Parent's Guide: Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright?

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright is an incredible mash-up game that brings two of gaming's best puzzle solvers together in an adventure with a fantasy twist. Upon being miraculously transported to the land of Labyrinthia, a town where logic seems to be a foreign concept, magic runs wild, and the townsfolk believe their very destinies rely on the writings of a mysterious man, known as the story teller, this is one of the duo's biggest mysteries yet.

How do you play Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright?

Being a cross-over, the gameplay is a mix that asks you to solve both the mind-boggling puzzles of Professor Layton, and the court cases of Phoenix Wright. Needless to say, if you've played either - or both - games, you'll be in familiar territory here. While the Layton sections see you exploring the mysterious town in point and click style, touching anything that looks of interest using the Touch Screen, as you chat to the villagers, hunt for hint coins, and seek out the all important puzzles (jigsaws, logic puzzles, and the like), the Phoenix Wright sections see you stepping into the defence box as you take on the town's star prosecutor, in an attempt to prove that the accused "witch" didn't do it - whatever "it" is.

To do this, it's up to you to cross-examine the witnesses, going through their testament chunk by chunk, looking for anything suspicious you can press them on. Find a contradiction in their statement, and you can present a piece of evidence to blow their argument away - but spotting the contradiction is easier said than done. With a crazy cast of characters, and a killer sense of humour, while it may have a more mature plot than previous games, there's plenty of laugh out loud moments, as even the most serious of subject matters are handled in a suitably light hearted way.

How easy is Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright to pick up and play?

In terms of accessibility, Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright is definitely aimed at those who like their games to test their grey matter rather than their trigger fingers. There's a lot of thinking, and a lot of logic required if you want to get through here, with a keen eye for detail being a must.

To help make things a little bit easier, collectible hint coins let you whittle down the options you have in a trial, or give you progressively more specific hints during the puzzles. Keeping the hints coins in mind, it's actually trickier than you'd think to get truly stuck here - although the game is certainly best suited to those who like a mental challenge.

While we wouldn't advise this for the youngest of players, due to its inherent difficulty, we should also point out the complexity of the language involved here, that makes a confident reading ability a must. The game is heavily text based, with a lot of reading to get down, and only fairly sparse voice-overs, with text that's often written with accents in place. 

Sample sentences include:

• "It gets very 'ot in the kitchen you know. I'd 'ave shown 'er my eccezionale cutting skills"
• "and the wainy weather we had till yesterday has compwetewy cweared, so we'll be able to see evewything, even fwom afar."

While it doesn't contain any overt gore, or swearing, Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright does deal with much more mature subject matters than the previous games. Each court case usually involves a murder, and while you don't usually see anything too gory, there's often at least some description of how the victim died - as an example, one died by strangulation, and you'll be shown a court sketch of the fingermarks on the victim's neck. It's all very understated, but parents should just keep in mind that there's a lot more "mild peril" in this than in previous Layton games, especially during the witch trials, where those found guilty of being witches are locked in a cage, and cast into a fire pit.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS