Just before the release of the final Layton game, The Azran Legacy, Level-5 tried their hand at entering the mobile market. Instead of bringing the main series over, however, something they would only do several years later a spin-off was created in the form of Layton Brothers: Mystery Room.
Well, more or less. Mystery Room wasn't conceived as a Layton game, it was instead meant to be an entirely separate investigation series. Level-5 went quiet about this game after its announcement, and then it resurfaced after over a year, rebranded as Layton Brothers: Mystery Room. And you can kind of feel how the Layton brand was shoehorned into this: the only relation it has to the Layton series is that one of the protagonists, Alfendi Layton, is supposed to be Hershel's son, but other than that, it features mechanics and stories entirely separate from those in the good professor's games.
As the game begins, Lucy Baker joins Scotland Yard as a detective. Her job is to assist renowned investigator Alfendi Layton in solving murder cases that get sent to the ward. In time, Lucy begins to realize that there is more to her colleague than meets the eye. The story is split into an intro plus nine cases, some of which are interlinked and form a larger plot. In each case, data about the murder is brought to Lucy and Alfendi along with profiles of its suspects, and the two set out to investigate and try to pin one of the suspects.
The game plays closer to something like Ace Attorney than Layton. Every case begins with the circumstances of the crime being made known, followed by Lucy and Alfendi inspecting the crime scene for every piece of evidence they can find. There's mostly only one room to investigate in the entire case, though, you don't get to move between various locations like Phoenix does, which makes it a more casual experience than AA, for good and for bad. It's fitting for a mobile game, where you go and play a game when you have time to kill, but it's also not as memorable as other similar titles.
The case is laid out as a series of questions that need to be answered by the player either through evidence and/or statements from the people present at the time of the crime. Once each of these questions has been answered and the suspect has been narrowed down, the detectives call over the person whodunnit to finally get their confession.
Overall, Mystery Room is far from an unmissable part of the Layton series, but it’s an enjoyable detective romp, and I figure the only major problem is that it goes out with a whimper. The last couple of cases are meant to be the highest point of the story, but they are by far the worst of the bunch. The central issue is that they revolve around events that happened so far in Alfendi's past that it feels like you're grasping at straws for two entire cases. The writers really wrote themselves into a corner with this ending.
Well, more or less. Mystery Room wasn't conceived as a Layton game, it was instead meant to be an entirely separate investigation series. Level-5 went quiet about this game after its announcement, and then it resurfaced after over a year, rebranded as Layton Brothers: Mystery Room. And you can kind of feel how the Layton brand was shoehorned into this: the only relation it has to the Layton series is that one of the protagonists, Alfendi Layton, is supposed to be Hershel's son, but other than that, it features mechanics and stories entirely separate from those in the good professor's games.
As the game begins, Lucy Baker joins Scotland Yard as a detective. Her job is to assist renowned investigator Alfendi Layton in solving murder cases that get sent to the ward. In time, Lucy begins to realize that there is more to her colleague than meets the eye. The story is split into an intro plus nine cases, some of which are interlinked and form a larger plot. In each case, data about the murder is brought to Lucy and Alfendi along with profiles of its suspects, and the two set out to investigate and try to pin one of the suspects.
The game plays closer to something like Ace Attorney than Layton. Every case begins with the circumstances of the crime being made known, followed by Lucy and Alfendi inspecting the crime scene for every piece of evidence they can find. There's mostly only one room to investigate in the entire case, though, you don't get to move between various locations like Phoenix does, which makes it a more casual experience than AA, for good and for bad. It's fitting for a mobile game, where you go and play a game when you have time to kill, but it's also not as memorable as other similar titles.
The case is laid out as a series of questions that need to be answered by the player either through evidence and/or statements from the people present at the time of the crime. Once each of these questions has been answered and the suspect has been narrowed down, the detectives call over the person whodunnit to finally get their confession.
Overall, Mystery Room is far from an unmissable part of the Layton series, but it’s an enjoyable detective romp, and I figure the only major problem is that it goes out with a whimper. The last couple of cases are meant to be the highest point of the story, but they are by far the worst of the bunch. The central issue is that they revolve around events that happened so far in Alfendi's past that it feels like you're grasping at straws for two entire cases. The writers really wrote themselves into a corner with this ending.