Game #1216: Layton's Mystery Journey - Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy Deluxe Edition

 Puzzles are meant for solving, just watch the anime.

 And now, I am definitely done with the Layton series, as Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy Deluxe Edition(The title is such a handful!) pretty much condemned the Layton series'. 

 Katrielle's adventure is a bit of a soft-reboot for the series, as it takes place much later after the third Layton game, featuring his daughter as the main protagonist. The Professor and Luke are completely gone, and it's framed as a mystery... that is never addressed in the game. If you want to know what happened with Layton, well, better watch the anime. Katrielle's team is made up of herself, of course, as well as Ernest Greeves, a wet-blanket of a character that is deeply in love with her as well as a talking dog, Sherl. Who is this dog? Why can some people understand him? Once again, it's framed as a another mystery, but it's never addressed again after the introductory cutscene. It feels very unsatisfying.

 I've never much cared for Layton's gameplay, as I never cared about the riddles, it was the plot of each game that really intrigued me and kept me invested. Well... Katrielle's adventure is way more light-hearted than the ones in the previous game, and instead of having one big mystery for Kat to solve, you get 12 different cases. For case 12 every character that you met, the 'Millionaires' from the game's title, reappear, but very little that happened in previous cases is pertinent to this reunion. It's rather unfulfilling, and the low stakes of most, sans 2, cases just makes it all the lamer. 80% of the cases are very predictable, so you'll have figured them out before Katrielle herself. Although I think some might prefer this, as in previous Layton games it was pretty much impossible to figure out the solutions. I mean, hypnotic gas, need I say more? Regardless, I felt previous Layton games featured a more interesting plot, and the character were much more endearing. Kat's alright, but she feels like a mixture between Luke and Emma, while I couldn't care less about Ernest and Sherl.

 It's not all doom and gloom. I liked how you can purchase new outfits for Katrielle using in-game currency. It's a bit stereotypical, y'know, it's a girl therefore clothes, but I'm always up for character customization, so I'll take it. It's a bit lengthier than previous Layton games, and it has 180 different puzzles to solve out of the box, plus, it features just as many side-diversions as the previous iterations. Collecting useless items by exploring the backgrounds, a mini-game in which you must plan a 5-course meal for an NPC according to their tastes, one in which you must plan a route for shoppers so that they buy everything and one in which you make a route for Sherl the dog as he tries to get to the end of a maze. The game supports the touchscreen, which is really nice, but a finger is no stylus!

 The game itself is your standard Layton fare, follow a story solving puzzles as you go from place to place. You can click on objects on the background to find puzzles, hint coins or collectibles, etc etc. That said... this one is easily the easiest game in the franchise. By far. I must've used the guide 10 times or less, which is surprising as all the other Layton games owned me so hard. That said, there's a rather large amount of 'trick question' puzzles that don't always feel very... logical, and you can only come to the right answer by using hint coins and getting hints. Apparently, the 3DS release was worse in this aspect, as a lot of puzzles were replaced with other ones for this release.

 I.. I won't type this game's title again, it's just too long. Suffice to say, I get what they were going for with Mystery Journey, I do, but I don't think it worked very well. It's as charming as any other game in the series, and it looks BEAUTIFUL, but while Katrielle was alright her supporting cast just wasn't up to par. The plot just didn't do it for me, and in a series that I play for its story.... yeah, this is one Layton game I didn't like too much. I also have issues with the revelation at the end of the game.

 5.0