What's impressive about the series, though, and especially in Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, is that while the aspects of game and story are almost completely separate, it manages to tie both of them together into an at least somewhat cohesive whole. It's both a collection of brainteasers and a point-and-click adventure game without being bad at either one.
There isn't a lot to say about the "game" part of Diabolical Box, but there's something to be said about its meta-game . Whenever anything needs solving, the game has you solve one of 138 puzzles (with 15 more puzzles outside the main adventure mode), which are as varied in both style and difficulty as you'd expect. Everything from riddles to sliding puzzles to math questions is rated in Picarats (the higher the number the harder the puzzle), which serves as both point system (you unlock extras by having X number of Picarats), and as a way to guide your thinking.
It's subtle, but in both a puzzle's Picarat score and in the wording of the puzzle itself lie potential tricks themselves. This is obvious in riddles, of course, but there are those times when I've over thought a puzzle simply because of its high Picarat score. I'd already come up with the right answer, but I dismissed it because I thought it was too simple for a puzzle that was supposed to be hard.
On the other hand, because there are so many times in which the simplest answer is the right one, you can find yourself thinking simple on the puzzles that actually do require you to think your answer through. It's a dynamic that presents itself the entire game, and it encourages you to make sure have the right answer before tapping submit (wrong answers cause you to lose Picarats, which can only be regained by turning off the DS).
Another facet of the game I found myself thinking about often was the game's potential for multiplayer. My pride took a hit every time I asked someone for help, sure, but having an entire room of people attempting to solve a riddle turned out to be much more fun than struggling through it on my own. If you'd rather like to solve all the puzzles yourself, though, know that you can replay any puzzle, which means you can have a group try to solve it while you dangle the answer over their head.
And with the puzzles being the entire point of the game, you wouldn't expect there to much in the way of story, but it's arguably half the game. The sections between puzzles skillfully emulate old adventure games, albeit with more clear borders (want to get information? Solve this riddle). The surprising thing is that the story provides motivation for solving puzzles as well as a context.
The plot's simplicity is reminiscent of a children's movie, though it's more evocative of Miyazaki than Disney. It also provides more variation than last year's Curious Village. In Diabolical Box, you're traveling to different cities by train rather than explore one town.
The pacing is faster as well, which lead to some 4-5 hour sessions on my end. It does a good enough job at getting you through frustrating puzzles. There's also a higher attention to production values, with more cutscenes and spoken dialogue than in Curious Village. When all was said and done, I felt adequately satisfied during the last cutscene, even if it didn't mean I was done with the game yet.
The puzzles live up to expectations of the series, the story has as much mysticism and deducing as you'd expect, and it's a great multiplayer experience (albeit "Local"). If you're a fan of teasing your brain (as well as teasing the brains of others), occasional frustration, and British accents, this is the best the DS has to offer you, and the best alternative parents have to watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse again.
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