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REVIEW: Professor Layton and the Curious Village

By Shaun Hatton - February 24th, 2008

Developed by Level-5 and published by Nintendo for DS

When the wealthy Baron Reinhold passes away and leaves a puzzle as his last will, the famous Professor Layton and his young assistant Luke are on the scene to help figure things out. But when the pair make it to the village of St. Mystere, home of the late Baron, they find that things may not be as simple as they’d like them to be.

Rather than unravelling just the mystery they were called there for, they realize that something else is afoot. Indeed, something much bigger than the two of them could have imagined is somehow connected to their case.

Baron Reinhold’s will stated that whomever should find the family heirloom known as The Golden Apple would be the one to inherit all of his estate. Turns out, however, that Reinhold owned just about the whole town. So it comes as no surprise that everyone tried to find this Golden Apple. Unfortunately, no one was able to find it, and that’s where you come in.

As Layton and Luke, you must solve the mystery of St. Mystere, one puzzle at a time, so that the story plays out to its end. In fact, remove the story elements and the game is indeed nothing more than timeless and contemporary mind-bending puzzles.

The game’s instruction manual credits Akira Tago, Professor Emeritus of Chiba University, for creating the puzzles found in the game. Professor Tago is a researcher in the field of psychology and has written puzzle books full of brain teasers like the ones found in Professor Layton and the Curious Village.

Most of the puzzles in the game are presented to you by the various characters you come across in your journeys about town. Ever the gentleman, Layton can never turn down someone in need of his help, so it’s up to him (with a lot of help from you) to solve every riddle. In many cases, you’ll be presented with some sort of reward for solving the puzzle: additional information, items for your room at the inn, or weird pieces of gadgetry and painting scraps which you must assemble to access additional puzzles.

Some of the puzzles are actually quite difficult to figure out. For the most part this is due to the tricky ways in which the questions are asked. It’s highly recommended to any of Layton’s apprentices to read over each question carefully. More often than not, the game is trying to trick you when the answer is very clear if you ignore the misleading wording of the question. But if even that advice won’t help, you can also buy hints for each puzzle using hint coins that you find throughout the village. As reward for solving puzzles, you get picarats, which are the point currency in the game. Each time you provide a wrong answer to a puzzle, the picarat total you’re eligible for will drop.

Though the puzzles can get very difficult, the game itself really steers you in the right direction. Layton knows where and when to go to certain places. He just needs your help in pointing out the way and solving puzzles that he comes across. As the game progresses, the puzzles get trickier. But once you’ve played for about five hours or so, you won’t look at puzzles the same way again. In that respect, the difficulty never does increase. There are just a lot of puzzles to get through.

In addition to all the brain teasers that come on the cartridge, Curious Village makes interesting use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection by allowing users to download a new puzzle each week. Once you’re done the game, in other words, you’re enticed to keep playing on a weekly basis, if only for a few minutes, to check out the week’s new puzzle. Not only that, but the game’s manual makes reference to a sequel (seems Nintendo knew this game would be big) that would give players access to even more content in this current game. This bonus content is labelled as “Top Secret” so there’s no telling if it’s going to be more puzzles or bonus video footage.

Speaking of video, Professor Layton and the Curious Village contains a lot of beautifully-animated cutscenes. The visual style of the game is very reminiscent of many European animated features (The Adventures of Tintin comes to mind) with lots of yellow and sepia tones replacing what would normally be white and bluish hues. The whole game is wrapped in this gorgeously immersive art style, which is another similarity St. Mystere has with the village in Resident Evil 4 (I drew comparisons between the protagonists in each game last week).

The voice acting in the cutscenes is fantastic. The only time the voices are somewhat annoying is when you hear Luke say “Layton’s apprentice saves the day!” for the fiftieth time after solving a puzzle. But as annoying as he can be, the young Luke is still quite the cute and likeable character. He’s definitely one of the better sidekicks you’ll find in a video game.

The DS has brought us many outstanding titles, but it was made for games like Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Though the story won’t take long to play through (I recommend playing in short, episodic bursts – like when you’re on a train, etc.) the game is still very enjoyable, and there’s a lot of bonus material to unlock, too. The personalities of Layton and Luke evoke the memory of classic and lovable cartoon characters and it’ll be interesting to see where their next adventure takes them.

Posted in DS, Nintendo, Reviews |