The story and plot got me good.

The music is more fantastic than ever, adding violins and trumpets to fit within the theme of desolation and perhaps lost time. The story begins with Angela Ledore, a former friend of Layton's, asking him to investigate the city of Monte D'or.

I was drawn to the 3D-esque atmosphere, even if I used a New Nintendo 2DS XL. My console somehow is able to display 3D objects, so I would say a 3DS with the 3D feature on, would display the 3D images in a pop-out-of-screen way?

Unlike the previous games, players have the opportunity to use the stylus to slide a magnifying glass. You tap whenever the magnifying glass expands slightly and changes colour. You can also zoom into another part of the same place, where you could add something to your collection box, get more hint coins, or even a new puzzle pops out.

The thing I have that concerns me with this game, is the frequent flashes of light. I have to be extremely careful while I play this game.

I liked how this time, the past and the present were separated into two parts so it didn't become confusing when the flashbacks came. I was made aware when I was revisiting the past and when I was back into the present.

The whole plot is about love, friendship and reconciliation. It shows the characters feeling guilty of the mistakes they've made to lose a friendship or a love interest. It wasn't anyone's fault what happened to Randall. It was just a freak accident.

When it was revealed that Randall was alive, I felt it was understandable why Randall would want to take revenge. He was a misguided character, not a villain. He was manipulated by Descole (who used his amnesia as an advantage to make it seem like Layton, Angela and Henry had abandoned him). It was so sweet in the end, when Henry and Angela explained to Randall they weren't really married and it was a happy ever after. I was happy that Dalston turned out to be good in the end, even if he was still a silly schoolyard bully.

LIT ON THE SPOT - REVIEW

Professor Layton is a franchise that never needed constant revamps to work. After all, its games are about only two things: their narrative and puzzle solving aspect – and two puzzles are never the same. The fact that The Miracle Mask doesn’t do much to reinvent the wheel, then, is far from a problem, since it bolsters the franchise’s best story after The Unwound Future and a large number of puzzles to solve.

The Miracle Mask begins with Professor Layton being called by a former friend to the town of Monte D’Or, which is being terrorized by a mysterious fellow who calls himself The Masked Gentleman. After arriving in town during carnival festivities, Layton observes one of the villain’s infamous appearances, as the Masked Gentleman proceeds to transform a portion of his audience into stone statues. The investigation then begins.

Layton games have always tried to have a “heart”: deep inside the haunted cities the professor visits there are touching characters with tragic backgrounds surrounding the problems that arise from love – be it paternal, platonic or lost. The Miracle Mask’s main theme focus on friendship, discussing its value, while showing the mistakes people insist on making to lose one.

The game contains a fair number of flashbacks exposing Layton’s past and why he became an archaeologist. It is, therefore, a story as personal as that of the excellent The Unwound Future, with all the benefits this brings: Professor Layton is a far more fascinating character than his colleagues, thanks to his high level of introspection that hides a traumatized persona. His duality is reinforced by the main shades of his outfit – an intellectual brown covering an warm orange –, further increasing the player’s interest in his story.

The narrative’s structure is very simple and episodic, marked by the apparitions of the Masked Gentleman and his Dark Miracles. After each “miracle”, in which people are turned to stone or float and disappear, the professor visits old friends to unravel the villain’s plans, find out how such events actually occurred, and understand what’s behind the fiend’s hatred for the city of Monte D’Or.

The story turns out to be less absurd than usual: this time there are no dinosaurs facing giant robots at the climax, for example. Rather, it prefers to subtly explore the various facets of its characters, ensuring that it doesn’t need preposterous plot twists to work: the story being very predictable, then, is never a serious issue.

Staying true to the franchise tradition, The Miracle Mask also expands its main themes through the extravagant inhabitants of Monte D’Or and their special quirks. The true nature the Masked Gentleman’s miracles is well represented by the city’s circus performers – and the fact that the aspiring clown Stumble continually gets entangled in his own balloons serves as a subtle metaphor for the villain’s tragic trajectory – while more general themes like greed and carelessness towards a loved one are reflected by specific characters, such as the fat tycoon Sterling, whose thirst for money blinds him to his wife’s intentions, and the relapsed mother Tanya, who always loses her daughter while observing the city’s landscapes.

As for the puzzles, they remain as consistent and challenging as ever. Their diversity is still abundant, varying from the purely logical (Considering that the numbers 1130, 1231, 0131, 0228 follow a pattern, what would be the next number?), to those that tell a brief tale to contextualize the puzzle and throw you a little off the scent:

“This unusual Ferris wheel is adorned with a letter of the alphabet in its center and on every cabin. The letter in the center is [S] and the cabins, when read in a clockwise direction, go like so: [J], [M], [E], [V], [M], [N], [U], and [?]. According to the fairground worker, there used to be a letter instead of the [?], but he can’t seem to remember what it was. He only knows that the letters obeyed some sort of rule. Can you find out what which letter used to be in the [?] cabin? ”

There are puzzles that are all about moving blocks in a limited space and those that innocently believe that the player is able to imagine three-dimensional geometric figures, cut them and form other figures with the resulting parts, among many other types of puzzles. The difficulty is still measured by the amount of “Picarats” offered – the currency used to unlock extras – and it can range from 25 Picarats, such as the Ferris wheel puzzle, to more than a hundred.

Despite being the franchise’s fifth title, The Miracle Mask changes very little of the basic structure of the series: the player will be exploring the environments to find puzzles or proceed in the story. The new features it does introduce have the sole purpose of adding a little more action to the adventure.

These additions are horse racing and a Zelda-ish section of cave exploration. Admittedly, both activities would have benefited from the use of the Circle Pad – using the stylus to move a horse is anything but intuitive – and are very far from being complex or original – everyone who has ever played any Zelda has already pushed enough giant blocks into devices for a lifetime –, yet they are brief, harmless affairs. Most notable is the gameplay change regarding exploration: before The Miracle Mask, the player used the Stylus to traverse and explore the environments through the touchscreen and had to touch everything on the screen to find puzzles and secrets. Now, the stylus is used to move a magnifying glass that shines only at points of interest, making the player’s life easier and everything flow more quickly.

The Miracle Mask also lives up to the franchise’s reputation regarding its presentation. The art direction remains extraordinary: the city of Monte D’Or is richly drawn in the background – the powerful 3D effect giving it even more life – and the character models, now three-dimensional, retain the charm provided by the eccentricity of their designs. The soundtrack, in turn, continues to be fabulous, using the most varied instruments – from violin to the trumpet – to convey the melancholy atmosphere of a contradictory, yet glamorous city built on the ruins of broken friendships.

Offering over four hundred puzzles, The Miracle Mask features a respectable amount of content, a top-notch presentation, and a tragic and touching story of loss and reconciliation. Professor Layton and The Miracle Mask is a game that never aims to innovate, but only to raise the franchise’s overall quality; a decision that proves to be quite successful. After all, a true gentleman knows when certain things don’t need to change.

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Miracle Mask was the best Layton game in all three of the categories that I think comprise a Layton game. I will first describe what those three categories are, and then I will evaluate Miracle Mask through each one of them. The three categories are: 1) A wide variety of puzzles including the juggernauts, quick and fun ones, traditional ones, new style (to series), bust most importantly don't insult the player's intelligence with cheap answers like Curious Village was so prone to do. Diabolical Box was much better at legitimate puzzles. 2) A wonderful story with a complex mystery looming. Along with a plethora of characters with unique personalities. 3) An unique and exciting setting with plenty of good hint coin nooks and crannies.

1) Puzzles: Miracle Mask found the right mix of puzzles. There were wonky puzzles that respect your intelligence and traditional puzzles that were addictively fun. I think Miracle Mask and Diabolical Box are tied in this category, but that's the only tie out of the three! Usually in every Layton there are a couple puzzle strands that I dread seeing either because it's one that wants to exercise a hole in my brain or it's one of the ones that seem like they were trying to trick you into overthinking or word the problem. In Miracle Mask there were no puzzles like that.

2) The story is by far the best of any Layton thus far. I loved the end to the Unwound Future, but the whole Angela, Randall, Layton, Henry, and Dalston plot is unrivaled in the series. Actually it kind of felt way out of the others' league. Maybe that's just because it was years before they made it and there were a lot of cinematic cut scenes to get you enamored.

3)While there have been great settings in every Layton game, I think a mysterious desert city resembling an English Las Vegas that is run by the main characters takes the cake, lol. The "dark miracles" just add to the mystique of the setting too. there's always an eeriness to Monte d'Or because there's the feeling that the Masked Gentleman could be looming around any corner at any moment ready to perform his next dark miracle.

I wonder who all is with me on this one bit of a disappointment.... after you have tea in Henry's place near chapter 3 or something I formulated my Randall is the masked Gentleman theory, and especially after he falls into the abyss with the mask in hand in Akbadain. The rest of the game I was thinking there's no way that it's him because that's too obvious and Layton always saw something I didn't at the end every other time. So when it was revealed to be him I was disappointed in a competitive aspect, but for the story it was obviously perfect. Also, Henry seemed a bit unrealistically dedicated to being Randall's eternal slave. Almost clinically obsessive or just mentally unstable, lol.

Wonderful game all around. I'd give it a 9.4