There are approximately 120 puzzles scattered throughout the village of St. Mystere with additional puzzles unlocked via downloadable content. As a result, if you find a certain type of puzzle which you just cannot crack; you can opt to skip it since you only need 100 puzzles to finish the game. Puzzle types range from your typical riddles to slide puzzles to simple arithmetic problems. Do not worry, though. You do not need algebraic skills to conquer the puzzles. You can use it, but a lot of the puzzles are solvable with simple deducing. Over thinking can make your life extremely difficult and annoying in Professor Layton.

The over arching story to Professor Layton gradually unfolds as you solve puzzles and talk to NPCs. I won’t get into the fine details of the story, but I will say that it’s rather simple and predictable. You don’t actually “solve the mystery of the Golden Apple”, but instead follow it and solve numerous unrelated puzzles along the way. Is it safe to tap your way through all the dialog sequences? You can if you wish, but I believe the story acts a solid framework for the puzzle solving antics. Additional motivation for progressing through the game come in the form of picture pieces and other knick knacks which are given when certain puzzles were successfully solved.

To sum up, Professor Layton is a suitable Nintendo DS game; it’s as easy to put down as it is to pick up, it oozes with charm and it makes good use of the hardware at hand. There are a handful of obscure puzzles, but thanks to the forgiving nature of the game’s design, only the perfectionist would find this fault to be a major one. So if you dig the puzzle genre and don’t have anything against simplistic mystery solving then Professor Layton and The Curious Village is an absolute no brainer.

Verdict:
Recommended

For more information, visit the official website.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 pm and is filed under NDS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.