Professor Layton and the Last Specter (2009)

The introduction to Emmy was excellent. She could kick ass, unlike Flora (that wasn't really her fault though). The only problem I had with this was Layton insisting Emmy not to go on a dangerous adventure, until he saw her actually fight. It was cringey how misogynistic Layton is...

The new villain. Wow. Much better developed than Don Paolo. We have to wait until another two games to find out who Descole is and why he has something against Layton... or the whole world, perhaps... The games never seem to work chronologically either... the past gets muddled up with the present and now I'm confused at what happens in what order...

Luke. You get to see Layton meeting Luke for the first time, and it's like he is a different character to the first three games. Luke feels withdrawn from people, and it doesn't help that he and his father aren't seeing eye to eye. My theory is, he doesn't really feel like talking to people if he has a gut feeling his mother is in danger. He's not completely withdrawn when he goes investigating Mistenhallery, because he must investigate in order to get his mother back. Then his mother is found safe, and all the other games, Luke is back to his old, cheery self.

The music is very good. The puzzles are great. There's puzzles everywhere! Everywhere you see, everywhere you look, there is a puzzle! It seems like the plot gets thicker in this game.

As for London Life, it's a perfect slice-of-life game. I've never played it with wi-fi connection since it was cut out of the Nintendo DS, which that means a few items and quests won't appear, but that's okay. I'm sure it wouldn't matter.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter is probably the weakest Professor Layton game so far. However, it is still a great game that was worth the playthrough.

Being the fourth game, you'd expect Lost Specter to take place after the events of Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (Considered by many to be the best in the whole franchise). But no it isn't. Professor Layton and the Last Specter is actually a prequel and is the start of the Layton prequels

Taking place 3 years before the events of Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Professor Hershel Layton and his newly appointed assistant Emmy Altava leave London for the town, Misthallery where they meet a young boy, Luke Triton. Luke, Emmy, and Professor Layton set out to find the truth behind the cursed, mythical Specter that is supposedly haunting the town.

As a story of how Layton and Luke meet, it does the job. However, the entire story as a whole besides Luke and Layton's meeting is pretty underdeveloped and ends too quickly before it gets good. The story is just ok. It didn't leave me stunned or emotional like Curious Village, Diabolical Box, and Unwound Future.

As for gameplay, not much new is brought to the table. The Puzzle Battles are cut in this one and are replaced with question-and-answer-like puzzles done in sequence. Not as good as Puzzle Battles but they are fine. This game has 155 Main Puzzles and 15 bonus Puzzles. Making 170 total puzzles. Besides the bonus puzzles, I never found the puzzles too difficult. Sure, they weren't easy and they were varied and creative. But they never had me sitting there for way too long like the previous games. I solved them all again and I still had fun doing so.

They also introduced The Collection Feature. Basically, just collect nice pieces of treasure. Does nothing for the plot and there is no reward for doing it. I did get them all. They also introduced Stories. Which were flashback scenes or just small scenes to establish more story context. Which is fine. I actually really liked it and got all of them.

This leads to the mouse badge feature. After collecting 10 Mouse Badges (Which is done by tapping a mouse running around on the screen), You unlock this mouse mini-game that serves like a whack-a-mole-like game. You can reach up to 10,000,000 Points which I didn't do as that would take forever. It was cool but I didn't care much about it.

The coolest feature is the London Life Mode which was basically an RPG, Stardew Valley like simulator. I didn't play enough of it but It was cool from what I played.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter is the weakest game in the franchise but it is still a great Layton game and puzzle game nonetheless.

3/5

Would Recommend