Shame how expensive the series is getting now. Wish they did ports I feel like this entry in specific would be a great switch port.
Guapo que flipas e, lo de viajar por el mundo me encantó
I LOVE JEAN DESCOLEEEEE HE'S SOOOOO HFHBSFHJBUIHSDUGBSKALFJBJ
This review contains spoilers
First video game where the main character gets dead named
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.