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My absence from the site for the past few weeks has been unfortunate but I have been trying desperately to keep up with the new releases and tackle some of my laundry list as of late. My latest conquest has been a fresh experience (to say the least) but also one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in gaming in a long while. I have finally gotten around to playing a hefty amount of the original Professor Layton on the DS and let me tell you: I have NEVER had such a love/hate relationship with a game. Let me tell you why.
Let me start by telling you just how much I am really enjoying certain aspects of this game. Unfortunately, the aspect that I am not really enjoying is the gameplay. What I am loving so far is the beautifully crafted presentation, the music, and the charm. When I play this game, my brain runs wild with memories of some of my favorite Miyazaki films such as Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and even Princess Mononoke. There is just something about the way that the story and the characters are presented that scream "Studio Ghibli!" With that said, I feel that the game suffers from some major flaws that prevent it from being the enjoyable experience that it is striving to be.
The only game-play mechanic to speak of in Professor Layton is puzzle solving. There is no direct control over character movement so game-play consists entirely of moving from puzzle to puzzle until a new story sequence is unlocked. Some of the puzzles are inventive, some are classic concepts revisited, and some are brain bending "mind-fucks" that would work if it were not for one fatal flaw; vagueness. How am I supposed to solve this stupid puzzle if you can't explain the mechanics or variables efficiently!? Take the following for example. Does it seem to anyone that there is some key information missing from this description:
On the top row of the picture shown below, you have three cups of juice followed by three empty cups. Your objective is to change things around so that the cups are arranged as shown in the bottom row of the picture. Assuming you can only move one cup at a time and that all rearrangement has to be done by hand, how many cups will you have to pick up?
Sure, this may be obvious to some people but my problem with this puzzle is that they aren't clear on what the rules are. When you pick up one cup, can you move a different one? Can you pick one up and slide another? It turns out, the answer has nothing to do with the rules that they even give you!! Here in lies my problem. The challenge of the game is not always from smart puzzle design, sometimes it is because of an intentional lack of relevant information!
Is this problem addressed or even acknowledged in the subsequent sequels? I honestly don't want to continue to subject myself to these terrible puzzles in the future. Has anyone else noticed this problem?
-Nick
Comments
13 years, 12 months ago
Just saying, that puzzle you used as an example was probably one of my favorite types of puzzles in the game. I practically solved all those puzzles in less than a minute. The worst puzzles ever for me were the ones that ask you to find the longest or shortest route through a maze.
I think the puzzles do get a bit more clear in the sequels, though I can somewhat recall the BS hint coin clues on one or two occasions.
13 years, 12 months ago
I think your problem is that you're thinking to hard about it. When it comes to Professor Layton, you have to realize when you're just over-thinking the problem. The example you gave isn't a really good one; since there's a clear answer to the question. All those questions you're asking about the rules are irrelevant. There is nothing missing from the description, since the answer is:
SPOILER
One. Just pick up the second one from the left, pour the juice into the second from the right.
END SPOILER.
13 years, 12 months ago
The rules they give in your example seem to tell you everything you need to know.
"Assuming you can only move one cup at a time..."
You can only move one cup at a time, so picking one up and moving or sliding the others would be more than one at a time.
They really do tell you what you need to know most of the time. It may seem like they don't but it requires you to really think outside the box to figure it out.
Also, use the hint coins, it isn't cheating or anything like David thought for a while (still does?). They are limited enough that you can't use them every single time but plenty enough so that if you need help or your mind can't think that way (the math-based ones for me) then they help you move on.
13 years, 12 months ago
it may say
“Assuming you can only move one cup at a time…”
but at the end it says
" how many cups will you have to pick up?"
13 years, 12 months ago
To be honest, I hadn't encountered these problems Nick, for me, going into Professor Layton I had found that most, if not all the puzzle descriptions gave me clear rules and instructions in which to use to figure out said puzzle, I didn't second guess myself on whether something that was/was not in the description was blatently placed there as a trick.
At the start towards the halfway mark of the game, I was pretty snobbish towards the hinting system, using it felt like I was just giving up on a puzzle when and if I decided to use one. But I did get over that and actually found SOME of them really great in pushing your mind in the right direction, but still giving you that freedom of decoding the puzzle using your knowledge, all the while feeling a good sense of reward once you got it.
13 years, 12 months ago
I thought that Diabolical Box was far less well thought out than Curious Village. The puzzles seemed less explained as well as the reason for them existing. At least in Village, the reason everyone had a puzzle made sense.
13 years, 12 months ago
Totally, totally agree with you. Many times the challenge was so vague, I had no idea what to do; so I would use a hint coin, then it would say, 'have you thought of everything'? Sigh
The worst one I have ever seen is the one where it says, 'a monster is attacking the city! Stab it in its eye to kill it! (or something along those lines), and let's just say that it isn't entirely clear what the monster is...
augh! And those stupid birthday questions! I hate them!