Professor Layton and the Curious Village is brilliant. The whole set-up, the mystery, the shocking conclusion... it’s all brilliant.
Much of the brilliance is manifested in Professor Layton himself. Level 5 couldn’t have created a more likeable character: Layton is the perfect representation of an amiable and courteous gentleman. He’s the kind of guy with whom you’d love to sit by the fireside in the evening, have a cup of coffee, and just talk about life and share puzzles.
It’s no surprise, then, that puzzles make up this game’s backbone. Layton and his apprentice Luke travel to a strange town in response to a letter from a Lady Dahlia, and they soon find themselves roving around a setting in which everybody has a thing for puzzles -- puzzles that range from intense logic puzzles to picture puzzles to just-plain-random puzzles. The game throws you a few softballs, but the vast majority of the puzzles are tough. Inevitably, you’ll find that you enjoy a few puzzles because they’re just the type that you like to solve, and that other puzzles simply frustrate you to no end. Indeed, some puzzles are simply ingenious, having answers that you’ve never even suspected for a moment, but some puzzles will seem like they’re just making you shoot around for an answer (like trying to find the "big star" in a jumble of small stars). Either way, the point is clear: This game revolves heavily around puzzles.
Here are a few examples of the puzzles you’ll come across (answers at the end of the review):
- Alfred and Roland have been hired by a farm to sow flower seeds. They’ve been assigned a 10-acre plot of land and split it in half so they can work independently. Roland starts from the east and Alfred from the west.
Alfred can plow the land at a rate of 20 minutes per acre. Roland takes 40 minutes to plow, but sows seeds at three times the speed Alfred does.
If sowing seeds on the 10-acre plot pays $100, how much of that money should go to Roland?
- Ten candles stand burning in a dining room. A strong breeze blows in through an open window and extinguishes two of them. Checking back in on the candles later, you see that one more candle has gone out. To make sure no more flames go out, you shut the window. Assuming the wind doesn’t extinguish any more candles, how many candles do you have left in the end?
- Mice are famous for their ability to multiply at breakneck speeds. The type of mouse we have here gives birth once a month, birthing 12 babies each time. Baby mice mature and can give birth two months after they are born.
You picked up one of these darling baby mice at the pet shop and brought it home the day after it was born. In 10 months from now, how many mice will you have?
What gives this game its intrigue, however, it its setting and story. St. Mystere is an excellent setting for a good mystery, with its eccentric characters, sleepy atmosphere and crooked yet inviting architecture. The story always keeps you on your toes and completely off-balance; there’s always something to ponder, always an unknown element nagging at the back of your mind. All this mysteriousness leads to a delightful point-and-click adventure that will leave you pleasurably befuddled.
And all this is wrapped in a sleek presentation. The soundtrack is superb with some appropriately French-sounding tracks; the visuals and full motion videos are the kind of stuff akin to the style of Hayao Miyazaki (this is a stretch, but the graphics are so unique that there’s little else you could compare them to); and the voice acting is spot-on when you have the opportunity to listen to it.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village has very few flaws, but it has them nonetheless. First, with so many hidden goodies in each locale, you’re usually required to "click" almost every point on the screen. Sometimes the exact points you have to click are located in completely nondescript areas, so you’d have no idea anything was there unless you just guessed. Second, the game can feel like a wild goose chase sometimes; many of the villagers seem not to know anything, and sometimes you can feel like you’re just being scooted around various locations for the heck of it. And lastly, after you finish the game you’d already know all the answers to the puzzles, so that could put a damper on the game’s replay value (this is slightly redeemed by a new puzzle that the developer releases every week via Nintendo Wi-Fi).
In the end, though, there’s not much to gripe about -- this game is brilliant. The presentation, the puzzles, everything, all brilliant... and surely Layton wouldn’t have it any other way.
Answers to puzzles:
- $50. "The beginning of the problem says that the two men split the 10-acre plot of land in half so they could work independently. In other words, they both had the same amount of work assigned to them. Since each person did half the work, the pair should split $100 right down the middle. Each person gets $50."
- Three. "The seven candles that manage to stay lit will melt down completely. The only candles that remain in the end are the three that are extinguished by the wind and therefore stay intact."
- One! "Your mouse can’t birth any babies by itself!"
