better sense of scale than the first regarding both its central mystery and its locales. for one, you're given much more room to stretch your legs, with the second half of the game taking place in an area roughly the size of the entire first game and the first half having a few beefy areas of its own. the multiple mysteries in this one indeed also expand beyond the big endgame twist, and more care has been taken to drop breadcrumbs of intrigue throughout the adventure rather than the meandering approach of curious village. at the same time, the larger cast of characters and tragic lover's bond at the heart of the narrative makes the lack of attention paid to their actual characterization more noticeable. an examination of the folly of a rich family mining the earth and bringing ruin on their workers becomes didactic quickly when it's conveyed entirely through history lessons and layton's personal observations, and the writers' preoccupation with preserving the shock of the primary mystery keeps the actual humans at the core of the conflict from expressing themselves until the final ten minutes. I've cooled off on curious village's twist in the couple of years since I played it, and even though this one is probably more interesting, it still feels like a sudden burst of passion at the end of another meandering 15 hour adventure. then again, more pretty backgrounds than last time, so it all comes out in the wash.

puzzles in general are now better integrated into the story; layton still lives in an alternate reality where everyone is obsessed with puzzles, but at least he's actually using his skill at solving them in practical ways to navigate the world and solve mysteries. I'll hesitatingly say that conceptual puzzles seem to be fewer in number compared to curious village, with more focus on various physical layout puzzles and some math ones here and there. conceptual puzzles have the strength of obfuscating a solution space and thus making the exercise feel more like a product of reasoning and less trial and error, but I do also appreciate the variety of layout puzzles here, especially when it comes to ones like chopping wood in the right place to make a square or placing lanterns to cover every path of a forest. tired of maze puzzles tho; really no mental leaps required for them beyond just following each path to the right place. those are really the other extreme compared to conceptual puzzles, where the whole solution space is there for you to look at and you just check off whatever path leads to the finish. the best conceptual puzzles come on the critical path at least, so you won't miss any of them.

there's also better scaffolding around the ADV parts of the experience to keep exploration fresh thanks to some new integrated minigames. there's a persistent puzzle with an exercising hamster you must lead around a grid in order to have him reach a step count, and by solving puzzles around the world you can win items with new properties for him to chase. the puzzle itself is cool, and having a variety of ways to reach the maximum step count goes a long way to making the puzzle feel less prescriptive. when that's reached, he'll pop up in the world to tell you where you can find hint coins, removing the pixel hunting component of the game completely. there's camera components you can find as well that, once assembled, can be used to take pictures of specific rooms in the game. this opens up a "find the differences" type game that will open up a bonus puzzle; another neat addition that complements the main draw nicely. the third is less interesting: you can win different tea ingredients to make people tea? in-game there's no benefit to doing this, although I have a feeling some of the post-game puzzles will unlock if you can serve all the different kinds of tea. problem is figuring out all of the different brews is complete trial-and-error, and although some NPCs will give you recipes, others are much more vague. would help if some NPCs who want tea didn't suddenly stop wanting tea if you fuck up their initial order, though considering that they randomly re-enable later I have a feeling this is just some scripting issue.

I've been trying to finish this game since I was like 6 years old, and I finally did just that
The story was, idk, was it even decent? Idk this save file was played in mobile over the span of a year, I don't really remember half of it
The puzzles are interesting, but this isn't really my kind of game so I don't think I can give the best opinion about it
Overall, was it worth it? the 14 years of trying?
Shrugs I.... I guess so? Maybe?? Idk I think I prefer Inazuma Eleven every day of the week over this

P.D: IT'S NAME IS THE PANDORA'S BOX

fewer terrible puzzles than the first game so that's nice! still too many sliding puzzles and the fuckin endless peg solitaire and chess shit can die forever.

also somehow the plot twist of this game is even harder to believe than the first game?? the layton universe really just does whatever it wants and rolls with it lol

still a fun game. also still pretty rough around the edges

professor layton, as a series, just doesn't appeal to me. there's a couple reasons why, none of which involve the actual puzzles.

the puzzles are generally pretty fun; some are pretty cryptic, sure, but that's kinda just how logic puzzles are sometimes. the puzzles are most definitely the highlight of the series, and in diabolical box, they're quite good. better than curious village, at least.

my problems don't extend to the art or music either. the cutscenes are beautifully animated, characters are expressive, and the orchestral soundtrack adds a mature feeling to much of the game that feels just right.

even the general investigations are pretty solid; walking around town, clicking on evidence and seeing layton/luke's thoughts on the environment, it's endearing. i don't particularly love how the game sometimes becomes a series of fetch quests, but the puzzles along the way break that up nicely, so it's no big deal.

nearly all my problems arise with the story, especially the characters. starting with the plot, diabolical box is not a complex game. the huge mcguffin, this elysian box, remains wholly uninteresting throughout the game. much of the intrigue comes from the towns of dropstone and folsense themselves, both of which hold a sense of intrigue that remains until the twist.

speaking of the twist, it sucks. i won't go into too much detail for the sake of spoilers, but i will say that the foreshadowing was not fleshed out at all. were there hints? sure. does the twist explain how things went down? kind of. does the twist make logical sense? not one bit.

now, now, onto my largest problem with diabolical box (and the professor layton series as a whole): Professor Hershel Layton himself. layton, as a character, is nigh perfect. a perfect gentleman, always knows what to say, deducts mysteries and puzzles without problem (often before the player). oh yeah, he can also hold his own in a swordfight, and is trusted enough by the police to intervene with a murder investigation. sure.

creating a main character whose flaws just don't exist is not a strategy that i think works. professor hershel layton isn't a good character, and that's a problem when you spend the entire damn game in his perspective. it's no fun. layton isn't changed as a character after the game, he's the exact same perfect gentleman the moment you start and the moment you roll credits. i find it infuriating.

i just don't really get the appeal of a visual novel with no character development. sure, other characters develop, but they're characters you couldn't give a shit about; the ending is a heartwarming scene between 2 characters with 2 hours of screen time combined.

i think it's just a personal problem, or i'm missing something major, but i just don't particularly understand the praise this game gets. let me know if i'm just a bumbling idiot.

I love Layton and this one was in my backlog, i just never had this one so never got a chance to play it.

Seeing that it was now on Android decided it was time to give it a chance, after having played at least half of the Layton games already, so already coming in knowing what to expect.
Having played it, it has the layton charm, sure, but man it's def the only layton game where i fell like it was missing something, the mistery is kinda okayish, and the ending is barebones, feels incredibly rushed, I have a feeling this game was made quickly to cash on the popularity after the curious village released.

That said it still is layton and while it may be the weakest one so far that i played (Except for lady Katrielle that one is god-awful) it still was a nice playthrough.

But hey, after this one we got Unwound Future wich is one of my favourite games in general so no complaining there.

Okay so I might have the worst playthrought with this (stopped it midway cause TOTK hype) but it didn't prevent me from loving this game. While the start is kinda slow when you get to Folsense you get hooked for real. The vibe of this city is immaculate I loved running around and solving puzzles there. Talking about the puzzles they were great, your average Layton quality (except for the last one, broken mic iykyk). And of course the ending made me cry uncontrollably. But while I'm a sucker for those ending it would be nice to stop abusing this plot twist. The ending got me way more emotionnaly invested than in strange village but to be frank it was kinda rushed and a bit easy, I still have so many questions left unanswered. It's kinda like the game told us "go cry and stop thinking too much". But I'll forgive its flaws cause god this game has my heart, it was everything I wanted : epic and tragique scene, amazing character, peak ost and just the overall vibe...
So after being a bit dissapointed by strange village this trilogy is getting real good I cannot wait to play unwound future