Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights
Feb. 16th, 2014 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroIt’s the thrill of the hunt for treasure animatus, you know, not actually acquiring the treasure. It’s not like he’s one of those boorish “treasure hunters” or anything. He just loves figuring out puzzles, that’s all. Really.
There is not, and was never any question that this is a Professor Layton rip-off.
Herschel Layton is a bit of a prig, a bit of a stuffed shirt, but you can't help but like the guy. Lautrec is a consummate asshole. When Layton talks down to Luke, it's in a chiding but fatherly way. When Lautrec talks down to his girl Friday, it comes off as infantilizing and misogynistic.
There are only half a dozen different types of puzzles (crosswords, spot-the-difference, puzzle pieces, minesweeper), stealth segments (ugh!) in every dungeon, hunt-and-peck searching game play, and faux-rpg mon battles. Like Science Papa, they tried to make a game that looked like a direct rip-off without actually understanding why the original worked, and in turn screwed up the game play.
Every quest follows the same sequence: A riddle that you have to wander from place to place while the characters solve (even if you solve it before they do, you can’t just jump ahead—there’s no real challenge here, which is a stupid setup); a hunt-and-peck for the hidden symbol at the entrance to the underground; a stealth section through the underground; several stock puzzles; and battles to “tame” the various treasure mons. (If you kill a mon instead of taming it, or one of yours dies in the attempt, you need to spend your limited jewels or reputation points for a healing item.)
Then, as the game goes on and the mon battles get harder, you’re expected to go back through the previous quests over and over again to grind jewels and experience for your mons. But it’s okay, you only need to re-do the hunt-and-peck, the stealth sections, and the battles. No need to worry about doing those nasty, nasty puzzles again.
And should you fail a mon battle (which can happen simply by not bringing in the right kind of mon or strong enough mons, which you can’t know in advance is going to be a problem), you’re booted out of the dungeon and have to do it all again—including that dungeon’s puzzles, and watching all the cutscenes.
The 3D mode feels like it was thrown in at the last minute. It adds nothing of note.
Overall: Somebody saw that the Layton series was making money and thought, “Hey, if we ripped that off, we could make money, too!” but had no idea what made the Layton games good. I’m sure there’s an audience who likes this (particularly if you like stealth segments, puzzle-ish mon battles, random French history, and mild misogyny), but I don’t think it’s the Layton audience and I don’t really think it’s me.
There is not, and was never any question that this is a Professor Layton rip-off.
Herschel Layton is a bit of a prig, a bit of a stuffed shirt, but you can't help but like the guy. Lautrec is a consummate asshole. When Layton talks down to Luke, it's in a chiding but fatherly way. When Lautrec talks down to his girl Friday, it comes off as infantilizing and misogynistic.
There are only half a dozen different types of puzzles (crosswords, spot-the-difference, puzzle pieces, minesweeper), stealth segments (ugh!) in every dungeon, hunt-and-peck searching game play, and faux-rpg mon battles. Like Science Papa, they tried to make a game that looked like a direct rip-off without actually understanding why the original worked, and in turn screwed up the game play.
Every quest follows the same sequence: A riddle that you have to wander from place to place while the characters solve (even if you solve it before they do, you can’t just jump ahead—there’s no real challenge here, which is a stupid setup); a hunt-and-peck for the hidden symbol at the entrance to the underground; a stealth section through the underground; several stock puzzles; and battles to “tame” the various treasure mons. (If you kill a mon instead of taming it, or one of yours dies in the attempt, you need to spend your limited jewels or reputation points for a healing item.)
Then, as the game goes on and the mon battles get harder, you’re expected to go back through the previous quests over and over again to grind jewels and experience for your mons. But it’s okay, you only need to re-do the hunt-and-peck, the stealth sections, and the battles. No need to worry about doing those nasty, nasty puzzles again.
And should you fail a mon battle (which can happen simply by not bringing in the right kind of mon or strong enough mons, which you can’t know in advance is going to be a problem), you’re booted out of the dungeon and have to do it all again—including that dungeon’s puzzles, and watching all the cutscenes.
The 3D mode feels like it was thrown in at the last minute. It adds nothing of note.
Overall: Somebody saw that the Layton series was making money and thought, “Hey, if we ripped that off, we could make money, too!” but had no idea what made the Layton games good. I’m sure there’s an audience who likes this (particularly if you like stealth segments, puzzle-ish mon battles, random French history, and mild misogyny), but I don’t think it’s the Layton audience and I don’t really think it’s me.
