Has there ever been a horror movie that’s used elevator music successfully as its entire soundtrack? We mean a reasonably good one. Any suggestions? It almost seems there may be something tonally mismatched about the idea — unless you’re going for comedy — and, honestly, when playing Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, it’s sometimes tough to know whether it’s horror or humour we’re supposed to be enjoying. 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 to quite a bit more fanfare and interest than would usually be reserved for an entry in a visual novel franchise that, whilst perfectly fine, has never really set the gaming world alight. Old has-beens (like this writer) sampled Tantei Club Part II via fan translation and enjoyed it for what it was, but whilst the 2021 remakes are nice to have, it’s hard to say they are absolute must-plays, even whilst recognising their importance in terms of influencing the likes of Ace Attorney.
There’s very obviously a cultural aspect to this. These are traditionally styled games, they adhere to a format that is hugely popular in Japan, where the slow pace and often frustrating mechanics are part of the deal, and if you’re a fan of this stuff — as you may well be given the explosive growth of the VN genre around the world in recent times — well then, you don’t need us to tell you how it looks and feels to play, especially if you’ve sampled the incredibly similar remakes. The oddball mismatch of tones combining cartoonish visuals, supermarket tannoy music, and child murder has been a running theme in these games and it continues in this new entry.
Which brings us to the biggest issue we have with this one: It rode in on a wave of potential terror that it doesn’t justify. Well, not really anyway.
This is resolutely a Famicom Detecitve Club game. Forget all the Bloober Team nonsense and any other rumours of a huge shift in tone to something much darker. The originals earned 16 ratings for their stories, and this one pushes the boat out just that little bit further. With references to murdered teens, some disturbing imagery when Emio is on-screen, and an unsettling and rather icky vibe to the odd character here and there, we can see why it has technically got itself that scary adult rating, but we personally didn’t find anything particularly frightening during our playthrough, as unsettling as it might be at times.
This isn’t usually an issue, we know what to expect with Famicom Detective Club, and this one is definitely the darkest of the lot, but having had our hopes raised for something truly terrifying, it takes a little time to settle down and enjoy what is still a very well-written and intriguing mystery, albeit one that’s very hard to see as an adults-only affair overall.
We won’t give away any juicy details — and there are three whole demos on the eShop to try out if you’re really intrigued — but this new entry continues directly on from its predecessors, reintroducing the same main characters from the Utsugi Detective Agency (you even get to play as Ayumi Tachibana in select chapters this time) as they investigate the bizarre murder of Eisuke Sasaki, a 15-year-old who’s been found dead with a smiley-face bag over his head. It’s a murder that bears a worrying resemblance to a spate of killings from two decades prior, as well as seeming to copycat the style of the urban myth, Emio.
From this premise, we set about travelling to question persons of interest and look for any and all clues. If you’ve played the recent remakes, or Ace Attorney, you’ll know the general gist here as you slowly pick through a bunch of options relating to how you proceed to quiz people. The writing, which is thankfully excellent throughout, does a whole lot of easing our frustrations during these sequences which, irritatingly, still refuse to blank out or signify conversational branches which have been exhausted. This is the true horror at play here.
Questioning folk, or even just having a conversation, involves way too much guessing and stopping and clicking on options just to see if they’ve been played out. It makes for sequences that feel artificially lengthened and the first four or five hours of the game — which is, y’know, quite a lot of hours — suffers for this sludgy, trudgy pace. Nothing of real note occurs for too long early doors, and the conversations and lack of movement or urgency can become a little tiresome.
It’s annoying, too, that there’s no definitive way of being clever about how you work – there’s no way to figure out the right option beforehand, to have the conversation flow naturally because you’re being, well, Ace. So it turns into a guessing game, trolling through menus, trying to use a phone that’s out of charge, trying to yell out for characters who aren’t there and repeatedly attempting to “travel” because the character has just given up responding to any of your options. Then you realise you had to do something exacting, like studying their face, to move things along. It’s tedious at times, it really is.
And yet, it’s hard to stay mad for very long because it’s all so very odd and strange and enjoyable despite the lack of huge scares, and even despite the frustrations of your simplistic investigative techniques. Ahhhh…so that’s why they make it so kooky! There’s a very strong cast of characters to engage with here, the writing is often very amusing and doing things like staring at a man’s crotch as you study him in order to elicit a cheeky “My eyes are up here” adds a playful dimension that’s hard not to appreciate.
We’ve got a great line of pervy school teachers, weirdos, and other characters who are presented with real skill, and they really get under your skin thanks to some lovely animation and voice-acting – which is Japanese-only this time again, we’re afraid. This makes for sequences of questions that, whilst annoying for the reasons we’ve already noted, still raise plenty of smiles, as well as leading you off in wrong directions and having you mistrust or suspect a whole bunch of folk before beginning to hone in on the actual answers to the mystery.
The art style is similarly impressive. The remakes were lovely upgrades to the 8-bit originals in this regard, and this continues with some wonderfully evocative backdrops and characters who move around and express emotions clearly, as well as some appropriately disturbing Emio imagery.
It certainly could have been more, had we got a few quality-of-life changes (please highlight exhausted avenues of conversation, for the love of God), and had it lived up to pre-release hype that suggested a whole new era of darkness and terror was about to descend on Nintendo HQ.
We also have to admit a certain amount of surprise at just how similar everything plays in relation to the 2021 remakes. There’s been no seizing of the opportunity to change anything at all beyond the player-character now speaking (which can be turned off in the menus), and no English voicework does hurt a little. And while all of this makes sense with these traditional-styled offerings, we can’t help but think some streamlining and refinements could have been added to give you a less frustrating time during your investigations. It would have been a very quick and easy way to nab another point out of us. In terms of performance, and as expected given the genre, everything runs beautifully here whether you are in docked or handheld mode.
Overall, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detecitve Club is probably, just about, this writer’s favourite of the series (with the original taking second place, for those interested). There’s an intriguing and stylish mystery here, and the writing and characters will keep anyone more than interested for the duration. It’s just a shame there’s not a little more modernisation or refinement mechanically to make for a smoother experience. Not that series fans are likely to care about that.
Conclusion
Emio – The Smiling Man has been hyped up a little too much in terms of how dark in tone the whole thing is. This is still silly, kooky stuff, just like its predecessors. The sometimes frustrating core mechanics also haven’t seen any refinement this time around, which is a shame. And so it’s left to some top-notch writing to save the day, which it just about does. Once this troubling and intriguing story has its hooks in you (remember there are three demos to try if you’re unsure), it’s hard to put down. And that, at the end of the day, is all Tantei Club fans will be looking for.
