Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box Completed

I picked up the second Professor Layton game last week. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box sees the Professor and apprentice Luke seeking out the Elysian Box, a supposedly cursed artifact of a mysterious origin that kills all who open it. Once the box kills his mentor, Layton promises to find the box and its origin in the hopes of explaining his teacher's death.

I enjoyed the game a great deal. First of all the writing, voice work, and visual design are all top notch. The presentation of the game is incredibly polished and unique, blending anime style with old English conventions. The full motion video sequences are a delight, and add greatly to the text-driven conversations in presenting the story.

And what a story it is. The characters within are interesting, if a little caricatured, but Layton and the other main story characters are nuanced and likable. You're forever rooting for the cool and calm Layton and his plucky apprentice, along with all the other protagonists. Predictably, the story takes a huge twist, but ends perfectly.

The puzzles that make up a huge majority of the gameplay are satisfying. Few take the cop-out of tricks, but just enough to make yourself feel clever. The best are three-dimensional visualization puzzles, such as filling boxes with irregularly shaped objects or imagining how an unfolded cube would look folded back up. The rope and maze puzzles are also fun, made easier by a memo function that allows you to draw freely on an overlay without interacting on the puzzle below, tracing the paths of wires, ropes, and other objects. A few puzzles deeply puzzled me, but not so much that the hints didn't help, making the search for hint coins a fun and necessary part of the game.

The additional mini-games, such as the camera assembly and subsequent photo mode, hamster exercise, and tea brewing games are a fun distraction, adding to the main story and giving great benefits if you choose to complete them.

In all, the second puzzling adventure from Level-5 Games is a fun time, and you won't be able to put it down once you start because you, just like Layton and friends, will want to find out the real mystery of the Elysian Box. The final puzzle is a fantastic payoff not to be missed!