Doctor Lautrec and The Forgotten Knights (Nintendo 3DS)

This is an adventure game set up in a turn-of-the-century Paris. It features a professor of natural history who likes to solve mysteries, and surrounds itself with other interesting characters.

The concept is that you get to explore the city and the catacombs beneath it.

When it comes to the surface of the city, the game gives you an opportunity to learn quite a few true facts about old and modern Paris (as well as other things too). The amount of research that went in the game is quite impressive.

When exploring the catacombs, there's a labyrinth aspect to it. You need to avoid policemen (they have patterns that reminded me of the game "Commandos"). And perhaps move some boxes to reach certain areas.

Reaching some areas of the underground will also ask you to solve puzzles. These are not very difficult. In fact, there are only a few categories of puzzles. They are easy, but still rewarding, and don't break the flow of the story. After all, you already did some work to get to the puzzles. And there's other work ahead, as you get to "tame" the spirits that inhabit the treasures.

Since this is more of a Japanese vision of Paris, the catacombs hold treasures. Some of these treasures have a "guardian spirit", which must be defeated by using the other spirits in your possession.

My impressions so far (five hours in the game):

- well-written, fun non-violent story
- unique mix of game mechanisms
- good production values, with excellent voices and nice anime cartoons

But if you are the kind of player that would skip story scenes to get to the next mega-challenging puzzle, then probably this is not a game for you.

The first decent puzzling adventure on 3DS. There are more than a few similarities to Professor Layton, but in this case, that isn't a bad thing - the game's good fun. I recommend it.

Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights is a seriously good game. As other reviewers have noted, there are an awful lot of conversations between the characters, much of which is unnecessary. But the actual labyrinths are often fiendishly difficult and in many locations you have to deliberately fall off platforms to get to a treasure chest or doorway. There are two Boss monsters to defeat and they transform into a different form just when you think you've won.
However, the best bit is when the game is over and the credits have run, because then you get to carry on exploring even more difficult labyrinths and taming tougher monsters. The main game took me about 58 hours and I am a further 20 hours into the second section.
My advice for this game is to save often, particularly when you reach a puzzle door, as some of the puzzles are quite tricky--like the Mensa-style sequence and the Minefield--and you can cheat a bit then reload your saved game and sail through the puzzle!