After a phenomenally successful opening weekend in Japan,Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle became the 3DS' best-selling launch game – and it's easy to see why. Japan went absolutely mental for Layton's gentle, endearing mix of high-quality script and voice-acting, quaint, alternate-universe European setting and excellently-designed brain-teasers when the first game released back in 2007, and its popularity has only grown since. We got our hands on a Japanese copy of the game to see how the 3DS has changed things for the series – and whether it'll be worth the inevitable wait.
Release Date: TBA 2011
Exclusively on: Nintendo 3DS
RP for Rating Pending
Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Level-5
Developer: Level-5
The first thing you notice is that Professor Layton sounds way sexier in Japanese (and Luke sounds much less annoying). The second thing, though, is the huge leap in graphical quality. The characters are all actual models now, cel-shaded and outlined in black. It's a relief to see that the Professor Layton series has been updated without losing any of its style or soul. That beautiful watercolour aesthetic works just as well in 3D, and we finally have some conversational animations rather than pretty but static images.
Mask of Miracle's third main character, Emmy Altava, will be unfamiliar to non-Japanese Layton fans – she was introduced in Specter's Flute, the fourth game in the series which is still waiting for a Western release date. She's a 25-year-old assistant to the Professor, and she, Luke and Layton himself for an investigative trio, taking it in turns to solve puzzles. It's possible that their paths will split as the game goes on, too, but at least for the first few hours, they stick together.
More Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle Videos
Layton, Luke and Emmy are called to a town called Montdol by a concerned letter from an old friend, Sharon, whom Layton hasn't seen in eighteen years. She asks for his assistance in solving the mystery of the Mask of Miracle – a mask that can supposedly grant wishes to the wearer. There's also an extremely cool secondary plot running through the game, in which we get to see Professor Layton and his friends during his university days, complete with ridiculous hairstyle.
Montdol is a gorgeous collage of tumbledown, European-style buildings constructed at weird, eye-catching angles. The streets are cobbled, the colours are rustic, and the whole place has the look of a hand-painted watercolour. When you turn up the 3D slider, the characters and buildings appear much more distinct from the backgrounds, and conversation text and icons come right to the forefront of the screen. The 3D is subtle, but it brings the environment to life – to take full advantage of the effect, all the important goings-on and puzzle-solving now take place on the top screen.
The game opens as Layton and co arrive in town in the midst of a carnival. But suddenly, chaos erupts – a huge inflatable clown falls from the sky, sending the carnival parade scurrying for safety, and when the dust clears it appears that the townsfolk have been turned to stone. A white-suited man in a mask suddenly appears on a rooftop, laughing a trademark baddie laugh – he seems to know Layton, but it's not clear how. He then spontaneously grows wings and takes off through the town.
Happily, there are three horses nearby, and the Professor chases after him on horseback Layton gets a sturdy brown steed, Emmy a white horse, and poor wee Luke is stuck with a dopey-looking grey pony with its tongue lolling out of its mouth. It's a lovely, gentle sense of humour that these games have – it still comes across strongly in the cutscenes, character design and dialogue.
What ensues is something unusual for a Layton game: an action interlude. Guiding Layton with the stylus on the bottom screen, we must chase after the winged man, taking the right turns down narrow streets and avoiding barrels in the horse's way. The 3D is rather more impressive here, as the tall buildings roll past at speed and the white-suited chap disappears away into the distance ahead of us.
Before long, though, he vanishes in mid-air. A white sheet falls to earth at an astonished Layton's feet. From then on, we're free to explore the town, chatting to the remaining townsfolk – not all of them were turned into stone – and, of course, discovering puzzles to solve.
All the actual exploration is on the panoramic top screen, now – you move a magnifying glass around with the stylus to examine points of interest. The bottom screen shows a little map, allowing you to move between areas. The opening puzzles are sweet and simple, visually enhanced by the 3D slider but not dependent on it. There's a chap tangled up in a mess of balloons that you have to untangle by tapping panels on the touch-screen, a spot-the-difference game with three seemingly identical posters, and a little girl whose mother you have to find by following a few logic and visual clues.
In Sharon's mansion, there's a sort of chess board occupied by white rabbits; you have to turn them all into brown rabbits by leapfrogging them, Chinese Checkers-style. Puzzles are everywhere – hidden in cupboards, triggered by seemingly inconsequential stuff lying around in the street, given to you by riddle-obsessed townsfolk
One conundrum actually foiled us – we were stopped in the street by two guys pulling a scam by hiding balls under cups, switching them around and getting Layton and company to guess where the ball would end up. After ages spent fruitlessly trying to follow the ball with our eyes, we figured out that it always magically ended up back where it started, despite plenty of misdirection. The cads!
Layton:'s University years reveal a striking hairdo beneath the iconic hat.
There are plenty of puzzley asides and mini-games tucked away in the menus, as well. After solving a puzzle from a street vendor where we had to put a toy robot back together, we unlocked a mini-game series in which you have to guide a little robot guy around a maze, avoiding clockwork mice and trying to make your way to a red Exit tile. There was only one course open at first, but it was surprisingly challenging.
There's also a menu where you can view individual "episodes" - little cutscenes featuring particular characters. In the first one, apparently in the recent past, Emmy is investigating miracles, furiously scribbling in a notebook as she interviews townspeople – we think this is where we might see the most interesting anecdotes from Layton's student days. A Collection menu is a pretty 3D gallery of all the random objects that Layton picks up off the streets during his investigation, and you can also customise your save-game profile with icons, backgrounds and titles for yourself that unlock steadily as puzzle rewards.
It's still perfect for a portable system, with short puzzles, handy recaps when you switch the game back on after a couple of days and nicely concise chapters. The puzzles are still sweet, surprising and well-designed – which is remarkable, considering how many of them there have been now.
Sadly, we probably won't see Mask of Miracle for a while yet – previous games in the series have taken up to two years to localise and release abroad, and we're still waiting for Specter's Flute. Playing it now will be pretty much impossible if you can't read Japanese pretty well (although there are helpful furigana if you're not super-confident about your kanji-reading skills); you could theoretically solve the puzzles by just trying every option until a solution sticks, but you'd be missing out on the lovely dialogue and story that makes these games more than just collections of diverting puzzles.
But Layton on the 3DS is certain to be a system-seller, which we hope might goad Nintendo into speeding up the localisation process. Please, Nintendo? We're desperate for something more substantial and cerebrally demanding to play than the slight but lovely Pilotwings and Nintendogs, and Ridge Racer's Expert Grand Prix won't last forever.
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