Professor Layton's last adventure goes from puzzle solving to just puzzling.
Professor Layton was never as stylish as a certain Ace Attorney, or as dangerous as a situation with Zero Escape, but he was always a true gentleman who needed nothing more than a good cup of tea and a puzzle. The latest adventure, Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, is the finale of the prequel trilogy, and supposed to be the last game starring the hat-wearing professor. Unfortunately this isn’t the finest cup of tea Level 5 has produced. This is the sixth game with the familiar formula, and it is definitely showing its age. That along with a disappointing story makes this a rough experience for fans wanting to see how it ends.
If you have played a Layton game before, you know what to expect. You will click in areas looking for hint coins and various collectibles while talking to people and solving their problems and puzzles. Yes, there are hidden puzzles as well. There are a couple puzzles that are very similar to the puzzle battles from Professor Layton and the Unwound Future for good measure. It’s the same formula, and it’s a bit stale. Near the end of the game I was burning through hint coins just to get through puzzles as quickly as possible. It stopped being fun. This also came up in the last two games, but the story in those games was paced well enough to keep things from becoming too much of a chore. Sadly, Azran Legacy’s biggest folly is in the story itself.
The story begins with Layton and his assistants Luke and Emmy heading out to a remote location in Europe because of an archaeological discovery made by another professor, this time it is a mummy trapped in ice. Naturally the mummy is alive and she is the messenger for the Azran people, a race that went extinct a long time ago. The Azran people have been mentioned in the other two games in the trilogy, so this is not completely out of nowhere. Soon after that, you’re traveling the world looking for stones that can lead Layton and the newly introduced Professor Sycamore to the Azran Legacy, a mysterious treasure that supposedly has the power to change the world.
I have no problem with the setup. However, for a trilogy coming to the end, there is a lot of wasted time. A large portion in the middle to late game is traveling to different locations to search for each stone. Each location has a mystery to solve, but each one seems like filler compared to the bigger events going on. They are uninteresting to solve but are mercifully brief. There are five of these sections altogether, which turns the middle of the game into a large, bloated, slog. The whole thing feels like a waste of time. The tried and true formula mentioned above does not help matters, rather it emphasizes how insignificant all of this is.
The previous game left some plot points hanging around, most of those are either dealt with rather quickly, or sat on until the end of the game. One significant reveal was dragged all the way to the end, despite being completely obvious to anyone who has played the previous games, for a game that is usually clever about things like this, it felt lazy and insulting. Once you get to the final stretch, plot twist after plot twist gets dumped on you. Each more confusing and unbelievable than the one before it. The Layton games are known for their ridiculous plot reveals, but some of the ones in Azran Legacy were a bit much even for the series. It left me shaking my head. There are some great moments, sadly they are outnumbered by the subpar ones. The climax is a mess, and somehow manages to damage a lot of the main characters in the process. They somehow manage to beautifully tie this game to Curious Village, but at that point I just wanted it to end. If you’re invested in the story in the Professor Layton series, you might come away disappointed. There is a good story and some great ideas in here somewhere, if only they could have presented it better.
Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy makes it clear that this is a puzzle game first and foremost, and everything around it is merely extra. There are a good number of new puzzles that are solid and challenging, the minigames and extras are decent too. This is the sixth game in the Professor Layton series, the first game came out over six years ago. They squeezed as much as they could out of this simple formula, and it’s a shame that they could not end it well. This trilogy had promise, and it deserved a better sendoff. The “Layton 7” project looks to be a departure from the previous games, and that’s a good thing. Fun was had, but it’s time to move on.