Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (Nintendo 3DS)

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is the sixth game in Professor Layton series, and the third game in the second (prequel) trilogy. Continuing on the story of Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, Layton and Luke are in to crack their brains on yet another 150 puzzles of all kinds while trying to uncover the secrets of the ancient Azran civilization that predates everything known to mankind. In the cold snowy rural area, beckoned by and old colleague, professor Sycamore, Layton, Luke and Emmy arrive to uncover the mystery of a living mummy, which in turn appears to be a resident of a lost Azran civilization, a young girl called Aurora. But the criminal organization known as Targent is also on to get her and everything Azran-related, and they’ll stoop to anything to make it happen, putting Layton and his friends in constant danger and fight for their lives.

The gameplay is similar to its predecessor, and the first Layton game for 3DS, but this game includes more dynamic and action sequences, and not just through the cinematics, some of which require puzzle-solving in real-time (i.e. puzzle-fight mini-game trying to shoot down enemy missiles and drones launched at your airship). Hunting for hint coins is just as before, but there are many animated features on actual location sets which was not used in the previous game (i.e. you click on a water hose which starts sprinkling around and tosses something off which reveals a hint coin). There are new and recurring characters in the story, and almost all of them will have some puzzle to offer in a typical Layton sense.

Layton’s journal, list of mysteries, unlockable episodes that show sliced events with other characters, and collectable items are unchanged. However, mini-games and additional items are all new. These include:

• World Times – which basically contains a collection of interesting articles about events happening around the world written by one of the female NPC who is a reporter
• Dress Up – mini-game where you have to make clothes for a client based on what they want to look like (i.e. cute, trendy, formal, casual or glam), the affinity of each aspect is marked in up to five stars, and each clothes piece will affect in positive or negative way one of the five categories, plus characters themselves might have additional wish such as preferring specific color range for a particular item
• Nutty Roller – mini-game where you control a small squirrel which is on an elevated area and can push boulders and nuts downwards with the main goal of trying to put the nut inside the tent (additionally, certain seeds can be used to throw in the holes to grow a tree and make an obstacle that way)
• Bloom Burst – mini-game where you try to water all the trees and make them bloom, on a maze grid-set where you have limited number of reachable blocks you can place (some can reach horizontally up to 3 blocks on each side, some can reach 1 block on every side, even diagonally, etc.), with a goal to reach every tree (additionally perfect goal is to try and cover entire maze), but there are poisonous mushrooms that if watered will create a negative effect so you may on occasion have to try and work around them