Sound:
L – Luke. What the fuck was up with his voice?
M – Music. Decent, but didn’t follow the story. Not enough musical themes tied to story themes.

Story:
C – Character. This ties into the next one, but so many characters are introduced and played out for their plot point purpose, but it ends up being entirely one-dimensional. Speaking of one-dimensional. Maya.
T – Thematic cohesion. There are so many great themes and symbols at play in the game and it introduces them all with such promise, but then never follows through, hoping that a info dump at the end is enough. A mystery is intriguing for more reasons than seeing where all the technical pieces fit into place. Creating a traumatic event in a character’s history and then tying it all up in a happy ending isn’t the same as true exploration of theme. Having characters give dramatic speeches with emotion isn’t the same as real emotion. Professor Layton has had varied success (Unwound Future = excellent, Azran Legacy = pretty good, Last Spector = terrible), and this ended up being like Last Spector even though it started off like it could be more like Unwound Future.

@Mr. Bup: I heard some other opinions on this game, which marries two series I never cared for, and they said that it seemed like the devs didn’t know how to get these two characters together so they put them in a world foreign to both, to their disappointment. That seems a bit of a shame, if true.