Has there ever been a horror movie that successfully used elevator music as its entire soundtrack? We mean a reasonably good one. Any suggestions? It almost seems like the idea doesn’t quite fit tonally – unless you want something comedic – and honestly, when playing Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, sometimes it’s hard to know whether we’re supposed to enjoy the horror or the humor. It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
This brand new entry in the Famicom Detective Club adventure series has managed to arrive with considerably more fanfare and interest than would normally be reserved for an entry in a visual novel series that, while perfectly fine, never really made the gaming world a hoot. Old hands (like this author) tried Tantei Club Part II via fan translation and enjoyed it for what it was, but while the 2021 remakes are nice to have, you can’t say they’re absolute must-plays, even if you acknowledge their importance in terms of the influence of the likes of Ace Attorney.
There’s quite obviously a cultural aspect to it. These are traditional style games, they stick to a format that’s very popular in Japan, where the slow pace and often frustrating mechanics are part of the whole thing, and if you’re a fan of this stuff – which is entirely possible given the explosive growth of the VN genre around the world recently – then you don’t need us to tell you what it looks and feels like to play, especially if you’ve tried the incredibly similar remakes. The odd colour mash-up between cartoon graphics, supermarket speaker music and child murder was a running theme in those games and it continues in this new entry.
And that brings us to our biggest problem: the film has been ridden in a wave of potential terror that it doesn’t justify. Well, not really.
This is definitely a Famicom Detective Club game. Forget all the Bloober Team nonsense and any other rumors of a major shift in tone to something much darker. The originals received 16 reviews for their stories, and this game takes it a bit further. With references to murdered teenagers, some disturbing imagery when Emio is on screen, and an unsettling and rather gross vibe with one or two odd characters, we can understand why it technically has secured the horror rating for adults, but we personally did not find anything particularly scary while playing through it, as disturbing as it may be at times.
Normally this isn’t a problem, we know what to expect from Famicom Detective Club and this is definitely the darkest of them all. However, as we were hoping for something truly terrifying, it takes a while to calm down and enjoy what is nonetheless a very well-written and engaging mystery, even if it’s hard to consider it a purely adult affair overall.
We won’t give away any juicy details – and if you’re really curious, there are three full demos on the eShop to try out – but this new installment follows directly on from its predecessors, reintroducing the same main characters from the Utsugi Detective Agency (this time you can even play as Ayumi Tachibana in select chapters) investigating the bizarre murder of Eisuke Sasaki, a 15-year-old found dead with a smiley face bag over his head. It’s a murder that bears a disturbing resemblance to a series of murders from two decades ago, and also seems to copy the style of the urban myth Emio.
From that premise, we set off on a journey to question people of interest and search for any clues we can. If you’ve played the recent remakes or Ace Attorney, you’ll know the general tone as you slowly go through a series of options related to how you question people. The text, which is thankfully excellent throughout, goes a long way to easing our frustration during these sequences, which annoyingly still refuse to fade out or display exhausted conversation branches. That’s the real horror at play here.
When interviewing people or just having a conversation, there’s far too much guessing and stopping and clicking on options just to see if they’ve been played through. This makes sequences feel artificially drawn out and the first four or five hours of the game – which, you know, is quite a lot of hours – suffer from this sluggish, dragging pace. For too long in the beginning, nothing really remarkable happens and the conversations and lack of movement or urgency can become a little tiring.
It’s also annoying that there’s no definitive way to work cleverly – there’s no way to figure out the right option in advance, to let the conversation flow naturally because you’re, well, ace. So it becomes a guessing game of digging through menus, trying to use a phone that’s dead, trying to call out to characters who aren’t there, and repeatedly trying to “travel” because the character just gave up responding to one of your options. Then you realize you had to do something specific, like study their face, to move things along. It’s tedious at times, really.
And yet it is difficult to stay angry for long because everything is so strange and odd and pleasant despite the lack of big scares and even despite the frustrations caused by your simplistic investigative techniques. Ahhhh… so that’s why they make it so crazy! There’s a very strong cast of characters here to engage with, the writing is often very entertaining and things like staring at a guy’s crotch while studying him to elicit a cheeky “my eyes are up here” add a playful dimension that you can’t help but appreciate.
We have a great cast of perverted teachers, weirdos and other characters, presented with real skill and really getting under your skin thanks to the beautiful animation and voice acting – which is unfortunately only available in Japanese this time around. This leads to question sequences that, while annoying for the reasons already mentioned, still raise a lot of chuckles, lead you in the wrong direction and make you distrust or suspect a whole bunch of people before you start to find the actual answers to the puzzle.
The art style is equally impressive, the remakes being nice improvements over the 8-bit originals in that regard, and this continues with some wonderfully evocative backgrounds and characters that move and clearly express emotion, as well as some suitably disturbing emio imagery.
It certainly could have been more if we had made a few quality of life changes (for heaven’s sake, please highlight the conversation opportunities already exhausted) and if it had lived up to the pre-release hype that suggested a whole new era of darkness and terror was about to descend upon Nintendo HQ.
We also have to admit to feeling a certain level of surprise at how similar everything plays compared to the 2021 remakes. No opportunity has been taken to change anything, other than the player character now speaks (which can be turned off in the menus), and the lack of English voice acting hurts a little. And while all of this makes sense in these traditionally styled offerings, we can’t help but think some streamlining and refinements could have been made to give you a less frustrating time during your investigation. It would have been a very quick and easy way to wrest another point from us. In terms of performance, as you’d expect given the genre, everything runs beautifully here whether you’re in docked or handheld mode.
Overall, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is probably almostthis author’s favorite from the series (for those interested, the original comes in second). It’s an intriguing and stylish mystery, and the writing and characters will keep anyone more than enthralled the entire time. It’s just a shame there isn’t a little more modernization or mechanical refinement to make for a smoother experience. Not that fans of the series are likely to care.
Diploma
Emio – The Smiling Man was acclaimed a little too much in terms of how dark the whole thing is. This is still silly, wacky stuff, just like its predecessors. The sometimes frustrating core mechanics haven’t been refined this time around either, which is a shame. And so it’s left to some top-notch writers to save the day, which they almost do. Once this unsettling and intriguing story grabs you (remember there are three demos to try out if you’re not sure), it’s hard to put it down. And that’s ultimately all Tantei Club fans will be looking for.
