MAELSTROM LEGACY: The Tesla Mystery

I want to love this game, and I do, but it fails to be the game I hoped it to be. Unpolished is probably the best description I can give it. Let me preface this by saying I enjoyed playing Maelstrom Legacy and really hope that Wistfulware continues this series one day. It feels like Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright, as others have pointed out already, which I 100% agree with: there’s a disappearance mystery that you uncover as the story line progresses, and you get closer to the ending by solving puzzles and minigames while talking to all the characters. Those distinct characters are something I fell in love with almost immediately. They all have their own little quirks and personalities (Alpina best girl), making the world feel very alive despite not having too many areas to explore. I first played the prologue that comes with the game as an introduction to the world, and it also does a pretty good job to get you engaged into the plot and general vibe. This all gets elevated by the art. I love the distinct style that fits so well with the slight futuristic, comical world, as well as the cutscenes. Same with the music. If you do anything, then listen to the soundtrack. Please…

I hate to have to give this a thumbs down, but I feel like this game tries so hard to go through the motions of being a Professor Layton-inspired title, only to fumble the bag tremendously when it comes to the actual gameplay: the [i]puzzles[/i]. First, the good: the art is incredibly charming and full of color and style. The characters all feel expressive and vibrant. The world has a lot of thought put into it, an electro-utopian alternate history Paris full of gorgeous setpieces. The story, while a bit complicated and unfortunately mostly told through long text conversations, is interesting as well. The logic battles are effectively just flashy conversations, but that's fine, for the most part. But the meat of the game, the puzzles, is sorely lacking. Many times, the puzzle will just be a sorting question or brainteaser riddle. The difficulty swings wildly from easy pattern recognition to difficult trick based reasoning. Compounding this, there are only 55 puzzles in the game; even the first Layton game had 135 of them, so a handful of weak puzzles didn't distract too badly from the general puzzle quality, whereas here it's much more prominent. The puzzles themselves are also q…

Sadly I cannot fully recommend this game. As someone who sincerly loves Professor Layton, I was really looking forward to this game. But even though the style and the artwork is very nice, the game does not scratch that same spot for me. The story could not catch me (so far) and the puzzles are not challenging enough. But the biggest downside for me is that the puzzles are way to sparse for my liking. Oftentimes it just feels like I'm just clicking through lots and lots of dialogue to progress the story without any actual decisions or input from my side. And the time between puzzles is just to long so I lose interest in the game to often.

[b] Avoid this game. (for now) [/b] There have been ZERO updates to or on this game whatsoever - not even a "hey we're alive" from the devs - since the game released. (4 months ago at the time of this review) I wanted to like this game, too; as someone who grew up on Professor Layton I was surprised to see there were almost zero games like it on Steam. And to be honest, I did enjoy it a bit. However, the game has some major glaring issues that haven't been addressed since launch, mainly in the [i]puzzles[/i] - the main selling point of this game. Several puzzles are either too simple, are misleading, have wrong answers, or have multiple solutions that aren't addressed...plus the fact that the game apparently has less than HALF the puzzles that the first Professor Layton game had makes the issues stand out even more. This is honestly a case where I wish Steam had a mixed review, because I liked the game, it just has too many issues that make it not that great to play.

Bugs and translation issues make this game fall flat. The achievements aren't unlocked after meeting the requirements, and some menu areas are missing text. The English translation is clumsy in some areas rendering many puzzles extremely difficult do to the wordplay required. The game states early on that there is a map, but it doesn't appear to exist. The issues turn this game into a slog, draining nearly all enjoyment.

This is not a good game. It is an attempt at a cute game at best. It is a poor ersatz of a mix between Pr. Layton and Ace Attorney games. The puzzles are moronic : they're either basic logic puzzles or very convoluted attempts at being smart. The logic shield interactions require no deduction, have terrible minigames to uncover answer options and are needlessly timed. The accusation phase is equally obscure in its design. Achievements don't track. You can't unselect options in logic shield interactions. The game says open the map from a menu that does not exist (nor does the map). The exploration is close to pointless : you interact with things and get a bland sentence, sometimes implying "come back later". PIgeon tokens do nothing (they're supposed to, but don't work). The plot (so far) just throws names of famous people at you with no regard for context, and all feels very shallow. I am disappointed, and even after buying it on sale I feel like I wasted 10 bucks. This game is unfinished, and even if it were polished to remove bugs and add some QoL, it would need an overhaul of most of its puzzles to be OK-tier.