crazy experience as the final prequel game...I feel like so much didn't actually need to be done to try to make it top everything else in the series, i think a lot of the things revealed ended up feeling kind of out of left field because of this, but i still liked the game and its setting, and change in gameplay where you visit areas with the airship. sycamore is the best thing about this though #GOAT
Having played all the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy now, I've started to get tired of the writing style in Layton games where they throw twists without good foreshadowing or lead up between games. It really makes me feel like questioning everyone's motives without any reason. For puzzle games, it would be nice to have more payoff in puzzling out the plot. This game isn't really that much worse than the other Layton games, the series has just lost its charm for me.
Sycamore.
Can't believe I sold this game.
Great end to the prequel trilogy. Would love to have it back, but it's very rare and fairly expensive now.
Great end to the prequel trilogy. Would love to have it back, but it's very rare and fairly expensive now.
jesus christ.
[I will preface this by saying that the Layton games were my childhood, including this one. So I will be intensely biased and I will be overlooking obvious flaws that this game definitely does have.]
This is such a weird and charming lil' game. The story is really weirdly inconsistently inconsistent and really does not make any sense - which I absolutely love. It's an amalgamation of tropes and ideas and plot twists that do absolutely not result in a coherent, well-constructed storyline but which absolutely do result in it being fun as hell to follow. It's like the entire thing is told by an unreliable narrator that did one of those drug things. I love it! The storylines in PL games also always have that thing where their absurdness doesn't at all diminish their emotional impact. They're really charming! Also they finally gave Descole a time to shine, which is objectively good.
The game also looks absolutely beautiful. Like, I think this is the best-looking 3DS game that also really benefits from it being 3D as the landscapes you get to click through really get a sense of scale through that feature. And they're so richly detailed and charmingly crafted and fun to look at! There's also incredible variety, with the game being a journey around the world and all that. It's so fun to explore these places with my lil' magnifying glass and getting jumpscared by puzzles!? And those are still at the heart of the game and those are really fun and kinda charming again and I found only a small number of them really obnoxious.
So yea, it's a beautiful looking charmingly crafted weirdly written game - as all the Layton games are. This one has the benefits of 1) being dumb as hell about Laytons backstory and the greater mystery of the prequel trilogy 2) having a lot of variety in the places you visit 3) havin Descole do the puzzle pose thingy - It's fun! It's a place to relax! It doesn't scream for your attention, instead it just lets you chill!
This is such a weird and charming lil' game. The story is really weirdly inconsistently inconsistent and really does not make any sense - which I absolutely love. It's an amalgamation of tropes and ideas and plot twists that do absolutely not result in a coherent, well-constructed storyline but which absolutely do result in it being fun as hell to follow. It's like the entire thing is told by an unreliable narrator that did one of those drug things. I love it! The storylines in PL games also always have that thing where their absurdness doesn't at all diminish their emotional impact. They're really charming! Also they finally gave Descole a time to shine, which is objectively good.
The game also looks absolutely beautiful. Like, I think this is the best-looking 3DS game that also really benefits from it being 3D as the landscapes you get to click through really get a sense of scale through that feature. And they're so richly detailed and charmingly crafted and fun to look at! There's also incredible variety, with the game being a journey around the world and all that. It's so fun to explore these places with my lil' magnifying glass and getting jumpscared by puzzles!? And those are still at the heart of the game and those are really fun and kinda charming again and I found only a small number of them really obnoxious.
So yea, it's a beautiful looking charmingly crafted weirdly written game - as all the Layton games are. This one has the benefits of 1) being dumb as hell about Laytons backstory and the greater mystery of the prequel trilogy 2) having a lot of variety in the places you visit 3) havin Descole do the puzzle pose thingy - It's fun! It's a place to relax! It doesn't scream for your attention, instead it just lets you chill!
Es el Layton más irregular y con el ritmo peor planteado en su historia. Y, aún así, al llegar al final he sentido que todo ha valido la pena.
I was soooo hyped for this when it came out, definitely a fitting end to the series. Naturally though, the ending of this game does not tie back very well to the first even though they REALLY try to.
El mejor final que se puso desear
Has the best puzzles in the series from what I remember
Shame that the story is not all that great
Shame that the story is not all that great
Everything about Arzen Legacy is built on a solid foundation, the animation is great, the puzzles are great, and the formula of the series has been pretty much perfect'd at this point. Arzen Legacy by all means uses all the resources that previous Layton games had and makes use of them for it's own benefit and in a lot of ways is the logical conclusion of 6 games into one. That's the thing though, you can have everything work in favor for you and still lose it if you don't focus on a good story. Arzen Legacy felt like it was being built up throughout this whole prequel series and while there are some nice building blocks to the mystery, it ultimately fails to achieve this. The game feels far too bloated and misses a lot of beats to have all the twists and turns it has fall flat. It's a real shame too because the game really just needed to be longer or fix it's pacing in order to have all these mysteries feel satisfying. Still this doesn't ruin the game from being good on it's own, but it does notably suffer from it. Arzen Legacy is a decent last outing for Layton, but Unwonded Future still feels like the better end to the series, and I suppose I'm fine with that.
Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is the final game in the main Layton series, and it takes the story to heights the likes of which we haven’t seen before in these games. Being a prequel game to the series it feels a bit odd as the stakes laid out over the course of this games story are so grandiose in comparison to the original trilogy that the stories told in that game dwarf in comparison. But that said, that isn’t necessarily a great thing, I feel that the huge leap in what’s at stake can almost feel like a jump the shark type scenario for the series despite being built up from through Last Specter and Miracle Mask. Despite my shaky feeling about the larger than life narrative what makes me really appreciate the game once again is it’s characters. The new cast of characters introduced for the prequel trilogy seemed a bit shoe horned in at first, but as the trilogy told its story I became more invested in the microcosm that they inhabited watching all the characters relationships unfold into an ultimate climax in this entry was very satisfying. As for the gameplay, it takes the 3D Layton formula set up in Miracle Mask and improves on it just slightly to make the whole experience more enjoyable. Navigating the map and looking around an area remain largely the same but have been refined ever so slightly that it feels more enjoyable to control and explore, which was my biggest gripe with Miracle Mask. The game’s puzzles seemed to ease up on the math puzzles which I greatly appreciated but one thread that has continued throughout the prequel series the almost lack of any real creativity with the puzzles that we saw in the original trilogy. This does not mean the new puzzles are bad, far from it, but looking back at puzzles from Curious Village you can tell they were starting to run out of steam here. As for the environments you explore this game perhaps may be the largest in the series yet, as Layton and Co go on a globe trotting adventure exploring places like the Wild West, a tropical island, a Romani Village, amongst many others which are all displayed in high detail and brought to life with lovable NPCs and wonderful music. Overall I had a great time with Azran Legacy, and it is a great send off to the mainline series of games even if it bites off more than it can realistically chew. Any Layton fans should leave this game feeling satisfied at the very least.
aqui se les fue la mano a los de level 5
...and to this day, Layton remains the most celebrated Jew of video games.
def liked this one better than miracle mask. lots of interesting story choices lmao
This review contains spoilers
Professor Layton is one of my favorite series. I started playing them in 2020, and have finally finished the 2nd trilogy. For some reason I took a year break in between starting azran legacy and finishing it.
This is one of the weaker entries in the series, although it makes up for it by being the largest. Each Layton game is eager to slightly one-up the previous in puzzle count. Azran legacy is the sixth iteration in this arms race... wow there's a lot of puzzles packed into this one. I need to put into perspective just how each entry in this awesome series scales up in content: I spent 16 hours playing through Curious Village and 50 playing through Azran legacy.
Azran Legacy is also impressively high effort. It has many gorgeous 3D environments, a beautiful 2.3 hour soundtrack, charming puzzle visuals, and plenty of characters. All of this is spread across a fairly wide spread of themes and locations.
There is some padding in the structure of the game, but make no mistake the main attraction of the puzzles is wonderful the whole time. As a puzzle enjoyer, this game was well worth my time. One of my favorite parts about Professor Layton games is the diversity of puzzles, it's refreshing to play a random puzzle collection instead of a game that iterates on one theme and set of mechanics. This aspect truly shines in Azran Legacy, although most of the puzzles in this game have at least one sequel. One small quibble that's worth noting is that the picarat ratings are weirdly inflated in this game and I think there's actually a slight absence of truly evil puzzles.
Like every other prequel trilogy layton game, the trunk is home to fairly involved and interesting puzzle minigames . Bloom Burst has interesting mechanics and is surprisingly tricky. I like the optionial challenge of trying to green every square, although I didn't go for that on the last 3 levels. Nutty Roller was a lot of fun as well. The fashion minigame is cute and not annoying, I guess that's all I can say about it. {Wait, I have something else to say. WHY IS ONE OF THE OUTFIT PIECES NOT OBTATINABLE UNTIL YOU GET TO THE NEST. Literally every other thing in the trunk resolves before you visit there. It is maddening to feel like I've obviously missed something only to look it up and realize no it's just this one thing I can't get yet before this telegraphed "finish your business traveling around the world first". }
Also The "episodes" scenes are incredibly uninteresting.
I appreciate how each Professor Layton game has such a distinct tone and style. Azran legacy is centered around travelling the world, mystery of the week storytelling and a huge vibe of "hey we watched castle in the sky". Unfortunately this is probably the weakest vibe of the series... it's entirely outclassed by the other games. One of the big reasons for this is due to the travelling around the world gimmick. It sacrifices too much of something core to the layton identity: spending time in an intriguing place. The places are just settings for the adventure, rather than the adventure being fundamentally about exploring the mystery of some location...I'm definetly not a fan.
The most eggregious flaw in the game is the chapter where you search for eggs. Tragically, each location you visit for this bulk of the game is uninteresting and shallow. To make it worse, the puzzle placement and world times articles will require you to revisit each of these areas multiple times. I spent quite a bit of the playthrough doing another sweep through each area... only for all of them to unlock more puzzles after I thought I was ready to activate the eggs. Maybe this terrible pacing is why this game took me so long to finally finish.
I can't believe a layton game has places this boring
To be clear, there's quite a few locations I enjoyed, but my disappointment in these egg areas really killed a lot of this game for me
Ok time for some specifics and spoilers (note: I offhandedly and vaguely mention some stuff from previous games in the series as well)
Froenborg and London are awesome, shoutout especially to their music. Kodh has a solid vibe. The jungle and wild west are a total waste of time. The beach is amusing for the joke of there being tons of eggs and has nothing else going for it. The Dragonlord village and phoenix city are definitely the best of the egg ones, although they aren't amazing. At least those two have the decency to have something intriguing. My favorite of those 2 is definitely the phoenix city, although the answer for why the adults are all asleep is pretty lame. {I'm used to the answers to questions in this series being many things... lame is not one of them. This is pitiful compared to most of the crazy stuff in this series}
The nest is awesome, I wish you got to explore more of it. The Azran ruins look pretty cool, although they have the sin of overusing the Norwell track. That's unfortunate because what was associated with a strong emotionial moment in miracle mask has been repurposed to just be the theme of azran ruins.
My biggest disappointment is with the story. The whole time I was eagerly awaiting my dose of layton's signature reveals. What wild way would the Azrans be entirely fake (and replaced with something hilariously less believable)? It's strangely out of character for the main premise to actually be real. In some ways it's kind of like an amusing joke, but Unwound Future did that better.
Almost every twist around the climax of this game felt pointless. Ok who cares that Emmy was a targent traitor {although the awkward regret she feels in some of the epilogue scenes is neat}. Ok who cares that Bronev was actually layton's biological father. Descole and layton being brothers... literally who asked. These aren't quite the caliber of reveals I expect from layton games. It's like the writers heard that Layton is known for it's twists, but they didn't understand what makes them work so well.
The payoff for the Azran is quite bad. They choose to go such a generic direction with it. There's very little emotional weight (something the series normally excels at, even when you're laughing you're head off at the absurdity ). The whole "you're willing to kill Aurora, the humans are evil, let's unleash the golems and kill them all lmao" is dumb. Everyone "sacrificing" themselves in the beams of light is even more dumb. I don't mean the fun dumb that throws my suspension of disbelief on a rollercoaster, i just mean boring and uninspired writing dumb.
This is one of the weaker entries in the series, although it makes up for it by being the largest. Each Layton game is eager to slightly one-up the previous in puzzle count. Azran legacy is the sixth iteration in this arms race... wow there's a lot of puzzles packed into this one. I need to put into perspective just how each entry in this awesome series scales up in content: I spent 16 hours playing through Curious Village and 50 playing through Azran legacy.
Azran Legacy is also impressively high effort. It has many gorgeous 3D environments, a beautiful 2.3 hour soundtrack, charming puzzle visuals, and plenty of characters. All of this is spread across a fairly wide spread of themes and locations.
There is some padding in the structure of the game, but make no mistake the main attraction of the puzzles is wonderful the whole time. As a puzzle enjoyer, this game was well worth my time. One of my favorite parts about Professor Layton games is the diversity of puzzles, it's refreshing to play a random puzzle collection instead of a game that iterates on one theme and set of mechanics. This aspect truly shines in Azran Legacy, although most of the puzzles in this game have at least one sequel. One small quibble that's worth noting is that the picarat ratings are weirdly inflated in this game and I think there's actually a slight absence of truly evil puzzles.
Like every other prequel trilogy layton game, the trunk is home to fairly involved and interesting puzzle minigames . Bloom Burst has interesting mechanics and is surprisingly tricky. I like the optionial challenge of trying to green every square, although I didn't go for that on the last 3 levels. Nutty Roller was a lot of fun as well. The fashion minigame is cute and not annoying, I guess that's all I can say about it. {Wait, I have something else to say. WHY IS ONE OF THE OUTFIT PIECES NOT OBTATINABLE UNTIL YOU GET TO THE NEST. Literally every other thing in the trunk resolves before you visit there. It is maddening to feel like I've obviously missed something only to look it up and realize no it's just this one thing I can't get yet before this telegraphed "finish your business traveling around the world first". }
Also The "episodes" scenes are incredibly uninteresting.
I appreciate how each Professor Layton game has such a distinct tone and style. Azran legacy is centered around travelling the world, mystery of the week storytelling and a huge vibe of "hey we watched castle in the sky". Unfortunately this is probably the weakest vibe of the series... it's entirely outclassed by the other games. One of the big reasons for this is due to the travelling around the world gimmick. It sacrifices too much of something core to the layton identity: spending time in an intriguing place. The places are just settings for the adventure, rather than the adventure being fundamentally about exploring the mystery of some location...I'm definetly not a fan.
The most eggregious flaw in the game is the chapter where you search for eggs. Tragically, each location you visit for this bulk of the game is uninteresting and shallow. To make it worse, the puzzle placement and world times articles will require you to revisit each of these areas multiple times. I spent quite a bit of the playthrough doing another sweep through each area... only for all of them to unlock more puzzles after I thought I was ready to activate the eggs. Maybe this terrible pacing is why this game took me so long to finally finish.
I can't believe a layton game has places this boring
To be clear, there's quite a few locations I enjoyed, but my disappointment in these egg areas really killed a lot of this game for me
Ok time for some specifics and spoilers (note: I offhandedly and vaguely mention some stuff from previous games in the series as well)
Froenborg and London are awesome, shoutout especially to their music. Kodh has a solid vibe. The jungle and wild west are a total waste of time. The beach is amusing for the joke of there being tons of eggs and has nothing else going for it. The Dragonlord village and phoenix city are definitely the best of the egg ones, although they aren't amazing. At least those two have the decency to have something intriguing. My favorite of those 2 is definitely the phoenix city, although the answer for why the adults are all asleep is pretty lame. {I'm used to the answers to questions in this series being many things... lame is not one of them. This is pitiful compared to most of the crazy stuff in this series}
The nest is awesome, I wish you got to explore more of it. The Azran ruins look pretty cool, although they have the sin of overusing the Norwell track. That's unfortunate because what was associated with a strong emotionial moment in miracle mask has been repurposed to just be the theme of azran ruins.
My biggest disappointment is with the story. The whole time I was eagerly awaiting my dose of layton's signature reveals. What wild way would the Azrans be entirely fake (and replaced with something hilariously less believable)? It's strangely out of character for the main premise to actually be real. In some ways it's kind of like an amusing joke, but Unwound Future did that better.
Almost every twist around the climax of this game felt pointless. Ok who cares that Emmy was a targent traitor {although the awkward regret she feels in some of the epilogue scenes is neat}. Ok who cares that Bronev was actually layton's biological father. Descole and layton being brothers... literally who asked. These aren't quite the caliber of reveals I expect from layton games. It's like the writers heard that Layton is known for it's twists, but they didn't understand what makes them work so well.
The payoff for the Azran is quite bad. They choose to go such a generic direction with it. There's very little emotional weight (something the series normally excels at, even when you're laughing you're head off at the absurdity ). The whole "you're willing to kill Aurora, the humans are evil, let's unleash the golems and kill them all lmao" is dumb. Everyone "sacrificing" themselves in the beams of light is even more dumb. I don't mean the fun dumb that throws my suspension of disbelief on a rollercoaster, i just mean boring and uninspired writing dumb.
going full castle in the sky
This game is a bunch of British people running around stealing artefacts.
One of them is Descole though, so it's okay.
One of them is Descole though, so it's okay.
sorry for playing this game first, i didn't know how professor layton games were supposed to be played
Good ending and good twist but thats all its got going for it honestly
what is it about the final entry of professor layton games that makes it go so hard
Disappointing end to the prequel trilogy. This could have been the next Unwound Future, but fumbled it massively and ended up feeling like a Castle in the Sky or Assassins Creed rip-off.
Story-wise, almost all of the issues can be tied to letting you visit the world locations and solve the mysteries there in any order. It prevents the writing from carrying themes forward and leaves you with 6 separate stories that don't have much in common. As the stories are basically surreallist detective novels, it doesn't really work at building up the ending.
Gameplay-wise, the puzzles in the 3D games just feel too much like mini-games compared to the more puzzle-bookish puzzles in the 2D games. This, combined with the weird looking 3D graphics, makes the game feel a lot more childish than the previous ones. Miracle Mask also suffered from this, to some extent, but I didn't mind so much then because it wasn't the finale.
The point is that most of the story and gameplay feel quite simple and childish, and this then clashes massively with the ending, which in classic Layton-fashion is unexpectedly dark and mature. Additionally, 50% of the cutscenes happen at the end, so the majority of the game's dialogue is shown with goofy 3D-models of 2D characters gesturing wildly at each other.
However it is still a Layton game and a bad Layton game is still a good game relative to others on the DS/3DS, so I don't hate it but it did disappoint me after all the hype it built up.
Story-wise, almost all of the issues can be tied to letting you visit the world locations and solve the mysteries there in any order. It prevents the writing from carrying themes forward and leaves you with 6 separate stories that don't have much in common. As the stories are basically surreallist detective novels, it doesn't really work at building up the ending.
Gameplay-wise, the puzzles in the 3D games just feel too much like mini-games compared to the more puzzle-bookish puzzles in the 2D games. This, combined with the weird looking 3D graphics, makes the game feel a lot more childish than the previous ones. Miracle Mask also suffered from this, to some extent, but I didn't mind so much then because it wasn't the finale.
The point is that most of the story and gameplay feel quite simple and childish, and this then clashes massively with the ending, which in classic Layton-fashion is unexpectedly dark and mature. Additionally, 50% of the cutscenes happen at the end, so the majority of the game's dialogue is shown with goofy 3D-models of 2D characters gesturing wildly at each other.
However it is still a Layton game and a bad Layton game is still a good game relative to others on the DS/3DS, so I don't hate it but it did disappoint me after all the hype it built up.
A middling end to the 2nd Professor Layton trilogy, but is still charming. The puzzles are weak but the game is still fun.
La historia tenia mas potencial y se queda un poco corta, por lo demas pues buenos puzzles.
Je pense que c'est mon deuxième layton préféré.
L'histoire est top, les environements sont beaucoup plus beaux que le masque des miracles. Les ost toujours aussi bonne.
Mais je pense que le meilleur point du jeu est toute la fin les dernières heures sont tout simplement incroyables.
À faire absolument.
L'histoire est top, les environements sont beaucoup plus beaux que le masque des miracles. Les ost toujours aussi bonne.
Mais je pense que le meilleur point du jeu est toute la fin les dernières heures sont tout simplement incroyables.
À faire absolument.
this was okay
The structure of this game is far different to all the others, taking a quasi open world approach to Layton, each individual area is decent, if a bit confined and short, the overarching story is interesting, but some of the connections revealed between the protagonists and antagonists feel very contrived.
el 90% de este juego es literalmente relleno. el cambio de estructura que hicieron fue bastante malo y el final aunque bonito tiene un par de giros que xd xD
Was a bit bummed with the puzzles, as they feel uninspired when compared to the previous games. But the way the story unfolds in this one is enough for me to recommend it. Don't expect the greatest puzzles, but when it comes to the story... expect the unexpected.
While the first two acts of the story have some minor pacing issues (which, this game has made me realize, a lot of the Layton games seem to have) it's made up for by the really stellar finale; the game pulls out a handful of big twists in quick succession and somehow they all feel handled really well. It even does a good job on the emotional beats, which I really wasn't expecting since this was a replay (granted, the first one in a while, but still).
Also I really liked that one trick question puzzle at the beginning of the game.
Also I really liked that one trick question puzzle at the beginning of the game.