Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire’s Conspiracy – Deluxe Edition

Genre: Puzzle / Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Layton’s Mystery Journey (I’m not saying the full title for brevity’s sake) is a Family-Friendly Puzzle game with Graphic Adventure elements that was originally released on Nintendo 3DS and mobile devices in 2017 and brought to the Nintendo Switch in 2019 with all of the original game’s expansion content included, along with 40 new puzzles and some other new content as well. The latest in the long line of the Professor Layton series focuses on Katrielle Layton, the daughter of series protagonist Hershel Layton, as she starts up her own detective business and starts to get unusual cases.

When this game originally released on the 3DS, the reactions were a bit mixed. On the one hand, the game still contained the series’ trademark charm and puzzles, but some complained that the characters droned on a little too much and the story was less engaging than prior installments in the series, in part due to the game’s episodic nature. On the other hand, the change to a new protagonist does help to give the series a fresh start, and those new to the Layton titles will find this game to be a good starting point for their entry into the series.

All of this remains true in the port to the Nintendo Switch – the dialogue still goes on a bit too long and the story here, while decent enough if you’re okay with things staying light-hearted, doesn’t exactly pull you in. However, the move to the Nintendo Switch does bring with it a change in the presentation, and that is the game’s new high-definition visuals. The cel-shaded 3D graphics here are good but not fantastic, but the real treat is seeing the game’s delightful animated sequences play out on the screen in full HD. The voice acting here is good too, and the music is superb, giving the whole thing the feel of a well-made animated film.

The gameplay here has players observing environments and speaking with various people to investigate the game’s mysteries, with these dialogue sequences interspersed with occasional puzzles. These puzzles take on all manner of forms, from visual puzzles to logic puzzles, and there’s little rhyme or reason to them, and in fact they often have absolutely no connection to the mysteries Katrielle is investigating or the people she’s talking to. Rather, every now and then you’ll be stopped from progressing and given a random puzzle about some random topic.

Talking to a woman about a store closure? Here’s a puzzle about a diagram of pipes. Talking to a random passerby on the street about a missing landmark? Here’s a puzzle about the position of balloons at a circus. The puzzles are fine in and of themselves, it’s just jarring how little they have to do with the narrative.

Well… almost fine. The game doesn’t make it clear when the puzzle you’re solving pertains to the image shown alongside it, or if it’s just a word and logic puzzle. One early puzzle, for example, asks you how many times you need to touch a clock to get it to go from 3:30 to midnight, along with an image showing a girl and a clock. This image has nothing to do with the answer to this puzzle – it’s a trick question, actually, and the image only serves as a distraction. And all of this confusion keeps happening despite the game over-explaining every puzzle (with some explanations making things more confusing).

At the very least I can say that the changes added to the Nintendo Switch version are welcome. This version adds the ability to use a Joy-Con’s motion control to use the controller as a pointer, or they can simply use a standard controller interface… and of course the game preserves the touchscreen controls as well. All of these work fine, and suffice it to say that one of the best things about the Switch version of the game is that the game’s designers made sure to make the game playable however you choose.

In the end, Layton’s Mystery Journey is far from perfect – the puzzles here don’t mesh well with the story, the story itself is a bit lackluster, and the puzzles are at times made more confusing than they need to be. However, if you’re looking for a lighthearted Puzzle game on the Switch, Layton’s Mystery Journey is still a charming experience, and the Switch version’s improvements make it the best version of the game.

tl;dr – Layton’s Mystery Journey is a port of the family-friendly 2017 3DS and mobile Puzzle game with Graphic Adventure elements about Katrielle, the daughter of series protagonist Hershel Layton. This game brings the visuals up to HD quality, packs in all of the original game’s DLC, adds more puzzles and features, and provides players with a plethora of control options. That said, the flaws of the original game remain – the story is lacking, the puzzles have no connection to what’s going on, and the puzzles are at times confusing despite being over-explained. That said, the game still has the series’ signature charm, and the puzzles themselves are still engaging. Puzzle game fans looking for something lighthearted should definitely give this game a look.

Grade: B-

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