Layton: Unwound Future in HD

I have been a long standing fan of the series since around the time of Diabolical Box. This is one of, if not my favorite game series ever, and I can’t say enough good about it. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the well written and emotional story made me cry the first time I finished it. I hope other people give it a try. I didn’t think I would enjoy it much, let alone love it to the extent I do. It’s a unique and fun IP that I’m so happy Level 5 is continuing to make games for. Here’s to the next one!

As a huge fan of Layton 1 and 2, I was extremely excited to play Layton 3 and bought it on day 1. This game is not nearly as good as the previous two. Layton is a puzzle game. This game game chooses to forego that and instead lean HEAVILY on being a “visual novel”. There is about 3x the amount of text in this game as previous games. Random bystanders that you click to try to trigger a puzzle can blather on with flavor text for several screens before introducing a puzzle or yielding nothing. Much of this is an Attempt to give context to the puzzles, but the context is unneeded. The end result is thinking, “I want to do a few puzzles while I have time” and realizing that your entire play session may just be clicking through dialog with no puzzles in sight. As for the puzzles, they are shockingly bad sometimes. many puzzles rely not on logic, but merely guesswork and assumptions. This is new for the series. There are also many puzzles that leave too many open ends to the phrasing. This is poison to a logic game. This game is still worth playing but set your expectations. It’s not as good as the first two, especially the second.

It came out 5 days ago and I finished it yesterday after grinding it for 18 hours. Unwound Future already held the spot of one of my favorite games of all time, and I basically sinked time into nothing but this for the past week. The atmosphere of this game is truly incomparable and you won’t find it anywhere else. The plot is deeply impactful, and to my knowledge there are no loose ends. Every story beat, every interaction, it has a purpose, and you become ingrained in the wonderful world they present you. The puzzles all vary in difficulty, and because not all are necessary to complete the game, anyone who finds them difficult is able to simply move on to those that work for them. The art and style are unique as well, and all the landscapes and puzzles have unique painting-esque portraits to match. the player is able to play the game as they wish, and it all works perfectly. I could never give this game anything other than five stars. It’s marvelous in every way. And to Level-5, if you’re reading this, there’s nothing I want more than to see my favorite game franchise make its way to mobile in its entirety. Keep up the good work out there.