Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box review

I’ve been waiting almost a year to go on another puzzling adventure with Professor Layton and his trusty sidekick Luke and I couldn’t wait until it came out here in the UK so I’ve imported the US version. Once again I’m having a thoroughly good time and that’s thanks to the same great gameplay as the first game Professor Layton and the Curious Village. This time, one of the Professor’s friends has apparently been killed after opening a mysterious wooden box, and they set off to find out what happened. During the course of the game they uncover many more mysteries and of course over 150 puzzles to solve.

These range from sliding puzzles, to riddles, to interactive puzzles where you must move and manipulate items. There are also observation puzzles where you need a keen eye – tricky on such a small screen. To add a bit more variety there’s also a pet hamster to look after. Treat him well and exercise him via a mini game and you get a nice surprise.

Once again the visuals and whole presentation are cartoony yet interesting and there’s more dialogue this time. It can jar a bit when suddenly the dialogue is replaced by just text but there isn’t all that much room in a DS card so developers Level 5 are forgiven.

If you loved the first game as much as I did you’d be a fool not to get on this right away. It’s more of the same and as the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I can’t put it down, so Professor Layton’s latest adventure gets an almost perfect 9 out of 10.

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