EDITOR'S NOTE:
My writer stooge's summoning circles finally paid off! They were over the moon, bless their ignorant little heart. Anyway, it is highly recommended that before reading this one, you read our articles on Idol Hakkenden and the 2021 Famicom Detective Club remakes for an overview of this kind of game. Of course, the difference here is this isn't a remake of a 30-plus-year-old-game, this is a brand new one! What doesn't change is we've tried to keep things as spoiler-free as possible- the broad strokes of the plot are discussed, as well as some themes and elements from across the game, but screenshots are generally non-spoilery or early enough that won't ruin your enjoyment of the game but still give you a taste of what to expect. If you want to go in completely-absolutely-100% blind though, you can skip this one, we don't judge. Finally, standard protocol for modern video game screenshots, we took these with the Switch's native screenshot button so click them and they will be rebigulated for your ocular stimulation. Or something like that.
Final warning- we have kept anything spoilery as vague as possible but please be advised we do talk about certain elements of the plot including the ending, with as few specifics as reasonably possible.
Finally, suicide and child abuse are topics that come up in this game, so please be aware if these are sensitive subjects for you.
Well, gang, it looks like the Famicom Detective Club is back in business, as once again there's a mystery afoot.
Time to put on our best ruffled raincoat, order a nice chilli and get stuck into the first proper new game in the series since the '80s!
Let's set the scene a little first, though. In 2021, Nintendo and MAGES collaborated to create the Famicom Detective Club remakes for Switch, a pair of straight remakes of The Missing Heir (Part I from 1988) and The Girl Who Stands Behind (Part II from 1989, based on the Super Famicom remake from 1998) and, shockingly, localised them into English. As you might glean from the article I wrote about them when they came out, I enjoyed them, although Part II was easily my favourite of the two. Both were very faithful to the originals with a few mild changes and quality-of-life features, but otherwise stuck pretty strictly to the formula of the Japanese console-based text adventure stylings of the Famicom Disk System games. This site had an overview of what that genre label entails over in the Idol Hakkenden article, but to put it in a nutshell (one that doesn't need to be cracked open by an otter, yes I'm still thinking about that puzzle from that game), these are distinct from PC-based adventures like Zork and Leisure Suit Larry in that the text parser is replaced with a list of actions you can perform, and you will eventually win as there's usually no 'walking dead' state to worry about, through methods such limiting where you can move to and preventing progression until you do everything you need to. They're also not visual novels as those are a distinct genre entirely, with the closest modern equivalent being the investigation sequences from Phoenix Wright- there is freedom to explore and use items (and find yourself completely stumped, yes), but not so much freedom that you miss an item and doom yourself. They're certainly an acquired taste, and after Idol Hakkenden gave me a somewhat-late introduction to the genre, I've somewhat gotten into them, so I was very much happy to see Famicom Detective Club return.
In the years after the release of those remakes, it seems a few other developers took notice and there was a slight resurgence in interest in the genre, such as a remake and new story for Yuji Horii's The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case and also an AI slop version of Yuji Horii's earlier The Portopia Serial Murder Case, plus localisations of the Retro Mystery Club games (although they first came out in Japan in 2019). I was far too busy to notice though- I was making summoning circles every Nintendo Direct for a follow-up FDC game, maybe a remake of the Satellaview-only installment starring Ayumi on her own, but I guess I wasn't making them right... Until July 2024. That month, Nintendo dropped a somewhat out-of-character teaser trailer (despite the rename to tie it to this game, this was originally just called 'Emio') showing a live-action man wearing a paper bag over his head with a crudely-drawn smiling face, a Japanese caption reading "The Smiling Man" and nothing else. I didn't pay much attention to it (again, making those summoning circles) while everyone else was baffled, wondering if it was some Bloober Team-developed, Nintendo-published thing for reasons completely unclear to me. Instead, a week later, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club – A Chat with Producer Yoshio Sakamoto appeared on Nintendo's YouTube page, where the designer and writer of the original two games in the series and their remakes (as well as some other, smaller games like Metroid, WarioWare and Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru) explains that, during the production of the Switch remakes, he decided there needed to be a new game in the series. And so, 30+ (!) years later, with him at the helm once again, Koufuku City finds itself at the mercy of a vicious killer, and it's up to some teenagers with moxie to crack the case.
Two years after The Missing Heir mystery was solved, the Utsugi Detective Agency- consisting of Shunsuke Utsugi who's supposedly the adult in charge here, assistant detective Ayumi Tachibana who's as sharp as a tack and eager to get answers out of people, and you, just an ordinary 19-year-old also doing the assistant detective thing- find themselves summoned by the police to help with a most unusual and disturbing case. The body of juniour high school student Eisuke Sasaki is found by an old pump station, strangled and with an unsettling paper bag over his head with a hideous smile on it... This ties the case not only to a string of murders from 18 years ago, but also the urban legend of The Smiling Man, who offers crying children the chance to smile forever before murdering them. A lot of things don't add up though, and not everything's on the level with this one, especially since the police can only give you so much info, seeing as you're civvies an' all that. With Utsugi out of the office for a lot of the story doing his own investigation, it's up to you and Ayumi to figure out this mystery, work your way around the police system and maybe solve a few cold cases along the way as well as figure out where the urban legend ends and the truth begins. No pressure, kids.
Before we get to anything else, we have to talk about what's changed mechanically between the two remakes and this new game, and while the general gist of things is the same- use a list of verbs on the menu to talk to people and get info (with your available verbs changing depending on the situation), examine your surroundings for clues and leads and eventually review what you've learned at the end of each day / chapter- it feels like a lot of the game's been tidied up, given a good dusting to make it more seamless and engaging. The thing is, the remakes were fairly exacting in recreating the original games, and while there were certainly plenty of quality-of-life additions to make them a little easier for modern audiences to get into, there were some elements- some progression paths being really obtuse, a very small amount of save files, that sort of thing- that perhaps weren't so thoroughly modernised. Emio jettisons a lot of that cruft and gives everyone, even doofuses like me, the chance to enjoy the story without having to consult a guide to figure out how to get one person to react in a specific way. Of these changes, the biggest is with the Think command- this was used in Part II to sometimes digest your thoughts and figure out the next course of action, but it often resulted in just a bunch of ellipses and you going to the internet to figure out what to do. Here, it can sometimes be used to progress to the next step but otherwise is a sort-of hint system, pointing you in the right direction of what to do next. At the start of the game it's fairly direct in telling you what to do, but as time passes it'll become a little vaguer but still vaguely hint on what to do next. This is what the option really should've done before, but it doesn't remove the challenge entirely- it gives you the general approach to take, but you still have to interpret these hints and some are less obvious than others. It's still a lot easier to progress and parse what to do than the previous games and others in the genre from the '80s- no real pixel-hunting, no examining a clock face to progress, it's very streamlined. The only odd change that makes things a smidge harder is new topics / options only briefly flash yellow, whereas in the previous games they turn yellow until selected. Pay attention, kid, you might lose your train of thought if you miss this!
Another big change, even if it's more story-related than mechanics, is that you get to play as Ayumi! In Part I especially, she was often doing her own thing while you were off investigating (usually running rings around you and doing your job way better) but here, we get to see what she's actually up to. The basic mechanics remain the same (although as a cute touch, she has a different-coloured notebook and will be missing notes on characters she hasn't learned about yet), but Ayumi is more about chatting with people and getting information out of them rather than exploring environments and the like. Her sections are a bit more linear as a result but it's a nice change of pace to just take it easy with a nice milk tea in a coffee shop as you chat with school students and the somewhat over-the-top teacher Fukuyama. This somewhat loosely ties in to the replacement for the 'Speculate' option in previous games- you'd use this option at the end of a Chapter to go over what you'd learn. Now though, you and Ayumi put your notes together and you have to answer questions to fill in the blanks, either by typing in names or answers to questions manually (a feature present in only Part I, it's back here and more frequent) as well as multiple-choice and using the Notebook to select answers, including entering multiple names or even picking out keywords to highlight, the latter being a new feature. This way, you get a glimpse into what Ayumi's doing plus you, as the player, get to put the notes together to form a bigger picture of what happened. Anyway, as well as the trusty notebook, another item's been added to your permanent inventory- being set in the vague time period of the late '80s / early '90s lets you get your hands on some new technology, a cell phone! You don't get to use it too much (the batteries on those things are really bad) but when you do have the chance to use it, you can make calls (including prank calls to your own office) and even get useless numbers like one for a restaurant you can never order food from. There's also a whopping 21 save files plus 21 auto save files for you compared to the paltry three files and one auto save from the previous remakes, so skipping around, saving so you can undo silly things like leaving a message on the office answer machine while pretending to be Ayumi, etc. is a lot easier. Even better, finishing the story also unlocks a very robust Chapter Select menu that even has individual scenes to select, so rereading favourite scenes and experimenting with options a little is a heck of a lot easier than before.
There are a few foibles still present, mind, including one new one introduced even if it meant well. For a start, some areas extend beyond a single screen, but to move from one to the other there's no 'move' command like in Phoenix Wright or anything, instead you have to go to Look > Surroundings to move which isn't especially obvious and did stump me a little the first time it happened. Next, one unfixed quirk is when you need to enter a name in manually, it uses the Switch's built-in keyboard UI meaning you can't open your Notebook or the Text Log to go over what you need to put in, which just feels a bit silly as you have to put a fake answer like KILLERMAN in to just get out of that prompt and check your notes. Speaking of the Notebook, it's back in a more robust form, looking like an actual notepad you flip through about key individuals in the case that gradually gets filled in, which is lovely... Except the text is smaller and, because it's presented like an actual notebook, has thin and faint text on a bright background, making it really hard to see in portable mode! Previously, this was white text on a black screen which is a lot easier for me to read, so I had to give up on my ideal method of play (curled up in bed with a nice cup of tea and some chocolate) and play on the telly instead. Your mileage may vary on this, depending on how good your eyes are, but it's a bit of a shame there's no visibility options here. On that note, portable play is still a little hurt by the lack of touchscreen support, but as with the last game, that would've required a lot of moving things around and changing button / option sizes to accommodate and perhaps the developers didn't feel it would be worth the hassle. It's a shame as I figure these games would be perfect for such a feature, but oh well.
Overall though, while there's a few little quirks still present, and they don't fundamentally change that these are cut from the same cloth as the '80s adventures at heart, these changes do the game a world of good, and make it a lot easier to recommend for newcomers to the genre. Having a general idea of how these kinds of games works definitely helps of course- examine everything you can and don't be incurious, half the fun is trying everything out- but these little tweaks make it significantly more streamlined and accessible. I needed the odd pointer in the previous games but here, it's to the point where even me, a complete doofus who has to open the map in a survival horror game every five seconds, didn't require any assistance from the internet at all to get to the end of the case. The challenge isn't gone- you still have to think- but it really helps things along. These changes, especially the greater emphasis on entering answers yourself and consulting your Notebook for keywords during the Review segments- also help a lot with immersing yourself in the game. You actively feel like a part of the investigation, keeping track of things going on with all these characters and actively contributing to figuring things out. It's a bit of an illusion, of course it is- ultimately, the game is linear and you either try again until you get it right or the game gets a different character to gently send you on the right path, although as a bit of replay value you're given a 'report card' at the end of the case with comments on how you played, so it does matter- but as an illusion, it damn well works, and really helps demonstrate the appeal of this kind of game.
As for the presentation, this keeps up the standards of the previous remakes, with similar art direction, excellent background art, consistently-good character designs helmed by Yukihiro Matsuo of the previous remakes and Chaos;Child, and there's some nice touches with the characters such as you and Ayumi changing clothes each Chapter for visual variety. Unfortunately, the character animations are still not the greatest- it's Live2D-style animation at 60FPS just like Part II with some very light animations, often using fade-outs to disguise more elaborate motion and angle-changes than can be achieved with that tech. There's slightly more ambitious things going on here, actually showing characters walking and the like, but that's about it. The problem here is games with similar presentation- in particular Type-Moon's excellent remake of Witch on the Holy Night / Mahōtsukai no Yoru- kinda blow it away, with Witch in particular doing way more with its limited presentation for convincing little action vignettes. Emio isn't the most action-packed game ever made of course, but it certainly feels a lot less dynamic than it could be. On the plus side, Emio has a decent mixture of the previous games' location variety for the backgrounds, with the pastoral and countryside-ish locales of Part I paired with the more urban and city-focused places of Part II. Additionally, while there's a few places you visit a few times across the course of the case, there's a much wider variety of locales and the ones you revisit either have more substantive changes (like Koufuku Station Shopping Center which you visit at a few different times of day with multiple different people milling about and a visit to a bar later on) or you do so only a handful of times- there's no equivalent to that bloody cliffside from Part I for sure! Maybe you do visit the coffee shop with Ayumi a few too many times, but it's with one of the more stand-out characters of the bunch, so it serves as a nice change of pace when it does show up, and I don't mind that so much.
That's the mechanical touch-ups and presentation covered, but what about the story itself? Unshackled by the restraints of faithfully retelling old Famicom Disk System stories, Emio gets to carve its own path and it goes a lot further into its themes than the other games. In particular, I like that it focuses a fair bit of attention on the people left behind after incidents like this- as well as the current case, you have to look into older cases with one in particular having a profound effect on a lot of the people involved, and it's interesting and involving to explore the different ways people deal with such things, although I kind of wish it did it more (not all the cold cases get the same level of attention). The Ayumi segments have their own kind of tension as she spends a lot of time trying to figure out what the deal with her old school friend is, and as the player you're in the same boat as you can't get a full read on the guy either! Seeing her do her detective work was definitely a highlight. Additionally, the game may be set in the vague late '80s / early '90s (you use old-style cell phones and we're clearly not in the modern day), but one particular theme that's brushed upon briefly is the sensationalisation of murder cases like this that feels particularly apt nowadays, with one of my favourite scenes being the effect the media has one one of the people closest to the case which almost leads to yet more tragedy. Again, it's something I wish the game explored a bit more, but what is here is pretty relevant to today if you've ever been directed by the algorithm on YouTube to true crime stuff. The pacing is pretty good too- it's not overly-long, about the same length as the previous games, and significant details and plot points do appear and get brought up at a reasonable pace to keep you interested, with no real lulls in what's going on.
Ultimately, I felt that most of the narrative was well-done- nicely paced, lots of interesting characters with their own stories to tell, and again the theme of the people being left behind struck a chord- but while I definitely enjoyed it a lot more than Part I, it's still not quite as good as Part II. While there are big impactful moments scattered across the game (I really liked Mama Shoko's story in particular because of how it ties into clues you've heard before), there's nothing quite on the level of Ayumi's shocking antics at the halfway point of Part II or the sense of dread near the end of that game where you get closer and closer to the truth. One time it does try involving Ayumi kinda falls on its arse in terms of making an impact, which is a shame. It's not that it's bad mind you, not at all! I was just spoiled a bit by Part II I suppose. You can also point to the final chapter and ending for a lot of this, and to avoid spoilers I'll have to tiptoe around things a little, but to keep it as vague as I can, it does feel a little rushed, with a lot of revelations being packed together around the climax. On reflection, if you really pay attention you can see at least some of this stuff coming, but it's a little bit of a shock and somewhat abrupt. It kinda makes sense, as since the game mostly sticks to your character's perspective, they don't quite have all the info they need to make sense of everything at the point it all kicks off, but this feels undermined somewhat by the game's tendency to show things in little scenes from other characters' POVs, in particular Detective Kuze. It doesn't happen very often, but it's often enough that the intent of the ending is somewhat lost a little. An extra chapter unlocked after beating the main story does go into explaining a lot of things with some pretty touching and unsettling character moments- it reinforces a somewhat recurring theme of misunderstandings and crossed wires, taking it to devastating extremes- and the way it's presented is an interesting path to take. In the end though, I didn't feel the execution for the ending hit the mark to the same extent it did in Part II. The final section of Part II was one of my favourite parts- brilliantly paced, with things getting tenser and tenser as you approach the final confrontation with the killer- and while Emio in theory has a similar set of scenes, it just doesn't land the same, especially since the ending is indeed abrupt.
What I will give Emio credit for is mostly tackling its more difficult themes quite well- people have noted this is pretty dark for a Nintendo-published game, and this is true. It's a little difficult to go into specifics while also tip-toeing around major spoilers, but I'll give it a try, so apologies if this is a bit vague. Simply going into darker subject matter doesn't automatically make a game more mature, of course- it's all in the execution- and as Emio reveals the real details behind the case, I think it handles most of them with a surprising level of care, in particular the first cold case and exactly what happened to lead to those events being very humanizing for the characters involved. It does its level best to treat everyone in the story as a human rather than a plot point, and I think for the most part it succeeds. It certainly doesn't take the buckets-of-blood-equals mature route except when it veers ever-so-slightly into over-the-top territory in one visual aspect in the epilogue that I won't spoil, but I'd suppose you'd call it more of a dramatic flourish rather than a core part of the more serious themes across the game, which are treated with the right level of gravity. After the final revelations, it really got to me and I was a bit emotionally drained after it all! Does this manage to mend the impact of the somewhat-rushed main ending? Well, not quite. I love the ideas on display here but I can't shake the feeling that the execution just doesn't quite hit the mark, which is a bit of a shame, as I was ready to declare this the best of the three Famicom Detective Club games! Part II remains my favourite in this regard, but Emio is a very respectable second place.
That's all our observations for now, so let's collate the evidence and come up with our final report. Overall, this is a solid entry in the genre with just some caveats in the presentation department (which isn't a big deal) and the story (which, well, is a bit more important). If you're a complete newcomer to this kind of game, Emio couldn't be nicer to you- it has all the quality-of-life furnishings of the previous two games and even more on top of that to make it one of the more accessible games of this type but without compromising the core appeal. You don't need to have played the previous two either, as it's a stand-alone story with only a few connections to the other games. If you've already played the other FDC games, then this is a great continuation that goes a lot further with its themes that you'll read through nice and breezily, but with the story just not quite being as good as Part II if you ask me. Still, I can only hope this leads to more MAGES / Nintendo collabs for more adventure games in this style, but we'll have to see. For now, I'm quite happy to have seen three good Famicom Detective Games on the Switch, so I'm satisfied. For now. I'm sure soon, I'll get the retro adventure itch again, and I'll dive back into the case files, but for now, we can rest easy knowing the case is solved.
For being another good outing for the Utsugi Detective Agency, Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is awarded...
In a sentence, Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is...
A Famicom-style adventure with modern-style consideration.
Rather than our traditional close-out... Time to repeat our tidbit from last time
That fancy cell phone you have also has the option to dial a number manually rather than pick from a list.
In Japan, the telephone number for the police is 110, and the number for other emergency services is 119.
Yep, same ending stinger. Don't do this in real life.
