I knew from the preview stills that I wanted Layton. A top-hatted chap-for-hire and his blue wunderkind assistant get stuck investigating a mystery in a town populated by unhealthy looking, puzzle-obsessed weirdos. I loath brain-training games; they’re ugly, and desolate–so much so that players of the genre become lovingly affixed to the little doctor mascots who, at their best, pop up to robotically barf score-based commentary to, I don’t know, motivate you.  But you didn’t come looking to get your dick stomped on for liking non-games, so let’s talk about this other thing.

The premise, as I mentioned in the paragraph preceding this one, is that mega-gentleman Layton, professor of something, gets called into the country to assist in an inheritance debacle. He brings along his trusty apprentice, Luke, who loves puzzles. Layton loves puzzles, too. So does every other person you meet. The deal goes sour and Layton ends up having to investigate a murder. There are several other side-mysteries that intertwine themselves into the primary investigation, and it can seem overwhelming, but the game very calmly deals with each one as the plot unfolds. There are items to collect that don’t really pay off until late into the game, but it’s sort of a fun/nice reprieve from puzzle and mystery solving.

The dialogue between Layton and Luke is charming, and the voice acting during cut scenes exceeds all rational expectations. I wouldn’t have minded the original Japanese with English subtitles (but I can hardly fault it for that). The music in this game is something of a wonder. It’s very European, and it’s very whimsical. It repeats often, but rarely becomes trying. While that’s all fine, the townsfolk are a little, off.

You know in old JRPGs, you’ll walk up to a hobo standing next to a barrel, begin a conversation, and he’ll say something like, “Huh? Ho ho ho! Jarvis won’t let me in so I’ve been counting the pebbles out here!” And then you click him again and he says, “*Hiccup*… … …” And you suddenly realize that half of the NPCs in the town are soulless fatbodies? Yeah. 

The game, and we’re talking about Layton again, is a victim of Hobo Fatbody Syndrome. NPCs just seem weird… They’re always standing right in front of their homes, like they’ve all come out to look at something, but the something’s not there. Thankfully, the NPCs are just a means to an end: Puzzles.

This game is all about puzzles. It’s a puzzle game. And it’s an adventure game, in the vein of the Monkey Island franchise–only instead of grabbing the bucket from the kitchen to use later when the Fettucini Brothers fire you out of a cannon, you solve a puzzle in the kitchen, and a puzzle in the circus tent, and a bunch of puzzles in between. A puzzle follows nearly every in-game conversation, and they also appear randomly in the environment (for you to discover via clicking). Some of the puzzles are easy, but most of them are quite challenging. All of them are well crafted, requiring sharp wits. There are only 135 puzzles out of the box, but that’s actually a galaxy of puzzles considering how long some of them are going to take you.

Whether it’s a puzzle game punctuated by adventure or an adventure game punctuated by puzzles is a matter of some debate. I choose to look at it not as a fusion, but a meeting. There are no trade-offs, here. It’s not more of one or the other, though you’ll log more hours on puzzles, definitely. It’s two games running parallel, working together. That’s a special thing.