Professor Layton and the Lost Future (also known as Professor Layton and the Unwound Future in US) is the third and final game in the original trilogy, the others being Curious Village and Pandora's Box. It plays pretty much identically to the previous games, being that you use the touchscreen exclusively for the whole game. You move around by pressing the arrows that appear onscreen, and investigate objects by tapping on them with the stylus. The key gameplay is finding puzzles and then solving them, and the story that revolves around these puzzles. The game boasts 168 puzzles, which are a lot! 153 of the puzzles can be found within the story mode, and the remaining 15 serves as bonuses which you must unlock by completing minigames within the story mode, these extra puzzles are extremely hard. Continuing the trend set by previous games, the rules of each puzzles are explained within one screen, but it is noticeably wordier now. There are a wide variety of puzzles but there are several types that keep cropping up, so your enjoyment of the game depends on whether you like these types of puzzles or not.
To begin with, there are a bunch of shape based puzzles, which involves moving blocks around on a tiled square when there are only limited empty spaces. The blocks are usually oddly shaped objects which makes the puzzles harder. A variation will be swapping the puzzles shown in the blocks around and reconstructing the images in a different way. The next type of common puzzles are visual-based, designed to confuse you with a tangled mess. These involves checking which are the two ends of a rope among of mess of ropes, or reshuffling the tangled ropes such that only two are connected. Further examples include checking how many posters there are on the screen (the posters are taped on top of each other so only the edge and corners peek out) or how many ripples are in a pond when several stones are thrown in. Tangrams feature in several puzzles, which you need to manipulate by rotating and flipping them. Then you might have to check out what's the original shape that created the mirrored image. The wordier puzzles have you reading several statements and then deducing which person is lying or what object it is talking about.
You might have to count some items or be thrown into several mazes with specific conditions, and trying to make it out from one end to another. Personally, it feels like The Lost Future's puzzles are much harder than previous games. Thankfully, Hint Coins return, which you gain by tapping in certain areas in the environment, and you use these to unlock hints. In additional to the three hints given, there is now a Super Hint for each puzzle, which basically gives you the answer. From the very start of the game you'd notice an uplift in quality. The animations are smoother and cleaner, not as pixilated anymore. The artworks are nicer too, as well as the character portraits. The story is told via the animated cutscenes, dialogue with character portraits and static backgrounds, and fullscreen artworks. The story has a lot more unusually designed characters this time around, including talking animals. The game is story-heavy, more so than previous games, with puzzles being infrequent in the earlier parts of the game as it sets the story up.
That said, The Lost Future has the best story out of the three games, it is intriguing but does stall in the middle where it ends up being a big runaround. Still, it is the biggest story in terms of scale, with a brilliant twist during the climax, and an amazing and emotional ending. You get to see a side of Professor Layton that you've never seen before, and it was fantastic. The whole game is worthwhile just for those ending scenes alone. It contained just the right amount of mystery and drama. The story begins when Professor Layton and Luke receive a letter from the future, and the pair end up travelling ten years into the future, and have to solve a mystery... with their adversary being the future Professor Layton. Rounding out the story is a wonderful cast of characters. The Lost Future also has the biggest map yet for exploration, although it takes place in both present and future London. However, the tedious nature of walking around makes you wish that there were some sort of fast-travel system. Furthermore, it is even easier now to miss puzzles during the game as some puzzles require you to interact with an object multiple times before it shows up.
The game blocks progression at certain points and lets you continue only when a specified amount of puzzles are completed. There are several minigames, including a Parrot minigame, where you draw ropes and the parrot will automatically try to reach from one end of the screen to the other. Then you'll have the Toy Car minigame, where you place arrows to direct the car around the screen, collecting all the items and reaching the destination. Finally, there is is a Story Book minigame, where you collect stickers for solving puzzles and filling up a storybook with the appropriate sticker on each page. After you finish the game, there are several bonuses unlocked depending on how good you were at solving the puzzles. You will get to unlock profiles, artwork and music. Overall, Professor Layton and the Lost Future is more of the same, yes, but it refines the formula and gives it a nice graphics boost. The story is fantastic with an emotional ending. The Lost Future is highly recommended and is the best game in the series yet.
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