As an M-rated game being published by Nintendo, there's certainly been a lot more interest in Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club in the lead-up to its release than there might have been with a more...
well, Nintendo-esque content rating attached. Whether it deserves the full-blown adult treatment, we've yet to discern as we've only had time with the prologue and first chapter so far, which you too should have access to at the time of writing via the multipart demo hitting the Switch eShop . But what we can say, is that this is an intriguingly dark game from the get-go whilst still remaining something that long-time fans of the Famicom Detective Club series should feel right at home playing.
Emio - The Smiling Man, is an urban legend created especially for this game by Yoshio Sakamoto, who returns as producer for this third (well, including the Satellaview entry, technically fourth ) installment. It's a legend that tells of a child killer who offers his victims a paper bag with a smiling face drawn on it in exchange for their lives. So, yeah, that's quite dark, really.
It's now up to you, as a lead detective at the Utsugi Detective Agency, to question witnesses, explore crime scenes, and progress through the grim plot by slowly picking at clues presented in a point-and-click style. If you've played the original Famicom Detective Club games , or their excellent Switch remakes, you'll know the drill here. This is slow-placed stuff, delightfully detailed in how it's wr.