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!

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.

I’ve never played a Prof.Layton game before but knew what the premise and gameplay was like. What a charming little game it is.

The storyline was slow to properly start due to the amount of puzzles that halt you - but that being said, it is a puzzle game and there are a lot to get your teeth stuck into.

Some of the puzzles I felt however were worded really strange, which made me come to the wrong solution - but maybe that’s the point for some of them?

I would have liked a little more action put into the narrative - but all in all I had a good time playing and some of the puzzle stumped me for a while.

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 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.