It's 2023 and it has been like 5 years since I completed the latest entry on the Ace Attorney main game series. We are nearing what can be the final years of the Switch and I still don't know if Capcom is gonna follow on the cliffhanger they let us on.

Direct after Direct I watch with the mentality "no new Ace Attorney right?" and the Direct ends with me being right and more frustrated. But in this February something that I also thought was dead came from the ashes.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is something I played a long time ago just because I wanted to get a bit of context for the crossover with Phoenix Wright. I finished it but I remember not liking it that much. So seeing Layton coming back and not my blue attorney kinda pissed me off. But after a week I decided to give this series another chance.

Layton surprised me for having animated cutscenes and voice acting on the DS, something that was not that common on the console. The artstyle is gorgeous and reminds me of an european animation. The soundtrack is also beautiful and really sells the mood of the game.

Curious Village is a chill, but sometimes eerie, adventure where you try to solve a mystery solving puzzles. The mystery although intriguing, it's not that mindblowing and that's ok. The main selling point of the game is the puzzles.

The puzzles feels kinda disconnected from the main mystery with you solving them because something reminded someone of a puzzle or you have to solve someone's puzzle if you want to progress. You don't have to solve every puzzle but there are some chokepoints where you have to solve a minimum number to continue the game.

Do I like the puzzles? Most of them are fine, I love the ones where you have to think outside of the box or pay more attention to the problem. The ones where it seems difficult but then you realize it's a lot simpler. The ones I really don't like are the math ones and the moving blocks one. The "Princess in a Box" ones are my stuff of nightmares. Something I thought I wouldn't like but end up loving was the "Too Many Queens" ones, I felt like was playing sudoku, really fun.

The game has 135 puzzles and there are somes that kinda overlap with each other but it didn't bother me that much. The number seems a lot but playing the game it feels just right.

I started loving the game but by the end I remembered why I didn't like it, the kinda of puzzles I don't like started to be more prominent and they get really hard. Some of them I cheated because even with the hints I couldn't solve it. You can spend "hint coins" to get hints and it's another aspect I don't like that much because It's just pixel hunting find them in the world. I just used a guide to get all hint coints because I'm a completionist fag.

The game is best played like Layton would play it, like an afternoon tea where you pick up the game, solve some puzzles and when you start to get tired or hit a wall in a puzzle you put it off, think about it and then come back to try to solve it again. But by the end of the game I was so fixated in finishing it asap that I kinda put it aside and got a little stressed out.

The game kinda lack a catarthic ending, like when you finally break through an culprit in a Ace Attorney ending or a final emotional puzzle like Zero Escape 999. Everything is kinda solved in a cutscene and the final puzzle is not special, just a weird "find squares" one. But the final message and cutscenes are heartwarming and will make you look back fondly of this weird village.

I began playing the Diabolical Box and the beginning is already more interesting. I just hope Don Paolo or whatever was his name doesn't appear anymore. I will try to play it with more leisure, relaxing like a warm bath after a long day of work... That reminds me of a puzzle, have you seen this one?

Lots of fun brain teasers mixed together with a charming little story. They don't do an amazing job with fitting the puzzles into the story (not that I'd expect them to) but they do have a few moments where it either ties in to what's happening, or a character has a personality based around puzzle types that can be pretty fun. There is a heavy reuse of puzzle types the further you get though. Even most of the bonus puzzles you can unlock are just the same ones you've done before but on "hard mode".

There's probably some kind of analysis that could be done on people based on what puzzles they find easy or struggle with.

I liked that some puzzles gave you items which were used for other puzzles. The room one was a fun way to show off character personalities, albeit one where the "rules" didn't seem consistent. The gizmo also had a neat little effect when it was completed.

A pretty solid start to the Professor Layton franchise. I'll admit that I had try and keep my expectations low after playing through Unwound Future last year, but I still think this game holds up mostly fine. You do spend an eternity and a half just wandering around the main part of town though, so that can get a bit monotonous, and the game REALLY likes sliding puzzles and matchbox puzzles. I think they really improved upon puzzle variety and matched that up with the environment better in the later games, so I'm looking forward to playing more soon.

Growing up with a DS, I’d always had a passing interest in the Professor Layton series, but I didn’t get a chance to experience it until I picked up one of the entries for the 3DS. Years later, I wanted to go back to the origin of the series to see what the debut had to offer.

Fundamentally, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a mix between a narrative point-and-click adventure and puzzle game. This game was inspired, in part, by the Phoenix Wright series and this comes through in the moment-to-moment gameplay which consists of navigating the environment to progress the story and solving a variety of logic puzzles along the way. The Curious Village was released when the Brain Age series was becoming a household name and those games probably factored into the puzzle focus in the Layton series.

The Curious Village exudes charm through its atmosphere and gives the game a sense of coziness that pervades the experience. The art direction is a major contributing factor to this and is reminiscent of classic French animation like The Triplets of Belleville. The music perfectly complements the art and is a moody mixture of piano, accordion, and violin. All of the characters are drawn in an exaggerated style, even minor ones, making up for the relative lack of personality that the protagonists (Layton and Luke) are generally pretty flat themselves.

The puzzles themselves are varied and, in general, well constructed. Some are simple riddles, others involve manipulating blocks around constrained areas, and others are just straight up math questions. Sometimes, the hints don’t reveal enough leading to an unsatisfying guessing approach, but genuinely solving a puzzle that characters in the game were moaning about is always fun. There are also some odd minigames that I can’t stop thinking about. Namely, the bizarre tamagotchi-esque sim where you decorate Layton and Luke’s bedrooms in an effort to make them happy.

The major gripes I have with the game have to do with the puzzle solving UI. This game desperately needs a whiteboard feature. Oftentimes, I would find myself pulling out a physical whiteboard to take notes while working on puzzles and this is something that could have easily been implemented with the touch screen on the system. Once you have the solution to a puzzle, inputting the numbers or letters to answer it feels like its own puzzle. Single strokes are recorded as inputs so adding an “E” to your answer is needlessly complicated.

The game’s story is the vehicle that moves you from puzzle to puzzle and, for what it is, I found it to be quite satisfying. Like the gameplay itself, the narrative is a series of puzzles in the form of mysteries that are gradually revealed. The resolution to some of the mysteries feels obvious by the time you reach them, but this is mostly due to appropriate clues being given beforehand. Refreshingly, the character of Flora, who is crucial to the resolution of the story, is actually given some agency of her own rather than being relegated to the damsel in distress as was typical of the time. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the story is quaint, a little sinister, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of the DS trilogy has to offer. The Curious Village showcases the charm that the Professor Layton series would be known for. UI gripes aside, any puzzle aficionado or cozy game enjoyer should give this one a shot.

The Professor Layton series is my very favorite on the DS and should be considered all-time classics. The gentlemanly Layton and his eager apprentice Luke travel to the sleepy town of St. Mystere looking to solve the mystery of the Golden Apple for the Lady Dahlia. The game’s art design is endlessly charming and it was a blast to utilize the point and click style mechanics to meet all of the quirky characters throughout the game and inspect every screen for hint coins. The storytelling is really top notch and though later revelations get pretty wacky, I came to realize that’s in the nature of the Layton series and part of the charm. Layton and Luke ground the adventure through their wholesome interactions with each other and those around them. The game even has some beautifully animated cutscenes for many of the major story moments.

The Layton series is all about puzzles and Curious Village isn’t afraid to test your mettle with some real brain stumpers. While you can sort of brute force your way through them by spending the pretty copious hint coins, using them as a last resort makes for a more rewarding experience overall. Credit has to go to Akira Tago for designing so many unique and rewarding puzzles throughout the entire series.

I love Professor Layton and at least the first game is an absolute must play- it’s even been ported to the App Store so it’s more available to anyone than ever.

Add this one to the pile of DS games with outstanding soundtracks, good lord. Just like Actraiser, that's what drew my attention to Professor Layton a long time ago: its music.

Professor Layton's theme, The Looming Tower, Veil of the Night, Ferris Wheel Park, The Village Awakens, the ending theme... Curious Village has one of the most unique OSTs out there, easily.

That said, I wouldn't actually finish it for real until recently, despite knowing about the series for like, 10 years by now. I sampled the first game at one point and did enjoy it, but didn't push through more than the first couple of hours for whatever reason. Revisiting the Ace Attorney series brought my attention back to it though. "Oh yeah, there's that crossover game, right? I better check out the PL games before going into that, then."

Playing this during breaks in my routine in the past week was really fun! Curious Village is a pretty good mobile/portable game, best experienced in short bursts over time. That is, until the story finally hooks you.

One of Professor Layton's defining traits(aside from its masterful soundtrack, I will not shut up about it) is that it features a story on top of its puzzles. You're not just completing a series of challenges on a list like Picross or something, you're also supposed to piece together the truth behind a mystery taking place in the village. I read somewhere that originally, Level-5 didn't plan on taking this approach at all and were instead going to release a puzzle collection a-la Brain Age, but I'm SO glad they went this route because the story is actually pretty interesting!
I don't know if it was thanks to me playing the game on short bursts or initially paying more attention to the puzzles than the story, but I did not see that twist coming at all. Eventually I put the hints together and immediately went "Holy shit, what?????" and HAD to get to the end in one night. Cut to me at 4am, drifting to sleep to one of the most beautiful ending themes I've ever heard.

The aura that hangs over the game once you realize what's going on is so bittersweet, and it's SO effective. A short and simple story that knew exactly how to aim for my heart strings, helped in no small part by its beautiful, often melancholic soundtrack.

That said, this setup does raise some issues. Once the story caught my attention and had me wanting to see the end, the puzzles felt more like bothersome roadblocks than interesting brainteasers. Thankfully I had already completed most puzzles in the game by that point and the last ones blocking your way to the final room mostly didn't give me trouble, but when they did pose a challenge, I just ended up looking up the answers online instead of racking my brain for an answer like I had done with every other puzzle until then. I'm curious to see how they'll address this balance in future games, if at all.

Oh, right-- the puzzles! I spent all this time talking about other shit, but at the end of the day this is a puzzle game after all. They're good!
130+ short problems that'll have you scratching the side of your head with a stylus for a good, long while. Loved the sliding block and Queen puzzles, and the wordplay ones were my favorites. Picking out little details on what exactly was being asked of me for a solution had me thinking back to testimonies in the Ace Attorney series.

Now, they don't all hit the mark. The "who's lying?" puzzles were a bit samey, and there's a couple of them with pretty bullshit solutions. (The chocolate keyboard one comes to mind)

All in all, I really wish I had played these games earlier. Curious Village is such a good starting point, I'm gonna dive in the next games right after writing this. Considering how much I enjoyed the story here, I can hardly wait to see what lies ahead.

Man, the DS really is goated, isn't it? Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Etrian Odyssey, Trauma Center; so many great gems on this little guy.

it takes some cues from japanese adventure games but is really more of a big puzzle collection with very fancy menus. walk around, talk to some villagers, get new puzzles, and meander towards your destination. thankfully the characters are likable, especially the laid-back layton and his fiery yet precocious sidekick luke. with the limited cast and the small locale the world is snug and bereft of needless pixel hunting or confusing objectives. lovely animation from production IG even if the DS can't quite do the FMV justice. the main thing that holds back the macrogame here for me is the pacing. layton and luke encounter a mystery, get shooed off, and then stumble into another mystery over and over again until the endgame where layton magically solves the entire plot and then the credits roll. the shock of the endgame twist makes layton's exposition dump less jarring and more like a riddle within itself; it turns your brain inside-out and briefly rethink the rest of the game as you bounce between the final few puzzles. a simple twist but effective nonetheless.

as for the puzzles themselves, this was a bit of a proving ground for myself to make up for my terrible riddle sense as a child. as an adult this hits a brain-teaser sweet spot where I can comfortably make it through the main scenario while legitimately feeling challenged by the harder puzzles the game has to offer. refreshingly few puzzles relied on moon logic that made me grumble, and none of the touch-screen gimmicks felt tacked-on or perfunctory. the final two puzzles gave me pause... thankfully the game has a decent in-game hint system accessible by coins that are strewn throughout the environment. then for the final one I just looked at a guide since whatever, life is short. overall a nice way to ease players into the concept, and I'm sure the rest of the DS trilogy will flesh out the setting and intrigue.

Visual novels are often dismissed as low-effort titles, but it’s important to recognize the role they play in the modern gaming landscape. With the classic adventure genre being functionally dead, visual novels have taken their place as the format of choice for mixing a focused narrative with thoughtful gameplay. This can come in the form of something like Danganronpa, where the gameplay is detective work directly linked to the events of the story, or something more like Professor Layton, where its library of puzzles are only loosely contextualized within the narrative. In both cases, it’s a tough balancing act to ensure each part isn’t holding back the other, with riddles that are either too scarce to appeal to puzzle lovers or too frequent to maintain a good narrative pace. Layton’s approach heavily favors the puzzle side, but it made some smart concessions with its story to ensure everyone could enjoy the game. While it does require you to complete a certain number of puzzles, players have the freedom to skip the ones they’re stuck on, and since they’re given by townsfolk who may be unavailable at certain times, missed puzzles are conveniently moved to a centralized location at the end of each chapter. On the other side, the story has a lot of intriguing little mysteries, but there’s never a time where you have to sit and listen to people chat for minutes at a time. The plot is free of unnecessary drama, acknowledging that the central thread of the game is in solving mysteries, not character conflict. Characters are introduced and given a few sentences of establishment, then they reveal a new story detail, and present a new puzzle. It’s a concise way of keeping everyone happy, especially when combined with the aforementioned puzzle streamlining. The only problem the game really has is how, in a struggle to come up with 120+ unique puzzles, it flips from logic problems to semantic riddles without warning, occasionally cheating players with a deliberately misleading premise. These are very much the minority however, and the quality speaks for itself when someone who’s close to double the target age could still enjoy the game and have to spend time working out the tougher puzzles. The best way to sum it up would be that it’s just like the animated movies it seeks to emulate, in that its earnest simplicity could charm just about anyone, even if it probably won’t end up being an all-time favorite.

There's something quite charming to the original Professor Layton, knowing it's an adaptation of a long-running series of Japanese brain teasers first and foremost, and all the stuff that would come to define the series (the characters, the adventure mystery plots full of over-the-top moments, etc) exists here purely as a framing device. At the same time, there was such confidence in the game that not only were sequels already in the works, but code functionality was implemented that would only be paid off when the sequel rolled around, like a mini Stop 'n' Swop. None of this confidence feels misplaced; Atama no Taisou makes for a great template, and the characters and world are immediately charming, the latter's bombast offset by Layton's quiet modesty.

This isn't a fair-play mystery, to be sure, which seems a contrast to the general nature of the puzzles being solvable with careful critical thinking. But maybe that's all right? Luke's there to play the Watson, so the player isn't alone when things start going off the wall in the endgame.

Extremely charming
wonderful music and characters
and a story that was way more in depth then I expected
my complains are the puzzles
while despite the fact it is a puzzle game their over abundance and lack of connection to the story and feel like a slog to get through