Emio: The Smiling Man - Famicom Detective Club Reviews

While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, Emio - The Smiling Man succesfully uses drama and horror to great effect, crafting a story that's equal parts gripping and shocking.

Emio - The Smiling man is a chilling detective story that leans a little too heavily into repetitive mechanics, but will reward those who stick with it.

One thing that helps elevate the game is its presentation. The graphics and animations are beautiful, with many little details that keep it feeling lively. In every aspect, you can see how much attention went into it to make it a high-quality experience. While it’s still a fairly short game, it’s the longest of the series. It also has some nice features, such as an optional recap of the plot when you load a game and an evaluation unlocked at the end that shows how well you did in each chapter and offers insight into your personality based on the choices you made. Overall, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club truly feels in line with the Famicom Detective Club remakes, even if it lost a bit of the investigative gameplay, and I’d love to see this series continue on with more.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a phenomenal piece of work from Yoshio Sakamoto and Nintendo that sits as one of the best games of 2024. From the haunting story to the wonderful characters, this is a game I'll be thinking about for the rest of the year and beyond. I truly hope that Nintendo continues the Famicom Detective Club series, as it sits as a very special IP within the company's history.

Nintendo and MAGES defy all expectations, delivering a grim murder mystery filled with heartbreaking characters and a tragic narrative that stands among the visual novel genre’s best. Hopeful just as much as it is haunting, Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a monumental feat of storytelling from Nintendo’s long dormant adventure series.

While the experience is marred by its many drudging moments, Emio—The Smiling Man is a highly entertaining, engaging, and well-produced entry that fans will likely enjoy.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a superb detective game and a proper comeback to a beloved Nintendo series. While some gameplay decisions are a bit confusing, they never dampen the excitement. If you're a fan of sleuthing games and intriguing plots, Emio offers that and much more.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a classic visual novel that hooks you right in from the beginning and comes from a very unlikely developer. Despite this, I think the game fits on the Nintendo Switch.

The Nintendo Switch has seen a lot of deep-cut releases over the past year, but arguably none slice quite as deep as Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. A series of surprisingly-mature 8-bit visual novels written by Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto, the Famicom Detective Club games gained a certain amount of notoriety over the decades amongst hardcore Nintendo fans who like to keep up with the company’s unlocalized oddities. It certainly came as a surprise when Nintendo brought remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club titles, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, to worldwide audiences in 2021. While that was a big deal to a certain niche audience, the remakes didn’t exactly do Mario numbers, so many assumed the series might just disappear again. Thankfully, the surprises kept coming, with the first all-new entry in the Famicom Detective Club series launching tomorrow.

Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club might not reinvent the visual novel genre, but it still offers a fantastic mystery elevated by brilliant writing, a memorable cast of characters, some truly excellent visuals, and a phenomenal final chapter.

Emio – The Smiling Man has a rich, empathetic heart, there’s just not enough of it. Solid character work and a decent setting can’t get around the fact that the game isn’t ever all that thrilling.

Solve the tragic death of a student, where a creepy clue recalls cold cases from the past and an urban legend about a killer with a disturbing modus operandi.

“Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a refreshingly mature turn for Nintendo in more ways than one.”

Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is a successful homage to the venerable series, which tells an enticing story despite its repetitive nature.