I have finally beaten this most wonderful game. With all of its surprises and puzzles, I am in the final credits. It proposes itself much to its own story and, of course, leaves open a way to a sequel and does a great job of giving fans a constant supply of free content. Oh, in the credits, there is a scene right at the end of the first song which helps you understand more of what happened after you completed it. Aww, it’s kinda cute too, the pictures that tell the story in the final song of the credits.

I must note, there is one mystery left unsolved. There is… I won’t spoil it for anyone. Just one mystery though in the town itself. You will know it if you look at the 4th scene from the end. Ah ha! I was right “To Be Continued…” it says. And then there’s a picture of them getting on a train, but there’s– I bet I already know the story for the next game. If you complete this one, ask me, and I will tell you. Watch me be right.

During the game, I figured out the story far too quickly I guess. RIGHT at the end I figured out the mystery of the Golden Apple, but not to the extent of figuring out the entire game. Professor Layton, or should I say, whoever wrote the story, really knew what they were doing. It was a great ending.

The game took me 15 hours and 46 minutes to beat. If I was speed running it, it would’ve been quicker. Most of the time I was doing other things while leaving my DS open for play. I never figured out what the whole thing about Picarts was though.

For a while, I was realizing the music getting a bit stale, but it picks up once you go past the clock tower. The reason the music isn’t a bother in the beginning is because the story arc and how everything is setup is very well done, and it kind of goes a bit out of focus nearer to the end as you are left with near to no puzzles to solve unless you continue pushing the storyline.

All in all, this is a recommendation for everyone. I’ve never seen a hardgame so accessible to the mass audience. Have fun and buy this game!

– Kevin
=D

[Update]

Upon restarting the game, I found a “top secret” area and went into the instruction booklet to find out what it was. It’s a password you can enter that you get from buying the sequel that unlocks some rare extra. Pretty awesome!

Reading the very bottom of the Wikipedia plot:
“As the first part of a trilogy, the main story ends with the expected ‘to be continued’ message.”
So it looks like it’s planned to have more games even though this game is great all by itself. Awesome job to Level-5 for not hacking together a piece of crap just so they would have a trilogy. Common on the X360 is the practice of putting out crap to get the brand out there and then they will release sequels. 2007 was the year of new IPs, that’s for sure.

[Update 2]

And yet again, there’s sequel news. Check this out: http://ds.ign.com/articles/764/764487p1.html