I had planned on doing my usual long form review of Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracles, but alas, I just don’t have it in me. I apologize to my fellow Laytonites out there who feel I’m giving them, and the game, a short shrift.
I know this guy who once said that he’d love Halo if Bungie would only change everything about Halo that makes Halo Halo. That’s kind of where I am with the Professor Layton games right now. The Layton games follow a pretty strict formula of whacky characters, a semi-mystical story that ends up being explained away through non-mystical but no less fantastical means, great puzzles, interesting mini-games and beautiful, hand drawn animation. The puzzles change, the mini games change, the story changes, but everything else remains the same, which is great if you really like the established formula.
Unfortunately, for me, the formula has become somewhat stale and the stories of the past two games haven’t been strong enough for me to get past the things I”m less interested in. I felt that Professor Layton and the Unwound Future was not only the best game in the series but one of the best, most heartwarming stories I’ve ever experienced in a game. Since then, I’m just not as interested in the adventures of Layton, Luke and Emmy, despite the narrative that Level 5 is telling throughout these three prequels.
As I was playing this game, I found myself not caring about the mini-games, one which has you moving a robot across various maps and one that has you placing items on a store’s shelves so as to entice buyers to buy everything in the shop display, a game I found slightly tone-deaf what with the still ongoing economic problems facing various countries. In fact, I found myself completely uninterested in the puzzles as well, seeing them as nothing but barriers to my progress through the story.
Unfortunately, once those barriers were removed, the story left me cold. The identity of the masked man wasn’t a surprise and once revealed, the way everyone lined up to forgive his trangressions felt odd. I know forgiveness is divine, but this was crazy. Given how much the Layton games depend on the story, if the story doesn’t do it for you, a big part of the game’s charm is gone. I mean, at that point, if I don’t care about the story I could just do all of the downloadable puzzles I never finished in the previous games.
Sure the 3D looks great and it makes the environments pop and I certainly appreciated having a reason to turn the 3DS on after many months of non-use but in the end, this was the first time I was looking forward to being finished with a Layton game just to be finished with it. If that’s not a sign that I need to take a break, I don’t know what is.
Maybe the Layton – Phoenix Wright mash-up will be what I need to rekindle my love of the series, although I felt very much the same about the Phoenix Wright games when I was done with them. I have no doubts that Level 5 will make a good game, but whether that game ends up being enough to kick start my interest is another thing entirely.
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For me this was one of the strongest entries in a while.
Last Specter was not to my tastes at all, and the story was indeed weak.This one I found predictable but well-told. I can handle well told. That said, Unwound Future is far and away the best in the series. I can handle stagnation; I play these, finish them to my liking, then trade them in.
Games like these live and die on their stories. Good puzzles are a given, so a story is needed to lift the package above its humble origins. Phoenix Wright never gets old for me, typically, though they never topped the first one. It regularly battles Gabriel Knight 1 for my favorite game of all time.
Yeah, that first one was pretty dang good.
I’d feel the same way about Ghost Trick as well, I’m sure, if they had managed to sell enough copies to make a sequel.
The most important takeaway is that Gabriel Knight was mentioned here for the first time at NHS. Man, I loved those games!
Ghost Trick was the bomb, yo.
Brandon, this review reminds me of a famous puzzle we used to do when I was growing up in Winklesville. These three rutabagas need to be cut in 74 different ways….
The answer, of course, is radicchio.