I personally started my Layton journey with miracle mask, but of course I wanted to check out the earlier games in the series at some point too. No better place to start than the very first one, and it does certainly have the mark of first-game-in-the-series-itis. It’s a relatively low stakes story where I feel for most of the plot not much really happens. The conclusion has some of the qualities I would come to love Layton for shining through though, and the characters are filled to the brim with charm.

Puzzle-wise they strike a good balance so that no puzzle takes too long to solve, and there’s plenty pf hint coins around if needed, but the difficulty of said puzzles is kind of all over the place sometimes. Some I cleared in 5 seconds, some took like half an hour if not more, and these would both happen rather randomly during the course of the adventure. As it is the first game, it’s clear they still had to iron that out a bit, but most of these puzzles are still quality.

Overall, I really liked this first adventure, and looking forward to moving on to the next one, where I also started collecting layton games in different regional dubs just for the fun of it.

With the coming of IOS emulation means a little retro detour is needed for the backlog. Used to love these as a kid so I thought it would be fun to revisit.

This is probably the one I remember the least, and for good reason, while the puzzles and characters are pretty cool, it’s still pretty bare bones and relies almost entirely on the brain busting and distinct visual style.

Pretty cool palate cleanser and a precursor to one of the more fondly looked back on games from my childhood. Worthy of a true gentleman.

You follow Hershel Layton and his apprentice Luke as they make their way to St. Mystere to help with a puzzling inheritance case. The deceased left everything to whomever could locate the "Golden Apple," yet no one has ever even heard of it. Explore the village for clues, help villagers, and solve puzzles all on the way to figuring it out!

Visuals

I absolutely love the artstyle in Professor Layton and the Curious Village! It stood out to me as soon as the game loaded.The backgrounds have a hand-painted storybook feel to them, and the characters look straight out of an old cartoon! In fact, the fully animated cutscenes could be clips from a real series!

Sound Effects + Music

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is partially voice acted. The major cutscenes are fully voiced, and everyone sounds great. Other than that, there are just minimal sound effects when interacting with the environment, no ambient noises.

I also really enjoyed the music too. There's only a few tracks, so it does get repetitive if you play for long stretches. But the music fits the slightly uncanny feel of the village perfectly.

Gameplay + Controls

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a hybrid of point-and-click adventure and puzzle game. You tap arrows on the screen to move from location to location, along with on other areas to find secrets. However, rather than finding an assortment of objects to combine and use in the environment, you find a wide variety of puzzles and riddles to progress your journey.

The puzzles range from slide puzzles to math riddles to optical illusions and more. You'll need to think logical and often times literally to solve some of them. There is a hint system and most puzzles are skippable. You are required to solve some specific ones to get the evidence you need, as well as needing 75 total to unlock the final area. However, you can skip non-story puzzles and return to them later if you need to. It's fairly generous.


Replayability

As much as I enjoyed my time with Professor Layton and the Curious Village, the nature of being a mystery makes it non-replayable for me. The surprise is gone, so there's no real need to go through it again. You can always revisit the puzzles or continue solving the ones you missed though without restarting.


Overall

I absolutely adored Professor Layton and the Curious Village from the opening cutscene! It's so engaging and charming. If you like brain teasers and silly mystery stories, make sure to check this one out!

Historinha bem bolada, enigmas divertidos, essa franquia é bacana, hein?

Eu confesso que lá pro último terço do jogo os enigmas subiram de dificuldade de modo que eu batia tanta cabeça pra resolver que cansava, sendo a história o que me mantinha jogando.

Claro, a culpa é toda minha eu ter empacado tantas vezes a ponto de olhar as respostas na Internet, mas não é porque eu sou ruim que eu vou culpar o jogo em si, que na verdade tem é muito valor.

Digo isso porque a premissa desse primeiro Layton é bem direta e reta, e a execução é redondinha. As coisas ficam mais grandiosas ao passar do tempo e o final é daora.

Se for pra dar pitaco, tem uns enigmas que são meio mal formulados, seja porque são difíceis de entender o comando, ou porque a resposta é aberta a interpretações.

Particularmente, eu acho difícil dar uma nota pra um jogo assim porque apesar de ser um jogo competente em tudo, não fiquei super engajada com o conteúdo. No momento da publicação da review, não tem nota alguma. Se quando você vir, tiver, então eu consegui me decidir.

I’ve played a couple Professor Layton games before but never to completion. I finally decided to see Curious Village through to the end and it definitely didn’t disappoint. I ended up getting an extremely solid small puzzle adventure with an interesting story.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village has an absolutely gorgeous Ghibli-esque art style that’s ever so comforting. The environments adorn a beautifully hand-drawn look and the animated cutscenes are animated so much like a Ghibli film that I was surprised it wasn’t Studio Ghibli themselves producing the scenes. The art style is just astonishing from the scenery to the characters designs.

The puzzles are absolutely ridiculous though. This is only the first-entry in the series so I hope that future installments don’t have puzzles as convoluted and math-driven as the ones in Curious Village. The logic-based puzzles are brilliant though so I hope the series leans more into those.

The soundtrack is also a weak spot for this game. It’s not bad but just very limited to the point of making not being able to play the game for long hours. The repetition and lack of variety in the tracks makes the game feel like a slog when it really isn’t.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a great first entry that has obvious room for improvement but gets so much right the first time around. I can see a next installment of this be a complete masterpiece if they choose to improve the right elements. As it stands, though, this game is pretty great.

Im not very good with dedicated puzzle games sometimes, but the story of the this game is great and comfy to read. It also manages to tie in the gameplay reasons well with the story in addition that makes a lot of sense. Also the anime cutscenes are nice. Yet it’s another reason why the DS library was just unique and full of great, low-budget video games that had good effort put into them. As it’s my first Professor Layton excluding the PWvsPL crossover game I’m glad to check out what the whole series has to offer

I'm sad I never got to this franchise sooner, this is great. Professor Layton and the Curious Village is not the first entry in the series I've played, unfortunately it was the crossover with Ace Attorney that took that privilege and it painted a slightly negative view in my mind (I really don't like PLvsPW)

Starting from the beginning properly, I loved the charm this game has, the unique character design, the small list of music tracks that are here are all absolute bangers, the mystery is eccentric but fun and the puzzles are, for the most part, really well done (Put a pin in this).

Layton is a really fun character to watch, he has a charm about him that is impossible to describe. Watching him talk and interact with increasingly bizarre people is a joy and how he handles the mystery solving is honestly great. And that main mystery, while a little predictable in some ways, has a lot of really nice moments. The beginning of the deductions into the mysteries of this town and the ending are highlights for me, mainly because when a cutscene plays you know its gonna be peak.

Now I mentioned putting a pin in the what I said earlier about puzzles, "for the most part" is very key. My major complaint and frankly the only one I really have is as the game goes on, you start seeing the same types of puzzles over and over. "Who is the liar", "Slide the blocks to create a exit", "Move the ball to the hole" and others kept peering their heads, and the issue becomes when you've solved one, you've basically solved them all. I sucks seeing a puzzle and going "This again?"

This also creates a issue of by late game, you're getting privy to the games tricks that it tries to pull, the phrasing of questions, the fake outs, the attempts to mislead you, eventually when your playing by it's logic, you start to find them predictable.

Another minor issue is the puzzle types that require you to find x amount of shape in y, and how with the tools at your disposal on a DS, if you play with only whats given, it becomes a mental trial of trying to not forget a absurd amount of info without any means of physical note taking. This is a issue I hear gets fixed in later enteries and is just a growing pain of being the first entery in the franchise, but still worth mentioning.

While the tangent on issues I have does seem long, in the grand scheme of the game, I enjoyed the puzzles enough to go for 100% in it, and strived for as much as a perfect, no hint coin run as possible. This was a joy from start to finish, and I cannot to delve further into this series.

Goodbye, you curious village, it's time to open Pandora's Box!