Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (Nintendo DS) > Reviews (20)

Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box

Introduction

Last year I saw the first Professor Layton game for the Nintendo DS, it was called Curious Village. I really wanted it all year round, and eventually got it for my anniversary present off my husband. I completed the game in record time, and then the new game called Pandora’s Box. This Christmas day, I opened this as a present. Something I had really wanted all year!

I set about playing the game right away!

Game Play

The game is very much like the first game really, sadly even a couple of the puzzles are the same which is quite annoying when the game was more expensive than the first one!

For anybody who had never heard of Professor Layton, the games are stories of Layton and his young protégé Luke, they go off in the hunt of mysteries to find the truth for all involved. This story is about the Elysian box, a box which kills anybody who opens it. Professor Layton and Luke get on the case, first by going on the Monetary Express and travelling through the villages and towns around to see what they can find out about the box, and its contents! Along the way they have hundreds of puzzles to solve, some of which are required to be solved to progress through the game, whilst others are there for fun!

Each puzzle is worth Picarts which are like points, which you collect for each correct puzzle solved (the higher the Picarts, the harder the puzzle tends to be!), and they allow you to open up bonus sections of the game.

It can take between a couple of weeks to a few months to complete the game depending on how much you play it, and how good you are at solving the puzzles! I haven’t yet completed the game, but am quite a way through!

Other Sections
There are a couple of extra games on Pandora’s box, which include collecting camera pieces for a broken camera, The Hamster Game, where there is a fat hamster who belongs to the chef on the Monetary Express who you have to find food and toys for and exercise to get thinner! And the Tea Game where you find ingredients and have to make teas, there are around 20 to find! These extra games add something extra to the main game, and make it last a little longer, and give you more incentive to complete the puzzles as you need to find parts for the games to complete them!

The main game is fun, and I like the fact there is a story to follow makes it fun, and makes you want to keep on playing to find out what happens. Something which did annoy me was when I was playing a few puzzles which I knew I had seen before…which I had done in the first game! That did annoy me quite a bit as it made me think that the makers were been cheap and trying to fool the buyers by packing the game out with puzzles they had already done in the first game! But to be completely fair, up to now I think there have only been one or two which were on the other game, so I shall let them off I suppose!

Difficulty

The game is quite hard, and some of the puzzles take hours to work out, and others are impossible!

There are websites online which do help, but this to me makes me feel like I am cheating, so I try not to use them unless I have tried and tried the puzzle and it is one which I need to complete to continue in the game!

Some of the puzzles are 10 Picarts which are the “easy” puzzles, but they go through 15, 20, 25, 30 and even 40 and 45! In the first game some of the puzzles were 70 Picarts at the end of the game, and were very difficult!!!!

On the difficulty scale I would say this is about a 3 out of 5 but does go up to a 5 out of 5 at times!!! It isn’t a game which you can expect to breeze through and certainly isn’t a game which a kid can be given and expected to be able to complete alone!

Age Range

I would say this game is suitable for children aged 10 and upwards, but they may struggle with a few of the puzzles and may need a parents of adults help with some of them! There is no age limit to the game, and adults will enjoy the game as much, if not more than younger people!

Price

The game varies in price depending on where you go to buy it, the RRP is £39.99, but you would have to be unlucky to have to pay that amount for the game! A lot of places before Christmas were charging a ridiculous price for the game at £34.99, which I thought was atrocious for the game, most places will sell the game for £24.99 to £29.99, but you could even be lucky enough in the after Christmas sales to get it for even less than that!

As with everything, you need to shop around to find the best price! And remember to take into account any loyalty card points which you may get (Tesco, Game, Nectar Card etc will all give you points if you buy the game in their shops which may make it more worthwhile looking here first!).