Professor Layton and the Curious Village

The Professor Layton series is an odd one when explained in a bare-bones fashion, combining the DS's "brain training" puzzle genre and attaching a story onto it, complete with various characters and a unique setting - but even in this first foray the formula works surprisingly well.

The game begins as you follow the two main protagonists Professor Layton, a charming top-hat wearing gentleman and Luke, a cheeky and playful younger boy and Layton's apprentice/sidekick, travelling into the main location of St. Mystere, a quaint English village, in order to solve the mystery of the "Golden Apple". Soon after arriving, a murder occurs kicking off the plot, and you are required to explore the village in search of clues, often needing to converse with the puzzle-obsessed residents of St. Mystere.

The game really oozes comfiness and charm, there's a real laid back atmosphere throughout (which make the occasional twists and dramatic scenes hit all the more harder) that makes exploring St. Mystere just extremely pleasurable, which is all fuelled by the beautiful art style that would easily belong in a good children's book... and then there a bunch of puzzles tacked on as well for the gameplay.

There's no bones about it, the puzzle 'integration' within the actual story is very weak, and it would seem like it would get old/boring quickly... yet it simply just doesn't. There's an awful lot of variett in both content and presentation and so each puzzle put forward feels like a brand new challenge to solve. With no time limit, hints for each puzzle, with a lot of them skippable or can be retried at a later date, you never feel helplessly stuck. The game may provide all these questions, puzzles and challenges but it also wants you to succeed and take great pleasure at answering them, one at a time. The quality of puzzle does tend to slip a little towards the end, but it takes much longer than one would expect.

I'd also recommend having a pen and paper to hand when playing, as a lack of a good memo/notepad function can really be felt after having experienced some of the subsequent sequels.

The Professor Layton series is a bit of a weird one for me, essentially being visual novels with a ton of puzzles thrown into the mix, not even in an elegant way either, just, puzzles, completely unrelated to the story most of the time. With that said, the strangest part of the game is the fact that this total dissonance in gameplay doesn't detract from the enjoyable experience quite as much as one would think, being kinda charming in a way. This charm extends most notably in terms of artstyle, which is absolutely beautiful and definitely goes a long way in making this an enjoyable time even despite some of its flaws. Charm in general is a big reason why this game works at all I'd have to think, with the laid back tone and generally soft spoken characters making even the most extreme moments feel largely lowkey. I feel this to the point where I feel as if it could make a murder something that creates very little emotional response, but somehow in a good way.

While this aesthetic undoubtedly goes a long way, along with the entertaining characters and beautiful soundtrack contributing to this, the gameplay itself is pretty fun as well. While it starts off seeming like the puzzle aspect of the game would become quite dry rather quickly, this potential issue is somewhat prevented for a while thanks to the game throwing in a number of trick question curveballs that spice things up and make you consider a completely different line of thinking. Even with this however, it still feels as if the game goes on too long and ends up repeating itself to detrimental degrees towards the final act. This is especially notable when you realise how many puzzles in this portion end up being either maths or sliding puzzles, both types completely lacking the quaint charm and lightheartedness of the best parts of the game.

Overall, despite the oddities of this game and the fact that it begins declining towards the end, I still found this game to be quite enjoyable, with my issues with both the awkward plot and worst integration of puzzles out of any game in the series, it's undeniable charm makes it easy to forgive some of these flaws. If you think you'll care about the plot of these games, then definitely play this one first, but otherwise, I'd much more readily recommend the more refined entries of the series, namely Pandora's Box and Lost Future.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a game I didn't expect to grab my attention the way it did. I had heard about the Professor Layton games and I obviously was aware of Luke and Layton before even thinking about picking them up. My girlfriend insisted I play them. I knew they were puzzle games but I didn't expect to enjoy the game the way I did

Curious Village takes place in a fictional town in England called St. Mystere. You follow Hershel Layton and his assistant, Luke as they go to this town in search of the Golden Apple. The story is basic as basic gets going in but this game throws many twists that just blows your mind. All the characters are interesting to interact with because of how many characters there really are. It's also due to this game's amazing presentation. The art style is great. The music is pretty good too. Not to mention how fun exploring St. Mystere is

What dictates the game's pace is the puzzles. There are over 120 Puzzles to do in St. Mystere and 15 bonus puzzles. Making it a total of 135 Puzzles. Some of these puzzles are optional while others aren't. The difficulty of each puzzle is dictated by how many Picarats (The game's score) it's worth. 10 Picarats being the easiest, 99 being the hardest. Exploring St. Mystere can gain access to hidden puzzles and hint coins which allow you to purchase up to 3 hints per puzzle. With every failed answer, the Picarat score lowers which doesn't change the difficulty, but changes how many Picarats you will be earning.

Some of these puzzles are straightforward while others really require you to take a second and think. Some puzzles are so intense that I had to take a picture of the puzzle or get paper and write stuff down. These puzzles exceeded my expectations and some were REALLY hard to figure out which makes solving them extremely satisfying especially if you never bought a hint.

This game wouldn't be that interesting to me if it was just puzzles, but the story and characters are what drove me to keep going and the game got so fun that I accidentally solved all 135 puzzles without the goal in mind. The game even encourages you to play the sequel, Diabolical Box to find a password to use in this game. It's mindblowing. Trust me, these characters and the story will make you wanna keep going. It's also great to play with others. I played it with my girlfriend which was a blast. It still blew my mind to see animated cutscenes for a DS game.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village exceeded all my expectations and tho some of the story bits could have been better executed and some puzzles maybe should've been less repetitive, the game is a blast to go through and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to play a puzzle game with an equally engaging narrative.

It's pretty much a random collection of puzzles all tied together with a story. Luckily, the story is surprisingly good, albeit a little absurd; it certainly serves its purpose well as a motivator to keep the player chugging through the game.

The puzzles range from satisfying to scoff-worthy. There's one particular puzzle that I still need to re-enact physically in order to believe the solution. Luckily there are three hints per puzzle to help along with the particularly ridiculous and/or difficult ones.

Ultimately, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a good way to exercise your mind, as opposed to just working through a book of sudoku puzzles.