Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club Review

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club isn’t your typical Ace Attorney-looking game. As the first new entry in the series in 35 years, this game aims to make a splash with its 18+ rated themes and uncomfortable story. It succeeds there. Essentially, this is a detective game. There is a murder case to solve and your player joins the Utsugi Detective Agency to help solve it.

Bodies have been found around the city. These dead bodies have brown paper bags over their heads and have been linked to folklore from twenty years ago regarding the Smiling Man. The tales go that the Smiling Man would greet sad young girls on the street. If these girls were to smile back at the bag-wearing figure, it would walk away. If they were to cry again, it would kill them and stick a bag over their heads with a hand-drawn “smile that will last forever”.

Throughout the game, my character who I named at the start of the case, travelled to various locations and interacted with different people. Some of these people were suspects while others were police and witnesses. The locations then housed their own explorable mechanics where I had to navigate around the screen and interact with items and objects that caught my eye.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is all about gathering information, tying it to people and keeping up with the clues of the case. In conversations, I could then ask questions, explore different outcomes and “think” which would help give me an idea of what my character was thinking at the time.

Throughout the game, what I gathered up to that point would also be important. Characters would ask to link certain events with certain items and submit my “findings” to advance the case. However, getting to the point is half the fun. Scenes are filled with suspense as this overshadowing murder case lingers above you.

Not to mention the flow of conversation flows in a brilliant way. While it takes some time to get used to, there was something enjoyable about paying attention to the neutral place in a chat and deciding when to move on to the next topic. It is like when you talk in real life and the same thing is being said over and over again. While at the time it seems normal, there are various opportunities where we could simply move onto a new topic.

There’s also no punishment or negative impact on the story if you don’t know what to say or do next. Even when I couldn’t link evidence to a clue, the game would provide feedback that my choice was wrong. I could then simply try again. So no matter how little attention you pay to the game content, you’ll always achieve the same ending.

There is a grading system that only appears at the end to show off how accurate you were throughout the game. Again, this is simply for reference and doesn’t change the story. Of course, there is a downside to this. First, the hand-holding might put people off. Some may believe it is better to fail than be forced into the correct answer. I, however, enjoyed this. It let me keep engaged with the narrative in Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. You’ll want to pay attention because the story is captivating.

If you pay enough attention, you won’t end up submitting the wrong answers and clues. There were times when I felt a bit lost but this was more at the start of the game. After a while, I was fully dedicated to every aspect of Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. If anything, it became my nightly routine to lay in bed and play a few chapters. Sort of like reading a good crime detective book. Given the lack of “real gameplay”, it is easy to get lost in this game.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club lasts for about 10 hours with each chapter taking roughly 45 minutes to complete. The entire game is Japanese voiced so I ended up skipping a lot of dialogue after reading the page. This further cut down the game time.

The general story is also quite dark. The 18+ game isn’t full of blood and violence, however. Instead, the game touches on mental health, abuse and some other uncomfortable themes. These all help tie into the characters you meet and if anything, force me to engage in their dialogue and personality. This is definitely not a game for children, though. Many of the characters and on-screen depictions are often delivered for adults. There are even some sexual harassment cues.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is likely the most engaging detective game I have played. It is gorgeously presented too. The beautiful anime style brings characters to life and the dark themes make this story uncomfortable in all the best ways. For anyone looking for a murder mystery to casually pick up and play, this ticks all those boxes.

This Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club review is based on a code sent to us by Nintendo. The game is available on 29 August only on Switch. It starts at R1000. You can play the first three chapters in a special demo now available on the Nintendo eShop.