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.
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.