Review - Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is the last game of the first trilogy. How good are the puzzles that the game offers? And are the adventures of Professor Layton and Luke an interesting one? Also, how does it compare with the previous two titles?

The story of Unwound Future begins with Professor Layton and Luke being invited to a public demonstration of a working time machine. However, the demonstration goes wrong as the time machine malfunctions and causes an explosion. The demonstration was a tragedy as well as a failure, but Professor Layton receives a strange letter from the future. As strange as it is, the peculiar letter catches the Professor's interests and decides to check out what the sender has in store for him.

The story starts off by giving you many mysteries, much like the previous two Professor Layton games. The story can be quite slow at times, however, while Professor Layton picks up clues here and there, especially early on, but pays off with the answers to the mysteries along with interesting twists near the end. It is a nice treat, especially when the major events are provided in some nice, animated cutscenes.


Gameplay is as same as always. You move around town, poking things on screen for hint coins and hidden puzzles, while also talking to townsfolk to progress in the story, get puzzles, and occasionally get rewards for solving the puzzles. Essentially, majority of the game is about solving puzzles. For those of you who aren't interested in using your brain to solve wide assortment of puzzles, this might not be the game for you. But if you are looking for some nice, thinking challenges with context, that isn't just a bunch of brain exercises like Brain Age games, look no further.

The puzzles included in the game covers many different kinds of puzzles. This game will give you several logic puzzles, mathematical puzzles, picture or sliding puzzles, trick questions, and many other puzzles that will get you thinking in more ways than one. They often vary in difficulty, and you can see how difficult a puzzle is by how much picarat points they are worth.

If any puzzles give you any difficulty, then you can spend hint coins to get hints to the solution to the puzzles. Often times, the hints may give you some details that may not be obvious at first glance, or clarify some things that the puzzle may not have been clear about initially. Failing to answer these puzzles correctly will not hurt your progression in the game, but without enough picarat points, you may not be able to unlock some of the bonus content the game has to offer, often being artwork images, a music player, and the movie player as well for the animated cutscenes.

The graphics in Professor Layton is artistically drawn, and also easy on the eyes as well. However, the best graphical treats are in the cutscenes that I have previously mentioned. These cutscenes are fully animated and voice acted in high quality. The animations are also fluid in motion that it is like watching an anime on your DS. Too bad they're usually short and infrequent; you'll want to see more in the same quality.
The sounds department is also on par with the graphics quality with fitting, orchestrated background music at all times. The music itself is usually colorful in the same way how the art style blends in with each other. These two combined gives a strong sense of environment, adding more to the experience of playing through the game.

Now, replay value is something that Professor Layton games lack, since you already know the solutions to all the puzzles, and usually, there aren't any rewards for playing it over again either. However, should you ever want to replay a puzzle again, all puzzles that you have done are easily accessible from the main menu; maybe to show your friends to have them have a go at it. If not, there are still three save files available, so you can let family and friends play it as well once you're done.

Overall, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is just as well polished as the other two games in its trilogy, which is pretty good. However, out of all three Professor Layton games, I do feel that this one is stronger in the story, mostly due to it being the last of its trilogy. However, do keep in mind that each sequel will contain spoilers for the previous games if you have not yet finished them, so if you're going to start any Professor Layton games, my recommendation is to play them in order. After all, a true gentleman would enjoy the trilogy as a whole. In case you enjoy the series, you'd hate for the other two games to have been spoiled for you already.