DS User Reviews

I can see why it's so famous, it must have been very interesting in its time, especially because of its use of the DS's features, but it's lost some of its coherence for me. I was expecting a story that wasn't so unrealistic, and the puzzles have pulled me out of the narrative a bit because many times they don't make any sense.

Really nice game! I especially like the style and the anime like cutscenes.

Profesor Layton and the Curious Village es un juego de puzzles muy enttetenido con una gran historia. Para ser de DS gráficamenre está muy bien, y a nivel técnico va genial. Sola.ente tiene dos canciones, pero van acorde a su atmósfera. Lo mejor es su muy interesante historia, y sus adictivos puzzles. El único pero que le puedo poner es que hay algunos puzzles (muy pocos) que me han parecido injustos, ya sea por su planteamiento o porque no los he entendido bien. Si te gustan este ripo de juegos no puedes perderte esta joya, aunque aviso que los puzzles los hay de todo tipo, desde fáciles a realmente difíciles.

This game is a wonderful puzzler with cozy graphics and a well thought story line. Twists are present throughout the games and will leave you awestricken. Puzzles range from easy to hard, but all will get you thinking!

Very good puzzle game, which wraps the puzzles in quite a charming story, which is maybe more for kids than for adults. The puzzles on the other hand will steal more time than you'd expect and are often clever and interesting. Also, nice usage of the DS hardware 8,5/10

Great game! Enjoyed very much the story, music and graphics. Very charming game. Some puzzles are a little complicated but overall very interesting.

Le meilleur Professeur Layton. 18/20

Professor Layton is one of the best video game franchises in history and this game proves it. I love every single one of the clever and fun puzzles in this game. Some of them are not too complicated but others you will have to use all your brains to solve. Like all Leve 5 games, it has a noticeable focus on humour and the mystery that awaits you throughout the game is structured in a very good and clever way. This game can be enjoyed by everyone; old or young? it doesn't matter, even a person who initially didn't like puzzle games too much (like me) can enjoy it and even fall in love with the genre just by trying this title (like me again XD). A highly recommended game in my opinion. 9.4/10

Cartoon mystery punctuated by puzzles of the type you find in quiz books sold at the train station. The Professor Layton games are all virtually identical so if you like one of them, you'll like them **** vice versa.

Les énigmes sont très variés. L'histoire est sympathique malgré son non sens à certains moments. Le gameplay est un peu simple mais c'est aussi ce qui fait sa force.

Charming the player with a whimsical art-style and an elegant, immersive soundtrack, Professor Layton blends puzzle and adventure elements to craft something distinctively original. Even if exploration boils down to shallow point-and-click gameplay framed by an endearing but forgettable plot, puzzles are stimulating and wonderfully diverse, challenging the player's observation, deduction and logical skills in rewarding ways, besides a few tedious, uncreative math problems.

El inicio de la saga más única de la plataforma. Pocas veces un juego de puzzles enganchó tanto con una trama tan interesante. Puede parecer para niños... hasta que juegues a algunos puzzles. De lo intrincados que son, estoy convencido de que un niño pequeño no lo completa. Y un adulto... tampoco, a salvo que le eche muchas horas.

Some puzzles weren't logical enough for me but for a game with more than 100 puzzles that's acceptable. Plot is stupid but I assume this game was created more for kids than for adults so also fine

Despite having a deep place in my heart for being my first Layton game, it dated quite a lot in the gameplay. Puzzles are mostly math and the game is very "green" compared to the other entries. One of the weakest, yet still in my top 3 Layton games in terms of story, despite its weakness compared to later titles.

The game is fine with many good puzzles so it can not disappoint if you're looking for a puzzle game though it has 2 flaws that should be mentioned. First: some of the bonus puzzles can not be solved by a human without brute forcing or backtracking (e.g. the eight-queens puzzle which according to chess literature itself is in need of a computer program or heavy backtracking) which can become obnoxious though luckily the issue was minimal on the main questline so it doesn't take away much from the game. Second: the developer that wrote the text commenting on the puzzles after their correct solutions and sometimes even when giving hints was obviously not the one that created the puzzles and didn't understand many of the puzzles themselves because in several cases the text wasn't on-point at all (which is pretty obvious to players that have already solved the puzzles and understood them).

A beautiful game... nothing more, nothing less. The sound, the storyline and the character take you into the game, you live the game.

The beginning of a legacy which will never be forgotten. There are some limitations, like not being able to go back to the file selection screen without turning off the console, but the story is awesome and the characters too. Disappointment rate: 0% :D

This game influenced who I am today, and holds a very special place in my heart. I own both the original DS version and the HD mobile re-release.

De acuerdo que es el primer juego pero es malísimo y los puzles no son ni los mejores. Ah y bueno, este juego marca tendencia de la sida de guion que tienen estos juegos.

For a game that essentially just boils down to a bunch of puzzles with a good mystery plot, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a ton of fun.

This is the first layton game I played and I can say its still a great game in 2019. The cutscenes and story are really good and beautiful for its time. The only bad thing I can say is that it lacks a good soundtrack. It was a great experience overal.

I felt like this game had really great puzzles and some of them were challenging however the story was one dimensional and too obvious.

Curious Village is great if you just want some challenging puzzles, but if your looking for anything else your likely not to find it here. It's hard to be critical **** when it's key gameplay aspect is done well, but CV really suffers from being bland. To see what I mean, let's look at the story and characters. The story line is that our two heroes are brought to a strange town to work out some property rights or something on the surface, but are really interested in finding out the secret of the golden apple, a super cool treasure, or something. When they get to the town someone dies and now the plot is a murder mystery, or at least it is once you solve the pressing issue of some important persons cat running off. If you can't tell, I find the story to be pretty forgettable and overall uninteresting. While this may be fine for most games, CV spends a good amount of time focusing on the story considering it has a visual novel-esque format. This causes a good chunk of the game besides a very small amount of the end to be superbly forgettable. There are some twists at the end that I can't say I saw coming, but were just... stupid. This is something that's in almost all the Layton games, unfortunately, but when the overall plot is so boring it just makes it stand out more as bland and dumb. Next we have the characters. First off, I'll say Layton and Luke are cool. I like them as protags, their fun characters, they're good. Everyone else... about as bland as the story. CV really suffers from going for quantity over quality with it's cast. There's a whole bunch of people with personalities that can be boiled down to "this person does X". This wouldn't be too bad if the game had some characters other than the protags who were more than this but there just aren't. Design wise, again Layton and Luke are good but I just don't find anyone else's design memorable at all. They're just that look cartoony and that's it. So yeah, this isn't really a strong suit for CV as well. The graphics overall do have some nice aspects to them, the hand-drawn style works very well and the art on the top screen looks very nice. My biggest problem graphically is the sprites in this game just look ugly. Very inexpressive and really basic. I think this is also a problem that boils down to quantity over quality. So yeah, good style, but not utilized that well. The town you're in also gets kinda old. You're there the entire game and it loses it's charm pretty quickly and just becomes really boring. The music in this game is great. The instruments used work well, all the songs fit when they play, and it just sounds lovely. Another highlight are the sound effects, from the text bleeps to walking down an echoing hallway, these are some of the best sound effects on the DS I've heard. The audio design of CV is plain and simply great. Gameplay-wise, it's almost all good. To start with the negatives, moving around on the map is pretty time consuming and finding your next location can feel like wondering around until you find the thing. My only other problems is that the puzzles go from 0 to 100 WAY too quick. You'll be going from baby's first puzzle to rage-inducing puzzles really quickly and it can be pretty jarring. Other than that, all the puzzles are good. They are a fun time, and almost always have a clever concept and solvable answer. While I wish I had more of a reason to be doing said puzzles, that's really just a personal preference and they are very good. So yeah, if you want to play this game for some really good puzzles and some nice music to go with it, this is the game for you. If you're looking for anything more than this, CV might be better to skip.

Not my favorite out of the Layton series but it sure is one awesome game the dialogue,story,and etc are just very well made and my score for it is a 9.4

You'll need a notebook to play this game. Pros: - The music is amazing. - Lovely characters. - The puzzles are difficult and tricky, which is good. - There's a lot to do in the game: find puzzles, build the gizmo, order the painting, etc. - That feeling of solving a complicated puzzle is so satisfying. Cons - The main story is bland - The cutscenes did not aged so well - The color palette is not my cup of tea, but it leaves an ominous sense of mystery to the game. - The clicking mechanic to travel through the village is tiresome sometimes, but you'll get used to it. - The hints of some puzzles are useless. - That feeling of how your IQ goes down after realizing that the answer of a puzzle was obvious and easy is disgusting.

El primer juego de una saga increible, con sus puntos flacos pero de los mejores para su época. No me cabe ninguna duda de que es un juego excelente que dio el pistoletazo de salida a una saga que es insuperable.

Una de las sagas más infravalorada de la historia. Es muy divertida para cualquiera que le guste los puzles. Además me gusta el estilo artísitco aunque sea muy sencillo. Le pongo un 84/100

Adventure, puzzles. What more could you ask for? it's like being in a small movie as a detective searching for mysteries and unsolved clues to connect the plot together. Big surprises at the end. Fun, addictive and a brilliant story made. Don't miss out.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

一番おもしろくしたDSゲーム。子供も大人もみんな楽しめる良いゲームだと思います。後続作が続い出たらと思います。

An exciting and original story, interesting mysteries and a cute animation. A good game for those who enjoyed of RPG or strategy games. unfortunately once you finish the game there are no reasons to play it again, poor replay value.

The game gets repetitive and there's not much of a consequence for getting a puzzle wrong, but Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a very charming and fun puzzle game with a great story, beautiful art direction, and some really creative puzzles.

I really don't understand the love that this game gets whatsoever. The story is not interesting in the slightest. Which is one of the most important parts about the game. First off, it takes forever to start the quest that the main characters came to the village for. As the game drags it out with things such as finding cats. It's bothersome. I don't find the characters in the village memorable in the slightest, I find them very boring. To be honest the only reason I sat through was becuase I enjoyed the Phoenix Wright Vs. Layton game that released earlier this year. I enjoyed the puzzles in that game. But in this game I cannot stand the puzzles. Some of them are really tedious and bothersome. Graphicly the game is alright. The characters are decently animated and drawn and the backgrounds look nice. The animated cutscenes by japanese animation studio P.A Works, look decent enough. Though they have some very obvious and distracting looking 3D CGI in them. The games soundtrack is for the most part, in my opinion. Quite forgetable. With the only track I personally liked being the games main theme. The voice acting, on the other hand is pretty well done. Though I will say I can't stand Luke's actress in the american release of the game. Thankfully, I have the british release. in which Luke has pretty well done voice work. Overall, I don't understand how people like this game. With a uninteresting story with forgetable characters, some very tedious puzzles and for the most part a forgetable sountrack. I did not enjoy this game. OVERALL - 4/10

Really liked this game, not my normal choice (it was a gift) but quickly got hooked by the story and the puzzles. Often my girlfriend and I would sit up nights working through the puzzle together. It also highlighted that we are both better at different puzzles - very useful teamwork for this one.

Consiguió mantener jugando a las personas mayores que fueron atraídas por la DS con el Brain Training, lo cual supone todo un mérito y es merecedor de estar dentro de la historia del videojuego, además hace de las tareas de rehabilitación cognitiva algo entretenido y motivante. Sin duda debería estar en todos los centros de mejora del aprendizaje.

Professor Layton & the Curious Village is a great little puzzle game with a interesting story and great characters, the story follows Professor Layton and his apprentice Luke as they go to the village of St. Mystere to solve the mystery of the Golden Apple. I'm not going to say much more than that since I don't want to spoil the characters or story. Obviously the meat of the game is in it's Puzzles, There is about 130 puzzles in the game, Most of the them are good but some can be a bit so-so in there logic and sometimes they don't give you any indication of how to solve a particular puzzle since they sometimes leave out key information but this happens rarely and may be a localization issue. The game has a nice art style with characters that really stand out, It's fun to explore St. Mystere to find some of it's hidden puzzles. The town is fairly small so there isn't really an issue of getting lost in the town or anything like that. Sometimes the puzzles can feel like they are not really relating to what's happening in the story and can be somewhat random but they do a fairly good job of trying to make them cohesive, Not that it really matters since the puzzles are still good for the most part. In the end if you like puzzle games or at least want to try one then Professor Layton is a great game to play on Nintendo DS or 3DS, If you generally turn away from puzzle games because you want an interesting story to keep you going then you won't have the problem here since the characters are a big standout, especially Layton and Luke. Go pick this one up.

This game is arguably the best puzzle video game on the DS. Complete with challenging puzzles and a well written story, the game forces the player to think in new ways, and as a matter of fact, the game greatly increases cognitive ability. All puzzles are done with the stylus, and this seems logical because when you see people completing puzzles like a crossword or a cryptogram, there are no buttons. But enough about gameplay, how is the story? The game has a marvelous cast, including my new favorite video game character Professor Layton, who was actually based off of Phoenix Wright with the "bad qualities" removed. The lush anglomaniac environment and lovely cutscenes and charming side characters emanate the game's most prominent quality: character. This game is its own, isolated from other puzzle games like Momento Mori or Brain Age.

This game is overated, the puzzles are boring as hell. I feel like im back in school.

The definitive puzzle/riddle game for the DS. A must-play. I would recommend this game to anyone. Not the best for story, but wonderful puzzles/riddles for all ages.

This game is awesome. The FMVs are great and enjoyable to watch. The voice acting is better than a lot of triple a console releases. The puzzles are fun and engaging. Some puzzles are difficult but w.e, I love layton!

I really enjoyed playing this game. Not only were the puzzles very clever and appealing, but the overall atmosphere and story were both well made and portrayed. The story rounded itself up quite nicely, and left it wide open of a sequel. There was some difficult questions, and some hard to understand places; but these weren't too troubling, and I was able to really enjoy every second of this game

This adventure-puzzle game really surprised me and was in fact the reason why I bought a DS console in the first place. The majority of the puzzles are really fun and well-balanced, with only a couple of instances where the puzzle explanation is not very clear. The nice story, marvelous setting and fun characters (all of which supported by gorgeous graphics and nicely fitting music) do their work also. What's incredible about this title is that it can attract people of all kinds and of all ages, and each of these categories will find their share of fun and challenge. If had to find a flaw in this game is the fact that most of the puzzles are completely unlinked to the plot, and above all the graphic styles used in the puzzles differ too much between them. It would have been nice to have a little more graphical coherence in this game, but apart this, the game should be played and finished by anyone possessing a DS.

I like a good puzzle-adventure game, and I'd played through the first Puzzle Agent just before I picked up Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Before long, I was missing the charm of Puzzle Agent; I don't find stuffy brit characters particularly interesting, and the story was too slow and predictable (though it did liven up before the end) to be a big motivator to keep playing. And while many of the puzzles were fun (and plenty were familiar), some were...well, annoying. Or tedious. Or, in a few cases, frustrating. In a game like this, where I expect each puzzle to shine, those are big strikes against the game.

"Professor Layton and the Curious Village" is a engrossing adult and child DS game that will hold your attention for a long period of time with its brilliant puzzles and questions.

I really can not understand how this game can get so good reviews. First of all, the story is very uninteresting so I found myself clicking it away just to get to the puzzles. Some of the puzzles are fun and creative, but it's not enough. Many puzzles are boring and uninventive and while some of them are very logical, some are not. But that's just a matter of taste and logic I guess, the biggest problem is that none of the puzzles are related to the story! This makes the gameplay very lame, it's basically a graphics novel with some random puzzles crammed into it without any kind of connection. Since the graphic novel isn't interesting or fun, it's utterly pointless so the only real fun in the game is the puzzles.. which isn't enough to keep me interested. Also, there is nothing that makes it worth playing this game on the DS, it would fit much better on a PC where you can click with your mouse. Pointless, boring.

While it might not be the most well written or original story, the characters are charming and the puzzles are quite fun. The problem is that the puzzles are presented with generally no context to the story, so instead of playing a game where you are solving puzzles to advance a plot you mainly feel like you are answered SAT questions every two minutes with a short tidbit of story in between. The game lasted a good ten hours but again most of that was puzzles, the story itself is incredibly short with it neat little twist towards the end. If you are a fan of puzzle games definitely check it out but Ghost Trick and 999 remain the dominant games in the genre.

Let's get this straight: Level-5 is one of my favorite developers, ever since I discovered their masterpiece Dark Chronicle on PS2. Does that make me biased? Perhaps, though they've always brought quality titles to the game world, such as Dragon Quest and Rogue Galaxy. Furthermore, Professor Layton And The Curious Village bears little resemblance to any of those games. This game tells the tale of a puzzle master and his apprentice that travel around to solve mysteries for people in need. Gentlemanlike as they are, they hop in their deux chevaux to aid a family with a peculiar inheritance issue they're having. These aristocrats have been asked to seek out a mysterious Golden Apple in order to claim the vast fortune of their befallen kin. In doing so, they'll have to solve a series of intricate enigmas. So queue the good Professor into the town of Saint Mystère. Yes, they're masters of puzzles, yet can't come up with a decent town name. I guess you can't win them all. The cheesiness doesn't stop there though. Although the story is nicely written and brews along casually, most of the actual mysteries become so transparent so fast. Not only that, but in most cases there's little to no creativity in presenting you puzzles. In fact, the gratuitous one-liners, such as "Hey, there's a hidden puzzle in this piece of meat!" will grace your screen more than often. If they've gone out of their way to concoct a complex story with mysteries, one may wonder why they stopped caring halfway through. I suppose it would've made things unnecessarily complicated. And complicated is the word you'll think of when playing this game, because this game is hard! Supervised by real-life puzzle master Akira Tago, he has done all he can to torture your brain goo. With well over 100 puzzles, you'll get completely stumped at a good quarter of all riddles and will most likely fail at some as well. However, winning some puzzles after some hard thought, will leave you with an immense sense of self-satisfaction. Many times you'll feel like the smartest and smuggest person on this planet, after finding out that the matchstick had to go to that place. But that will be short-lived, for the villagers will soon enough present you with some other stunning problem. There is however the double-edged side of the fluent gameplay that allows you to enter your inventory and save effortlessly. This will result in you cheating yourself out of some experiences and randomly guessing and restarting, if you're really at a loss. They should've implemented a system where failures are permanent; this would've improved the game a lot. Other than that the game is a beautiful experience to go through. There is no end to the creativity of the puzzles, even if some are recurring or revolve around the same subject. Finding squares in dotted fields or placing pawns on a chessboard will require you to go all out. You'll tabulate all possible outcomes over and over, in the name of the good Professor. More so, the world he lives in is presented in a way unique to any other puzzle game. And this is what separates Professor Layton from the pack of brain teasers on DS. Saint Mystère is a visual wonder, even in its simplicity. A charming French looking village (vil-aaj) that brims with small details, pictured in a unique cartoon fashion. Everything lives and breathes quirky country town and, to a point, St Mystère is perfectly drawn. It makes it such a pleasure to rummage through and it will leave you with a smirk on your face for hours. Add to that the perfect soundtrack to amplify French country life. Think of those cheesy, old Parisian tunes with accordions and beret mustaches, waving baguettes around. In short, it will whisk you away to a magical experience. But that will only be in between the suspense moments, which ring in with immaculate sound effects. With the use of the dual screen, you'll get hints of dark touches popping up whenever something's amiss, accompanied by a single grim tone. This makes Professor Layton truly stand out and make it the best puzzle game yet created. Much in the line of older Broken Sword games, it combines charming cartoon graphics with mind-crippling puzzles to both charm and infuriate you at the same time. And it's hard to hate on a game that tries so hard to appeal to you. It's almost as hard as its hard puzzles! So, forget other flaunters of thinking exercises. Sure, this might not be a perfect game in terms of story, but what it lacks there it makes up with simplicity. It enhances perfectly the core gameplay of any puzzle game, with its alluring appearance and absolute logic. Professor Layton And The Curious Village is like Brain Academy on an acid trip! It's an unforgettable experience with a puzzle game, if you'll ever have one. Kick your mother in the face if she ever dares to touch another brain teaser, other than a Professor Layton game, for that's what she should play!

This is a really good game, I'm just a tough marker. The story is really good, the cutscenes are great, the puzzles are fun, the story is good and the characters are good, but to retry a puzzle you have to go through a million menus, it **** that you're confined to a small space repetitively running from point A to B and the puzzles don't really mix together with the story. It's also a bit short. Other than that, it's good but I prefer you to buy the far superior Pandora's Box or the even better Lost Fututre.