I just wrapped up on playing the iOS version of Professor Layton: The Curious Village (HD) and let me just say, it was an experience I wasn’t expecting. I’m curious how other people think about these games.
My overall impression was that the game is really well animated and stylized, the music is really well done and relaxing, and the story is (in my opinion) mostly just fine until the end where things close out on a very sweet and touching note. The controls are also surprisingly good for being a DS touchscreen port.
As for the puzzles, there’s really good variety here and the hint system makes sure that you never get stuck unless you want to be. They’re basic puzzles for the most part but I’d say your average adult is still going to take 5-10 minutes on harder puzzles and 15-20 minutes on just a few of them. Some of them are looking for obscure solutions or are worded wrong, not a big deal but noticeable.
If you like brain teasers or logic puzzles and you want a good mobile game that’s easy to pick up and put down, this is really good and it’s worth the $10 or so. I got about 8 hours out of it (so says my save file), so I’d say that was money well spent.
Let me know if you played these games on the DS and how the other ones in the series are!
For me I like them, I just wish:
- The puzzles were tougher.
- The story wasn’t as thin and spread out. It’s fine, but just not a lot of story for the amount of time it has to last.
I will say that as a result, my by-far favorite entry in the series is Layton vs Ace Attorney since it uses the combination of both “gameplay types” to cram more story “meat” into the same length of adventure. It’s also a wee bit darker, which actually helps it a lot IMO.
I’m generally a fan of Ace Attorney, but I didn’t like PLvAA because of how over the top the plot twists are in Layton games. I feel like the TVTrope equivalent is something like “A wizard did it”.
I’ve played 5 of the Layton games and I agree that the crossover game is the best one!
I also played the android version of Curious Village soon after it released and enjoyed it. From what my friends have said, the rest of the series really is more of the same, just with new puzzles and another simple new story. Safe to say if you enjoyed the first one you’ll like the rest. Unwound Future seems to be the most well-liked one in the series.
I really love these games. I like the silly little puzzles with the good music and art. The lack of story never really bothered me because every single person you meet is so unique looking that it enables a lot of people-watching imagination on my part. I just think they’re neat :)
