Professor Layton and the Curious Village -- Riddle Me This.

I have put in about five and a half hours into Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I've solved roughly forty-five puzzles thus far. Every puzzle found up to my current position within the game. Professor Layton and the Curious Village is an adventure game with a strong edutainment vibe. The game follows the story of Layton and his apprentice Luke as they search for clues in an ever broadening mystery. The gameplay however amounts to puzzles. Nothing but puzzles. As you move about the village of Mystere you'll be tapping away with the stylus. Tapping here and there and everywhere looking for hint coins and puzzles. As they're both everywhere in the game. You'll tap a chair and get a puzzle or tap a character and they'll give you a puzzle. There isn't any rhyme or reason to it. The game features a character named Granny Riddleton who happens to have a shack where any missed or unsolved puzzles will end up. You can go to her to find anything you've missed. That's just how stuffed anywhere and everywhere the puzzles are. The game keeps a running tally of the puzzles and certain instances of the story will require you to have solved a set amount. So you don't need to solve them all to get through the story. Each puzzle has a set reward called picarats for  being solved based on the difficulty. So you might find an easy puzzle valued at ten picarats, or a rather tough one valued at fifty picarats. If you get the solution the on the first attempt you'll get the full reward value. If you're incorrect and need to try again the reward value drops with each wrong answer. The game also keeps a running total of your picarats with the promise of something good happening when you earn a certain amount of picarats. Some puzzles come with rewards beyond the picarats. You might find gizmos or pieces of a torn up painting or items of furniture. There are three areas in the in-game menu where you can assemble the gizmos and the torn up painting and place furniture in Layton's and Luke's rooms. With the furniture you're trying to appease the tastes of each of them. All three offer the promise of something good happening upon successful completion of each one. The puzzles themselves are representatives of classic brainteasers. They run the gamut from riddles, to geometry, to optical illusions, to logic puzzles, to spatial relation and slide puzzles. For the most part the puzzles are decent fun even though they'll remind you of being back in school. The problems come in from really poor phrasing in what they want from you. More than a few of the puzzles are poorly written. This only leads to annoyance and frustration. The game offers a hint system. You can buy a hint with a hint coin. One coin per hint. Three hints per puzzle. Another problem here is again the poorly written hints sometimes offer no help. And when I'm saying the game has poorly written puzzles I'm not referring to the translation. This game received the same highly professional translation from Nintendo that they've given all their games in the last few generations. The problem is the puzzles themselves. As of right now this is a slight annoyance and I'm not sure if it's going to grow into something more than that. I'll just have to play on. And maybe the story will make the difference. Maybe the mystery turns out to be something great. We'll just have to wait and see.