I recently, finally, finished the final game in the main Professor Layton Saga (“The Azran Legacy”, final game in the Prequel trilogy)
It’s actually a pretty different style of game compared to the other titles, at least in terms of the pacing. The ending is still bonkers wild, yet fun to see.
Some of it is okay, but some of it is just… not good.
This entry is more of a globe-trotting adventure. The middle of the game is about going to 5 distinct areas of the world to find 5 special items. Each offers their own mini-story and mystery to unravel and each looks and sounds different. There’s a windy village in the north of England, a bright, sunny, coastal Mediterranean-type town, a Eastern-inspired desert town, among others. It’s pretty cool to see such a good variety of locales here.
In terms of the story itself, it’s… Okay. Although, I’d say that part of this is because it’s been years since I played the last entry.
You and this other archeologist professor find a young woman frozen in ice, presumably for 1000 years, and must find 5 artifacts relating to a long-lost civilization to uncover their secret.
The main story itself though is paced so heavily towards the last quarter of the game. You spend 2 hours finding the frozen girl, 6 hours finding the artefacts, then 2 hours getting to and solving the Azran Legacy. Add on another hour or two for finding and solving hidden puzzles in there, but overall it didn’t feel balanced.
The side-stories in each of the locations don’t connect at all with solving the main mystery, and by the time you get the last artefact, the game prompts you with the ‘If you go past this point, you will be locked from going back to find hidden puzzles until you finish the game’ and it felt undeserved, since the main vilian had not been revealed or the climax had not yet started.
Then, comes the twists. Every Layton game has them. They’re all insane, but in a crazily believable way. But for this entry? It felt like twists for the sake of twists.
- Emmy betrays the Professor, takes Luke hostage. She was a double agent for this evil organization the whole time… We didn’t even know there was a secret organization in the last two games!
- Descole is Layton’s brother. Also Layton isn’t even his name. He took Descole’s.
- Bronev (main baddie in this game) is Layton’s father. You can’t just dump that on me with no foreshadowing or build-up.
- The Azran’s secret was a bunch of advanced robots that turned on humans and wanted to destroy civilization.
Again, it might be because I haven’t visited this series in a long while (only recently found a cheap copy of this on ebay), but a lot of this just felt forced. I didn’t need to know any of this, and most of these revelations all happen within 20 minutes. It might have been better had there been more seeds of foreshadowing earlier in the game, rather than cramming it all in at the end.
Pretty good title, though the ending is shaky. 7/10.
I think I’ll check out the second Phoenix Wright game again, as I never finished it in the Trilogy collection.
I also want to revisit the Layton/Wright crossover game, as it’s been a while since I last finished it. I remember it being a great title with some impressive graphics and merging of the two gameplay styles.
. I am enjoying the AC Valhalla expansion and look forward to the new one coming out. 
