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Professor Layton and the Unwound Future Game Review

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a 2008 puzzle adventure video game developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It’s a strong conclusion to the original trilogy.

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“But you are a criminal!

If you are bored, you are doing it wrong!“

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‘The Curios Village’ and ‘The Diabolical Box’ both came out in 2007 and were renowned. This sequel was released a year later in Japan and a couple of years later in the US. It was a terrific sequel that was the final entry in what was the original Layton trilogy before they continued the franchise with the prequels.

In this game, Layton and Luke end up in future London. They have to solve a mystery involving time travel, a girlfriend in danger and some troublesome scientists. What then happened was a twist of course in the great tradition of terrific third act turns in this series. A couple of twists actually happened and they were all excellent.

While the final section of this story did seem almost never-ending in the constant turns and additional action sequences, some overly extended for this particular series, this was still an epic storyline that concluded the trilogy strongly. It was just so touching not only seeing a former flame of Layton, but also learning about his past and how he became a gentleman.

But the emotional highlight was the departure of Luke at the end. That was very sad; especially the first scene when we learn that it is going to happen. These two have been friends and mystery solvers throughout all three games, so their eventual splitting up was definitely heartfelt.

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Don Paolo literally became a positive guy here. It was a bit typical to suddenly make him good, but at least his flashbacks were pretty strong. Clive (or Future Luke initially) was a terrific villain and the same goes for others. The game has too many of these scientists, but at least their development was very satisfactory.

My main issue when it comes to the characters was the treatment of Flora by both Luke and even Layton himself. They continue to disregard her in the most bafflingly horrible way. It felt very puzzling to me why Layton is never willing to have her on their team when the girl was so ecstatic about it all. They just seemed too unfair toward her.

Unwound Future once again frustrated me with the difficulty level. In fact, this was the hardest Layton game so far in the series due to the puzzles being way too demanding at times. There are 165 of them, an extended amount from previous games. You can visit those puzzles that you’d missed after finishing the main campaign as always and the game obviously has a terrific length to it, being much longer than its predecessors.

But the puzzles could become too annoying, especially those terrible trick questions that were abundant here. I am atrocious at math in particular and unfortunately this entry had a plethora of these problems to solve. There is the addition of a super hint, a hint that costs two hint coins and is more helpful than the regular coin. That was terrific, but still quite a lot of puzzles were too hard for me to solve even with the hint coins used.

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I wished for more varied puzzles and more on the easier side of things. Once again, the sliding puzzles were my favorite. I love those and I have had a great time playing them every single time. I also really liked those puzzles that required thinking about who lied about something. These are always so much fun.

Following in the footsteps of ‘The Diabolical Box’, this third Layton entry benefits from amazing mini-games that just might be better than the main campaign. The picture book is the easiest of the three mini-games (yes, there are three of these games here, a substantial number that I highly respected), but its childlike charms were difficult to ignore.

But the parrot mini-game was just too hard for me, though I still loved playing through each of these missions. You have to carry packages with this bird by putting ropes exactly where he needs them. It is a game that is heavily dependent on your knowledge and sense of basic physics. It’s wildly entertaining, but quite demanding.

The best of the three mini-games is the toy car one. This was simply a brilliant addition here. You have to drive a car through obstacles by putting the direction arrows where needed. It just might be better than the somewhat similar hamster mini-game in the previous game. A lot of careful planning is needed to finish these levels successfully. It requires both a sense of space and tactical planning of resources, which can get very hard in later levels.

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Unwound Future lacks originality as it mostly repeats the formula of its predecessors, but it is still such a confidently made game that it is difficult to criticize it all that much when most of the ingredients work this well. The animation is still terrific as graphically speaking the game’s a charming treat. The world building has never been better as London is expansive, diverse in scenery and very memorable in some streets and striking interiors filled with cool steampunk machinery. The score is still only passable, but as a visual experience, the game is fantastic with amazingly acted and animated cut-scenes.