I've only played five minutes of a Professor Layton game before. I say this because this is a rip-off of that series. Not saying it to bash the game, I'm just saying what it is? So lets review this on it's own merits.
Story
May and her brother, Tery get involved in a balloon accident and crash outside the town of Dragonville. Tery goes missing looking for help and May goes looking for him, and immediately realizes something is wrong with the town.
The story isn't the most memorable, but it's not bad either. As a mystery, it gives you a few clue at the start and might show a peek of it's hand before giving you some more clues or foreshadowing. I won't talk about the ending but my mind was going in a different direction, still makes sense, though I do wish they tell us what happened after instead of showing it.
As for the characters, May's a pretty goods straight-man for the characters, naturally curious about whats going on and is willing to help people. The other character don't have much personalty except for Doyle who I think is suppose to be comic relief but he didn't make me laugh nor did I like him. Although there is this one part of the story I have a problem with: you have to find an animal to get into the graveyard so May find a dragonfly and said she's gonna take care of it from now on. And when she's done with the graveyard, it's never seen again. How cruel can you be, May.
Gameplay
This is mostly a puzzle game with every character you meet having one to solve. These range from pretty easy to very clever to HOW WAS I SUPPOSE TO KNOW THAT!! The puzzle above gave me so much trouble and the hints didn't help so I had to find the answer online. Of course, if there's a puzzle giving you too much trouble, you can just do a few bonus puzzles to get hint points, which not only give at least two hints per puzzle(some aren't that helpful), and for fifteen hint points, you can skip the puzzle.
Beside the logic puzzles that involve putting the piece in the right place or writing the answer which are good few of the puzzles, there are also hidden object challenges where you have to find all the objects on a list which I like and a good few of the bonus puzzles are hidden pictures which I don't like.
Also, there are ryhtem games which are the games boss fights. These games require to listen to the music and repeat it depending on the stylus like a simple tap for a short not to holding it with a long one. you can do a practice to see how what to do but what to do but when you play for real, you really need to pay attention to the notes as missing one can put a dent in your score. You ignore a few notes as long as you gt the points to win.
PresentationThe music is a joy to listen to. Not the kind I listen to on its own but it's fine for trying to solve the puzzles. The only one I didn't like was the theme for the Underworld because it was too quiet for me. The rhythm game music however is all good as you pay attention to repeat the song.
The art style is one off the things that will get a lot of praise from me as I always been a fan of this kind of art design, in fact I think the character design are more memorable than characters themselves. Though I am annoyed that the game and the cover spoil what Midnight Guards look like. We hear about them a lot but we never see them, except for one part and they actually look intimidating.
And finally, the few cinematic we see. The voice acting is okay, nothing bad that will make you you're ears bleed. The animation looks awkward however, I can't tell if they're using 3D or 2D but it just looks wired.
Verdict
Despite being a rip-off, this is a pretty decent game. The one I got was for the DS but I think you can get t on Steam now.
7/10
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