If you are unsure whether to buy Professor Layton and the Curious Village, then read this!
If you are a lover of puzzle and adventure games, then you should definitely try this!
This game is a brilliant masterpiece; it is a bit like a cross between brain training and popular mystery games. It has all the elements to make a fantastic game and it is.
This game has everything from wacky characters (some lovable, some you will learn to hate), charming music, brain tickling puzzles, riddles and brainteasers and a brilliant plot and storyline set in a great location, with amazing cut scenes and animation videos, complete with voice acting which as we all know is incredibly rare for a DS!
The game starts with one of the main characters' Luke writing a letter to you about what has happened in the village, then there is a cut scene where Luke and Professor Layton have received a letter asking them to go to the village of St Mystere to discuss a wealthy baron's will, which mentions a golden apple hidden somewhere in the village, that they want the Professor to find for them. Luke and the Professor start to drive away in their car, where you have the first puzzle, which village is St Mystere? Before you know it you will uncover and solve loads of secrets and mysteries hidden deep in the village and you will complete over 130 puzzles, but will you find the golden apple? What is it? Play the game to find out.
There are loads of different puzzles in the game including the crank and slot, sinking ship, strange dots, cats and mice, sausage thief, over the river, rolling a three, diamond in the flag, land disputes and lots more. The puzzles can be solved by circling the correct answer, moving objects, or writing the answer in the box with the stylus. There are easy and hard puzzles for the amateur puzzle solver and the expert puzzle master, but you only need to complete a few important ones to progress in the game. Sometimes you may need a hint for the more difficult puzzles, though they usually have a non-complicated answer, if you start doing complicated sums, the answer will usually be wrong. Some puzzles provide a writing space where you can try and work out the answer.
Whilst playing the game you will meet loads of different characters including Agnes, Deke, Gerard, Ingrid, Jarvis, Marco, Pavel and Sylvain. Some will be kind and helpful and others won't be.
There are also extra puzzles in the game, that don't need to be completed, but can earn you special rewards, these can be found in the Professor's trunk and are The Inn: Layton and Luke are staying in the attic of a local inn, decorate the Professor's and Luke's attic rooms with furnishings, to make them feel like home. Gizmos: put together mechanical objects to make something and The Painting: put painting scraps together to see the picture. In order to find decorations for the inn, gizmos to make something, and picture scraps to see the picture, you will need to complete certain puzzles, given to you in the game.
Puzzles will be found by clicking on certain objects in an area or talking to certain people at the right time. Sometimes you will find hint coins when clicking on things, these hint coins are used to unlock hints for puzzles, but only use them if you are really stuck on a puzzle because there aren't that many coins around and they can only be used once, so they will run out if you use them on easier puzzles, then you won't have any for the harder ones and will be completely stuck.
Puzzles you find and don't complete will be taken to Granny Riddleton's shack, if you want to complete them you will need to solve a puzzle on one of the doors in the village, to gain access to the shack. Once in the shack, touch one of the jars to try the puzzle inside, you can come back to the shack whenever you want.
When you have completed the game, you can go into the bonuses menu where you can download a new puzzle for the game, every week using the nintendo wi-fi connection. You can replay any of the puzzles you have solved or find the locations of puzzles you have found but haven't solved, you can try and solve some of Professor Layton's secret challenges and you can go into the top secret section and see what you find, one of the things in the top secret section is a hidden door, once you have finished the second game in the series, you will get a special code which you put in this door to get a rare bonus.
Overall this is a truly wonderful game I loved to play, I look forward to playing it again and to playing the rest of the series. I think you will love this game too.
10/10