REVIEW: Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)

Scribbled on March 1st, 2008 by Jonathon Howard
Filed in Nintendo DS, Puzzle, RPG, Reviews

Do you like puzzles?

If not, you can ignore everything that follows and check out some of the other stories here at GameStooge. However, if you do enjoy puzzles, you might want to read this review. Professor Layton and the Curious Village (PL) is an odd mix: part mystery, part adventure, part puzzle game. It’s what would happen if you gave narrative and direction to the Brain Age games and amped up the difficulty. You simply explore the world, solves puzzles, and in so doing uncover the story.

You are Professor Layton, and you have been sent to the remote village of St. Mystere by the family Baron Reinhold, to help them claim his estate. It seems the old Baron has hidden a “golden apple” somewhere in the town, and whomever finds it becomes heir to all his wealth. As you spend time in the village, the plot thickens and the mystery deepens. You’ll soon find yourself trying to solve a murder, kidnappings, bill dodging tenants, and so on. The story moves along in chapters, as you explore the town and solve the puzzles the citizens of St. Mystere pose to you, all presented in a lovely Saturday morning cartoon look (not like today’s edgy anime look, but the classic softer anime you might remember seeing in the 80’s, round and friendly.) One will often forget about what they are supposed to do to advance to next chapter in the game, but it never became an issue. There is a journal feature that one can review to remind oneself. I found as long as I was looking for puzzles and solving them, the story took care of itself.

The heart of PL are the puzzles; there are a total of 135 puzzles in the game, 120 of which can be found hidden through out the town and by talking to its residents. The next 12 require you to solve special meta-puzzles in the game, and once you’ve mastered all 132 puzzles, the last 3 are unlocked. It took me about 6 ½ hours to get through the story-line and another 30 minutes to find the remaining puzzles. Puzzles can be chapter specific, but all the puzzles you miss end up at a building in the village. There, you can solve missed puzzles and get hints as to where to find the ones you have missed. Puzzles range in difficulty from easy to very difficult. At the beginning, they’re pretty easy but near the end they’re killer.

To help you solve them, there are coins hidden through out the town, which you can use to buy hints – up to three for each puzzle. Be warned: even with all the hints, you might be stumped by some of more complicated ones. Completed puzzles give you “picarats”, the local currency, the amount of which is determined by how hard the puzzle was and how many attempts it took to complete. You’ll have thousands of them by the time you’re done with the game. You can’t buy anything with your “picarats” as they are only good for unlocking the extras.

PL comes with a lot of extras, more than I had any use for. There is an index of every character you meet in the game, a collection of background art you can browse, a music box, a video player for all the cut scenes and a voice test. I never bothered with any of those. The only extra worthwhile in PL is the weekly downloadable puzzle. That’s right: every week, a new puzzle is released and can be had by connecting your DS to the Internet via the Wi-Fi. Of course, these happen to be some of the most difficult puzzles of all!

Overall, an enjoyable experience but I think my girlfriend got more out of it than I did, as she is really good at puzzles.