today i finally got around to finishing the original layton trilogy! i played these games in a weird roundabout way. i played the phonic wright crossover first mostly just because i loved phonic wright. i was familiar with layton because i had a friend who played it, but even without prior knowledge i fell in love with the professor and the style of the puzzles there though. a few years later a friend of mine got unwound future (third game in the trilogy) at a yard sale. when they learned it wasn’t worth any money they gave it to me. i played the game over the course of about a week on my dsi xl. despite lacking more specific knowledge of some recurring characters, i don’t think my lack of series knowledge deducted from the experience at all. i adored it top to bottom. after that i would not play another professor layton game for a few years because of severe depression keeping me from enjoying anything. then i decided to finally give the first game in the series a shot. i played through curious village in a single day on the melonds emulator on my very nice computer. i missed some of the quality of life and more self-serious plot from unwound future, but i still found the game incredibly charming. i think the layton games are really good emulated, and if you don’t wanna hunt the copies down (they are probably pretty cheap) or don’t have a hacked 3ds (it’s really easy to do) emulation is an alternative that doesnt lose anything played with just a mouse.
anyway, back to the present day. i finally decided to fill in the gap i’ve been missing in the layton trilogy. i played diabolical box via retroarch on my modded nintendo 2ds xl. i beat it in about two days. i enjoyed it very much.
the game’s story manages to feel more far fetched than both other games somehow. i don’t want to spoil too much, but if you have any familiarity with the layton games, they tend to end with massive twists. i think professor layton vs. phoenix wright still takes the crown for the most outlandish one, i’d say this one takes second place for me. of the trilogy games i would say this one has my favorite main setting. i love folsense. the titular curious village of the first game certainly had creepy elements, but at least presented the facade of a normal place. and the world of unwound future was broadly the same. folsense stands out as an oddity. a town covered in ethereal lights under a blanket of eternal night. and there’s a vampiric castle looming in the distance. the small ds screen does compress the graphics of these gorgeous hand drawn backgrounds a bit sadly. it can also make some of the spot-the-difference puzzles a bit frustrating and eye strain inducing. i still love the look and feel of them though. the characters are a classic professor layton cast. i think compared to the first and third game they aren’t incorporated as well honestly. it felt like the game just kind of forgot about several characters past a certain point, some of the most interesting characters get almost no screen time, and flora gets shafted real hard. i think the strength of professor layton is that as long as layton and luke are still present and driving the story, you barely notice these things. it probably has my least favorite story of the trilogy, but it’s not bad at all. i thought the ending was beautiful and definitely cried during it.
i don’t have a ton to say about the puzzles. i think most of them had better quality of life features than 1. stuff like better input options that make it easier to understand the puzzle. also 1 i had to look up the answers to like the last 5 puzzles in a row and i only needed to look up a couple for this game. that might just be because i’m smarter now though.
now i’m thinking of starting the prequel trilogy. i’ve also been playing layton’s mystery journey a bit and i still don’t know how i feel about it. katrielle is a great character, but the supporting cast feels really weak so far. i might write a more in-depth review on it at some point, but i’m not sure if i want ot finish it yet!