LogFAQs > #932565826

#47





Years of release: 2012 (3DS, Japan), 2014 (3DS, NA/AU/EU)
Beaten?: Yes

The biggest flaw of the Professor Layton series, if there is one, is that the mystery plots aren't very exciting, and there isn't a lot of satisfaction to be gotten out of the meager investigating the player has to do before Layton just solves the entire mystery for you. The biggest flaw of the Ace Attorney series, if there is one, is that the game doesn't really challenge the player's brain too terribly often, and anytime the series offers some sort of puzzly thing during an investigation it's always kind of lame (see: the vase in 1-5). Each series excels at what the other lacks; the perfect ingredients for a crossover.

The result is the best Layton game and not the best Ace Attorney game, but really good overall. AA's penchance for drama and intrigue really adds a lot to the Layton formula; this game's plot is, in my opinion, vastly more exciting than any of the Layton games aside from maybe Unwound Future, and while this game mostly plays like a Layton game throughout, you can really tell in the moments when the AA influences take over in character design and plot intrigue, because frankly, Layton's never really taken those parts too seriously. The Layton puzzles are a nice addition to the AA formula, though, really breaking up the action nicely and giving this game a lot of variety.

And, of course, it's just really fun to see Layton and Luke team up with Phoenix and Maya. I don't see a lot of crossovers that excite me like this one does; I mean, Smash is great and all, but there's something really fun about seeing two kind-of-niche properties that you like mashed up into a really unexpected crossover that nontheless complement each other really well. The fact that this game even exists at all is a treat.

It's not ranked higher because the game's final act kind of drops the ball; it's really long and mostly just an overcomplicated explanation of a dumb Layton plot, and Phoenix feels like he almost completely takes a backseat during it. But the game's third trial is just as good as the best the Ace Attorney series has to offer - in fact, it elevates itself to one of the best cases in the series, in my opinion, and that's no exaggeration. So this game's got some highs and some lows. Overall, it doesn't have quite as much content or do anything really as mindblowing as the best Ace Attorney games, and the Layton puzzles are a fair deal easier than the puzzles in other Layton games, most of these kind of feel like puzzles they cut from other games. But it's two of my favorite series - or, well, one of my favorite series and another series I really like - masked up together and what's not to love about that?