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?
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?