Thoughts on Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Fair warning: This doesn’t divulge spoilers exactly but it does cover the ending and uses puzzle examples without specific plot details. I doubt you could draw accurate conclusions from this unless you are Layton himself.


The puzzles of the Professor Layton series are inspired by a Japanese series of puzzle books and in the first game, subtitled the Curious Village, this showed. They were mostly text with supplemental pictures that lacked interactivity and appeared to be disconnected from the traditional point and click adventure gameplay elements. This irked me but I carried on, enjoying the charms of the European-inspired artwork and music, mysterious story and grade-school-bonus-question-like puzzles. At the end, the unexpected happened. Both the puzzle gameplay and the story elements tied together in a logical fashion that was absolutely brilliant. The frustration caused by the obscure puzzles washed away—I loved it. Going into the second game, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, I had doubts that it could live up to the first's ability to tie everything together.

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The beginning few puzzles of the Diabolical Box show the different direction it intends to take. It is more focused on situational puzzles and providing more interactivity within the elements of the puzzle. These first few include having to arrange a map to get to where a friend lives, deducing which is the right house by reading a letter, figuring out which key opens a door, investigating to find something suspicious and having to pack a trunk for a trip.

The spectrum of puzzles then goes on to mix in obscurity. Layton and Luke begin to search for clues to solve the mystery of a woman’s missing child. Halfway through finding these clues, the answer to this mystery is clear and, of course, things aren’t what they seemed to be. A question about the true nature of this mystery is asked but instead of being able to answer with dialogue choices, the game requires you shuffle around blocks that have an image of the answer. It is at this point where the obscure reasoning for why a puzzle is presented starts to become apparent, along with the resulting frustration.

But by this point, I am already taken in by the charm. I want to find out the mystery behind the Elysian Box and experience more of the music and artwork. Even if these charms are similar to the Curious Village, they aren’t tired, having just enough flair and improvements to the presentation to reinvigorate the feel of the original game without being too derivative.

The mixture of obscure and situational puzzle-types persists to end of the game, when a twist in the story is revealed. But it underwhelms. Unlike the first game, which focuses on the story of one town, the Diabolical Box focuses on two with large amounts of time spent traveling on a train from London. The twist reveals why the second town’s non-situational puzzles exist but it does not explain the same for the first town nor the puzzles on the train ride. Also, the reasoning isn’t precise, relying on assumptions that make it feel ill-conceived.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box is still a solid game with all the charming elements returning, along with other improvements. It is just missing that final piece of the puzzle that would entirely wash away the frustrating obscurity. And a true gentleman leaves no puzzle unsolved...


Ben