Once again the latest Professor Layton game offers a great story and a ton of addicting puzzles #8.9/10#
The main story plot takes places before Curious Village and how Luke became Layton's sidekick, before visiting the town of Misthallery you'll receive a strange letter from a friend of Layton letting him know about a mysterious shadow lurking the small town and solving a mystery behind it with the help of his new sidekick Emmy.
Gameplay: Plays just like the last two game where you'll be solving puzzles throughout the entire game and chatting to people to find clues. It does feel more of a point and click game when you are heading to where you need to go or by tapping the arrow button where to go next. Each puzzle you'll have the question/riddle on top of the screen and the bottom touch screen for solving puzzles by writing the answer down or tapping on the answer you think is right.
Each puzzle you'll get picarats which are like points which can unlock various stuff on Bonuses the more you have the likely you'll unlock the extras. But however if you fail to guess correctly for each puzzle the picarats will decrease but if you have trouble solving a puzzle you can come back to it any time.
There are hint coins which can be used to spend on giving you hints on how to solve the puzzle straight away but some hints on certain puzzles don't really give you any help at all. Another thing that may annoy a few DS owners out there or anyone new to gaming that if you are writing a number down it might not recognise your handwriting. Some puzzle's you'll be using Memo quite a lot for taking notes down for various puzzles which might be handy if you've stuck on a puzzle.
Graphics and Sound: Nothing has really changed much since the second Layton game, the animated cutscenes and visuals are still pretty impressive and stunning to look at. Its characters are also cute and charming making most of the characters look like something out of an old British cartoon but with a mix of Japanese Anime putted together.
While exploring the town of Misthallery you'll be exploring the town, the mini-market and a few old buildings and landscapes throughout Spectre's Call. And I just love the new characters and art being thrown into one DS game.
For those who did play the last two Layton games you've still got the same English voice actors who played Layton and Luke, some of the new characters you meet in the game do a nice job too.
You've still got the same text-dialog when speaking to any of the local people or getting through the main story, so there's much voicing but lots of dialog. Soundtrack does a nice job too making you more focused on its puzzle and hearing a few odd tunes once again making it feel you welcome back to the series.
Overall: More than 170 puzzles to solve you'll be coming back to this game a lot which can be quite addictive; there were times I wanted to keep coming back for more. Not only that there are also puzzles which you can download from the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, there are a few mini games including a Toy Train by laying down tracks across each map, The Fish is to guide a fish on collecting bubbles within 8-10 seconds and Puppet Theatre is where you have to choose the correct action for this scene to act out.
The downside to Spectre's Call is that the UK/Europe version does not include The London Life which is a Mini-RPG style game which was only released for the US and Japanese version of the game, but the game itself is still worth checking out if you've a fan of the Layton series.