curious Village, and recommend you grab it at your next convenience.