User blog comment:Sunshineandravioli/Stuff Sunshine Likes, Issue I/@comment-2186558-20120128020259/@comment-1194745-20120129000315

Well, that really depends on your level of skill - I had a lot of difficulty with the final battle the first time around due to my lack of experience and slow computer framerate (especially with the final core, which requries an unholy extra-complex maneuver where you have to excecute a double fling and grab the core in midair, something that took me over two minutes on its own), so once or twice I did end up running out of time. With the Layton series, the main characters and even some of the secondary characters have a lot of depth to them and are really compelling, but the minor, townsfolk-y characters are generally pretty one-note, mostly because they usually only appear in one part of one game and you don't get enough time or interaction with them to learn more than a couple of things about them. Even then, though, some of the minor characters have enough revealed about thim that they become more fleshed out, especially when you gain enough picarats to unlock the character bios that reveal a little bit more background on them, and some of them even in the few times you speak to them reveal enough to become a pretty compelling character (this isn't really true in Curious Village, as back then they were really working more to set up the foundation of the then-unique gameplay and introduce you to the basics of the central characters and whatnot, but in the sequels there's some minor characters that actually make you want to learn more about them, with one in particular in the third game that was just such a hilarious basis for a character that the fandom just ate it up and started developing her further in fanfictions and such like there was no tomorrow XD)

With a title like what I gave this conversation, I could present it to universities as an article for use in classroom studies XDD