When the Famicom Detective Club duology was released outside of Japan for the first time in 2021, there was excitement all around. The games were originally released for the Famicom in Japan in 1988, and though their re-releases stayed true to old mechanics and therefore showed their age a little, I had a pretty good time with them. When Emio – The Smiling Man was then announced at a Nintendo Direct earlier this year, I was keen to see what the team would do with a cool, Nancy Drew-esque kid detective property but also more freedom to update the game’s mechanics. As it turns out, Nintendo have decided not to mess with the formula, instead creating another game that feels identical in almost every way to its predecessors.
Once again, it is up to the Utsugi Detective Agency to solve a grizzly crime filled with twists, turns and a host of suspicious characters. I described the original games as being like a ‘never-ending loop of the investigation sections of Ace Attorney’ and am yet to find a better way to describe this part adventure game, part visual novel-style mystery. You’ll move between locations, examine scenery, and talk to people about the case at hand. Any information you manage to collect is noted in your notebook, which you can use to refresh your memory on details about the case and connected individuals – and occasionally to present this information to others.
In theory, this should lead to a neat gameplay loop that is straightforward to move through when you have an idea about the direction the case is taking. Asking someone the right question opens up new topics of discussion, which then leads to new information or a new location to visit. But, just as in the previous games, this isn’t always the case, and things don’t always work the way you’re expecting. Sometimes, trying to figure out what the game wants you to do in order to progress a conversation, or open up a new location, means just wildly clicking through dialogue prompts you’ve already tried until you arbitrarily hit the one that magically suddenly works. When I came up against this problem in the original games, I chalked it up to a faithful recreation of dated mechanics. Now that this is a new game in the series, it annoys me a little more.
At the end of each in-game day, you will get the opportunity to ‘review’ that day’s investigation process, consolidating and organising the information you’ve collected into more cohesive thoughts. It’s a neat way for the members of the detective agency to share information in-game, and a nice way for you as the player to cement what each piece of evidence means as part of the broader case. There isn’t a huge consequence for getting things wrong during the review, so it rarely feels consequential – though one of the game’s extra features does allow you to see how you’ve fared in each chapter after you’ve completed it. I did enjoy these sections as a way to really solidify my thinking, though – it really helped with the pacing of the narrative.
And the narrative is where the game is strongest. Nobody is doing gruesome mystery quite like the Famicom Detective Club games, because nobody else seems willing to be quite so violent, or tackle such mature themes. There are times when it handles those themes a little clumsily, but it’s hard to know how much of that feeling is caused by strange translations from the original Japanese, or simple cultural differences. I’m also not sure how much of this was intentional misdirection to throw me off the solution to the true nature of the crimes committed, and how much was just that there were some characters who gave me bad vibes for some unrelated reason.
While you once again spend most of the time playing as the nineteen year old male detective from the previous two games, you’ll also spend a good amount of time playing as Ayumi – another detective at the Utsugi Detective Agency who is a very talented detective in her own right. While people were willing to be kind of gross towards both protagonists at times, it was hard not to notice that people tended to be gross towards Ayumi in a way that commented on her physical appearance, and people were gross towards the other (unnamed) protagonist about Ayumi and how much they liked her physical appearance. Even when they were speaking respectfully towards her, there was also a layer of openly expressed weirdness to the interactions.
The mystery itself is captivating if quite gruesome, with both protagonists using their individual relationships with witnesses to tease out information and propel things along. It never gets stale, with the detective agency’s current case – the murder of a fourteen year old middle school student – sharing many similarities with a case of eighteen years prior that saw three teen women brutally murdered by an entity known as ‘The Smiling Man’. Having now become an urban legend, The Smiling Man is known for leaving behind a paper bag with a smiley face drawn on the front over his victim’s heads. It’s super creepy, and the story behind how the tale of The Smiling Man came to be is darkly fascinating. The ending of this game genuinely surprised me, even if I was grimacing through some of its grittier reveals.
I wish, so badly, that they’d made some more improvements to the series with this newest entry. There’s a solid and simple foundation here, and a series with such a unique and self-assured identity that could be excellent if it was a little easier to navigate. Trying to have conversations with characters shouldn’t feel like they rely on hitting the right options by chance. There have been some UI updates, but otherwise, it feels like they decided they were happy with the formula they established, flaws and all – and sometimes, adding a new entry to an old franchise means you need to embrace a bit of innovation to iron out the kinks.
Player2 reviewed Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club on Nintendo Switch, using a code kindly provided by Nintendo.
