As this game shows, it pays not to follow the trends of others
Proffesor Layton and the Curious Village has you take the role of Proffesor Layton and his assistant Luke as they venture of to the small village of St. Mystere. Summoned by a letter from Lady Dahlia, widow of the late Baron Augustus Reinhold. The Baron stated in his last will and testament that whoever solves the mystery of the Golden Apple will inherit the his fortune. The pair enter the village and see that everybody in the village loves a good puzzle, and Layton and Luke are somewhat experts in that field. That is why they were requested to see if they could solve it. However, not soon after arriving they have a death on there hands, the village is misterously closed off from the outside world and people are slowly dissapearing. Layton and Luke take it apon themselves to solve the mystery that is St. Mystere
The plot is well written and cleverly developed as the game progresses, it has a certain Sherlock Homes feel to it. The characters are well deisgned and detailed. It is delivered mostly in text and on occasion voice acting is added but mostly its just text. You would think this would make it quite dull and you'll be skipping through all of the text, but no. The writing is just so clever and intresting you'll not only enjoy it, you'll be hungry for more. The story also keeps you guessing right up untill the end, where I'm sure you'll be just shocked, as I was, but eventully when you think it through it all makes sense.
Even with a compelling storyline the game has to have some good puzzles, and I'm happy to tell you it does. It has more than 130 puzzles and they all range in concept, difficulty and design. What makes the puzzles so good is that you can tell there all indidually thought up and there very cleverly crafted. Aside from a few ones (Chess and Pint glass) there all unqiue. Some of them are re-done famous ones like the old get the ball out of the maze one but some of them are ones that will in 100 years times be famous themselves.
They do range in difficulty and this is I'm afraid can be a bad aspect for some people, you see there are easy puzzles but its when the hard one are delivered thats the main issue. Even in the beggining are a few puzzles that are so frustratingly hard that you'll end up looking on GameFAQS for the answer which really deafeats the purpose of the game. Some people may however like a challange, so its up to you whether its good or bad.
Now it has a storyline and the puzzles but how you get to them is simple enough so that causal people don't get confused. Its a simple point and click method and works really well. The top screen shows a map of St. Mystere so thats a nice little touch. On the bottom screen is the point and click aspect of the game, you just click on where you want to go, who you want to talk to or what you want to investigate. If you want to move onto another area click on the show in the bottom right corner and then click on the direction you want to move to.
So its simple enough, to make puzzle's easier there are hint coins, they are scattered around St. Mystere. Every puzzle has 3 avaible hints, to read them you must purchuse them with hint coins. Now to find them you must click on random things in St. Mystere, it is advised to click on everything when you enter a new area, they are hidden in crates, lampshades, milk bottles, tree's everywhere. There are a limited amount as so you cant spam it, so save the coins for the harder puzzles, trust me you'll be happy I mentioned that.
The game has a loverly presentation, when I see It I picture Rin Tin Tin, it has an old English cartoon feel to it, it really is a stunning game. There are a small amount of cutscenes aswell in the game, far and few between but they really show off the power of the console and look stunning, there really isn't a game that shares it's look. The game though can display a childish vibe from it, and parents may buy it for there young children, but as I said earilier, adults can get easyliy stumble.
It has a small amount of voice acting that adds to the atmosphere of the game, Layton especially has an excelent voice actor, however Luke can get quite annyoying after a while :P The sad fact however is due to the limitations of the cart there cant be much of it which really is a disapointment, same can be sad about the lack of Cutscenes.
Well the game in musical terms has a certain Frenchy style to it, that said the main theme is really good and sets the tone for the rest of the game. The problem however is everytime you do a puzzle the music is exactly the same, can get quite annyoying after a while but it does the job.
The game's length all runs down to your intelligence, the puzzle fanatics can complete it in just over 10 hours. The rest of us can excepct 15-20 hours, which is quite good considering its a puzzle game, however thats where it fails in replay value as once you've done a puzzle once....you know the answer.
Proffesor Layton and the Curious Village came out of the blue, nobody expected anything of it with such a wierd name and the most unlikely of hero's but it really is a stunning game. It really must be apart of your DS collection, there is no halfway here I'm afraid. As this game shows, it pays not to follow the trends of others.
Thanks for Reading!