Game #1159: Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy

  As such concludes... the Layton legacy.

 I'll keep this short, as there's not much I can say about Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy that I haven't said in previous Layton entries. This game concludes the prequel sequel as well as Layton's story, at least as of now, as the latest Layton game at the moment focuses on his daughter. Regardless, as such, I think this game had kind of a heavy burden. Unwound Future was a phenomenal way to end the original series, so one would've hope Azran Legacy would live up to it. I don't think it.

 Well, this comes from the point of view of someone who, funnily enough, played the Layton series for their story as opposed to their gameplay. I'm not into riddles or mindbenders, so I couldn't care less about the gameplay proper. But I do enjoy exploring the world of the Layton games, as well as its mysteries. On that note, the game is what you'd expect: 150 riddles as well as a few bonus ones, lie in wait for the player. Some are mandatory, some must be found either by talking with NPCs or by poking around the beautiful backdrops with the stylus. The presentation is as amazing as it has been since they did the jump to the 3DS, as the character models are crisp and very clean, while the hand-drawn art displays gorgeous locales. There are also the mandatory side games, one about picking outfits for characters, one about bowling with acorns as a squirrel and, lastly, one about explosive flowers. Pretty much like any other Layton game.

 That said, at around the game's midpoint it throws a curveball to the player, letting you tackle six different areas in any order that you wish. It's something they haven't done before, and an interesting idea... and one that I think made the game boring. Probably as a consequence to this new layer of freedom, the pacing slows down to an absolute slog. Now you must collect the 6 Azran objects, getting minimal plot progression in the meantime. The last two chapters do pick up, and I did get invested into Layton and somebody else's temporary truce, but it was a bit short-lived. The fact that now Layton's group is made up of about five characters at the same time, instead of just Luke, Emmy and Layton, means that not everyone gets as much screentime as you'd like. Speaking of the plot, at the tail end the game just throws plot twists that feel completely out of the blue, one of them which makes you put everything that happened in the previous game under a different frame... and considering this wasn't foreshadowed in the least, it's not a good thing. Oh, and the way a certain 'deathly' issue resolves itself at the end was bollocks.

  Well, despite trying something a bit different, Azran Legacy is still pretty much like every other game in the series, so it IS a decent game. It's just that there better entries, and that as a finale to the prequel trilogy it falls short of its mark. It doesn't help that for such a disappointing entry it's also the most expensive one!

 6.0