Professor Layton and the Curious Village

If my past reviews are anything to go by, I am a complete sucker for adventure games. In recent times, there has been a resurgence of games in the genre, such as Another Code and the Ace Attorney series of games. More recently the Professor Layton series of DS adventure games.

Being fond of adventure games, I am more than happy to welcome this addition to my collection and I am just as happy to at last review it. Especially since today’s video game market is so clogged up with first person shooters it is starting to become hard to remember that there are other genres.

Overview

Upon the death of the wealthy Baron Reinhold, his will was opened and he offered his greatest treasure, the Golden Apple, to anyone who can find it in his estate. After numerous searches, none of the next of kin has succeeded and thus they call on the services of Professor Hershel Layton.

Accompanied by his young assistant Luke, Professor Layton heads to the village of Saint Mystere. It is not long before the professor and his assistant soon realise what there is a lot more to the village and just the Golden Apple.

Saint Mysteria is not without its own mysteries. There is the oddly shaped tower that dominates the skyline. Every time it lights up, someone gets abducted only to re-appear again the following morning as though nothing has happened. The one and only draw bridge being disabled upon the Professor’s arrival. And the mysterious figures that hang in the background as the Professor conducts his duties.

Game Play

Effectively, the whole game revolves around the player solving various puzzles. The puzzles are found but either examining object or talking to in game characters. Some puzzles are compulsory thus the player must complete them in order to progress the game.

There are even a few instances where the game will not progress until the player has solved a minimum number of puzzles. A tactic such as this can easily deter players from finishing the game but with all the puzzles in the game varying in difficult any player is bound to find enough simple puzzles to move on.

The puzzles themselves also vary in their nature. Some puzzles challenge mathematics, reasoning, logic and some even require players to visualise problems in three dimensions, like when given five paper patterns, select the one that results in the completed, folded box.

Even though some puzzles are only more difficult and/or complex versions of earlier puzzles, there is a lot of variety of puzzles between them thus this game avoids losing players by constant repetitions.

Story

The problem with the puzzles is how they are scored. Before attempting a puzzle, the player is informed of how many Picarats the puzzle is worth. Picarats are a form of in game currency that allows players to unlock additional content such as concept are and even a music player.

The problem is puzzles of high difficult do not always mean that they are awarded a large number of Picarats. There are times where a difficult puzzle is worth 10 Picarats while a dead easy one is worth 60. It most likely explanation for this is the difficulty of puzzles is not constant across human beings. Also, if the player gets the puzzle wrong and tries again, the amount of Picarats rewards is reduced.

In the event that the player cannot solve a puzzle, the player can unlock hints. Each puzzle has three hints associated with them and unlocking a hint sends another in game currency called hint coins. The coins themselves are found by examining environments as Layton and Luke walk around. While helpful, the hint system is easily broken in two ways. First, some hints are only understandable by the one who wrote them. Second, with the wise accessibility of the Internet it is easy to get the solution to any puzzle.

Finally, the usual adventure elements are there. There are cases where Layton and Luke need to complete fetch quests to progress the game. And there is also the typical item hunt where the player gets to find and assemble the parts for a surprise.

Genre wise, the story behind The Curious Village is a British Mystery – specifically the style used by Agatha Christy. As Professor Layton conducts his search for the Golden Apple, he and Luke observe all other residents of Saint Mystere and based on their actions the Professor presents the final solution to the case after gathering everyone in a room.

However, structure alone does not make a good story. The player has to relate and actually take a liking to the characters. And Professor Layton is practically surrounded by well-rounded characters. Each character is unique, has his or her own dialect and one gets a feel for them as the game progresses. Surprisingly even the NPCs whose sole purpose is to provide optional puzzles have had the same attention to detail as those key to the story.

The only problem I found is with the delivery, specifically its pacing. There are instances in game where the player has to sit through long sessions of dialogue. This is sometimes made worse when a puzzle is presented after a long session of dialogue and it turns out to be a difficult one with minimal Picarats in return. The story would have flowed better had it be given in more comfortable portions.

Graphics and Sound

Despite being a game from Japan, there is no anime style influence to the visuals. Like the story, the visuals have a strong European style and all the backgrounds feel like water colour paintings. Furthermore, the characters are well designed, colourful and are even backed with actual voice tracks.

In some cases, the game story is also told via animated cut scenes with an almost Ghibli-like quality to them. In more complex scenes, CGI has also been used but the style is still consistent with the rest of the environments and the characters.

In terms of sound, it can only be described in word: perfect. All characters have superb voices that fit perfectly with the design of their characters. Besides the voices the game is also backed by a superb soundtrack. Despite only having a few areas, each major area has its own soundtrack and there are various themes each one attached to a required scene. As with the graphics and the story, the music itself has a very European style to it.

Overall

Despite the odd puzzle that only its designer could understand and the inconsistency between puzzle difficulty and rewarded Picarats, the Curious Village is a well-rounded adventure game for the modern day. A murder mystery with a European style in visuals and soundtrack, this game is another welcome breath of fresh air for today’s gaming.