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Layton’s Mystery Journey Game Review

Layton’s Mystery Journey is a 2017 puzzle adventure video game developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. It is a flawed, but solid sequel to the mainline series.

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“It’s the truth that’s crazy, not me.

Because the truth is stranger than fiction“

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When this game was released, it received solid reviews that ranged from pretty good to mixed. This remains the last Layton game to date and the only one in the main series released on consoles that didn’t star the main characters. It’s a pretty good entry, but one that suffered from a myriad of problems.

This game follows Katrielle Layton, the daughter of Hershel Layton. She solves puzzles along with her friends Sherl the dog and Ernest Greeves. There is a story here where Kat tries to find her missing father, but that storyline is abandoned maybe in order to deal with it in a sequel that was never released. And that is my main issue with the overall plot here – it was simplistic and almost non-existent, being a far cry from the previous entries that all had extensive arcs.

I missed Layton, Luke and others, but the characters that we got here are surprisingly good and memorable. Katrielle herself is an instantly classic heroine in the series. She isn’t a copy-paste daughter, but actually she is different than her father and wholly unique. Her penchant for food and fashion was well explored and her striving to solve more important mysteries instead of boring ones led to a very solid arc for her. Her relationships with her friends are terrific and quite humorous.

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Madame Doublee, Mayor Lowonida, Inspector Hastings and Emiliana were among the highlights in the supporting cast. As for Ernest, he got a solid backstory that was well explored in the twist ending of the last case. Him being enamored with Kat was also mined for laughs well. But my favorite character has to be Sherl, who is this cynical, snarky dog who stole the show from others with his biting commentary and hilarious one-liners where he made fun of others, especially Kat. I just wished that they concluded his origin story that was frustratingly never revealed.

Unlike all of its predecessors, Layton’s Mystery Journey doesn’t have an all-encompassing story. This game is contrasted from other entries by being fragmented in approach – instead of one case, it consists of twelve different cases. These cases range from having to find a character’s pet to trying to buy a gift for the inspector’s wife. Needless to say, gone was the rich storytelling of previous games in favor of these tiny storylines that were mostly quite forgettable. Undeniably, the game was as charming as is always the case with Layton games as the world building, atmosphere and characterization are top-notch once again, but I missed having a strong, memorable story nonetheless.

The gameplay is actually terrific. This was the strongest element of this game that is among the best Layton entries when it comes to the puzzles themselves. Yes, we still have those off-putting puzzles where solving them depends on whether or not you see through a semantics trick. Those puzzles were plain annoying and mostly badly worded in their descriptions.

But other than those, the rest of the puzzles ranged from solid to downright great with the highlights being the spatial puzzles that are always my favorites. Whenever the game focused on solving a puzzle through trial and error with the mazes or board game scenarios, I was having a blast, and this entry was particularly rich in that puzzle type.

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There are around 200 puzzles to be found in this game that is by far the longest and most ambitious Layton title to date. It offers hours upon hours of gameplay (I myself finished it off at around the 37^th hour mark). The hint coins, the exploration and the additional puzzles all worked the same as they did before as the formula wasn’t tweaked in the slightest, which is a good thing in this instance.

You can collect collectibles once again, but here there is the addition of fashion farthings that each unlock a new outfit for Kat. Changing the heroine’s outfit was a clever idea that made for an additionally pleasant gaming experience. But the mini-games were easily the highlights of this entire game. Unlike the last entry, every single mini-game here worked and was very well constructed.

There are three mini-games: Ideal Meal, Passers Buy and Hound in the Pound. The first is the weakest as it sees you trying to figure out an entire meal for one person through hints and trial and terror. It’s a charming enough excursion, but too often the answer eluded me as it was too ambiguous. But the other two were both incredible.

Hound in the Pound has you guide Sherl through many obstacles to the finish line. It involves manipulating objects and pulling switches in the exact order and it was a blast to play. Passers Buy involves putting the objects in the right spots in order for the buyers to buy them all properly. This one involved a lot of trial and error and ambitious thinking. Both were demanding, but pleasingly so.

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Layton’s Mystery Journey features lovely graphics. London is just as vibrant and as charming as ever while being populated by lively, effervescent personalities. The game looks great, though there is nothing new here visually speaking. The voice acting is fantastic with the voices for Sherl and Kat being the standouts. The score is pleasant and the sound is terrific. The difficulty curve was mostly just right and the sprawling length was a great choice with the more episodic narrative befitting more casual play sessions wonderfully.