Review #731: Professor Layton and the Curious Village

 A gentleman doesn't leave puzzles unsolved.

 Professor Layton is a Nintendo DS classic, but one that never interested me much since I was never into puzzles and riddles. Come Professor Layton VS Phoenix Wright and my interest was picqued, so a chance I will give it, starting with Professor Layton and the Curious Village, the professor's first ever game.

 The story follows genius and gentlemen extraordinaire, Professor Layton, and his aide, Luke, who find their way into the title's curious village where they must discover the secret behind the recently diseased Lord's Golden Apple. It's a simple, but entertaining story that contains 120 puzzles and riddles and should last about 10 hours to complete. The game is fairly rudimentary as far as graphics go, puzzles have very simple and basic illustrations, backgrounds are barely animated, if animated at all, and characters have very basic animation loops. That said, the art-style is absolutely adorable, even if it feels like every character came from a completely different world than the others. Finishing the game lets you unlock 15 other puzzles, if you cleared a few extra objectives, such as building the robot dog, fixing the painting and decorating Layton and Luke's rooms, the parts and objects needed for these are obtained by solving the puzzles during the main story, so... basically, the game is a bunch of puzzles that unlock more puzzles. Back in the day, when Nintendo Wi-Fi was a thing, you could download about 70 extra puzzles, luckily, my copy of the game had them downloaded! It's a nice extra, but the main game felt meaty enough by itself.

 The game plays like a first person adventure game, you move through different screens, each one covering a different part of town, and you must tap on every nook and cranny in order to find hidden hint coins or even secret puzzles. You'll also have to tap on NPCs in order to either trigger optional puzzles or progress through the story. There are not 'find items to use on objects' kind of puzzles, instead, the puzzles and riddles themselves are the, well, puzzles. In other words, the game progression is pretty much "We need to investigate a certain part of town", and once you get there either solve a puzzle hidden in the environment or solve a puzzle an NPC will trouble you with,  or, 'Talk to X NPC' will inevitably end with said NPC handling you a puzzle before you can go on with the story.

 The puzzle and riddle selection is fairly varied, both in types and difficulty, although talking about challenge when it comes to puzzles and riddles is fairly subjective, as far as someone like me goes, someone who doesn't care about riddles and puzzles, well.... more than a few stumped me. Stumped me hard. You can use Hint coins to purchase hints, up to three per puzzle, but Hint coins are a limited currency, so you can't just use them willy nilly.

 I can't exactly say that I loved the game, or that it turned me into a fan of the genre, but I can tell that the game is fairly good. The story and characters are fun enough to keep you interested, and there were a handful of puzzles I can honestly say I adored because of how smart they were. Regardless, I think I can understand why the series managed to become a cult hit and garner a following.
 7.0 out of 10