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Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask Game Review

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask is a 2011 puzzle adventure video game developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. It was a terrific transition to the new era of Layton games.

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“Every failure is a doorway to success!“

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This Layton entry was among the first games released for the Nintendo 3DS. It is the second game in the prequel trilogy after ‘The Last Specter’ and the first one to feature 3D graphics on a new system. In many respects, it is an improvement upon its predecessors and it ranks among my favorite Layton games, probably being my favorite entry after ‘The Curious Village’.

The story of this game is quite impressive. In fact, it’s the best written and most sophisticated game since the original one. Luke, Emmy and Layton must investigate the town of Monte d’Or and help its citizens from the terror of the Masked Gentleman, a villain who turns people to stone and statues. This is only one part of the story and the less interesting one in my opinion.

The final twist was very predictable as everybody who has seen a lot of shows and movies such as myself will quickly realize who this villain is. But this revelation did lead to an incredibly moving finale that was just breathtakingly impactful in its serious, elegant tone and the complexity of the various emotions on display.

All the residents of this town are very well realized as characters and we see the return of some old favorites. Jean Descole is back here as the main villain. He is the villain of the entire prequel trilogy as well as the movie ‘Eternal Diva’. He is fine, but much more interesting are the memorable Dalston and the fantastic Randall. Angela is a bit boring as this very dull female companion, but Randall as Layton’s friend gave many new layers to this franchise.

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In a brilliant and fresh movie for the series, Miracle Mask consists of two separate storylines, one set in the present and the other set in the past. Not only are these two distinctly different in style and even some gameplay elements, but they also most definitely connect into a deeper and surprisingly coherent whole that really worked.

The archeology sequences set in the past are very adventurous while the glimpse that we get at Layton’s early years as a teenager are emotionally resonant. We get to meet his family, but more importantly his lost friend Randall. The friendship between the two is so powerful that it gave a lot of emotional intensity to this game and it led to that amazingly heartwarming finale. The writing on this game was truly incredible in spite of its obvious twists and turns. The dialogue is particularly amazing. Although Emmy and Luke are a bit sidetracked here due to this story being very Layton-centric, both get some nice moments to shine nonetheless.

Most of the major gameplay mechanics returned in this sequel, but with a few major caveats. The 3D graphics of the 3DS led to a few big changes in graphics (more on that later), but also some drastic alterations in gameplay. It took me some time getting used to these new mechanics as they weren’t very intuitive. You cannot touch anything on the main screen, but you have to use the magnifying glass to move around in the second screen to then interact with an object or person on the main screen on the top. Having an option to minimize the puzzle explanations was excellent, but otherwise most of these changes were employed for the worse.

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There are 150 puzzles scattered across The Miracle Mask. As is usual for a Layton adventure, many of these puzzles were ridiculously hard and some were downright infuriating in their trick questions, some of which even made no sense. Among the new types of puzzles, those pyramidal stacking puzzles appealed to me the most while the puzzles where you have to paint each tile with correctly colored paint were also stupendous and a lot of fun.

The highlight for me came during the sections set in the past. When exploring the archeological ruins with Layton’s friend Randall, you are tasked to get through a labyrinth of many tunnels, all of which have their own hint coins that you can dig out and puzzles to solve in the form of either evading the mummies or pushing boulders to a correct position to unlock a door. This section of the game was so refreshing as it happened outside of those 150 puzzles, yet it was just as fun and maybe even more entertaining to go through. It was immaculately designed.

There are mini-games here and once again these were more fun for me to play than the main puzzles. The horse-riding mini-game was thankfully not necessary to finish as it was ridiculously hard to control. Collecting the numerous objects of interest throughout the game’s world was also a lot of fun.

Rabbit Show was a filler mini-game as training this rabbit was both pointless and uninteresting, though surely cute. One-Stop Shop has you stack items on a display in a proper order. This was quite fun, but sometimes it was almost impossible to figure out the correct order due to odd mapping of the shop aisles. By far the best of these mini-games is Toy Robot. Navigating a maze through the finish line was so much fun and each stage was brilliantly designed.

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Going back to the graphics, The Miracle Mask does have an awkwardly utilized 3D style that disappeared in some sections only to reappear again. The characters weren’t fully incorporated into their surroundings and the result was a game lacking polish. Thankfully, the town itself looked beautiful and cozy as always and the adventurous exploration aspects were expectedly very charming. The score is familiar, but serviceable.