Professor Layton and the Last Specter is the fourth entry of the Professor Layton series for Nintendo DS. It is also the first game of the series’ second trilogy, which takes place three years before the first game of the first trilogy, Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
Like previous entries in the series, Last Specter has Professor Hershel Layton tasked with solving some big mystery related to the goings-on in a strange town. This time around, the town in question is Misthallery, which is itself normal, but whose goings-on are presently not. Misthallery is being terrorized at night by a giant, shadowy monster that destroys the town’s landscape. This monster has been dubbed the Specter, after the legendary creature of similar appearance that has been said to protect the town in times of danger when it is called. However, this Specter seems to behave very differently by attacking Mistallery instead of protecting it.
The gameplay for Professor Layton and the Last Specter, like previous Layton games, is divided into two main sections. The first is investigative, in which Layton and his assistants walk around the environment talking to people and amongst themselves. This is where most of the game’s plot occurs, aside from cutscenes, which will be discussed later. This part of the game plays pretty straightforwardly, and allows the player to enjoy the game’s well-written plot and dialogue, in addition to its quirky character design and beautiful scenery.
During the investigation, one will also often encounter puzzles, the second main gameplay type and the entire series trademark. “Puzzles” here are basically logical puzzles that the player must solve to either advance the plot or simply for fun. The types of puzzles present run the gamut from basic logical deduction to mathematical reasoning to spacial reasoning to visually-based puzzles to sliding block puzzles. Fortunately, the puzzles in this Layton series entry continue to have a full range of difficulty, from very easy to, in the case of the bonus challenge puzzles, soul-crushingly difficult. Each puzzle rates its own difficulty by its value in Picarats, the currency the game uses by which unlockables can be obtained. Solving a puzzle correctly on the first try awards the player more picarats than otherwise. The player may additionally spend hint coins that can be found strewn around in the investigative portion of the game for obtaining hints on how to solve any given puzzle. A few hints that are given feel redundant and unhelpful, but they are overall a useful addition to balance the difficulty of the puzzles.
The game relies almost entirely on the DS stylus for input, which functions responsively for puzzles and for simply moving around town. Long bits of dialogue can also be advanced with the A button, which is a welcome addition to the controls that eliminates the need to balance the DS in one hand and the stylus in the other for too long.
The plot of Last Specter, as mentioned before, is excellently written. It feels genuinely intriguing and exciting, and most new characters that the game introduces become surprisingly well-developed over the course of the story. The story portion of the game is presented through the dialogue portion in the investigative portion of the game, both voiced and unvoiced, as well as through several fully-animated cutscenes. These in particular are gorgeously presented and truly make the world of the Layton games come alive.
It is also worth noting that Professor Layton and the Last Specter also contains an entirely separate bonus RPG called Layton’s London Life. Although I have not played this additional game extensively, it appears to play in a similar manner to Animal Crossing in that the player can customize their own appearance and obtain furniture and other collectibles for their new flat in Little London. It is also immense fun to meet and talk to major and minor characters from the entire Layton series up to this point. London Life was developed separately from Level-5, the developers of the Layton games, by Brownie Brown, the creators of Mother 3 (which you can look forward to me playing and reviewing next year). Thus, the game uses a charming sprite-based visual style and exclusive button control scheme that clashes and compliments the main game’s beautiful hand-drawn visual style and stylus control scheme. London Life is, in short, a welcome addition to the main adventure.
Professor Layton and the Last Specter doesn’t quite rise up above the breathtaking story of the last game of the first Layton trilogy, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, but perhaps this was done intentionally so that future games of this new trilogy can surpass it in this regard. Nearly every other feature of Last Specter, however, has been tweaked and optimized to be the best the series has yet to see, thus making the game a valuable addition to the Professor Layton series.
My Rating: 9 out of 10
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