Don Paolo coming out of nowhere in every game in the first trilogy is so funny to me lmao. The fact he's just a nonsense villain and iirc we never find out his deal is just the kind of surreal humour I love. I am glad that he isn't the primary antagonist of each game though.
@@tisthecat nope, that's the story. he was in love with claire and he saw her confessing to layton. so when he said yes, he swore he'd make him pay for it. honestly, trying to kill layton by throwing the tower he was in knowing there were 2 children inside as well or even making a whole ferris wheel follow him around an entire carnival was a bit extreme but... oh well
I think one of the saddest things in this game is the fact that Anton never even knew he had a daughter until she had been dead for years. They were never given the chance to meet, she grew up and died, all while her father never even knew his wife had been pregnant. And the game sort of just glosses over this, which is a shame. Sophia's letter even avoids the subject because she couldn't bare to break it to Anton that he never got the chance to meet his daughter.
Definitely. When I played this for the first time, I thought Katia was his daughter (all the explanations flew over my head 😅) so realizing that there's a whole generation between them makes the situation so much more tragic.
Ok ive had a little headcanon for this for YEARS, that i admit is weird but i like it and it fits the tragedy of the ending: the hallucinogenic gas that ruined the city and spelled its doom also influenced the fetus growing inside of Sophia. Sophia fled the town leaving Anton, but the baby came out disabled in Dropstone. Either mentally or physically, doesn't change the point. Sophia did the best she could raising the disabled child with love, who eventually grew up and became pregnant with Katia. That is why Sophia, in her letter, mentions only Katia and NOT their own daughter as "the one good thing that came out of this tragedy". Because sadly, the growth of the fetus, the life of their daughter was irreparably damaged by the gas enveloping Folsense. And only the second generation, Katia, was finally, truly freed from the "curse" brought about by the town's mines. She didnt reveal this to Anton in her letter cause it really would have done nothing but cause pain.
I mean, Sophia could have, you know, told him she was leaving because she was pregnant instead of speaking in riddles. The game glosses over the fact that she deliberately never gave him the option to choose his daughter over his life in Folsense. Pretty terrible, honestly.
I enjoy the twist because it's not a "cheap cop out" as many people claim, it perfectly fits thematically into how Folsense is symbolic for greed (as you pointed it out), but also symbolic for refusing to let go of the past. Dropstone is founded by those that did move on, and it's so much happier and less miserable because these people simply let go. Anton and those residents that are alive (there are a few, the hotel bellhop, Olson who says he can barely see anymore, Joseph) meanwhile refused to let go, instead holding onto a world that has long passed because they were all too afraid of moving into a new one.
The ending of Pandora's Box never fails to make me cry. Like, I know everybody always talks about Unwound Future, but for me, this ending just hits the most. I think it's because of the music. Iris is a beautiful track.
I have these lines permanently burned into my brain. I played it in German as a kid and i still remember the exact sound when Anton says "Folsense is real. I am real" in German. :D
Omg same, that was soooo iconic when I heard it for the first time. Totally changed the tone of the game and loved how Layton still helped Anton when he lost strength during their fight
Same because my sister gifted me the second game first, thinking I probably wouldn't like the first game not having translated voice acting in europe. And I don't blame her at all for that, at 12 I was still very bad at english, and despite the Curious Village spoilers I really enjoyed Pandora's Box as it is and that pushed me to play the whole series including Curious Village.
Great video. I personally think the remark about Folsense not being real was more metaphorical. I don't think there were any people who were entirely hallucinations. Especially as the Professor and Luke venture to the borders of Folsense where the gas doesn't affect people and everything is rather dingy and depressing which is what the real present Folsense is.
I also interpreted it this way! I always assumed that Layton meant that no one was real in the way that we saw them. That all the villagers were also older now or different than the way we saw them as our vision was always clouded by expectations brought to life by the gas. This game is the MOST nostalgic for me as it was technically the first one played. I just replayed them on the iOS remasters and it was so fun!
Anton is truly the most tragic character in the whole series. The whole “literally just found out he had a child but he can’t meet her because she’s already dead” thing was like a punch to the gut.
Exactly! I wanted to bring up this point as well-the villagers ARE real, and there’s plenty of evidence to support it that ties into the theme of Folsense being an elaborate deception: children complain about aching backs and joints, people reminisce about what the town once was... etc etc
I really just want to talk about these poor children. They think "Yo! I'm 8 years old and I can't run as fast as I used to! That's really wild haha" and then they hear a giant explosion, see the castle on the horizon implode, and then all of a sudden they're old farts having a mid-life crisis about the young-adulthood they were robbed of. It's so crazy, and so sad!
I agree, there are some other areas in Folsense, like Northern Folsense, where we see these towering, impossible-looking buildings. I always thought that they weren't actually real, and were the result of their minds "filling in the blanks" with these dreamlike buildings made from things they'd already seen
As much as the plot twist of the gas is insane and hard to believe, every Layton plot twist is equally mad. Everyone being a robot or, even crazier, having a replica London built underground, are insane as well. You can’t criticise the twist of Diabolical Box without also criticising the writing of the whole series. I love Layton, and while I love Unwound Future, this entry has always been my favourite, and I see it as highly underrated, and I’m glad to see it get some love :)
I think you can criticise this one without criticising the others. I like this game still, but this twist irked me a little. The robot twist and underground London twist are obviously unbelievable, but in the Layton universe I can accept extreme sci-fi nonsense. The first game is especially important, that's the game that establishes how the series is going to work. Sure, this guy built some robots and repairs them. This guy inherited infinity billion pounds so he can build a replica city and a superweapon underground. The Pandora's Box twist with the gas doesn't feel the same to me. It's less sci-fi and more magic-fantasy. I can accept unbelievable sci-fi solutions, they make sense to me in the world the first game created, but I can't really buy "hallucinatory gas tricked everyone into thinking the town was still there" as an answer to the mystery.
Idk, it's just a hallucination. I don't think every game in the series needs a massive science fiction twist either. It's a little dissonant for the trilogy in hindsight but you wouldnt have known it at the time. I also wouldnt call it "magic-fantasy", id say they explain it in a way that at least applies scientific reason to it. I'm pretty sure they even mention it in-game that since Luke, Layton and "Flora" see pictures of old Folsense in the train station, thats the hallucination of Folsense they end up seeing. Plays into the notion of what the box seems to do quite well if you ask me. People expect death when they open it, they seemingly die. Layton and co's first impression of Folsense is gilded and fancy, thats what they see. its all about expectation and perception. and at the end of it all, its really minor enough for me to look past personally. At least in comparison to the ridiculousness of CV/UF lol
I mean, it makes sense that it didn't take that long. All the coding was there, they just needed assets, a plot, and more puzzles. And I'm sure they used some scrapped ideas for characters and puzzles that they planned to add to curious village
I've probably mentioned it in one of my other comments on this brill channel but Pandora's Box is my favourite too. The atmosphere, the music, the story and the characters all really came alive in this one, and, compared to literally every other game in the series, I think it worked so well to have a mystery that wasn't rooted in the past and relationships of the protagonists. If I could spend a day exploring anywhere from the series, it would have to be Folsense. On a slight side note, I work a lot with digital conservation of old photos and films, and I love being able to look at locations through the eyes of someone who lived 20, 50 or 100 years ago, especially when the focal point of the image is no longer there in today's world. I feel like Folsense was almost a giant living photograph that the characters could explore, and I'm super jealous of that, even though its absolutely fictional. I grew up in a commuter town too, so it was so cool seeing Layton and Co exploring a setting similar to where I lived, just about 50 years earlier. Cannot recommend this game enough, regardless of how mental the twist was. Thanks for making a vid on it and getting people talking about it again!
Curious village never got translated into Dutch, so I first played diabolical box as a child. Luke trying to rip of Chelmey's face never made sense to me until I found out there was an earlier game.
Personally it’s a close tie with Lost Future when it comes to which professor Layton game is better. I think Diabolical box has some better pacing and theme(s), while the story of Lost Future, without spoilers, is better in my opinion.
Hard agree on this one. I think Diabolical Box story relies a lot on wether the player liked the ending or not, while Unwound Future has the better mysteries through the game and a less divisive finale.
@@Stonesands yeah thinking about it again, the ending of diabolical box is more impactful if you take in the story that it’s trying to present. I do still think both games have their own plusses and cons though.
I JUST RAN TO GET MY DS BOX TO SEE IF THE TRAIN TICKET WAS THERE AND INDEED IT WAS WHAT THE HELL!? I bought this game in 2008 and just noticing this now its like finding a secret tresure, i'm obsessed
thats crazy! i distinctly remember the game telling you to look in the game box for the ticket to solve the folsense puzzle. but maybe that was a hint? cant remember now
The residents of Folsense are real, just not how they look, the “illness” in Folsense is just old age and death. Some of the dialogue for the residents talks about them feeling weaker. Like with girl at the club saying “I may not look but im no spring chicken”. So everyone is seen as a younger version of themselves. With them looking say 20-30ish but being 70-80. Which I feel makes it really hit hard that realization that not just Anton but multiple people wasted their lives in Folsense.
im currently working on a little layton fangame with some friends with flora as our main character and we are trying to give her a fully fleshed out character arc so that she does not feel like the npc she has been through the first trilogy. im so excited and i cant wait to share the results with the layton fanbase.
@@kaisemporium8549 the project kinda died down :( people lost interest. im focused on learning to code so i can do it myself but i have 0 free time currently. ill give my all to it in summer tho :)
I’m pretty sure the characters’ names are pronounced German, because they look like it: Anton is the German name for Anthony, even Herzen means hearts (and funnily enough, if we attach the nobility “von” to the name, “von Herzen” means “from the bottom of your heart”, and is even correctly conjugated. (The H in Herzen isn’t silent, by the way.)) Just wanted to point that out as you were wondering. ^^ Then, Katia would sound like Katya.
Folsense as a concept is something pretty unique and the setting of it is phenomenal. It's the truest rendition of a Ghost Town, but with the twist that you as the player are unknowingly playing as one of the ghosts.
I tear up every time I hear Sofia reading her final letter. (T_T) I haven't played every single Layton game, but Diabolical Box, Unwound Future, and Last Specter are my favorites. I enjoyed this retrospective very much.
The whole end of the game is so heartbreaking especially Sofia and Anton's voice acting 😭 the music that plays when the scenes of Folsense are fading to what they actually look like all run down and decrepit make me bawl my eyes out every time 😭
just wanted to say how glad i am that you're keeping this series alive with your videos, especially with how sad seeing it fall into more and more obscurity has been :'( (esp with the latest entry and then level-5s american branch shutting down) i just recently bought pandora's box at a flea market since i never actually owned it myself and haven't played it in about a decade, so I'm very happy to see you making a video about it now. always love your thoughtful and funny analysis, keep those videos coming!
@@cronk2695 hi fellow layton fan! and agreed i'm always happy to see a new layton video pop up somewhere. if u happen to know of any other great channels talking about this series i'd love to hear about it!
@@seldom8252 DearestHershel makes some great Layton content if you haven’t checked him out! He makes a bunch of well edited memes and the occasional in depth serious video
This is also my favourite game! I never thought that everyone is fake, just older than we thought. I haven’t played it since I was a kid but I distinctly remember a little girl character who mentioned that now she gets tired when she plays a lot faster which I always took after the game to be similar to Anton being surprised he got tired sword fighting. Dunno maybe I just don’t want them all to be our imagination either. Great video!!
Okay, I think Layton’s line about the residents having never existed in the first place MAYA BE a mistranslation. ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN! A lot of the residents talk about seeing things and feeling older than they appear to be. Ilyana admits to the men in the cast that despite her appearance, she’s “no spring chick.” Niles- who looks very much like a child- says that he can’t run around for very long anymore. This little boy then wonders if he’s just getting older. HMMMMM… We get a lot of these details about how the residents feel from giving them tea. Personally, I think there was a disconnect in the translation of the script. You see issues like this pop up a lot with translated media- most notably in games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, where you actually end up missing huge chunks of the story from improper translations. I think this game has a better translation team, but this one line is the biggest problem.
To be fair, there is the possibility that this line change was done for the english speaking market as a censorship of the, lets be real, massively fucked up nature of the residents fates that's just kinda getting glossed over in the game. Not a single one of these poor people (least of all the CHILDREN) deserved to have their lives ripped away from them by being stuck in an hallucination *for 50 years* . That is horrifying to think about. Anton wouldnt be the only one "waking up" as an old person and little Niles would presumably be a middle ages man by now and thats me being generous. In this case I would definitely understand if the script translators were actively being given the instructions to soften the ending by changing the line into saying that all the people were part of the hallucination too. We never see any of these people in the end so we also dont know if they are OKAY (which they shouldnt) and what happenes to them from now on to make them having the same fate as Anton any less devestating on too many layers the moment you start thinking about it a bit more.
oh absolutely, i got that from the "and they grew ill and died" because hallucinogens wouldnt do that on their own (as far as im aware), so its likely the illness was just from growing older (and being unable to tell) and subsequently passing away. if everyone thinks theyre young then it looks like a mysterious disease, but theyre not, theyre just dying from old age.
The twist being a gas leak always felt like a cop-out and hardest to swallow out of most the big Layton mystery solutions. Robots, a fake alternate future city made just to trick you, a high oxygen prehistoric grotto, all seem outlandish but feasible within Layton's whimsical exaggerated reality. But "mass hallucination" that's consistently shared between several people doesn't hold up very well on its face, plus it kinda creates an "unreliable narrator" problem in that you're straight being shown lies through most of the game, it's highly counterproductive to a mystery plot that's presented like a puzzle for the player to solve.
I believe the part about none of the residents being real to be a mistranslation. In the spanish version it's implied that they're not as we see them, which fits some NPC's talking about getting tired more easily and feeling somewhat weak, which could indicate that they're older than what they look like.
really loved this video!! i don’t find professor layton content super often sadly but this retrospective genuinely brought a smile to my face and it’s amazing to see so many other fans keeping the games alive!! have binged all your layton videos since and i hope you keep making retrospectives for the rest of the series too (:
The music and atmosphere in this game is a major reason as to why this is my favourite in the series. Such a great game and then to follow it up with the lost furure, this series has too many brilliant entries. Really good overview and analysis, can't wait for the next one
Luke! Stop that! That's his face! Also, I love hearing about these games again. Feels like seeing an old friend for the first time in a decade. Can't wait for more.
@@dorkasdaydreams it went well, I did a mini campaign: roughly one session per chapter. I kept the main storyline and let my players solve the mystery. I gave them the premise of Dr Schrader being dead and they were hired to solve the mystery of his death and the box he was studying and all they had was the train ticket and the photo of the box (I had the center piece missing from the beginning). I swapped out some characters and objects to fit a more dnd realm. For example instead of Don Palo kidnapping and impersonating Flora, I had a doppelgänger hired by the man who stole the box kidnap and impersonate one of my players after their first night in Folsense. (Revealed by the fact that he didn’t know the picture was of a goat and not a frog) then when they ran into the guy who stole the box, I used the “he knew it was a goat which meant he had the box”. I also gave my players a wand of metal detection to find the diary keys. I made the curator of the Herzen Museum a ghost who vanished when the players asked too many questions, I also said that all the townsfolk were ghosts the whole time rather than them just not existing at all. I was able to pull some puzzles from the game which worked well. I did some other tweaking throughout too: I got rid of Chelmey and Barton and reduced appearances by Katia and Beluga because I worried my players wouldn’t be as polite as Layton and would interrogate them and solve the mystery too quickly. Overall my players really enjoyed it and it made for a great mini campaign!
Thanks to this one-year-old video, I suddenly realize that I haven't finished Pandora's Box yet! I'm still hoping for a new Professor Layton game on the Switch, but for now I'm going into the storage room to look for my Nintendo 2DS. Thanks for the video @Voyan.
I think this one is definitely my favourite game. The ending especially when it hits you with that reveal, and the music, Iris by Salyu, then the credit images showing how things are winding down. Makes me tear up every time
Makes me so happy to see content on Layton, it's been such a big part of my life for so long. I've lost count of how many times I've replayed them all but they never fail to bring me joy and all the other emotions that they carry in their stories. Especially Lost Future because uhhh yeah thats some traumatising stuff! Why first play through of Lost Future I finished it in the middle of the night and absolutely cried my eyes out! Pandora's Box is a big heavy hitter for me too, and the nostalgia aspect is huge as it was the first one I played that made me fall in love with the series. I hope the professor comes back!! Katrielle just wasn't the same, it was missing the heart
I really love your channel, I usually don’t find a lot of ytubers funny but your jokes have me laughing. It’s really nice seeing someone talk about these games, it brings back memories for me. When I was a kid and scared at night I would turn my ds on and listen to the last cutscene from Db lol
Please continue this series I love it so much I've missed Professor Layton so much I've just ordered myself a 2DS XL and copies of the games I'm just so excited to replay them
I'm so glad to see you making a video series on these games in exactly this format and really hope you'll get around to completing it. Really thankful for being able to listen to you geeking out about those games. Like for so many others here, the Professor Layton games are a massive part of my childhood and I adore them to this day. Curious Village has one of if not the first plot twist in a story ever I remember having an emotional impact on me as a child and Azran Legacy, in my youth, had me pulling my first all-nighter ever the day I bought it, playing through about 80% of the game in one sitting. I personally tend to view Pandora's Box as my least favorite entry of the original trilogy, but I still like it. While I'm not as captivated by Folsense as you, I enjoy the game's initial changing of locations.
As someone who just played through The Diabolical Box for the first time. I love the mystery of the game and just the overall style. Now onto the next game.
the flowerbed puzzle also stumped me. Luckily I redraw it on a book and show it to my math teacher. She noticed the quick logical way to solve it and finally I finish the puzzle lol
If i had to rank the Layton Games: 1. The Unwound Future 2. The Curious Village 3. The Miracle Mask 4. Pandoras Box 5. Azrans Legacy 6. Spectres Call Personally, the Unwound Future ro me had the coolest Atmosphere and great Plot (Man i love that Casino Part of the Game) and holy, the reveals, the atmosphere, everything is just amazing. Curious Village has all that Nostalgia, but also it feels so oldschool and chill, the Plot is great and the characters probably the most likeable in this one. I love the story of Randall and Layton, Percy and Angelas dedication to him, the bestiful city and the great characters in this one. Also every cutscene with The Maskes Gentleman is just so dope, his miracles really are something. This game is really amazing and i like the general idea of the plot, but everyone being an illusion realy left a bitter taste in my mouth, and felt wrong. Id rather have them all deaged like Anton, that would have been better in my opinion. Still a great game with amazing atmosphere and probably my favorite cutscene (along with the Casino scene from Future) aka the fight between Anton and Layton Azrans Legacy really felt so big and all the locations were really amazing to explore, it was something refreshing and new and i really enjoyed it. However i feel like the plot is a little bit too grand, the Aslanti really didnt feel all that amazing , and that its an actual mysterium completely, something fullbown hypernatural any mysterical in a way is something, i just didnt dig as much as the other games. Aurora was cool tho, and the games concept, atmosphere etc still were great, just not as good as the others. Spectres Call is honestly the one i remember the least. I need to replay that one.
@@sfav Nice to hear that! Yeah you should play it, its (not chronologically tho) the finale of the series, and its pretty good. However to me, the original trilogy just felt more natural and grounded than the "Prequels" , except "The Miracle Mask" , that one felt so classic and almost like the first game to me, with its own identity and carneval atmosphere ofc , but still, i loved it a lot.
Specters call has really good atmosphere too, good puzzles and decent music. You definitely should replay it. The biggest con is that the 100h RPG mode isn't present in the PAL version, that pissed me off so much as a teen
I also liked Spector’s call the least. Even though the plot twists for Layton games are always INSANE, the giant manatee fighting a robot and protecting a magic garden just felt a step too far
Personally this is my absolute FAVOURITE Professor Layton game-- one time during lockdown I was actually so engrossed in replaying it that I fell down the stairs and had to walk with a crutch for a while after 😅 The music is gorgeous, the animation is great, particularly in the swordfight scene, and even though the plot can be dicey if you read into it too much, it still really gets me emotional. And yes, I've cried at the ending every time I've played it. The puzzles are fun, even though I had to get my brother to help me with the mathematical ones (I have dyscalculia), I am also a huge fan of the slidey ones, and maybe it's bias because this was one of the first DS games I ever played and nostalgia is a key factor, but I think it has way more replay value than its descendants. Sure, if you know the twist there's less motivation to play it again, but the game has so much personality, and colour, and cool details that you could only notice the second time through, that it's just so worth it. God I love this game. Sorry for the text wall lol
From what I remember, I actually enjoyed Mystery Case Files: Millionheir as a kid. Though I recall a lot of it was like an I Spy simulator. I'd also say that Club Penguin: Herbert's Revenge is worth checking out.
Honest the ost in this game is one of my favourites that you just walk around the town and it is calming but has a sense of sadness. I played this game so many times that during nighttime when I need to go to sleep and have school the next day.
Its not my favourite but definitely top 3 for me. I love it so much, simply because of the amazing atmosphere and the incredible soundtrack. Folsense is closely behind Misthallery my favourite location. The twist is far more believable than a huge second london being built underground and the ending always brings tears to my eyes. My only complaint is that you cant go back to Dropstone and that Don Paolo and Flora felt a bit random, but apart from that a brilliant game.
I'm loving this series! Professor Layton was a big part of my childhood playing DS games (along with Animal Crossing), and it's great to see someone giving it the love and deep dives that it deserves!
Your video on curious village is part of why I started playing through all of the layton games! Tysm voyan for shedding more light on these amazing games!!!
Heck yeah, I live for your Professor Layton videos. This series is severely underrated, more and more as time goes on, so it's really neat to see people like you keep talking about it!
the flower bed haunts me to this day. I don’t understand it and I never will, no matter how many times my math-teacher father explained it to me growing up
Diabolical Box was the first video game I ever owned with my DS being the first console I ever owned, and I got stuck at the dog sliding puzzle as a kid, and never saw the other towns (a common problem for me as a kid). But when I came back to the game as a teenager, holy moly it was so good. Also Mystery Case Files: Millionheir is actually a decent hidden object game with a varying plot line, would recommend
I really love your videos on Professor Layton, hearing your takes as you replay the games you already know from childhood is so nice. The recap of the game throws me right back into when I played it. I'd love to see more for the rest of the series! Like seriously these videos are so so good!
This was the first Layton game I ever played, and it's still my favorite to this day. I think the ending to this game is way better that Unwound Future's tbh
I'm so glad diabolical box is getting the love it deserves, because it is for sure my absolute favorite one. I admit it has a lot of nostalgic value to me as it was my first and I've played it the most (so I know every puzzle solution by heart), but there is just something about it atmosphere wise that's miles ahead of the others. anton and sophias love story at the heart of the game is unrivaled and generally the plot just has heart. in diabolical box i am more invested in the characters than in any of the others. honestly the twist never really seemed that weird to me as a kid, the non-sensical the better, now I can see how it's a bit of a stretch but how is the twist in unwound future not then?
Nonsensical gastown with seemingly contradictory and impossible rules and "death mecha hidden in fake future london that somehow exists under regular london to fake the idea of timetravel" are both on the same level and both suck. Actual supernatural events in this same series(That yes, canonically happened) manage to be more grounded simply because they are a lot simpler and more believable if you believe in those concepts being possible to begin with.
To this day I can still remember the sense of dread I felt when as a child, the animation of Folsense taking back its original appearance played I hated the game back then because of that x) Even nowadays, trying to replay it gives me that feeling, as I'm interacting with these characters and this town and know the truth
Hi! I don't know if you'll see this, but thanks for this video. I'm now watching it for the second time and I can't wait for you to cover the third game, which is my favorite game of all time. This one's also really special to me though, and you really did it justice with this video. More than anyone else has done. Great editing, audio & a lot of the jokes made me laugh out loud. So thanks!
Also my favorite game in the series, and the first video game to ever have an ending that touched me so much I cried. Holds a special place in my heart for that as narratives in games have since become a special interest of mine. Great video ❤️
I recently replayed this game since I couldn't remember the story well enough to understand it (I was around 10 years old when I first played it and other layton games too, this one just didn't really stick with me as much as say lost future or miracle mask). at first it was a bit boring to me but once Folsense came into the picture I became hooked. I showed it to my partner too and she loved it too even tho she had never even heard of professor layton before it. safe to say that this game has won a special place in my heart
god i so love that you've made this. professor layton is my all time favourite game series, mostly because its really the first series i played and got invested into when i was a kid. my mum always wanted me to trade in one layton game before i got the next one and i'm so glad i fought her on that cuz now i have the whole collection to this day. im so glad you're reviving layton with this video, i rarely get the chance to talk about how much i've loved this series with someone
6:52 OH MY GOD !😭🤣 Oh man, I am an ultimate fan of PL, of DB, I played to the game maybe 6 times, enjoyed it as hell each time. But I NEVER thought about this and now I CANNOT ignore it ! You killed me !🤣🤣🤣 Anyway, thank you to talk about the masterpieces that are Professor Layton games. Personnally my fave Video Games licence of all time. And for me, Unwound Future supremacy. Forever and ever the best of all for me💚 Can't wait for your video on it ! 21:28 the music in the background... YOU HAVE TASTE BRO !
31:32 I think that the reveal makes more sense in the Spanish localisation. When translated to English it would be "In truth, neither Folsense nor its residents really exists as we see them" (Meaning that all residents may appear younger than they do, as Anton, but they would still be real)
9:26 I don’t know how the in game solution spells it out, but you can cut that center “star” piece in quarters by cutting between the points of the star. Then move the four pieces to four corners of the circle to form a square with side length twice the circle radius. I don’t think these games ever expect you to do serious math.
SO GOOD. I still have fond memories of this game and watching your video made me recall just how much I had actually forgotten. I really hope you continue this series!
Just like so many others, the atmosphere of this game really gets to me. The folsense and forest tracks especially. The melancholy in them has always stuck with me. They’re as haunting as they are beautiful. The game really sells you on the sorrow that seems to pervade the entire town. Even before you know the reveal, I remember the dreary attitudes of the townspeople rubbing off on me. That dissonance-of the scenery and the music-it was meaningful to me as a kid, even if I can’t articulate it much past what I’ve written so far. I remember as a kid I’d go to the edge of town (past where Garlands shop is I think) to a dead-end and just… stare at the art of the rest of the city. The parts you can’t reach. Try to imagine what was there, what it was like, if anyone lived there anymore. Something about that combined with the Folsense track, it always filled me with this indescribable sadness. Especially after the reveal. Now that I’ve grown up, and find myself becoming victim to nostalgia more and more… the main reveal of this game has really gotten to me. That the past is gone, and you lost what you had long ago. It hits me way harder now than it ever did as a kid. Just… the melancholy in this game. Nothing like it. It’s my favorite as well, I think. Thanks for doing a video on this game, and the series as a whole, I’m really enjoying them
i remember playing this game on my ds when i was pretty young, around the age of 7-8, but i couldnt remember the title or plot of thr game. it was just a scratch in the back of my brain wich contained BIG childhood memorys. watching your vid made me very nostalgic and i FINALLY know what that game was called xd im defenetly going to replay this game just for the sake of nostalgia
I love watching your videos on Professor Layton, I hope you will do the other games as well. I am especially looking forward to your views on Unwound Future as it was my first introduction to Professor Layton and the Puzzle genre ^^
Hey man. I took your advice and went back and replayed this before watching the video and boy am i glad. I played these all when they came out. Theyre all really great but i tpok an edible after work and before beating this and i absolutly bawled my eyes out at the end. It just got me lol
I'm so glad I found this video! This is probably my favorite series of all time and it's nice to relive the games through this recap. can't wait to watch your other videos
Just recently finished this game after so long and I have to say…this game is way better then I remember it. The points you make in this video are really good and I cannot wait to see your views on unwound future!
This is the only Layton game I ever played. Enjoyed it quite a bit as a kid. Remembered it recently when i picked up a 3ds (regretfully I’ve only used that console for a handful of hours) and was shocked at how expensive the games are now. Thank you for letting me relive my time with the game
I just discovered this series of videos today and wow I have never seen such quality takes on the Layton series since I played them way back in middle school. Can’t wait for the Unwound Future video! (Also where is it 👀)
First of all, great video! As a more recent fan who only discovered PL a few years ago (and has been obsessed ever since, lol), I'm glad to see that the fanbase's love for this series still persists, and I'm looking forward to your retrospectives on the rest of the games! I just wanted to add that it's actually canon that the gas only presented Folsense and its residents as they appeared 50 years ago, not that the gas created them entirely. This would explain Folsense reverting back to its present state at the end of the game, the residents' interactions, Nigel in the end credits, etc. Apparently this is made clear in the original Japanese dialogue, so I have to wonder why the English localizers took this approach instead, as absolutely nothing makes sense when "Folsense isn't real" is taken literally as the explanation behind everything.
Well now I wonder what the situation is like for the Folsense kids. Are they really 50+ year olds who still act like children?? Also everyone in that town has got to have lung cancer
@@guy-sl3kr I assume they are. Even in the English releases, one of the children makes a comment about sometimes seeing flashes of her dad as an old man, but dismisses it as her imagination. Another child makes a comment about not being able to run around as much as they used to, etc.
Honestly, I’m surprised that no one (at least as far as I’ve seen) has much to say about the foreshadowing in PLatDB/aPB. It’s a huge part of the reason why, as farfetched as it might be, the ending feels earned. Absolutely everything built up to the gas reveal (which is something I can’t say about the ending to a certain prequel game…), and I think it’s a shame that this game’s writing pre-third act isn’t praised as much. (edit: Said foreshadowing also motivated me to solve absolutely every single puzzle I could in order to find all of the diary keys, which I didn’t do on my first playthrough. I think it’s a shame that no one ever mentions Anton’s diary and what it adds to the experience, either.)
@@clemenem7238 Wow, I can see why the game glosses over this because that's arguably more messed up than Anton's situation. The people of Folsense really ought to file a class action lawsuit against the Herzen estate. They'll need the money to pay for all their therapy
Pandora's box was my first Professor Layton game and honestly the puzzles and storyline are burned into my brain I loved it so much,, the hamster mini game was the biggest pain in my ass tho fr
I'm so glad there are other people who have this as their favourite layton game, to me this is just a more heart breaking story than lost future and the ending never fails to make me cry Loved the video so much, well done!
Seeing this on my feed made me smile wide, Diabolical Box was (and still is!) my FAVOURITE Professor Layton game, and the one that got me hooked on the series! 💕
I'm glad I finally found out how Diabolical Box ends. I played up to the part where Luke and Layton are captured by Anton, but I just could not solve the "escape the rope" puzzle and gave up.
Thank you for your passion with this video. I appreciate it a lot. I am looking forward to your next video about the series because it my personal favourite of the series!
Because I discovered this saga through the soundtrack in TH-cam videos (saw the cool cover and decided to get it), I ended up playing this game FIRST rather than Curious Village. And let me tell you, playing the 2nd game before the 1st one makes a lot of the plot twists a lot more unexpected. In particular, though.... The Don Paolo replacing Flora, Luke trying to remove Chelmey's face, Flora's entire existance, and oh my god Layton's brand on plot twists- But gotta say, this is still my favorite game with maybe Spectre's Call in second place. The atmosphere, the characters, everything, uff. Just amazing.
This was my first Layton game when i was an early teen I was introduced to it by my mom who received it from her mom as a gift, cos my mom loves puzzles and mysteries It continued like that: Oma would get mom one of the games, she would play through it, it would get handed over to me, and id play with much more struggle than my mom cos shes much smarter than me lol Once the Layton series moved to 3DS, my mom and i made a deal: she would get me the 3DS and id let her use it when she got a new Layton game My favorite part of this game was the tea set and the final puzzle
Mmmm yeah this one hit me in the feels. Pandora's Box was the first Professor Layton game I owned, and I loved it so much. The soundtrack gets better every time I hear it, and the credits sequence reduces me to tears.
Don Paolo coming out of nowhere in every game in the first trilogy is so funny to me lmao. The fact he's just a nonsense villain and iirc we never find out his deal is just the kind of surreal humour I love. I am glad that he isn't the primary antagonist of each game though.
Iirc he had hots for Claire, no? And that's why he went after Layton
Or maybe it's just gas from Diabolical box doing tricks on me xd
@@tisthecat nope, that's the story. he was in love with claire and he saw her confessing to layton. so when he said yes, he swore he'd make him pay for it.
honestly, trying to kill layton by throwing the tower he was in knowing there were 2 children inside as well or even making a whole ferris wheel follow him around an entire carnival was a bit extreme but... oh well
He is the main villain of the curious village
@@justsomeoneoutthere1367 especially for a "dead" woman.
I think one of the saddest things in this game is the fact that Anton never even knew he had a daughter until she had been dead for years. They were never given the chance to meet, she grew up and died, all while her father never even knew his wife had been pregnant. And the game sort of just glosses over this, which is a shame. Sophia's letter even avoids the subject because she couldn't bare to break it to Anton that he never got the chance to meet his daughter.
Definitely. When I played this for the first time, I thought Katia was his daughter (all the explanations flew over my head 😅) so realizing that there's a whole generation between them makes the situation so much more tragic.
Ok ive had a little headcanon for this for YEARS, that i admit is weird but i like it and it fits the tragedy of the ending: the hallucinogenic gas that ruined the city and spelled its doom also influenced the fetus growing inside of Sophia. Sophia fled the town leaving Anton, but the baby came out disabled in Dropstone. Either mentally or physically, doesn't change the point. Sophia did the best she could raising the disabled child with love, who eventually grew up and became pregnant with Katia. That is why Sophia, in her letter, mentions only Katia and NOT their own daughter as "the one good thing that came out of this tragedy". Because sadly, the growth of the fetus, the life of their daughter was irreparably damaged by the gas enveloping Folsense. And only the second generation, Katia, was finally, truly freed from the "curse" brought about by the town's mines. She didnt reveal this to Anton in her letter cause it really would have done nothing but cause pain.
@@zangbang9886 That fits so well but also is so goddamn heartbreaking
I mean, Sophia could have, you know, told him she was leaving because she was pregnant instead of speaking in riddles. The game glosses over the fact that she deliberately never gave him the option to choose his daughter over his life in Folsense. Pretty terrible, honestly.
I never thought about that before that's so sad
I enjoy the twist because it's not a "cheap cop out" as many people claim, it perfectly fits thematically into how Folsense is symbolic for greed (as you pointed it out), but also symbolic for refusing to let go of the past. Dropstone is founded by those that did move on, and it's so much happier and less miserable because these people simply let go. Anton and those residents that are alive (there are a few, the hotel bellhop, Olson who says he can barely see anymore, Joseph) meanwhile refused to let go, instead holding onto a world that has long passed because they were all too afraid of moving into a new one.
The fact that Folsense was named as a meaning of "False Sense", forshadowing the whole game...How did I NEVER REALIZE THAT AS A TEEN?!
The ending of Pandora's Box never fails to make me cry. Like, I know everybody always talks about Unwound Future, but for me, this ending just hits the most. I think it's because of the music. Iris is a beautiful track.
I can't listen to Iris without tearing up a little
Iris makes me cry like both this and unwound future do but honestly they both capture pain 😢
As for the sword fight scene, the voice acting is so good too! In the entire game, but, "LAYTOOOOON!" from Anton always gets me
I have these lines permanently burned into my brain. I played it in German as a kid and i still remember the exact sound when Anton says "Folsense is real. I am real" in German. :D
Omg same, that was soooo iconic when I heard it for the first time. Totally changed the tone of the game and loved how Layton still helped Anton when he lost strength during their fight
The dutch voice over is so funny😂😂😂😂 it's so dry I cried laughing
I played this one first before curious village so I had no context as to why Luke attacked Chelmey 😂 it was very funny to me as a kid
Same. I also had no idea who Flora was and why they somehow knew her already.
I bought Pandoras Box the other day and didn't realise that Curious Village came beforehand so I was also a bit confused
Same I thought that Luke had Imposter Syndrome or something xd (when you think a person is a robot or alien pretending to be someone you know)
Haha literally same! 🤣🤣🤣 I was very confused and just thought Luke was an impulsive child!
Same because my sister gifted me the second game first, thinking I probably wouldn't like the first game not having translated voice acting in europe. And I don't blame her at all for that, at 12 I was still very bad at english, and despite the Curious Village spoilers I really enjoyed Pandora's Box as it is and that pushed me to play the whole series including Curious Village.
Great video. I personally think the remark about Folsense not being real was more metaphorical. I don't think there were any people who were entirely hallucinations.
Especially as the Professor and Luke venture to the borders of Folsense where the gas doesn't affect people and everything is rather dingy and depressing which is what the real present Folsense is.
I also interpreted it this way! I always assumed that Layton meant that no one was real in the way that we saw them. That all the villagers were also older now or different than the way we saw them as our vision was always clouded by expectations brought to life by the gas. This game is the MOST nostalgic for me as it was technically the first one played. I just replayed them on the iOS remasters and it was so fun!
Anton is truly the most tragic character in the whole series. The whole “literally just found out he had a child but he can’t meet her because she’s already dead” thing was like a punch to the gut.
Exactly! I wanted to bring up this point as well-the villagers ARE real, and there’s plenty of evidence to support it that ties into the theme of Folsense being an elaborate deception: children complain about aching backs and joints, people reminisce about what the town once was... etc etc
I really just want to talk about these poor children. They think "Yo! I'm 8 years old and I can't run as fast as I used to! That's really wild haha" and then they hear a giant explosion, see the castle on the horizon implode, and then all of a sudden they're old farts having a mid-life crisis about the young-adulthood they were robbed of. It's so crazy, and so sad!
I agree, there are some other areas in Folsense, like Northern Folsense, where we see these towering, impossible-looking buildings. I always thought that they weren't actually real, and were the result of their minds "filling in the blanks" with these dreamlike buildings made from things they'd already seen
As much as the plot twist of the gas is insane and hard to believe, every Layton plot twist is equally mad. Everyone being a robot or, even crazier, having a replica London built underground, are insane as well. You can’t criticise the twist of Diabolical Box without also criticising the writing of the whole series.
I love Layton, and while I love Unwound Future, this entry has always been my favourite, and I see it as highly underrated, and I’m glad to see it get some love :)
I think you can criticise this one without criticising the others. I like this game still, but this twist irked me a little. The robot twist and underground London twist are obviously unbelievable, but in the Layton universe I can accept extreme sci-fi nonsense. The first game is especially important, that's the game that establishes how the series is going to work. Sure, this guy built some robots and repairs them. This guy inherited infinity billion pounds so he can build a replica city and a superweapon underground.
The Pandora's Box twist with the gas doesn't feel the same to me. It's less sci-fi and more magic-fantasy. I can accept unbelievable sci-fi solutions, they make sense to me in the world the first game created, but I can't really buy "hallucinatory gas tricked everyone into thinking the town was still there" as an answer to the mystery.
Idk, it's just a hallucination. I don't think every game in the series needs a massive science fiction twist either. It's a little dissonant for the trilogy in hindsight but you wouldnt have known it at the time. I also wouldnt call it "magic-fantasy", id say they explain it in a way that at least applies scientific reason to it. I'm pretty sure they even mention it in-game that since Luke, Layton and "Flora" see pictures of old Folsense in the train station, thats the hallucination of Folsense they end up seeing. Plays into the notion of what the box seems to do quite well if you ask me. People expect death when they open it, they seemingly die. Layton and co's first impression of Folsense is gilded and fancy, thats what they see. its all about expectation and perception. and at the end of it all, its really minor enough for me to look past personally. At least in comparison to the ridiculousness of CV/UF lol
I mean, it makes sense that it didn't take that long. All the coding was there, they just needed assets, a plot, and more puzzles. And I'm sure they used some scrapped ideas for characters and puzzles that they planned to add to curious village
Both megaman.exe and Phoenix Wright where like this. The BASE game is there, and in the beginning they push them out in a short amount of time.
well, duke can be seen in the original ending cutscene of curious village, implying he was made for that game
@@llunaTrick he even feels more like a CV character than a DB one imo
I've probably mentioned it in one of my other comments on this brill channel but Pandora's Box is my favourite too. The atmosphere, the music, the story and the characters all really came alive in this one, and, compared to literally every other game in the series, I think it worked so well to have a mystery that wasn't rooted in the past and relationships of the protagonists.
If I could spend a day exploring anywhere from the series, it would have to be Folsense. On a slight side note, I work a lot with digital conservation of old photos and films, and I love being able to look at locations through the eyes of someone who lived 20, 50 or 100 years ago, especially when the focal point of the image is no longer there in today's world. I feel like Folsense was almost a giant living photograph that the characters could explore, and I'm super jealous of that, even though its absolutely fictional.
I grew up in a commuter town too, so it was so cool seeing Layton and Co exploring a setting similar to where I lived, just about 50 years earlier.
Cannot recommend this game enough, regardless of how mental the twist was. Thanks for making a vid on it and getting people talking about it again!
Folsense has such a great vibe. The music hit so hard, especially when i was first playing through the game late in the night.
Curious village never got translated into Dutch, so I first played diabolical box as a child. Luke trying to rip of Chelmey's face never made sense to me until I found out there was an earlier game.
Personally it’s a close tie with Lost Future when it comes to which professor Layton game is better.
I think Diabolical box has some better pacing and theme(s), while the story of Lost Future, without spoilers, is better in my opinion.
Hard agree on this one. I think Diabolical Box story relies a lot on wether the player liked the ending or not, while Unwound Future has the better mysteries through the game and a less divisive finale.
@@Stonesands yeah thinking about it again, the ending of diabolical box is more impactful if you take in the story that it’s trying to present. I do still think both games have their own plusses and cons though.
I JUST RAN TO GET MY DS BOX TO SEE IF THE TRAIN TICKET WAS THERE AND INDEED IT WAS WHAT THE HELL!?
I bought this game in 2008 and just noticing this now its like finding a secret tresure, i'm obsessed
I had the same realisation too! Can't believe how much I struggled with that puzzle as a kid meanwhile the answer was RIGHT IN THE DS BOX 😂
thats crazy! i distinctly remember the game telling you to look in the game box for the ticket to solve the folsense puzzle. but maybe that was a hint? cant remember now
@@knucklebump557 Oh, wait that would be so cool, I kinda wanna check the hints now lmao-
Bruh the puzzle literally tells you that ypu can use it😭
The residents of Folsense are real, just not how they look, the “illness” in Folsense is just old age and death. Some of the dialogue for the residents talks about them feeling weaker. Like with girl at the club saying “I may not look but im no spring chicken”. So everyone is seen as a younger version of themselves. With them looking say 20-30ish but being 70-80. Which I feel makes it really hit hard that realization that not just Anton but multiple people wasted their lives in Folsense.
im currently working on a little layton fangame with some friends with flora as our main character and we are trying to give her a fully fleshed out character arc so that she does not feel like the npc she has been through the first trilogy. im so excited and i cant wait to share the results with the layton fanbase.
hey do you have any socials or a discord or something for updates on this?? I'd love to play!!! 😊😊
@@kaisemporium8549 the project kinda died down :( people lost interest. im focused on learning to code so i can do it myself but i have 0 free time currently. ill give my all to it in summer tho :)
Hey, this sounds super exciting! How's this project going? :)
Any update?
She is an NPC? What do you mean by feel like one
20:39 I remember one the hamsters lines by heart. “Aw come on, I’m tired!”
I’m pretty sure the characters’ names are pronounced German, because they look like it: Anton is the German name for Anthony, even Herzen means hearts (and funnily enough, if we attach the nobility “von” to the name, “von Herzen” means “from the bottom of your heart”, and is even correctly conjugated. (The H in Herzen isn’t silent, by the way.))
Just wanted to point that out as you were wondering. ^^
Then, Katia would sound like Katya.
Folsense as a concept is something pretty unique and the setting of it is phenomenal. It's the truest rendition of a Ghost Town, but with the twist that you as the player are unknowingly playing as one of the ghosts.
I tear up every time I hear Sofia reading her final letter. (T_T) I haven't played every single Layton game, but Diabolical Box, Unwound Future, and Last Specter are my favorites. I enjoyed this retrospective very much.
The whole end of the game is so heartbreaking especially Sofia and Anton's voice acting 😭 the music that plays when the scenes of Folsense are fading to what they actually look like all run down and decrepit make me bawl my eyes out every time 😭
32:33
"If you thought that curious village's plot was a reach, then this is a dislocation." Omg xD
just wanted to say how glad i am that you're keeping this series alive with your videos, especially with how sad seeing it fall into more and more obscurity has been :'( (esp with the latest entry and then level-5s american branch shutting down) i just recently bought pandora's box at a flea market since i never actually owned it myself and haven't played it in about a decade, so I'm very happy to see you making a video about it now. always love your thoughtful and funny analysis, keep those videos coming!
It’s nice to see other Layton fans :) I’m glad there’s still good content being made for it
@@cronk2695 hi fellow layton fan! and agreed i'm always happy to see a new layton video pop up somewhere. if u happen to know of any other great channels talking about this series i'd love to hear about it!
@@seldom8252 DearestHershel makes some great Layton content if you haven’t checked him out! He makes a bunch of well edited memes and the occasional in depth serious video
This is also my favourite game! I never thought that everyone is fake, just older than we thought. I haven’t played it since I was a kid but I distinctly remember a little girl character who mentioned that now she gets tired when she plays a lot faster which I always took after the game to be similar to Anton being surprised he got tired sword fighting. Dunno maybe I just don’t want them all to be our imagination either. Great video!!
Okay, I think Layton’s line about the residents having never existed in the first place MAYA BE a mistranslation.
ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN!
A lot of the residents talk about seeing things and feeling older than they appear to be. Ilyana admits to the men in the cast that despite her appearance, she’s “no spring chick.” Niles- who looks very much like a child- says that he can’t run around for very long anymore. This little boy then wonders if he’s just getting older. HMMMMM…
We get a lot of these details about how the residents feel from giving them tea. Personally, I think there was a disconnect in the translation of the script.
You see issues like this pop up a lot with translated media- most notably in games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, where you actually end up missing huge chunks of the story from improper translations.
I think this game has a better translation team, but this one line is the biggest problem.
@Don't Quote Me I’m really grateful for your insights. Your knowledge of Japanese really helped me understand things better.
To be fair, there is the possibility that this line change was done for the english speaking market as a censorship of the, lets be real, massively fucked up nature of the residents fates that's just kinda getting glossed over in the game. Not a single one of these poor people (least of all the CHILDREN) deserved to have their lives ripped away from them by being stuck in an hallucination *for 50 years* . That is horrifying to think about. Anton wouldnt be the only one "waking up" as an old person and little Niles would presumably be a middle ages man by now and thats me being generous.
In this case I would definitely understand if the script translators were actively being given the instructions to soften the ending by changing the line into saying that all the people were part of the hallucination too. We never see any of these people in the end so we also dont know if they are OKAY (which they shouldnt) and what happenes to them from now on to make them having the same fate as Anton any less devestating on too many layers the moment you start thinking about it a bit more.
oh absolutely, i got that from the "and they grew ill and died" because hallucinogens wouldnt do that on their own (as far as im aware), so its likely the illness was just from growing older (and being unable to tell) and subsequently passing away. if everyone thinks theyre young then it looks like a mysterious disease, but theyre not, theyre just dying from old age.
@@buumbaby How does that explain the "people died because they thought they would" in reference to the box tho?
Adding to your comment, In the Spanish localisation is translated as "In truth, neither the town nor its residents really exist as we see them"
MYSTERY CASE FILES IS SUCH A FUN SERIES I USED TO BE OBSESSED WITH THOSE GAMES AS A KID
The twist being a gas leak always felt like a cop-out and hardest to swallow out of most the big Layton mystery solutions. Robots, a fake alternate future city made just to trick you, a high oxygen prehistoric grotto, all seem outlandish but feasible within Layton's whimsical exaggerated reality. But "mass hallucination" that's consistently shared between several people doesn't hold up very well on its face, plus it kinda creates an "unreliable narrator" problem in that you're straight being shown lies through most of the game, it's highly counterproductive to a mystery plot that's presented like a puzzle for the player to solve.
I believe the part about none of the residents being real to be a mistranslation. In the spanish version it's implied that they're not as we see them, which fits some NPC's talking about getting tired more easily and feeling somewhat weak, which could indicate that they're older than what they look like.
26:42 "hats off"? A gentleman never removes his hat Voyan!
really loved this video!! i don’t find professor layton content super often sadly but this retrospective genuinely brought a smile to my face and it’s amazing to see so many other fans keeping the games alive!! have binged all your layton videos since and i hope you keep making retrospectives for the rest of the series too (:
The puzzle where you had to fold the ticket in half was just so creative
I figured that one out pretty quickly bc I like to fold pound notes in the same way to make the queen's face look really dumb
The music and atmosphere in this game is a major reason as to why this is my favourite in the series. Such a great game and then to follow it up with the lost furure, this series has too many brilliant entries. Really good overview and analysis, can't wait for the next one
Luke! Stop that! That's his face!
Also, I love hearing about these games again. Feels like seeing an old friend for the first time in a decade. Can't wait for more.
Personally my favorite is Unwound Future, but I recently adapted this game into a D&D campaign and it’s going well so far!
Care to elaborate?
@@dorkasdaydreams it went well, I did a mini campaign: roughly one session per chapter. I kept the main storyline and let my players solve the mystery. I gave them the premise of Dr Schrader being dead and they were hired to solve the mystery of his death and the box he was studying and all they had was the train ticket and the photo of the box (I had the center piece missing from the beginning). I swapped out some characters and objects to fit a more dnd realm. For example instead of Don Palo kidnapping and impersonating Flora, I had a doppelgänger hired by the man who stole the box kidnap and impersonate one of my players after their first night in Folsense. (Revealed by the fact that he didn’t know the picture was of a goat and not a frog) then when they ran into the guy who stole the box, I used the “he knew it was a goat which meant he had the box”. I also gave my players a wand of metal detection to find the diary keys. I made the curator of the Herzen Museum a ghost who vanished when the players asked too many questions, I also said that all the townsfolk were ghosts the whole time rather than them just not existing at all. I was able to pull some puzzles from the game which worked well. I did some other tweaking throughout too: I got rid of Chelmey and Barton and reduced appearances by Katia and Beluga because I worried my players wouldn’t be as polite as Layton and would interrogate them and solve the mystery too quickly. Overall my players really enjoyed it and it made for a great mini campaign!
@@ClarissaMcLaughlin Sounds awesome!
This game is the one that got me into the professor Layton franchise. It holds a special place in my heart.
Thanks to this one-year-old video, I suddenly realize that I haven't finished Pandora's Box yet! I'm still hoping for a new Professor Layton game on the Switch, but for now I'm going into the storage room to look for my Nintendo 2DS. Thanks for the video @Voyan.
The question that is unsolved and is bugging me till today is HOW TF DID DON PAOLO SHRINK TO COSPLAY AS FLORA!?
It’s simple, he is a master of disguise.
The atmosphere in Folsense is unmatched. That music... 🥰
Just watched the Curious Village video, so this was quite well-timed! Keep up the great work, I can’t wait to watch this! :)
I think this one is definitely my favourite game. The ending especially when it hits you with that reveal, and the music, Iris by Salyu, then the credit images showing how things are winding down. Makes me tear up every time
Makes me so happy to see content on Layton, it's been such a big part of my life for so long. I've lost count of how many times I've replayed them all but they never fail to bring me joy and all the other emotions that they carry in their stories. Especially Lost Future because uhhh yeah thats some traumatising stuff! Why first play through of Lost Future I finished it in the middle of the night and absolutely cried my eyes out! Pandora's Box is a big heavy hitter for me too, and the nostalgia aspect is huge as it was the first one I played that made me fall in love with the series. I hope the professor comes back!! Katrielle just wasn't the same, it was missing the heart
I really love your channel, I usually don’t find a lot of ytubers funny but your jokes have me laughing. It’s really nice seeing someone talk about these games, it brings back memories for me. When I was a kid and scared at night I would turn my ds on and listen to the last cutscene from Db lol
Please continue this series I love it so much I've missed Professor Layton so much I've just ordered myself a 2DS XL and copies of the games I'm just so excited to replay them
Using the music that plays in Super Paper Mario when recapping the previous events at 12:00 for the summary of what happened so far is incredible
I'm so glad to see you making a video series on these games in exactly this format and really hope you'll get around to completing it. Really thankful for being able to listen to you geeking out about those games. Like for so many others here, the Professor Layton games are a massive part of my childhood and I adore them to this day. Curious Village has one of if not the first plot twist in a story ever I remember having an emotional impact on me as a child and Azran Legacy, in my youth, had me pulling my first all-nighter ever the day I bought it, playing through about 80% of the game in one sitting.
I personally tend to view Pandora's Box as my least favorite entry of the original trilogy, but I still like it.
While I'm not as captivated by Folsense as you, I enjoy the game's initial changing of locations.
I had to subscribe after you put the body discovery music over the Dr. Schrader cut scene. You're literally my hero. Time to binge all of your videos
As someone who just played through The Diabolical Box for the first time. I love the mystery of the game and just the overall style. Now onto the next game.
I remember playing pandoras box before curious village and i was so confused why luke just ATTACKED THE INSPECTOR FOR NO REASON!
the flowerbed puzzle also stumped me. Luckily I redraw it on a book and show it to my math teacher. She noticed the quick logical way to solve it and finally I finish the puzzle lol
I can not express how happy I am to find someone who makes professor Layton content
If i had to rank the Layton Games:
1. The Unwound Future
2. The Curious Village
3. The Miracle Mask
4. Pandoras Box
5. Azrans Legacy
6. Spectres Call
Personally, the Unwound Future ro me had the coolest Atmosphere and great Plot (Man i love that Casino Part of the Game) and holy, the reveals, the atmosphere, everything is just amazing.
Curious Village has all that Nostalgia, but also it feels so oldschool and chill, the Plot is great and the characters probably the most likeable in this one.
I love the story of Randall and Layton, Percy and Angelas dedication to him, the bestiful city and the great characters in this one. Also every cutscene with The Maskes Gentleman is just so dope, his miracles really are something.
This game is really amazing and i like the general idea of the plot, but everyone being an illusion realy left a bitter taste in my mouth, and felt wrong. Id rather have them all deaged like Anton, that would have been better in my opinion. Still a great game with amazing atmosphere and probably my favorite cutscene (along with the Casino scene from Future) aka the fight between Anton and Layton
Azrans Legacy really felt so big and all the locations were really amazing to explore, it was something refreshing and new and i really enjoyed it. However i feel like the plot is a little bit too grand, the Aslanti really didnt feel all that amazing , and that its an actual mysterium completely, something fullbown hypernatural any mysterical in a way is something, i just didnt dig as much as the other games. Aurora was cool tho, and the games concept, atmosphere etc still were great, just not as good as the others.
Spectres Call is honestly the one i remember the least. I need to replay that one.
Basically completely agree! Never played Azran legacy though, I need to change that
@@sfav Nice to hear that! Yeah you should play it, its (not chronologically tho) the finale of the series, and its pretty good. However to me, the original trilogy just felt more natural and grounded than the "Prequels" , except "The Miracle Mask" , that one felt so classic and almost like the first game to me, with its own identity and carneval atmosphere ofc , but still, i loved it a lot.
Specters call has really good atmosphere too, good puzzles and decent music. You definitely should replay it. The biggest con is that the 100h RPG mode isn't present in the PAL version, that pissed me off so much as a teen
I'd say:
1. Pandora's Box
2. Unwound Future
3. Curious Village
4. Miracle Mask
5. Spectre's Call
6. Azran Legacy
I also liked Spector’s call the least. Even though the plot twists for Layton games are always INSANE, the giant manatee fighting a robot and protecting a magic garden just felt a step too far
Personally this is my absolute FAVOURITE Professor Layton game-- one time during lockdown I was actually so engrossed in replaying it that I fell down the stairs and had to walk with a crutch for a while after 😅 The music is gorgeous, the animation is great, particularly in the swordfight scene, and even though the plot can be dicey if you read into it too much, it still really gets me emotional. And yes, I've cried at the ending every time I've played it. The puzzles are fun, even though I had to get my brother to help me with the mathematical ones (I have dyscalculia), I am also a huge fan of the slidey ones, and maybe it's bias because this was one of the first DS games I ever played and nostalgia is a key factor, but I think it has way more replay value than its descendants. Sure, if you know the twist there's less motivation to play it again, but the game has so much personality, and colour, and cool details that you could only notice the second time through, that it's just so worth it. God I love this game. Sorry for the text wall lol
From what I remember, I actually enjoyed Mystery Case Files: Millionheir as a kid. Though I recall a lot of it was like an I Spy simulator. I'd also say that Club Penguin: Herbert's Revenge is worth checking out.
Honest the ost in this game is one of my favourites that you just walk around the town and it is calming but has a sense of sadness. I played this game so many times that during nighttime when I need to go to sleep and have school the next day.
Its not my favourite but definitely top 3 for me. I love it so much, simply because of the amazing atmosphere and the incredible soundtrack. Folsense is closely behind Misthallery my favourite location. The twist is far more believable than a huge second london being built underground and the ending always brings tears to my eyes. My only complaint is that you cant go back to Dropstone and that Don Paolo and Flora felt a bit random, but apart from that a brilliant game.
I'm loving this series! Professor Layton was a big part of my childhood playing DS games (along with Animal Crossing), and it's great to see someone giving it the love and deep dives that it deserves!
Your video on curious village is part of why I started playing through all of the layton games!
Tysm voyan for shedding more light on these amazing games!!!
Heck yeah, I live for your Professor Layton videos. This series is severely underrated, more and more as time goes on, so it's really neat to see people like you keep talking about it!
The ticket in the game case, as a kid, this blew me away. I thought this was unbelievably cool
the flower bed haunts me to this day. I don’t understand it and I never will, no matter how many times my math-teacher father explained it to me growing up
Diabolical Box was the first video game I ever owned with my DS being the first console I ever owned, and I got stuck at the dog sliding puzzle as a kid, and never saw the other towns (a common problem for me as a kid). But when I came back to the game as a teenager, holy moly it was so good.
Also Mystery Case Files: Millionheir is actually a decent hidden object game with a varying plot line, would recommend
I really love your videos on Professor Layton, hearing your takes as you replay the games you already know from childhood is so nice. The recap of the game throws me right back into when I played it. I'd love to see more for the rest of the series! Like seriously these videos are so so good!
This was the first Layton game I ever played, and it's still my favorite to this day. I think the ending to this game is way better that Unwound Future's tbh
The train puzzle that gets you to Folsense must be the best puzzle of the series, bc its quite literally a out of the box puzzle
I'm so glad diabolical box is getting the love it deserves, because it is for sure my absolute favorite one. I admit it has a lot of nostalgic value to me as it was my first and I've played it the most (so I know every puzzle solution by heart), but there is just something about it atmosphere wise that's miles ahead of the others. anton and sophias love story at the heart of the game is unrivaled and generally the plot just has heart. in diabolical box i am more invested in the characters than in any of the others. honestly the twist never really seemed that weird to me as a kid, the non-sensical the better, now I can see how it's a bit of a stretch but how is the twist in unwound future not then?
Nonsensical gastown with seemingly contradictory and impossible rules and "death mecha hidden in fake future london that somehow exists under regular london to fake the idea of timetravel" are both on the same level and both suck. Actual supernatural events in this same series(That yes, canonically happened) manage to be more grounded simply because they are a lot simpler and more believable if you believe in those concepts being possible to begin with.
Man, Iris (the end theme) is such a fantastic piece, that i just can't get enough from!
To this day I can still remember the sense of dread I felt when as a child, the animation of Folsense taking back its original appearance played
I hated the game back then because of that x) Even nowadays, trying to replay it gives me that feeling, as I'm interacting with these characters and this town and know the truth
Hi! I don't know if you'll see this, but thanks for this video. I'm now watching it for the second time and I can't wait for you to cover the third game, which is my favorite game of all time. This one's also really special to me though, and you really did it justice with this video. More than anyone else has done. Great editing, audio & a lot of the jokes made me laugh out loud. So thanks!
Also my favorite game in the series, and the first video game to ever have an ending that touched me so much I cried. Holds a special place in my heart for that as narratives in games have since become a special interest of mine. Great video ❤️
I recently replayed this game since I couldn't remember the story well enough to understand it (I was around 10 years old when I first played it and other layton games too, this one just didn't really stick with me as much as say lost future or miracle mask). at first it was a bit boring to me but once Folsense came into the picture I became hooked. I showed it to my partner too and she loved it too even tho she had never even heard of professor layton before it. safe to say that this game has won a special place in my heart
god i so love that you've made this. professor layton is my all time favourite game series, mostly because its really the first series i played and got invested into when i was a kid. my mum always wanted me to trade in one layton game before i got the next one and i'm so glad i fought her on that cuz now i have the whole collection to this day. im so glad you're reviving layton with this video, i rarely get the chance to talk about how much i've loved this series with someone
6:52 OH MY GOD !😭🤣
Oh man, I am an ultimate fan of PL, of DB, I played to the game maybe 6 times, enjoyed it as hell each time. But I NEVER thought about this and now I CANNOT ignore it ! You killed me !🤣🤣🤣
Anyway, thank you to talk about the masterpieces that are Professor Layton games. Personnally my fave Video Games licence of all time. And for me, Unwound Future supremacy. Forever and ever the best of all for me💚 Can't wait for your video on it !
21:28 the music in the background... YOU HAVE TASTE BRO !
Love how you revise my favorite (childhood) games in a funny way. Thank you!
31:32 I think that the reveal makes more sense in the Spanish localisation. When translated to English it would be "In truth, neither Folsense nor its residents really exists as we see them" (Meaning that all residents may appear younger than they do, as Anton, but they would still be real)
9:26 I don’t know how the in game solution spells it out, but you can cut that center “star” piece in quarters by cutting between the points of the star. Then move the four pieces to four corners of the circle to form a square with side length twice the circle radius. I don’t think these games ever expect you to do serious math.
SO GOOD. I still have fond memories of this game and watching your video made me recall just how much I had actually forgotten.
I really hope you continue this series!
out of curiosity, will you also make the unwound future movie?
Yes! It's a larger project so I apologize for it taking so long, anyone who's played the game knows there's lots to cover. But expect it soon!
@@voyan38 understood! take all the time you need, no rush!
Just like so many others, the atmosphere of this game really gets to me. The folsense and forest tracks especially. The melancholy in them has always stuck with me. They’re as haunting as they are beautiful.
The game really sells you on the sorrow that seems to pervade the entire town. Even before you know the reveal, I remember the dreary attitudes of the townspeople rubbing off on me. That dissonance-of the scenery and the music-it was meaningful to me as a kid, even if I can’t articulate it much past what I’ve written so far.
I remember as a kid I’d go to the edge of town (past where Garlands shop is I think) to a dead-end and just… stare at the art of the rest of the city. The parts you can’t reach. Try to imagine what was there, what it was like, if anyone lived there anymore. Something about that combined with the Folsense track, it always filled me with this indescribable sadness. Especially after the reveal.
Now that I’ve grown up, and find myself becoming victim to nostalgia more and more… the main reveal of this game has really gotten to me. That the past is gone, and you lost what you had long ago. It hits me way harder now than it ever did as a kid.
Just… the melancholy in this game. Nothing like it. It’s my favorite as well, I think. Thanks for doing a video on this game, and the series as a whole, I’m really enjoying them
PLS CONTINUE THIS SERIES! Both videos to professor layton u made are awesome✨🙏🏻
i remember playing this game on my ds when i was pretty young, around the age of 7-8, but i couldnt remember the title or plot of thr game. it was just a scratch in the back of my brain wich contained BIG childhood memorys. watching your vid made me very nostalgic and i FINALLY know what that game was called xd im defenetly going to replay this game just for the sake of nostalgia
5:20 he ALWAYS got a puzzle for you. Even in the phoenix wright collab 🤣
This will always be my favourite game, it literally had an impact on my childhood in a good way
I love watching your videos on Professor Layton, I hope you will do the other games as well. I am especially looking forward to your views on Unwound Future as it was my first introduction to Professor Layton and the Puzzle genre ^^
Hey man. I took your advice and went back and replayed this before watching the video and boy am i glad. I played these all when they came out. Theyre all really great but i tpok an edible after work and before beating this and i absolutly bawled my eyes out at the end. It just got me lol
I'm so glad I found this video! This is probably my favorite series of all time and it's nice to relive the games through this recap. can't wait to watch your other videos
Just recently finished this game after so long and I have to say…this game is way better then I remember it. The points you make in this video are really good and I cannot wait to see your views on unwound future!
This is the only Layton game I ever played. Enjoyed it quite a bit as a kid. Remembered it recently when i picked up a 3ds (regretfully I’ve only used that console for a handful of hours) and was shocked at how expensive the games are now. Thank you for letting me relive my time with the game
I can’t wait for your other breakdowns! These games are amazing and while I don’t have my ds anymore I love reliving them through these videos
this game's plot would be improved massively by removing the cutscene where flora gets kidnapped and instead handling it more like unwound future
I just discovered this series of videos today and wow I have never seen such quality takes on the Layton series since I played them way back in middle school.
Can’t wait for the Unwound Future video! (Also where is it 👀)
First of all, great video! As a more recent fan who only discovered PL a few years ago (and has been obsessed ever since, lol), I'm glad to see that the fanbase's love for this series still persists, and I'm looking forward to your retrospectives on the rest of the games! I just wanted to add that it's actually canon that the gas only presented Folsense and its residents as they appeared 50 years ago, not that the gas created them entirely. This would explain Folsense reverting back to its present state at the end of the game, the residents' interactions, Nigel in the end credits, etc. Apparently this is made clear in the original Japanese dialogue, so I have to wonder why the English localizers took this approach instead, as absolutely nothing makes sense when "Folsense isn't real" is taken literally as the explanation behind everything.
Well now I wonder what the situation is like for the Folsense kids. Are they really 50+ year olds who still act like children?? Also everyone in that town has got to have lung cancer
@@guy-sl3kr I assume they are. Even in the English releases, one of the children makes a comment about sometimes seeing flashes of her dad as an old man, but dismisses it as her imagination. Another child makes a comment about not being able to run around as much as they used to, etc.
Honestly, I’m surprised that no one (at least as far as I’ve seen) has much to say about the foreshadowing in PLatDB/aPB. It’s a huge part of the reason why, as farfetched as it might be, the ending feels earned. Absolutely everything built up to the gas reveal (which is something I can’t say about the ending to a certain prequel game…), and I think it’s a shame that this game’s writing pre-third act isn’t praised as much.
(edit: Said foreshadowing also motivated me to solve absolutely every single puzzle I could in order to find all of the diary keys, which I didn’t do on my first playthrough. I think it’s a shame that no one ever mentions Anton’s diary and what it adds to the experience, either.)
@@clemenem7238 Wow, I can see why the game glosses over this because that's arguably more messed up than Anton's situation. The people of Folsense really ought to file a class action lawsuit against the Herzen estate. They'll need the money to pay for all their therapy
Pandora's box was my first Professor Layton game and honestly the puzzles and storyline are burned into my brain I loved it so much,, the hamster mini game was the biggest pain in my ass tho fr
I'm so glad there are other people who have this as their favourite layton game, to me this is just a more heart breaking story than lost future and the ending never fails to make me cry
Loved the video so much, well done!
Seeing this on my feed made me smile wide, Diabolical Box was (and still is!) my FAVOURITE Professor Layton game, and the one that got me hooked on the series! 💕
I'm glad I finally found out how Diabolical Box ends. I played up to the part where Luke and Layton are captured by Anton, but I just could not solve the "escape the rope" puzzle and gave up.
Thank you for your passion with this video. I appreciate it a lot. I am looking forward to your next video about the series because it my personal favourite of the series!
Because I discovered this saga through the soundtrack in TH-cam videos (saw the cool cover and decided to get it), I ended up playing this game FIRST rather than Curious Village. And let me tell you, playing the 2nd game before the 1st one makes a lot of the plot twists a lot more unexpected. In particular, though....
The Don Paolo replacing Flora, Luke trying to remove Chelmey's face, Flora's entire existance, and oh my god Layton's brand on plot twists-
But gotta say, this is still my favorite game with maybe Spectre's Call in second place. The atmosphere, the characters, everything, uff. Just amazing.
This was my first Layton game when i was an early teen
I was introduced to it by my mom who received it from her mom as a gift, cos my mom loves puzzles and mysteries
It continued like that: Oma would get mom one of the games, she would play through it, it would get handed over to me, and id play with much more struggle than my mom cos shes much smarter than me lol
Once the Layton series moved to 3DS, my mom and i made a deal: she would get me the 3DS and id let her use it when she got a new Layton game
My favorite part of this game was the tea set and the final puzzle
Mmmm yeah this one hit me in the feels. Pandora's Box was the first Professor Layton game I owned, and I loved it so much. The soundtrack gets better every time I hear it, and the credits sequence reduces me to tears.
When I was a kid Folsense scared the shit out of me but I loved it, I mean I used to had nightmares with that town but I couldn't stop playing
This is an amazing video I would love to see you go over unwound future. That game has so many great moments.
Anton and I have so much in common. We share the same name, we're both blond and have green eye colors. I'm also a 30-year old born in 1944.