chuckro | Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box in numbered form:
1. If you liked the first game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, you will also like this. It’s basically more of the same in terms of gameplay, graphics, music and style.
2. It is very much a sequel in that it does contain spoilers for the first game, though you might miss them if you aren’t paying attention. It’s also a little harder and the puzzles are a little more obtuse, so if you’re interested in the series, you should probably start with the other game. (They're definitely a bit more hard-up for puzzles--I've noticed a few annoying "gotcha" puzzles, and a couple of semi-repeats. And the Knight’s Tour and peg-jumping puzzles, with 6 variations each, get a bit old. Though I'll admit, the new variations on sliding-block puzzles, while fiendish, were clever.)
3. The biggest addition would be in terms of mini-games, which are a bit more varied than the previous game, and include a lot of random pieces to collect in order to complete them. These include two jigsaw puzzles, a set of nine “spot the differences”, the tea set minigame (which involves a decent amount of guessing and therefore gets annoying as you brew your 100th cup of awful tea), and the hamster exercise game.
4. The plot manages to do a serviceable job as a mystery, and the reveal explains why everyone you meet has a puzzle for you in an effective way that is nonetheless completely different from the first game. I found this amusing.
5. Sdrawkcab kniht ot lufesu netfo s‘ti.

If another sequel makes it over from Japan (apparently there are five games in the series over there, and the third is listed as TBA 2010 for US release), I'd totally buy it.