Professor Layton Problems

I while back, I reviewed Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.  I found it excellent.  It was smart, witty, made you think, and had a great story to boot.  The key, as always, were the puzzles.  Many were of the "don't overthink this" variety, which I appreciated.  I decided to go back and play the first game, The Curious Village, to see if my opinion of it had changed.

When I first played Curious Village, I was very upset at it.  The puzzles were mostly of the "try and guess what we mean!" variety.  There were far fewer spatial puzzles, just word puzzles that felt more like a sadistic math teacher torturing his students.  Unfortunately, my opinion of Curious Village still remains the same.  It's strange how Diabolical Box can be so good, and Curious Village so bad.

I don't know if I'm the only person who feels this way.  I suspect I am, since I haven't heard anyone else state this.  It also makes me a little worried for the third game, since the only thing that made one game so very, very good and one game so very, very bad are the puzzles.  If the puzzles in the third game are the same type as the first...