Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club review on Nintendo Switch
Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club brings the spooky to the Nintendo Switch, but what did we think?
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.
Images via Nintendo EPD
Platform(s)
Nintendo Switch
Released
29/08/2024
Developer
Nintendo EPC
Genre
Adventure
Publisher
Nintendo
Multiplayer
No
ESRB
Mature 17+
We have been dining on a buffet of fine horror games over the past two years with the likes of the Resident Evil 4 Remake, The Dead Space Remake, Still Wakes The Deep, and the upcoming Silent Hill 2 Remake. Nintendo has seemingly seen the rising popularity of horror games and decided to throw its hat into the mix with the ever-creepy Emio - The Smiling Man.
Fans will no doubt remember just how creepy the initial teaser trailer for this game was when it dropped out of nowhere one random afternoon, but can the full game live up to that promise?
Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club review
While Emio - The Smiling Man can feel repetitive, sticking with it will reward players with a chilling, enthralling mystery.
Pros
An intriguing murder mystery
Well-paced narrative
Gorgeous artwork
Cons
Some repetitive mechanics
Inconsistent characters
What’s with the smile?
In Emio - The Smiling Man, you navigate the urban myth surrounding a series of murders that the detective agency you are a part of has been tasked with investigating. The attacker is unknown, and it is on you to find out what is happening and who is responsible for the killings.
With one victim being a high school student who had been found strangled just outside the city with a smiling paper bag over their head, it’s clear from the jump that this isn’t your standard family-friendly Nintendo title. What was the motive behind this? What does the bag mean? All will be solved over time.
Working through solving the mystery is fairly formulaic, and you will eventually get to the end goal, even if you’re not blessed with sleuthing skills in reality. When talking to people around you, you will be presented with a series of dialogue options to help you find out more details about the situation you are facing.
You can ask questions, survey your environment and consult your journal to find any hidden links to the murders. Thankfully, Emio - The Smiling Man manages to stay away from schlocky, gore-filled horror and brutality and works to get its narrative hooks into you instead.
Narrative over action
While I traditionally prefer more of an action-based horror title Emio - The Smiling Man won me over straight away. At its best, it feels like a bizarro episode of True Detective, and the narrative never felt elongated to drag the game out. The entire thing feels precise and keeps you questioning exactly what was going on before dangling a subtle hint for you to find.
Characters can be inconsistent, however. They’re not all winners, with some seemingly positioned just to accelerate the plot or drop some exposition, but uneven interviews aside, I still had fun interrogating more tight-lipped suspects.
Running on almost eight-year-old hardware, there’s nothing particularly technically challenging about Emio - The Smiling Man. In fact, it’s almost timeless thanks to its gorgeous artwork that oftentimes belies its darker moments. If it ain’t broke, then there’s no need to fix it, and there are no sweeping open worlds or anything like that here.
In fact, it’s a very linear experience overall, and you’ll move from scene to scene without ever really getting the chance to stray from any pathway. Find a character, speak to them, question them, and look around the environment before triggering the next phase of the investigation - there’s a pleasing routine to things but it naturally starts to feel rote the deeper you get into the case.
Thankfully, the ramping of the game’s narrative helps alleviate any tedium, but that familiarity may breed contempt for some. Mechanics-wise, things never get too much deeper than the simple interrogation methods of just asking questions, which is a shame given the Zodiac-like ambitions of the game’s central case.
The Verdict
The repetitive mechanics will help decide whether Emio - The Smiling Man is for you, but there’s so much to uncover throughout its story that it feels like a worthy investment.
What it lacks in complexity when it comes to gameplay, Emio - The Smiling Man more than makes up for with its story and journey.
3.5/5
Reviewed on Nintendo Switch. Review code provided by the publisher.
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