Review – Professor Layton And The Last Specter

Professor Layton and the Last Specter is an interesting yet frustrating game.

For starters, the title blends classic PC point and click game-play with mind-bending puzzles. The concept is great, but instead of tying the game’s puzzles to the story – as is the case in classic adventure titles such as Monkey Island or Sam and Max – the Last Specter doesn’t even try to integrate the two. Basically, there are puzzles for no other reason than the town of Misthallery’s inhabitants are simply puzzle-crazed individuals. This strange decision pulled me out of the game’s otherwise reasonably engaging story line.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter is a prequel to all previous Professor Layton titles. It tells the story of how Luke and Layton first met and introduces Emmy, Layton’s female assistant. As a new character, Emmy, from what I understand, seems to add a welcome dose of femininity to the franchise (the Professor Layton series being pretty big with the female gaming crowd).

If you’ve played a Professor Layton title before, you’ll know exactly what to expect from the Last Specter. It adopts the same motionless hand drawn graphics style as past games and players use the DS stylus to navigate around the game’s world by clicking small arrows – It’s not a particularly engaging game-play experience, hence the title’s emphasis on narrative.

The Last Specter's graphics are beautiful, just a little bit low resolution.

Visually, the Last Specter is beautiful, its hand drawn graphics give the game a certain charm that I haven’t experienced with other adventure games. Unfortunately, the graphics are disappointingly low resolution and I still don’t understand why Level-5 hasn’t included character animations in the Professor Layton series.

As for the game’s puzzles, the main draw of the Professor Layton franchise, they’re hard, especially for me. I’m not a puzzle kind-of-guy, and I’m admittedly not the go-to man for solving word problems. Surprisingly though, I did enjoy quite a few of the Last Spectre’s challenging mind games. Unfortunately, since I’m basically a puzzle noob, I did have to utilize the game’s hint system frequently; without it there is was no way I would have figured out the solutions.

My brain can't handle word based problems.

Some of the game’s puzzles are downright frustrating and it takes a special kind of thought process to solve them. Often, it’s a case of over-thinking the task at hand; many of the Last Specter’s puzzles are extremely simple. There were times when I’d sit there swearing at my DS because I knew the solution should be simple, but I just couldn’t figure it out.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter also includes a rather expansive Animal Crossing-esque role playing game dubbed London Life. This short, interesting sub-game has enough content in it to justify a separate title. Essentially, it consists of small, simple fetch-quests and rudimentary boring tasks. But it also adopts an Earthbound-like art style that I found charming and pleasantly old school. It’s a welcome and added bonus to the Layton franchise and doesn’t detract from the Last Specter’s main story in any way. Ironically, this mode isn’t included in the European version of the game even though it’s called ‘London Life’.

Welcome to London Life, now pick up some garbage.

In the end, Professor Layton and the Last Specter only appeals to a specific kind of gamer; those who enjoy puzzles and who are fans of interactive novel video games. Action oriented gamers will find the game slow and even down right frustrating at times. The addition of London Life is great (I’d actually tout it as one of the game’s best features), but other than that, the Last Specter doesn’t really add anything new to the franchise.

Pros

- Graphics are beautiful

- Plot is entertaining and delightful

- Puzzles are challenging and rewarding

- London life is a great sub game

Cons

- Some of the puzzles are way to difficult and frustrating

- It doesn’t add anything new to the series

- Graphics aren’t animated

Overall Score 7/10

Recomendation: Buy it! (but only if you’re a fan of puzzles)

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