The fourth and final game in the Professor Layton series for the Nintendo DS maintains the same high quality of the previous three. They’ve almost become an end-of-year institution, and I for one really enjoy my annual Layton adventure with brain-tickling puzzles.

The story of the Spectre’s Call takes place a number of years before the story of the Curious Village, in the days before Luke became Layton’s apprentice. So this time we are treated to a new apprentice character, the light-hearted Emmy Altava. She joins him as his apprentice just as he’s on his way to Misthallery after a mysterious letter from an old friend. It seems there is a Spectre that is tearing apart buildings in Misthallery, clearly a puzzle that requires the great mind of Professor Layton to solve. Soon enough, Layton and Emmy meet up with a little boy named Luke Triton and begin to unravel the strange events of the eerie town.

Similar style, new plot

The story is told in a similar way to all Layton games before – through a few beautifully hand-drawn animation scenes, some excellent voice acting and a lot of speech bubbles. As you move about the town you’re treated to hand-drawn depictions of the location you’re in, and you can touch things in the scene to interact with them. Characters that you talk to will often give you a puzzle to solve.

It’s a little odd, yes, that everyone wants you to solve puzzles, but it’s to be expected in a Layton game, so it’s become normal. Tapping some on-screen objects will reveal fossil pieces for you to collect, or hint coins which help you solve puzzles, or might even uncover a hidden puzzle to solve.

The story aspect of the Layton games as well as the top-notch production values evidenced in the scene-drawings, animated cut-scenes, meta-games and overall polish raises them far above any other puzzle game of its type. The only downside to the Spectre’s Call is that it is so similar in structure to the previous three games that it doesn’t offer anything new. The Japanese and US versions of the game came with a separate RPG game called London Life which added something new to enjoy in the world of Professor Layton, but this is missing in the European version.

The Layton games already take nearly a year (or more) to come out in Europe after their release in Japan that it’s not surprising Nintendo of Europe didn’t want to wait to translate London Life, but it does mean this game is almost identical to The Lost Future in structure. Of course, in content it is entirely different, with a whole new story and over 170 new puzzles.

That puzzle was no problem!

The puzzles are the main draw of the Layton games, and although I enjoy the story I often feel the characters talk too much and simply want to get into the next puzzle as quickly as possible. The puzzles consist of brain-teasers, logic puzzles, sliding puzzles and many other different varieties. Each puzzle type (e.g. a sliding puzzle) is used vary sparingly, which means most puzzles are unique. Most puzzles also have a unique piece of art which is often unnecessary for solving the puzzle but adds to the richness of the game’s experience.

The puzzles are sometimes related to the plot, but only vaguely. Solving puzzles is mandatory to get through to the end of the game, but you’re not required to solve all of them and can usually choose to exit a puzzle if you can’t solve it. You can also use up a hint coin to get a hint. Each puzzle has three hints and a ‘super hint’ which costs two hint coins. The ‘super hint’ practically gives you the solution, and hint coins are found under practically every stone in Misthallery so it’s very unlikely that you’ll be stuck.

As you solve puzzles you will be rewarded with Picarats. Getting an answer wrong reduces the number of Picarats you can earn from the puzzle, but they’re not used for anything in-game so this is not really punishment. If you collect enough Picarats you unlock bonuses such as character profiles, music and voice sound-bites. Through completing some of the meta-puzzles (fossil collection, a toy-train-set puzzle series and a fish-tank puzzle series) you also unlock some extra-difficult puzzles which are accessed outside of the game.

There is a lot of content – the game took me 15 hours to complete and I am still missing at least 30 or more puzzles. Unfortunately to get the last puzzles I will need to walk around and talk to everyone again which is a pain, especially since it’s so easy to miss a location – I would much prefer if once the game is complete the puzzles all appeared in a list so you could simply play through.

I look forward to some new puzzle twists in the upcoming 3DS Professor Layton game, but I was highly entertained by this final DS entry in the series. The characters remain enjoyable and the production values seem to increase with each entry with great writing, music, backgrounds, voice acting and animation being hallmarks of the series. If 2D hand-drawn animation that is Japanese in the style of Studio Ghibli appeals to you, or if you enjoy brain-teasers, then Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call is a great choice for a handheld game.

Purchase: