Playtime breakdown:
Main Game: 22h 55m
London Life Main Quest: 27h 59m
London Life all available quests (non-WiFi required), play to Jan 1, learn all 32 recipes, max level Taxi Driver, Ticket Agent, Bus Driver livelihoods: 26h 1m
London Life final stats:
Happiness: 2,728,260
Wealth: 6,726,793
It's more of the same types of puzzles that are found in the first three Layton games. The final "battle" consisting of a series of several puzzles is an interesting concept. There being a handful of puzzles that are either trick questions, not really puzzles, and most egregiously one that has a wrong solution based on how the riddle is worded and one that has well over 100 possible solutions but only accepting one of them based on its wording knocks this down from the 8/10 I gave to the prior three games. The mini-games were decent. Considering there are bonuses that are unlocked based on how many Picarats you obtain, I'm not sure why they kept with the convention of decreasing the number of Picarats you receive from solving it if you get it wrong and try again, since you can just reload after getting the correct solution and gain the full amount of Picarats by solving it on your "first" try. I can't imagine many people playing through this without doing so and then having to play through it again in order to unlock everything. A personal preference, but thankfully there weren't too many sliding tile puzzles that I abhor.
In addition to the main game, included is what they've called an RPG in London Life. It's more of an activity than a game, as you take the role of someone who has moved to a miniature London. I understand it is similar to Animal Crossing, which I've never played. There are no battles to fight and the only thing that resembles anything close to HP is your character's Happiness, the max of which increases every time you buy something or complete a quest, and the only things that decrease it are a bat or mouse touching you, failing at picking flowers or fishing, and someone saying something mean. You can restore your lost Happiness by eating something, being in your apartment, someone says something nice to you, or if you happen to pick certain flowers or catch certain fish. When your Happiness reaches 0, it simply can't go any lower. The only negative to not having max Happiness is that you will earn less from performing a job. Each day, about a half dozen quests become available, many of which are repeatable, which follow one of a few basic structures: bring someone an item (almost always either purchased from a shop or restaurant, or a flower that you have to pick from various flower boxes, or a fish you have to catch by fishing), deliver an item from one person to another, escort someone to a location, or find a lost item. As far as I'm aware, you can't fail at any of them. There's also a main line of quests that lead to the conclusion of a plot. You can continue playing after finishing this and some new quests become available. Now that Nintendo has shut down wifi for the DS, some quests are impossible to get. In addition to the quests, there are a half dozen Livelihoods that you can perform to earn money (Wealth), all of which are very repetitive: Trash Picker (walk around the city and pick up all the crumpled up pieces of paper in the streets), Bellhop (deliver 6 pieces of luggage to rooms in the hotel), Ticket Agent (fill ticket orders for the train by playing something vaguely similar to Classic Concentration), Juggler (juggle for 1 minute and earn points each time you catch a ball or do a spin while the ball(s) are in the air -- I found successfully pulling off a spin to be extremely inconsistent), Bus Driver (basically drive a circle around the city, picking up people at the four bus stops and dropping them off at other bus stops until you feel like stopping), and Taxi Driver (pick up a passenger a the lone pick up spot, drive them to their desired destination, drive back to the pick up spot, and repeat until you want to stop). Each of the Livelihoods level up when you earn enough Wealth doing so, with the max level being achieved when you've earned 1M Wealth at that Livelihood. Gaining 1M Wealth takes a long time. There are quests that are only available on the in-game Christmas, New Years Day, and the birthday you give when you start. The in-game calendar started on the actual day I started playing (according to the DS's calendar), which I can't believe is a coincidence, so if you want to get all these without having to advance through a large chunk of the year, I would suggest changing your DS's calendar to late in the year and entering your birthday accordingly.
For the main game, if you liked any of the other DS games (I can't comment on the 3DS entries), I would think you'd like this one. For the London Life side game, just don't go in expecting a standard computerized RPG.
