#And I would honestly consider ranking Miracle Mask above PB

[quantomeno]

Professor Layton and Pandora's Box

I love this game. This game has what I would say is the most pure Professor Layton experience. It fulfils all the requirements of a good Layton game and has all the elegance and charm you could ask for, topped with a haunting atmosphere in the third act and an ending that will make you weep. It's also set largely on a train.

Yet it is not my favourite game in the series because I am a sucker for the dramatic finale that is Lost Future. And that ending makes me cry even harder.

Spoilers for the game series below. It's over 15 years old now, though so why haven't you played it yet? If you have not played it, play it now. If you are not convinced it's worth playing, then go ahead and read.

It's 2009. Two years after Curious Village (which I don't think I finished at that stage, but my sibling did), a game that changed my life and satisfied my love of puzzles and mystery. I still remember the trailers and the clip of Anton and Layton sword fighting. Give me a moment to savour that excitement...

And the game lived up to the hype. The puzzles! Gone were the awkward riddles of CV and now so many of them actually related to the story. They still had their difficult moments, but nothing like the terrible 'The Chocolate Code' (puzzle 67, which wasn't used in the European release). And let's not forget the train ticket puzzle you solved with a real ticket included with the game. And the graphics and the sound! It was all so much cleaner and more varied. AND A MEMO FUNCTION!!! I was so happy about that.

Quality of life features, graphics and music, these things are just icing on the cake. What really matters, and where Pandora's Box shines best, is in the story and atmosphere.

The Plot:

You know the drill: Layton receives a letter from an old friend who asks him to help with a mysterious item which leads to him ending up in a mysterious town. It's classic Layton and it sets the pattern later games would continue (with some variations). I actually love that they all start similarly, because it creates a sense of comfort: you know you're in for another adventure when Layton pulls out a letter.

The thing is though, despite the apparent repetition, I don't think many of the games adhere to it as tightly as the first two. Lost Future is exciting partly because it upends the script: there's no mysterious artefact (the time machine is probably the closest), there's no mysterious town (other than future London) and it feels less like Layton going to help solve a mystery as it does Layton going to save the future.

I want more of these games in the style of the first two. No mechas or Loch Ness monsters: I want British gentleman and his snarky apprentice pottering about in eccentric hamlets and peculiar townships, stumbling onto bizarre mysteries (the prequel games are not as bad as I make them seem in this regard, but I do feel they lack the quaintness at key points, even in Last Specter/Spectre's Call). I feel the series could have gone on for a long time before we got to the wildness of LF. I love the wildness, but I love it because it's special: it should never be the norm.

But these games were planned to be a trilogy, and what we got was a glorious trilogy so I would never wish that away.

PB suffers from the same flaw CV has of feeling like a little too much of pottering around doing unnecessary tasks with no clear goal: you find Dr Schrader's lifeless body, get on a train because he had a train ticket (so far so good), find a lost dog (I just realise we had to find a cat in the first game at this same point in time), meet the other member of our team who we left at home but followed along (flora deserves better), stop off at a country town (and ask around because we have no better leads on our mysterious box), sneak into the first class cabin, end up in a weird town and then ask around here (because, again, we have no solid leads so why not), discover our teammate is being impersonated by the guy who tried to kill us the previous game, then go visit the local vampire (because he used to own the box, finally a lead), and then reveal he and everyone else is actually 50 years older than they think they are and everyone was just high this whole time.

It doesn't really feel like a mystery, does it? It just feels like a lot of stumbling onto the truth and fortuitous circumstances.

Yet I did not feel this when I first played it, because it felt natural. It made sense to check out Dropstone because the train stops there. The fact it is related to the story in the end is actually rather impressive and quite well foreshadowed.

The story of Sophia and Anton (I am literally crying thinking about this I cannot believe how much it affects me); this is the high point. It is barely addressed in the game proper until the very end, but the diary entries give enough detail that it doesn't come out of absolutely nowhere. And it is the full cast that adds to this story: all the characters who left or stayed in Folsense show the effects of the 'curse' of the town.

I will not criticise the love story. I can't. I am too moved by it that I can forgive anything. But even the common complaints people have ('why didn't Sophia just say she was pregant?') are easy enough to dismiss (she didn't want Anton to have to choose between her and the town).

The story works. It is not faultless and could do with a bit more momentum and less filler, but the puzzles keep you entertained when the story lags, so I don't mind. Boredom is rarely a terminal issue in a Layton game (unless the puzzles are bad, naming no names i.e. LMJ). It's the emotion that counts, and PB has emotion in spades.

The Atmosphere

Before we begin, I would like to define a genre: the Fantastic.

In a story, we can be presented with things that seem to happen which do not align with our view of the way the world works. In some cases, this is accepted because the story takes place in a world where our rules don't apply (this is called the Marvellous); in others, these 'magical' events are revealed to be just misunderstandings or failures of our perceptions, and the laws of Nature as we know them are unchallenged (this is termed the Uncanny).

On the border of these is the genre known as the Fantastic. This is when the reader is not able to work out whether the 'magic' observed is true magic or if there's a logical explanation for it. It is rare (incredibly rare) for a work to be situated entirely within the Fantastic. Instead, works tend to start from the Fantastic and end up in either the Marvellous (the magic is revealed to be true) or the Uncanny (it's revealed to be false). The point of the Fantastic is that the reader is reminded of the fallibility of their perceptions. One believes that the world is so, but one also knows that there is much we don't know (e.g. quantum mechanics and relativity). This leads to a painful sense of uncertainty as objectivity cannot be readily assumed (again, relativity).

The upshot is that if the story is sufficiently real, and there is the appearance of verisimilitude, the reader will be tempted to believe that the magical aspects of the story could be true, but they also instinctively cling to rational explanations that would do away with it.

I believe that Professor Layton is a stellar example of this genre, not just the individual games, but the series as a whole.

The games present a premise with an aspect of magic ― in this case a box that kills whoever opens it — and gives us strong proof that it is true (a dead body), yet the games are set in modern day London, and Layton is a man of science: he never seems convinced in the powers of the Elysian Box. The rest of the game is also incredibly mundane until we get to Folsense.

And it is in Folsense that things change.

This is where the atmosphere has its most potent effect.

The whole game has a gorgeous warmth, from the luxury of the Molentary Express to the bucolic charm of Dropstone. When we first enter Folsense, the cast are subjected to a mysterious circumstance where the town suddenly lights up as they walk through the train station. The music is unsettling, a far cry from what we have been listening to until now. The town looks unnatural: it's lit up artificially and seems so empty.

Then we learn there's a vampire.

And we are already convinced he's real.

Because we no longer seem to be in the world you and I know. We start to believe that the world of Layton is a world of fantasy. We're not in London anymore.

At Herzen Castle, our suspicions are constantly being confirmed: a mysterious carriage enters through the gate; the castle looms precariously over a pit, looking like some kind of giant bat; we are greeted by a butler who looks like a vampire himself and then we meet Anton who, despite everything we know saying he must be over 70 by now, looks like he is only in his late 20s.

And then there's the dream sequence, and then Anton captures us, claiming to want to feast on us. We are convinced we are firmly in the marvellous.

But then we meet Katia and the fog lifts. The castle crumbles into the pit, Anton ages before our eyes, the town fades as the sun rises, illuminating the artifice.

Our sense had fooled us: there was no magic box and no vampire. There was a scientific explanation all along. We are left in the Uncanny. We are reminded, by the town, the box's reputation and the miscommunication of the lovers, that life is often not what it seems and appearances can be deceiving: the objective truth is hard to distil, but it lies there behind all the illusions created by our own minds.

No other Layton game achieves the level of dread that this one does. While Lost Future may make you believe in time travel, plays on the idea of the Fantastic in a very clever way, it never reaches that same level of blood-chilling fear. As a child, I could not stand any place in Folsense because they all left me feeling disquieted.

Despite being an illusion, I don't think any other location in the series has reached beyond the screen and made me feel I was there, made me feel part of its world, the way Folsense did.

It is the atmosphere that makes this game. It is beautiful.

As an addendum, when I played this game I was so into it I made my own Elysian Box out of paper. The thing was, the game had such a sinister aura that I was actually afraid of the box I had made. I felt there was something evil about it, even just a depiction of it.

Of course, now I would look at the box and be reminded of the love of Sophia and Anton, but the point still stands that this game moved me as a child and it moves me as an adult. I love it deeply.