Now Nintendo is back with a new Famicom Detective Club game once again courtesy of veteran developer Mages. Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club jumps right into things with the serial murder of a teenager, something that not all players may be comfortable with. While this is a dark premise, that’s nothing new for the series but players should be aware that themes may be uncomfortable in Famicom Detective club and frank discussions of murder of children and suicide take place throughout the game. If you are triggered by these subject areas, this may not be the game for you, so please keep that in mind as they are dark recurring themes throughout gameplay and are referred to repeatedly.
You work for the Utsugi Detetive Agency and as a 19 year old assistant detective, it’s your job to help the police to solve the new Smiling Man murder, named after an urban legend in Koufuku City about a man with a paper bag over his head who murders crying girls. While young, you’ve worked on cases before (the previous games) and you’ll be working hand in hand with the police to solve the killing and catch The Smiling Man.
Much like previous entries in the series, this is a fairly linear visual novel with a focus on dialogue and character development. The game’s story sequences segue into the main game interface, a menu driven system that allows you to ask questions, present evidence, examine your surroundings, and perform various other tasks. The menu layout is extremely similar to the first two games in the series with a menu in the top left corner of the screen which provides options to choose from for interactions. Most of the game is played through this menu so you’ll get pretty familiar with it.
What’s weird about the Famicom Detective games is that the menu system changes based on what you’re required to do. The same options aren’t always there and when they are, sometimes they don’t work. This can be confusing and a bit frustrating, but remember that the goal is for you to progress through the story somewhat organically, so most of the choices should be intuitive if you’re paying attention. You have options like Call/Engage, Ask/Listen, Look/Examine, Open Notebook, Show, Take, and several others that will appear and disappear during the course of your investigation. You may have to use the same options repeatedly to progress through a conversation however and occasionally, the correct choices may not be obvious, leading to a fair amount of menu guesswork from time to time.
You’ll occasionally get hints in the menu system of Emio – The Smiling Man in the form of yellow flashes as a conversation segment ends. These indicate that this is the correct menu option to select and the flashes are only momentary. Going to that menu item either begins a new dialogue or opens a sub-menu which will have a momentarily yellow highlighted item that you can select in order to proceed. However, you won’t want to count on these clues because they only appear intermittently and often when you least expect them but they’re certainly handy when they appear.
It definitely pays to pay attention as well. There are numerous areas in Emio – The Smiling Man where you’ll have to review salient details of the case with multiple choice options or even type in missing words and names, requiring you to try to keep details fresh in your head like a real detective. When these pop up, access to the notebook is disabled as well so you’ll have to come up with the answer, even if it’s a name in Japanese that you didn’t expect to use this way. Review sections at the end of most chapters challenge you to keep everything organized mentally but they don’t penalize you with game overs. Instead you’ll be gently prodded for getting things a bit jumbled and the story will continue regardless.
As you work your way through the 12 chapters of Emio – The Smiling Man switching occasionally between the main protagonist and assistant detective Ayumi Tachibana, you’ll find yourself in a variety of locations including shopping districts, neighboring cities, and even out in the countryside. Rather than being able to freely navigate from place to place, conversations lock you to whichever location you have moved to until you complete the expected dialogues and then the Travel option appears at the top of the menu. It’s an odd system because the lack of free options makes the game feel more linear than it should but it also keeps you from going too far astray and wandering without knowing that there are still options left to investigate, an improvement from the first two games.
There’s a noticeable shift in visuals from the first two games and Emio – The Smiling Man feels somehow crisper visually, more like an anime. Some of the characters are a bit over the top, especially the rather suspicious middle school teacher Mr. Fukuyama, and the rather juvenile Detective Kamihara but by and large most of them are more realistic. That’s not to say that the original games weren’t excellent looking, but there’s a subtle shift in both design work for both backgrounds and GUI interface that makes Emio feel more polished.
All the polish in the world won’t fix pacing issues though and one of the biggest issues with Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is that the pacing is very inconsistent. Some chapters feel like they blaze by in an instant and others drag heavily, mostly on the way the interaction menu system works and whether the choices are somewhat intuitive or not. This can make the game feel a bit unbalanced, frustrating with a game that has this high of a production value across the board. It seems like the game itself is weighed down by the conventions of the franchise and that detracts from the impact of some of the key scenes and reveals. There was a lot of potential here to really focus on holding the player’s emotions hostage but by and large it was missed out on. That’s not to say that the story isn’t engaging. It absolutely is. It’s just that it could have been so much more.
The minutia of life in Japan is clearly on display throughout the game though. From restaurants to speaking patterns, architecture to city life, everyday life in Japan is an incredibly engaging setting for Emio – The Smiling Man. It’s the juxtaposition of normal and extreme that makes this story more compelling and allows it to surpass limitations instilled by both the GUI and the pacing. There’s a worthwhile story with more than a bit of heart hiding beneath the story of a serial killer that spans decades and the intensive character development that slowly builds in complexity over the course of the game serves to create an impressive sense of realism in Emio.
Part of that realism stems from the visual design in Emio. Every attempt has been made here to make backgrounds and locations as realistic as possible. This has been a trend in anime and games that take place in Japan for a while now and for real locations has led to anime tourism with people even moving to the location of their favorite shows. The level of detail in many of the static backgrounds is honestly impressive and the work that has gone into the various backdrops, character designs, and stop motion style cinema sequences demonstrates the care and reverence that the developers have for both the series and story. Between character designs, cinematography in key scenes, and character design, there are some excellent visuals here. However, the same cannot be said for undocked play as the GUI is noticeably less crisp and the visuals lose some of their fine detail, even on the OLED system. Comparing docked and undocked play, while undocked is serviceable, it seems obvious that Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club was primarily designed for docked play.
The approach to audio in the game is somewhat unique as well. Most of the audio is low key, quiet piano and other music that fades into the background and accompanies the focus on the outstanding Japanese voicework in the game. In fact, it’s so chill that playing the game near bed time runs the of putting you to sleep. That’s kind of at odds with the overall content of the game, but for the individual situations in each chapter, it works fine. In more tense scenes, the music ramps up appropriately however but in general, don’t expect to be held on the edge of your seat all the time. Voicework is fantastic though, very realistic and serious. Even if you don’t speak Japanese, this is a voice track that you’re going to want to keep on and the actors absolutely nail their roles from start to finish.
There aren’t a lot of extras included with Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club though. In addition to the main game, there’s a music player that lets you listen to all the tracks from the game and a mode where Mr. Fukuyama grades your performance in each chapter, telling you how you stack up on responses and whether you could have done better. There’s also one more little surprise after you complete the game but we definitely one spoil it for you.
Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a subtle evolution of the previous two games. Harnessing similar low-key high quality cinematograpy and interface, the game manages to match and occasionally surpass its predecessors. At $50, it definitely isn’t the cheapest game but it’s a solid experience overall. This is some top tier visual novel gaming for sure, though the lack of a touch screen interface definitely inhibits undocked play a bit. With a lengthy and interesting story, enjoyable compositions, and standout voicework, Emio – The Smiling Man is sure to stick with you long after the game is done.
This review is based on a digital copy of Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and performed noticeably better visually docked. Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a Nintendo Switch exclusive.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.