Professor Layton brought me in with the puzzles, but kept me going with the mysteries behind the great story.
I enjoyed playing Professor Layton. The game makes you think as you solve your way through the various puzzles. You walk around town talking with the townspeople to try to solve the various mysteries you are aware of and learn about new ones. The townspeople don't provide you any information on the mystery you are trying to solve until you solve puzzles for them. A lot of the mysteries get compounded into new mysteries as the storyline unfolds. You don't start solving the mysteries until near the end of the game. You use the stylus for everything in the game.
The different characters in the game are all unique and provide you with similar puzzles to solve. If you have problems solving the puzzle you can use a hint coin to unlock a hint to the puzzle you are working on. There are three hints that you can unlock with the later hints providing more information to make the puzzle a little easier to solve. Some of the puzzles are tricky and require you to think outside of the box.
The only puzzle I could not solve involved an apple puzzle. A picture of an apple is broken up into different puzzle pieces with one spot open. You have to slide the puzzle pieces around to create the correct picture of the apple. The hints don't help you, so you just have to work through the puzzle moving pieces until you get it right. I worked on this puzzle for about 30 to 45 minutes before I gave up. I went back to the same puzzle a couple times, but I could still not figure it out.
After solving the mysteries, there is usually a cut scene between Professor Layton and his apprentice talking their way through the solution to the mystery. The story is probably based on the Professor Layton Japanese children's book series. When I was in Japan earlier this year, I spotted a lot of Professor Layton books in the front of the bookstore. There were not a lot of pictures inside to figure out the stories, but they are probably mystery books.
The music gets old after awhile as you are trying to figure out the puzzle, so I usually just turned down the volume. The music during the cut scenes was good and added to the excitement of the moment.
I usually do not play puzzle games, but with the storyline made Professor Layton an enjoyable game to play. It is more of a thinking game, so I felt smarter after I solved the puzzles.