Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

After the surprising release of remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club games in 2021, I don’t think that many expected this series to continue. After all, those two Visual Novels were an intriguing obscure piece of Nintendo history, and it was nice for Western audiences to finally get the chance to play them for the first time, but I don’t think anyone else felt like this sparked a wave of new interest in a brand-new entry in the franchise, the first truly new game in the series in 35 years. Yet that is exactly what we have gotten in Emio – The Smiling Man, a brand new entry in the series following the same characters, this time trying to solve a new mystery.

To Nintendo’s credit, they built some delightful mystique around this game’s central mystery by teasing the game’s seemingly supernatural antagonist, the titular Emio, in a cryptic teaser video that implied this to be a character in line with cult favorite horror characters like Slenderman, something that excited people due to how out-of-character this was for Nintendo. However, perhaps because of their unfamiliarity with this sort of marketing, or perhaps because they didn’t want to lose control of the narrative around this character, they almost immediately revealed the full details of the game, dispelling that mystique.

Still, the ominous threat presented by the villain in the game is a delightful element befitting a good Horror game, with players discovering early on that a series of murders in the game are tied to a purported urban legend about the aforementioned Emio, who appears before crying girls promising to leave them smiling forever, with said girls’ corpses found wearing a paper bag on their head bearing the antagonist’s creepy smile.

Unfortunately, this wonderful story idea and exquisite tension is undercut almost immediately by a game that is absolutely committed to having some of the worst pacing I’ve encountered in a Visual Novel, with a dull tone that completely undercuts and Horror elements the game might have.

Your self-named protagonist, who works at a private detective agency, will discuss the details of the case with each of the two other employees in the agency, as well as multiple police assigned to the case… and then you’ll do it again, and again, and again. Then, every now and then, one of the characters will essentially quiz you on the case, seemingly trying to make sure you’ve gotten the details drilled into your head.

Oh, this case is like a series of murders that happened eighteen years ago? Yes, eighteen years ago. Eighteen years ago a series of murders happened that resembled the current one, but the victims were all girls. They were all girls? Yes, all girls, three victims, all girls. But the current victim is a boy! Yes, the current victim is a boy… how strange… But this case still seems similar to those cases from eighteen years ago. Even though they’re eighteen years apart? Yes, eighteen years apart. And even though those victims were all girls? Yes, those victims were all girls, but the current victim is a boy.

Hey, were you paying attention? What’s one big difference between the current murder, and the ones that happened eighteen years ago?

AAAAAAAAAAAARGHHH!

It gets worse. The game takes further steps to slow the pacing down. Yes, you read that right, the game artificially makes the pacing worse… on purpose. At one point early in the game, a character you need to speak with isn’t available, and after discussing the case with another character and learning almost nothing of value (other than that the character was an unlikeable jerk), your character resolves to come back the next day, choosing to head back to discuss the nothing that he’s learned with the other private detectives.

My jaw dropped – the game literally just made a day pass in-game with nothing happening because… because nothing! There was just no good reason for it! What little info was learned or shared with other characters could have been done after your character actually had something more substantial to share… but no. Instead, we have to repeat everything to the other characters… again…

It gets even worse. While the game often highlights the conversation choice you need to make to progress the plot, at other times it doesn’t, and it’s often not clear about what you need to do to get on with things, leading to players essentially brute forcing their way through all the options multiple times (because you’re not informed if things changed after something else you did or said). Furthermore, even if you know what you need to do to progress the plot, it’s not always clear how to do it – in one early conversation with a police officer, she asks you to identify yourself, and refuses to discuss anything else until you do… only… there’s no menu option to actually identify yourself.

I’m getting angry just typing this out…

And it gets even worse.

One other problem this game has is that you occasionally have to inspect the person you’re speaking with or the environment, using an on-screen cursor to do so. There are no “hot spots” to show you where to look, though titles do pop up when you’re over an observable object or person. Here’s the thing though – an observable object can have multiple spots on it that give distinctly different observation results, but the game doesn’t let you know that in any way.

So does Emio do anything right? Well, the game’s presentation is good, with some nice anime-style 2D character art lightly animated in a warping “paper doll” style, and some of the dramatic and chill synthesized music here is catchy, such as the Title Theme, Investigation Theme 1, Investigation Theme 2, Investigation Theme 3, Detective Theme, and Minami Daisan Junior High School.

However, as catchy as they may be, I don’t think anything here justifies this game’s absurd $50 price tag, just $10 short of the cost of the two prior games combined. Granted, this is a completely new game and it’s much longer than those games are, but… well, you’ve already seen my thoughts on this game’s absurdly inflated length.

In the end, I would say that Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a game that doesn’t respect your time, but that is a massive understatement. Emio hates your time. Emio wants to take your time into a back alley, beat it up, steal its wallet, and then spit on it. Even if you’re a fan of the earlier two Famicom Detective Club games, even if you’re enticed by this game’s quite good premise, I’d still argue that you should hesitate to buy this game, even if it goes on sale from its currently-bloated price. Treat yourself to one of the Ace Attorney games instead – not only are those games similar in how they play and feature far better pacing and none of this game’s frustratingly poor design choices, but they are much better-priced as well. I just wish this game’s great premise and nice presentation found their way into a better game. It’s just a shame.

tl;dr – Emio, the surprise third game in the Famicom Detective Club series, is much like its predecessors in that it is a Visual Novel about solving a murder mystery, here centered on an urban legend about a killer leaving a series of bodies with paper bags on their heads. As enticing as this premise is, the game murders any potential it has by stretching the pacing to the breaking point, repeatedly forcing the player through the same facts about the case over and over again, and making them contend with some absolutely terrible design choices. Do yourself a favor and just play an Ace Attorney game instead – you get the same basic gameplay, but it’s better in virtually every way.

Grade: D+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Overrated, Most Disappointing

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