Who doesn’t like a fun casual game from time to time? They’re simple and relaxing. Professor Layton is one such game, and proof that casual-friendly games aren’t always cheaply made.

I didn’t play the first Professor Layton, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from this one, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised.

Read on to see why!

Looks and sounds
The overall look is slightly wacky anime-ish character designs. Each have strangely-shaped heads and faces, and sometimes exaggerated body-features. The overall look is actually quite nice. The areas look good as well. The big thing here is the animated cut-scenes, which, other than having some frame skips at times, look very good, and are presented at key points of the story. The voice acting is also fairly nice, with voices that fit the characters well during those scenes. The overall view of the game is certainly cartoonish and unrealistic when it comes to character designs, but at the same time gives off a very serious tone.

The music is also quite nice. It’s not great, but it all sounds like it’s out of one of those music boxes. Simple and relaxing, that’s for sure, it’s very fitting for the game, and never does the music feel out of place. Sound wise the one thing that kinda annoys me is how only some of the in-game dialog has voice acting. All the cut-scenes have dialog, which is fine, but the rest of the dialog is mostly not voiced, though some of it randomly is (most frequently right after a cut-scene).

Overall the presentation here is really good. I wish all casual games were presented that well.

Story
You play as Professor Layton and his apprentice. At the start you get a letter from one of Layton’s friends, talking about a box, named the Elysian box, that kills anyone who opens it, and how he opened it. Worried for his friend, Layton comes to see him, just to find him dead in his locked office, and the box nowhere to be seen. The only clue you get is a train ticket for the Molentary Express, but with no destination written on the ticket.

So Layton and his apprentice go on the train and go wherever it goes, solving puzzles and finding info about the Elysian Box and its history. That eventually leads them to ahving the train car they are on being switched to another track and reaching the mysterious village of Folsense, but not before visiting another village and meeting up with a few characters.

So basically you’re going around finding clues as to where the Elysian Box is, what it is, and what’s its history, but also trying to find who killed Layton’s friend. The story is quite mysterious, as it should be, and is very well presented, with plot twists and overall an interesting setting. There’s a mild lack of character development, but it’s not exactly needed to develop the characters too much.

Gameplay
The basic gameplay is as simple as can be. You walk around using the walk button on the touch screen, and choose where to go. You can’t move inside an area(and you don’t even see Layton in the environment anyways), but you can select things to observe them, and select people to talk to them. Also, touching certain objects gives you hint coins. The basic “moving around and talking to people” gameplay is quite simple, but it provides a fun interface to progress through the game.

The main thing you’ll be doing here is puzzles. You’ll do puzzles to advance through the story, or talking to people will make them give you puzzles, or Layton will be reminded of a puzzle he knows by observing different things. Puzzles are central to everything in the game, and everyone in the game is OBSESSED with puzzles.

Puzzles are all played through the touche screen. You can choose answers, move things, change things by touching them, and write down answers when it’s a puzzle that requires you to input a number. The puzzles are incredibly varied, ranging from basic logic questions with twists, to math problems, to mazes, multiple choice questions, sudoku-like puzzles, chess puzzles… and many other things. The difficulty is also appropriate, starting with easier puzzles and frequently increasing the difficulty as you progress through the game. And they’re surprisingly fun to play as well. The more difficult ones do take a lot of thinking, but they’re quite rewarding. You can find out before playing each puzzle how difficult they’ll be, as each puzzle has a Picarat value(Picarats are used to unluck special stuff), and the higher the value, the more difficult the puzzle. The value of picarats for each puzzle goes down each time you give a wrong answer to a puzzle though, so the better you perform, the more stuff you can unlock.

The puzzles are supported by the hint system, which, using hint coins you find through the game, gives you hints on how to solve the puzzle. You can get up to 3 hints, and each can bring you closer to solving the puzzle. That system is slightly flawed though, as the hints range from completely useless to basically giving you the solution to a puzzle. Hints frequently give too much info and. if you decide to use them, just make solving the puzzles too easy. Another fun element here is the Memo function, which enables you to write stuff and use your touch screen for calculations and other random notes. This makes it a lot more useful than always carrying a notepad when playing. Sure, you might still need a calculator for the tougher math problems(depending on how good you are at calculating stuff), but it’s not too bad.

The game features a few other elements. You pick up various objects after certain puzzles. They can be hamster toys, camera parts, diary keys and tea ingredients. Each of those goes towards a different mini-game. The hamster mini-game is massively annoying, but it’s actually pretty useful. The goal is to get the hamster to move from one item to another so he gets exercise and loses weight. You do that by placing objects on the grid and the hamster will walk towards them. When he’s finally fit(if you get him to do 30 steps in one run), at level 0, he stops needing to get thin, and he helps you find hint coins in each area by pointing out to you where they are.  The camera parts are a puzzle where you try to place them all in an enclosed space, and when it’s complete you can use it. In certain areas you’ll get a camera icon, which leads to a “find the differences” mini-game, which you can do to find extra puzzles. The diary keys open up a diary (of course) which reveal a small part of the story. The final part, the tea ingredients, let you brew tea. In the final village, some people will be thirsty, and using your ingredients you use the clues they give you to make tea that is to their liking. This gives a few rewards, of course.

Overall the gameplay of Layton is actually quite well done. It’s the bare basics of gaming, but it’s incredibly well presented and accessible to both veteran gamers and the “casual” crowd.

Overall
This is a casual game through and through, but its appeal isn’t limited to casual players. The puzzles are well made enough for anyone to play them, and “hardcore” crowd, in addition to the fairly good puzzle game aspect, will be drawn in by the really good story.

The presentation is great and can appeal to anyone. The gameplay is well done and interesting, and the game is incredibly addictive. Overall this is a very fun game that any DS owner should enjoy.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Great presentation
- Fun and simple gameplay
- Fun story
- Appeals to both casual and veteran gamers
- The hint system makes the game accessible to everyone
- The addition of the memo function is quite useful

Cons
- You need a calculator with you to play the game, unless you’re really good at maths
- The hint system ranges from pretty much giving you the answer to being completely useless, there’s rarely a fine line

The Save Factor
With a starting price of $30, the Save Factor for Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box is:

$35 (if it was a bit higher than the starting price it would still be worth it)

jobocan ds, Games, Handheld, Review