Blair Loveday
Famicom Detective Club is a series that started in 1988, which as I hadn’t quite nailed walking yet I missed this one. To be fair a remake was released 3 years ago, but I didn’t play them so… Ah well.
Anyway I have jumped into the third game of the series Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, to see if you can jump straight in.
It turns out, you can.
The game kicks off with you as a P.I. at Utsugi Detective Agency.
A call comes in and you go down to the scene of an intriguing murder. It turns out that a serial killer that hasn’t been around for a loooong time is back in action. The situation is that a body is found, with a creepy paper bag on the head with a smile on it. And the mystery kicks off.
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into the game, but it is much more of a visual novel than anything. I was kind of hoping for a bit more of a puzzle game like a Phoenix Wright game, but this was a solid surprise. The bulk of the time you will spend is navigating conversation paths.
You generally have a handful of options like to observe, to listen, or to ask certain questions. When I first started playing the game I was kind of half assed clicking through the options, but this is the wrong way to play and I started over. You need to get yourself into the headspace of trying to follow the story and figure out what is going on.
If you don’t do that, it’s tedious, if you do it’s interesting and intriguing. Fortunately, most of the time the writing and dialogue is good enough to make the story land home.
The game has a really nice visual style, not dissimilar to other visual novels.
Some scenes are more animated, some have that nice static objects moving style. It manages to tread that nice fine line to be great to look at but representing that visual novel style. The one complaint is that it is only voice acted in Japanese. This isn’t a major issue for many, but if you are jamming it on the train after a hard days worth of work, then some intense voice acting could have made it an easier game to experience.
On the whole, this is a fantastically created murder mystery with just enough interaction to elevate it in the visual novel space. The twists and turns are solid and engaging, and the game gets bloody dark at times.
Some voice acting in English could have really elevated the experience for me, but regardless, I am glad I checked it out.
Released: August 2024
Rating: PG
Platforms reviewed: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Mages
Publisher: Nintendo