better sense of scale than the first regarding both its central mystery and its locales. for one, you're given much more room to stretch your legs, with the second half of the game taking place in an area roughly the size of the entire first game and the first half having a few beefy areas of its own. the multiple mysteries in this one indeed also expand beyond the big endgame twist, and more care has been taken to drop breadcrumbs of intrigue throughout the adventure rather than the meandering approach of curious village. at the same time, the larger cast of characters and tragic lover's bond at the heart of the narrative makes the lack of attention paid to their actual characterization more noticeable. an examination of the folly of a rich family mining the earth and bringing ruin on their workers becomes didactic quickly when it's conveyed entirely through history lessons and layton's personal observations, and the writers' preoccupation with preserving the shock of the primary mystery keeps the actual humans at the core of the conflict from expressing themselves until the final ten minutes. I've cooled off on curious village's twist in the couple of years since I played it, and even though this one is probably more interesting, it still feels like a sudden burst of passion at the end of another meandering 15 hour adventure. then again, more pretty backgrounds than last time, so it all comes out in the wash.

puzzles in general are now better integrated into the story; layton still lives in an alternate reality where everyone is obsessed with puzzles, but at least he's actually using his skill at solving them in practical ways to navigate the world and solve mysteries. I'll hesitatingly say that conceptual puzzles seem to be fewer in number compared to curious village, with more focus on various physical layout puzzles and some math ones here and there. conceptual puzzles have the strength of obfuscating a solution space and thus making the exercise feel more like a product of reasoning and less trial and error, but I do also appreciate the variety of layout puzzles here, especially when it comes to ones like chopping wood in the right place to make a square or placing lanterns to cover every path of a forest. tired of maze puzzles tho; really no mental leaps required for them beyond just following each path to the right place. those are really the other extreme compared to conceptual puzzles, where the whole solution space is there for you to look at and you just check off whatever path leads to the finish. the best conceptual puzzles come on the critical path at least, so you won't miss any of them.

there's also better scaffolding around the ADV parts of the experience to keep exploration fresh thanks to some new integrated minigames. there's a persistent puzzle with an exercising hamster you must lead around a grid in order to have him reach a step count, and by solving puzzles around the world you can win items with new properties for him to chase. the puzzle itself is cool, and having a variety of ways to reach the maximum step count goes a long way to making the puzzle feel less prescriptive. when that's reached, he'll pop up in the world to tell you where you can find hint coins, removing the pixel hunting component of the game completely. there's camera components you can find as well that, once assembled, can be used to take pictures of specific rooms in the game. this opens up a "find the differences" type game that will open up a bonus puzzle; another neat addition that complements the main draw nicely. the third is less interesting: you can win different tea ingredients to make people tea? in-game there's no benefit to doing this, although I have a feeling some of the post-game puzzles will unlock if you can serve all the different kinds of tea. problem is figuring out all of the different brews is complete trial-and-error, and although some NPCs will give you recipes, others are much more vague. would help if some NPCs who want tea didn't suddenly stop wanting tea if you fuck up their initial order, though considering that they randomly re-enable later I have a feeling this is just some scripting issue.

fewer terrible puzzles than the first game so that's nice! still too many sliding puzzles and the fuckin endless peg solitaire and chess shit can die forever.

also somehow the plot twist of this game is even harder to believe than the first game?? the layton universe really just does whatever it wants and rolls with it lol

still a fun game. also still pretty rough around the edges

More or less on the level of the previous game. A nice, heartfelt story, well-made cinematics, banging sountrack. There seem to be a bit more annoying puzzles, which aren't really logical, but instead require the player to notice one weird detail (though the first game took me months to finish so I might be misremembering the scope of it). I do like the setting a bit more, I feel like the spooky atmosphere suits the series perfectly. I also like the improvements to storytelling in form of collectible diary entries. I never would've thought I would compliment something like that in a video game, but here the entries feel somewhat intimate, and actually matter if you consider the main story. You can sort of piece toghether what's going to happen and it's a really satisfying feeling - in a way, you're a part of Layton and Luke's story.

What I fucking hate though is the treatment Flora's character. Not only does she get left out in the beginning and then again halfway through the game, her character is solely used to build up Don Paolo for the third game. He doesn't even do anything interesting in this one - he just follows Layton and Luke for a while and then leaves like nothing happened. This is some MCU-level bullshit. I really hope it will pay off in the third game, but so far it felt like the trilogy wasn't really planned out in advance and the setups weren't all that great. If they didn't manage to think of anything for Flora to do they should've just made her stay in St. Mystere, and completely skip Don Paolo or at least write him better in this game.

But yeah - still a decent time. I'll check out the third game soon.

Se tem um protagonista injustiçado nesse mar que é o meio gamer, tem de ser nosso querido Hershel Layton. Charmoso, cavalheiro, maduro e inteligente, é um baita de um modelo, e um que eu não desconsideraria como figura paterna. Viajar ao seu lado é irresistivelmente aconchegante, e acompanhar suas jornadas torcendo pela sua vitória perante aos empecilhos em sua frente é inescapável.

Esses jogos são únicos. Seja no seu estilo artístico, seja nos seus puzzles intrigantes, que desta vez se encaixam perfeitamente nos contextos em que se encontram, seja pelos seus mistérios petulantes com resoluções surpreendentes, ou pelos personagens excêntricos obcecados por puzzles, Professor Layton se diferencia em um mar de jogos de aventura visual novel point and clicketcetcetc.

Apesar de não ter a mesma concisão da ambientação e familiaridade de St. Mystere, a variedade entre os cenários de Diabolical Box fornece uma jornada mais colorida e divergente de seu predecessor. O destino final de Folsense também é tão intrigante quanto a curiosa vila.

Por mais que a absurdidade seja ainda mais intensa aqui, a resolução de Diabolical Box me deixou extremamente satisfeito, com um final bonito e profundo. Existe uma sutileza agradável que não se encontra em nenhum outro lugar, e mal vejo a hora de desbravar o resto dessa franquia tão charmosa.

I've been trying to finish this game since I was like 6 years old, and I finally did just that
The story was, idk, was it even decent? Idk this save file was played in mobile over the span of a year, I don't really remember half of it
The puzzles are interesting, but this isn't really my kind of game so I don't think I can give the best opinion about it
Overall, was it worth it? the 14 years of trying?
Shrugs I.... I guess so? Maybe?? Idk I think I prefer Inazuma Eleven every day of the week over this

P.D: IT'S NAME IS THE PANDORA'S BOX