Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club Review
One of the things that I appreciate most about Nintendo is how, even when the Switch has made them more successful than they've ever been, they haven't hesitated to support series that won't always produce megahits. Nothing feels more emblematic of this than with Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. Nintendo shocked everyone when they released fully-fledged remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club titles back in 2021, and yet even then I was surprised when I first heard that the same team was returning for a brand new entry. Doubly so when it came time for the reveal, and it became clear that Nintendo was throwing their full weight behind the project; even before booting up the game, it was obvious they felt confident in what they were about to deliver.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Emio delivers. While it's tough to talk around the merits of any sort of narrative-focused game, doubly so when they revolve around some sort of mystery, Emio manages a depth to its story that I felt was perhaps lacking from the previous two games. Beyond the tragedy of the needless deaths that springs this new story into motion, there are other, additional tragedies at the heart of this tale, and Emio's greatest strength is how it truly humanizes its cast of characters - to make those tragedies have the weight that they truly deserve. At times it's an exceptionally tough read, not because the story itself is lacking, but rather the subject matter that it chooses to tackle, and how the necessary levity makes it stick the landing.
It's impossible to talk about specifics in any meaningful degree without spoiling some of what makes the story tick, so I won't go any further other than to say that I especially appreciated how much the game hammers home the responsibility that you've been given, and what it means to the victims of those who have been left behind. Emio isn't just content with telling a story about a murderer, but rather painting a picture of the stain that this violence has left on the people the victims have left behind. Even that might be sharing too much, but the heart of Emio's story feels a different shade from the Famicom Detective Club stories that came before it.
Otherwise, what I can talk about are some systemic changes. At its core, Famicom Detective Club is the same as it always has been; with only subtleties having been changed to better the game flow. Much like with The Girl Who Stands Behind, Emio is a much more straightforward adventure, and this is especially helped by a slight revamp to how the Think command works. This time around, it will always give you at least some sort of nudge in the right direction for what you'd need to do next, even if Think itself wasn't the next required option to progress the story - meaning that there should be far less situations where players are stuck trying to figure out an obtuse solution that lets you progress the story.
When the remakes for the original duology launched, Famicom Detective Club immediately became one of the most visually expressive Japanese Adventure games of all time - with a shocking number of unique assets, and what felt like an absurd amount of animations to go along with them. Emio, unshackled from the constraints of stories that originally were told on the Famicom Disk System, is yet another step forward for the genre in that regard. While there are still plenty of moments where players will retread the same environments, the game's length is noticeably longer than either of the two remakes, and the number of locations feel scaled up appropriately.
There's more to this than just the number of environments, but all I can say is that there's no doubt in my mind that this must be the most expensive game in the genre to have been developed - and players have a lot to look forward to as the game's story progresses. If you're at all a fan of this specific medium, for that alone Emio is well worth the price of admission.
Much as the remakes were 3 years ago, Emio truly feels like a love letter to an entire genre of games. Having experienced all that it has to offer, it's impossible to see it as anything else - and that love is immediately apparent when you sit down to play it. Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club might have only been revealed to the world a few weeks ago, but its already solidified a spot for itself as one of my favorite releases in a very, very packed year. If you're at all a fan of Visual Novels or Japanese Adventure Games, you owe it to discover who Emio truly is for yourself.