For fans of puzzle and adventure games alike, the question regarding Professor Layton and the Curious Village isn’t whether or not you’ll like it, but how quickly you can get down to the store to get your mitts on a copy. The combination of adventure game trappings, devious, varied puzzles, beautifully animated cut scenes and top notch voice acting make the stateside arrival of Professor Layton a smashing success.
Typically, puzzles in adventure games rely upon finding the right combination of inventory items to get that pesky water buffalo out of your apartment. Rarely do they fall into the category of “normal” logic puzzles, and often times they stretch the credibility of the story as you spend time running around for the right item, wondering why none of the other eight dozen things in your magical knapsack of holding can’t fix the current problem. Professor Layton goes in a different direction, offering up a varied collection of logic, math, visual, word and every other type of puzzle under the sun at every possible turn, and while their inclusion might stretch the credibility of the story, once the final chapter is closed, it all makes sense.
Professor Layton and his assistant Luke are brought to the town of St. Mystere at the behest of the widow of the late Baron Reinhold. As it turns out, Baron Reinhold mentioned something called “The Golden Apple” in his will, and the finding of said object will help determine how to split up the late Baron’s massive fortune. Upon arriving at St. Mystere, the good Professor and Luke find themselves trapped in the town with more than the mystery of the Golden Apple facing them. Before the story is over, the intrepid duo will solve ten mysteries and over 130 puzzles as well as find a full collection of gizmos, assemble a painting and engage in a spirited bout of room decoration.
The puzzles run the gamut from probability puzzles dealing with rolling dice or dealing cards, to logic puzzles regarding digital clocks and amorous mice as well as plays on words and code breaking puzzles. Some of the puzzles require you to read into the directions, or not read so much into the directions to solve them, while others, such as puzzles asking you to open up a path for a ball via sliding different sized blocks, require nothing more than dogged determination. Each puzzle has a different piccarat cost, piccarat’s being a kind of puzzle currency. Complete the puzzle on the first try and all of the piccarats are yours. Each attempt lowers the number of piccarats you’ll get, but don’t worry as after the third attempt, the number doesn’t decrease any further so as not to dissuade you from your efforts. At the end of the game, the number of piccarats you’ve accumulated determines how many of the game’s character profiles, music selections, bits of spoken dialog and animated cut scenes you can review.
For those that don’t want to lose any piccarats but find themselves stumped, you can spend hint coins to unlock up to three hints for each puzzle. Hint coins are hidden throughout the game and are found by engaging in adventure gaming’s most storied pastime, pixel hunting. Tapping various lamps, pictures, doorways, etc as you move around St. Mystere will uncover hint coins. The hints increase in usefulness as you uncover them, ranging from the first hint giving you a gentle nudge in the right direction up to the third hint often times laying the answer out in front of you. For puzzles that require nothing but simply working it until completed, the hint system is nice enough to tell you not to waste your coins.
While the game only requires you to solve 75 of the 133 puzzles to move along to the conclusion, finding and solving as many puzzles as you can does have tangible benefits. Early on in the game, solving puzzles will net you gizmos which can be used to assemble…something. This thing not only gives you a clue as to the various mysteries surrounding St. Mystere, but also makes it easier to find hint coins as you progress. Later in the game, solving puzzles will net you both painting scraps and items for Professor Layton’s or Luke’s room. Assembling the painting scraps, and rearranging the items to maximize Professor Layton’s and Luke’s happiness, as well as assembling the gizmos, will unlock additional puzzles played outside of the game’s story mode. Finding and solving all of the puzzles in the main game will unlock even more puzzles and solving all of the bonus puzzles will unlock even more bonus puzzles. Finally, players can connect via the WFC connection to download a new puzzle every week. The bonus puzzles, as well as the downloadable puzzles, are some of the hardest in the game, sure to tax the most steely of puzzle masters.
As you work to uncover the mysteries of St. Mystere you’ll run into a number of colorful characters, all with their own personalities beautifully brought to life by the game’s vibrant 2-d animation. Conversations had while walking around town uses static images and written words to move the story along, however major plot points are revealed in some of the best 2-d animation seen in a video game in some time. The animated scenes, fully voiced with pitch perfect British accents for both Professor Layton and Luke, are a joy to watch and it’s well worth solving every puzzle to obtain enough piccarat’s to unlock all of the clips. Audio outside of the cut scenes is charming, if repetitive however not to the point where you need to mute the game.
The only real fault of the game is the lack of replayability. Some puzzles can be retried to see if you can complete them with fewer moves and the ability to download additional puzzles helps to extend the life of the game somewhat, however like most adventure games before it, once you exit St. Mystere, there’s little reason to go back. Thankfully, with a liberal use of hint coins, you’re looking at over 12 hours of game play, many more if you try to go hint free.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village is one of the finest debuts of a new IP in some time and does an incredible job of combining two areas the DS seems to have been made for: puzzles and adventure gaming. The addictive gameplay, twisting story, charming characters and beautifully drawn animation makes this a game that neither puzzle fans, nor adventure game fans should miss. Jolly good show, Professor, jolly good indeed.
