Professor Layton and The Diabolical Box Review by: Zircron Swift - 9.7/10
Professor Layton and Pandora's BoxThe first three games in the Professor Layton series where something of a masterpiece. Something that retained a magical sense and a flare of mystery. Something I am afraid to say the prequel games didn't meet up to scratch with. Although they were very good in their own sense, i just didn't feel the same as the three three games did, and they didn't seem to bring out the anime-style wonder that the first three provided so well. One of my favourite of the first three games was Pandora's Box, or known as the Diabolical Box in the USA. After the release of the first game, the Curious Village, to know two more games would follow suit this magnificent puzzle solving game was amazing to know, and they both delivered in an amazing mix of cunning puzzles, fitting sound tracks, and most importantly, a gripping story that keeps you guessing to the end.
The story begins, as often as these Professor Layton games do, with a letter. This was from the Professors mentor, Dr. Schrader, whom had discovered the fabled Elysian Box box, with a terrible legend of it killing anyone who would dare open it. The Professor and his loyal, animal loving assistant Luke make their way to his office. As always, the game starts off with a puzzle to give a taster for what's to come, and doubles as a exercise for the coming events. It's a very cunning puzzle that requires thinking outside the box, which gave immense satisfaction to solving it. Upon entering Dr. Schrader's office, they find him unfortunately dead, with the Elysian Box missing.
The game then takes off with searching for whom ever stole the Elysian Box, recover it, and discover the reason why it kills people upon opening. For one, this journey is amazing. it takes place in different locations, where you can take your time exploring each one before going to the point of no return. It feels like a real advancement in the adventure, a true sense of investigation and exploration. The only fault I can find is that people have puzzles for the Professor to solve. What was odd in the first game's journal is that the Professor noted how odd it was for people to request the answers of puzzles to continue, and noted how enjoyable it would be on their investigation.
Of course, there was a reason for this at the end, but here, it just seems like every day life in the Professor Layton Universe, like puzzles are a very essence of life. In fact, in the most recently released Professor Layton game, the "Azran Legacy", it is pointed out time and again that puzzles are found growing on trees, used in stews to bring out flavours, and very generally finding a puzzle was like finding a penny on the floor. It's very weird how puzzles are used in a form of both hassle and pleasure in this universe, but it's a quirk that fits very well to Professor Layton's one. Nice to see, that characters from the first game also make an appearance here, weather as a cameo, or a fully fledged main character.
Along the journey the mystery thickens, as it should be. The game takes its time to let you reach the main town of investigation, allowing a lot of dialogue to window dress the current story and make the world fuller and more rounded. This also allows to add in subtle pieces of story development that will make the conclusion of the story all the more complete (which it does get explained and all loose ends are tied off, which I always find very enjoyable). What I like most of all is that eventually you'll get keys to a section of a lost diary, which as you progress through the game, more and more of the memoirs of this mysterious person will give their side of the story and allow not only anticipation to the end of the story, but a means of deduction to what is going on. These are also fairly heartfelt logs, giving that sense of perspective that I value so much in a good story.
The mini games that you can acquire when completing certain puzzles includes the construction of a camera, which involved you to gather all the pieces first, and then you must play Tetris with them to form a fully functional camera. But that doesn't get you the special house with three extra puzzles in the bonus features, oh no, you must go to various sections of the world and take pictures with this camera (thankfully it will indicate when you can do this), and then you can play a rather subtle game of spot the difference. This are rather challenging, so don't dismiss them as an easy task. I'm not a fan of spot the difference, and this is no exception, but non-the-less it's good enough for me to pursue them.
The others involve exercising an overweight hamster using a various set of quirky objects to make the hamster walk a certain number of steps. These are very entertaining to use and the aspect of maximising the number of steps the hamster can walk is very aspiring to me. This is the sort of puzzle you can slowly spend with a nice cup of tea on a cosy sofa. The satisfaction of completing all of these are as always, priceless. Finally there is the Tea Set, which you collect various ingredients from around the world and use them in this exquisite tea set. Trail and error is the key here to find blends that can suit any taste buds. You can then use these brews on people that need to either remember something or feel relaxed, or become cured of an illness, and they will be forever thankful of you. I can't remember if you get something from them, but giving everyone the brews they need will earn you three extra puzzles in the bonus section, as every mini-game completion rewards its players.
The world is composed of several works of art, every section and screen has a background made of hand drawn art which adds a very cultured look to the game. It adds the feel that it is an anime based game, giving a peculiar sense that you are part of the anime, playing as the main character. Although this does seem obvious, it's done very well, and it has taken me ages to pinpoint what I loved most about the original three games. The feel of being part of the adventure. This also appeared in the prequel games, but I guess since it's happened three time already, the magical feeling of it has faded away. Kind of like the Mega Man games, The first three were amazing, but they repeated themselves so many times the general feeling got lost. This isn't to say they were also good though, in their own sense. The animated parts were also a joy to watch, as always.
The music, much like the first game, did a good job on making puzzle music you can listen to for ages on end and not want to rip out your ears, which would distract you very much from the puzzle at hand. There was more than one puzzle track, which was also nice to add variety into it. The music for the general towns, scene change, climax, and everything in between fitted the atmosphere to a tee. The calm town of Dropstone had a very inviting track for the peace of mind and the town's young and helpful community. The mysterious town at the end offered a mysterious violin to match the....mystery and eeriness of it all. All of it was very well done, and it's very refreshing. It matches the first game's sound track in the sense of having the right music at the right time.
The puzzles were also very good. The game's main difficulty relies on the puzzles, with a little bit of knowing where to go, but the main focus is the puzzles, so I can kill two birds with one stone here. Some of the puzzles followed the same format from the first game, and some weren't very good in the beginning I must admit, but overall it was very good. You can download a puzzle every week up til a certain date (which I can assume that someone in possession of this game would be able to download all the puzzles at once), which is a nice feature to keep you on your toes when you have finished completely with the game, up to the release of the next Professor Layton game.
What got my notice from this game is that if you were to purchase the full game, box, cart, instruction booklet and all, you would also be given a train ticket. This is actually part of a puzzle you will solve later in the game. When that comes along, the game instructs you to get out the ticket from the box and try to solve the puzzle from that, which is absolutely genius! It's very rare for games in general include real world items as part of the in game puzzle to be solved. There are examples in the past, and this was an absolute joy to experience. True I was stuck with it, but having the ticket in my hand, turning it around and trying all sorts of possibilities that just would not be possible using the touch scree alone, made the whole immersion of the game all the more powerful.
Overall, I give this game a 9.7/10 One of the best Professor Layton games I have played, with an amazing story, wonderful graphics and scenery, immersing game play and a really fitting sound track. I would recommend that you play the first Professor Layton game before this one however, so you are more to grips with all the characters and the general history they share, but the great thing about the Professor Layton games is that they can be played in any order and can be enjoyed just as much (however this isn't recommended with the prequel series, as they all sort of link together to form one big story), it's just you might get confused if you play all the games in a random order. Still, a worthy game of puzzle, wit, and superb story telling that should be experienced by all puzzle-genre fans.
Graphics
10 Sound
10 Addictive
9 Depth
10 Story
10 Difficulty
7
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