3.5/5 ★ – MadisonMarceline's review of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.

A pretty good game (aesthetics, solid puzzle design, Layton, Luke and Flora are super sweet) that is still unfortunately a weaker entry than Curious Village for a variety of reasons. There are more annoying puzzles (Box Cutters were quite terrible), the locations aren't as memorable and (this is the biggest problem) the story just doesn't have the same punch. Its big narrative twist feels more like a contrivance than a genuine mystery to solve like with how CV handled its twist. And the main conflict in the story ends up being written in the worst kind of way where the game expects me to feel sad when this whole situation had no well established reason to happen. The sword fight is the coolest scene in the series though, so it has that going for it.