I played Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask
[Finished July 10th, 2023. Rating: 3/10]
Professor Layton has always been the type of modest little series I enjoy playing from time to time as a fun distraction. It’s rarely narrative-heavy, but it’s not trying to be — every game is designed as a short collection of brain teasers, with setting and characters lightly sprinkled on top for flavor. Even Unwound Future, the entry that sets itself apart by telling a story with a good amount of depth, still feels like it heavily prioritizes being a puzzlefest above its serious attempts at writing. I try to enjoy these games for their strengths rather than lambasting their weaknesses.
Miracle Mask is the first game in the series to make that feel impossible for me. This isn’t to say it’s more flawed than all the others, because my problem is actually the opposite: it doesn’t know how to commit to the level of quality it seemingly wants to achieve. Unlike its predecessors, the narrative is pushed much more to the forefront here, with instantly compelling setup and a consistently engaging plot full of intrigue. Yet this setup gives way to a disappointing ending that betrays all of that intrigue and bends over backwards trying to force simplistic solutions to its complex problems. It’s like it’s desperately fighting to be more than a status-quo Professor Layton adventure and eventually just giving up.
I’ll start with the good parts, though. For one, Monte d’Or is easily the best setting in a Professor Layton game so far. Not only did I adore the aesthetics of an eternally festive and extravagant oasis city, I was even more drawn in by how developed its culture was around the myth of its creation and the Mask of Chaos as the legendary artifact responsible. For a series with a professor of archaeology as its protagonist, this game is the first time it feels interested in examining things like the formation of cultural beliefs and the ancient history that informs them. The strengths of its setup don’t end there, though: simultaneously, it establishes an existing dynamic between all of the main characters, where their lives are linked by a shared childhood tragedy they all seem to have conflicting feelings on. This undercurrent of personal history runs perfectly parallel to the cultural history, creating an interwoven narrative of the past that quickly becomes addictive to unravel.
Capping all this off is the Masked Gentleman, a main villain oozing with dramatic flair and presence whenever he’s onscreen. Earlier games in the series tend to keep their villains hidden until the last possible moment, springing their involvement on the player as a surprise, but the Gentleman is just another way Miracle Mask defies expectations by placing him center stage as an element of its plot. It makes for a far more thrilling story when he’s constantly antagonizing our heroes with new mysterious attacks on their city, and his power stemming from the relic considered the source of the city’s prosperity is the cherry on top. All the lore and mysteries are funneled into this ominous figure who takes advantage of superstitions to work his ‘magic’, giving him huge potential to push the story’s ideas forward in so many ways.
Hopefully it’s clear why this game caught my interest. Narratives about how cultural beliefs can affect people’s relationships with others and impact their ways of processing trauma, along with how it can be maliciously appropriated by others for their own benefit, are really interesting to me inherently (and have been the focus of a good few of my favorite stories). So Miracle Mask heading straight in that direction from the start was exciting.
To its credit, it does at least do a little with all this potential. The game is interspersed with flashback segments that are pretty great at fleshing out the ways its five main characters approach this ancient culture and their attitudes towards going on an adventure to uncover it. It’s especially good for Hershel Layton himself, whose subtle coping mechanisms are expanded upon to a shocking degree in this backstory. These flashback segments even hold the honor of containing the only puzzles in the series I thoroughly enjoyed, with the Akbadain Ruins section feeling deeply rewarding to explore and work through, not to mention situationally fitting. However, that’s where pretty much all of my praise for this game ends.
Miracle Mask’s present-day segments are certainly skilled at gesturing towards interesting concepts, but that’s pretty much all they’re good for. This is fine during the beginning and even the middle of the game when the flashback segments get to pick up the slack in the execution department, but by the time the plot demands a resolution in the present, the quality takes a nosedive from inoffensive to inexcusable. Not only does the writing of the present-day segments avoid addressing so much of the nuance that was there in the flashbacks, it actively erases it by twisting the established facts to remove any theoretical conflict. It’s as if these two sides of the game were written by entirely different teams and the latter was set on ruining all the efforts of the former. Ironic, considering the finale’s half-baked and half-hearted attempt at a message about the importance of harmony between opposing halves. By the time the credits rolled, I was honestly surprised they hadn’t managed to undo everything I liked about it.
If any parts of the premise I described sounded as interesting to you as they did to me, I would just recommend you check out Higurashi: When They Cry. It’s one of my all-time favorite stories and does such a fantastic job tackling these ideas with the nuance they deserve. Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask should only be played if you want to learn what not to do with these kinds of subjects. In fact… I’m so annoyed with the way they handled it that I’m going to make an additional spoiler section detailing my specific ending gripes. Anyone who wants to remain unspoiled, you can stop reading here, and I hope you have a great day!
This is an official SPOILER WARNING for the full plot of Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. I know I just gave one in the previous paragraph, but it’s just more satisfying to section it off like this. Reading past this point, you should expect spoilers for the entire game as they relate to its ending.
Okay, I really despise how Henry and Angela aren’t allowed to have complex feelings towards the game’s main conflict because of the ‘wholesome’ resolution about the power of friendship — which, by the way, is the most insane overextension of that moral I’ve maybe ever seen in fiction. Henry’s sacrifice for Randall goes far beyond what is remotely healthy or reasonable, and not even in a touching way; he refuses to even remotely move on with his life or find any happiness on the off chance his friend might return to life after being presumed dead for over 18 years. And this is framed as a noble decision, somehow! Randall ends up coming back and throwing a whole fit about how Henry became successful without him and married Angela in his place, which is completely insane to hold against him for so many reasons, and Layton explains that Randall is right to feel that way but it’s okay because Henry didn’t do either of those things. Henry spent his life ensuring every penny he made was ready to be taken from him at a moment’s notice, and arranging a loveless false marriage for himself without allowing himself to feel anything for nearly two decades, and that’s what MM suggests is something true friends should always do for each other. It gets even worse when you consider the element of Henry being Randall’s poor servant who already unhealthily believed that the latter deserved everything for no good reason, and this aspect of their dynamic isn’t called into question at all when Henry is revealed to have made his decision in the present. Plus, it’s just a blatant betrayal of the messages Unwound Future already pushed for. Being stuck in the past and obsessed with owing tribute to your past relationships is bad because you should be allowed to move on… The rich and powerful don’t innately deserve anything more than the lower classes they exploit to stay on top… Miracle Mask’s ending is practically designed to spite all of that. Really depressing.
I promise I’ll have a more positive review next time, though. I’ve been reading Trigun lately and it’s phenomenal.
