It's been about two years now since I last played a Layton game. A friend of mine has been asking me to play the prequel trilogy for quite some time now and eventually I just felt like playing it. I'll start by saying that it was a good idea to have let some time pass between playing Unwound Future and this entry.

Last Specter is chronologically the first adventure of Hershel Layton and takes him to the foggy hometown of an old friend, where he's supposed to investigate the rampage of a supernatural being. Together with his new assistant and the mayor's son, the team encounters eccentric figures like the mysterious hooded Black Raven and a girl who's suspected to be a witch, dooming everyone who comes close to her.

As in the other Layton games, the gameplay consists of point-and-click investigations and puzzle-solving. The puzzle quality in this entry is solid and the difficulty is fine. In case you can't find a solution, Last Specter practically showers you with hint coins. I had about 130 left at the end of the game, so don't feel bad about using them! I'm pretty sure the original trilogy didn't hand out such an abundance, but I might be misremembering here. Either way, why is everyone so obsessed with puzzles in this town in the first place?

The narrative itself is intriguing, although rather compact. Game has a lot of "this is a prequel" moments, where you can find a reference to some characters from the original trilogy and even some direct cameos. However, Last Specter doesn't really go much in depth with those and shifts the focus to new characters instead - like Emmy, the professor's assistant. In my opinion she's a welcome addition to the main cast and I'm looking forward to seeing more of her in the next games. Now, the twists are usually a big part of what I'm looking forward to in Layton games. They're usually a big shocker that's near unpredictable and totally alters your way of perceiving those games, but I can't say I had a moment like this in Last Specter. Without giving anything away, after a certain point in the story it's really easy to find out the twist by yourself, so at the part where the game explicitly tells you, it's not much of a surprise anymore. The reveal itself was alright, I just expected more out of a Layton game, especially after seeing what Level-5 did with Unwound Future.

Despite this, Last Specter is another well-rounded entry in the Layton series and now I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the prequel trilogy.

A gameboy advance fell in my hands as soon as ~ 2005. My uncles brought it from China to Argentina. With it it came Naruto: Ninja Council game cartridge with it's colourful orange sticker. There was only one problem, it was all in japanese. As a kid I learned but EVERY option was for. Even deleting my own save files. But I know this game like the palm of my hands. I remember playing it in primary school so many times before knowing it had an Anime. Naruto shouted his name... but the other characters where:
the blue one, the girl, the masked one, Gaara was the honey one. What a blast.