Famicom Detective Club on Switch by jeuxvideo.com

During the 80s, when Yoshio Sakamoto wasn’t having fun pitting Samus Aran against the fearsome Metroids, he was starting his first visual novel scripts, bathed in his love for the macabre aesthetic of horror filmmaker Dario Argento and the pioneering nature of The Portopia Serial Murder Casea monument of the genre that would meet a disastrous fate in the Steam catalog of AI-hacked remakes. In 1988 and 1989, he published Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and its prequel Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, respectively. two episodes in which the player takes on the role of a young amateur investigator confronted with criminal mysteries in a peaceful Japanese countrysideand which quickly demonstrate his talent for creating intimate atmospheres and weaving captivating plots. The license naturally rises to the rank of local classic, but will only experience a slight Western craze when excellent remakes are released in 2021. The fame will never be truly international and yet, After twenty years without an original screenplay, Sakamoto has decided to offer us a new mystery to solve this year.. Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club crystallizes the dreams of a community that, until then, did not dare hope to dive back into this universe so fleetingly brought up to date.

A climactic episode

THE first very cryptic teasers Emio’s surprise releases by Nintendo were already mouth-watering and foreshadowed a rather sinister scenario. It’s hard to imagine the mysterious man from the trailers, decked out in a long beige trench coat and a sticky paper bag on his head, with good intentions. The first intuition is often the best: he is the initiator of a macabre legend that is told in the corridors of Japanese schools; that of Emio, a man with a face hidden behind an improvised mask who offers crying young girls an “eternal smile”. By that, he means he murders them without the slightest compassion, probably thinking he will free them from tears that are too painful to bear, before putting a hideous bag over their heads on which he will have previously drawn a hideous smile. A start to a plot that would make Mario and his sidekick pale and which sets the tone foran atmosphere as horrific as what we experienced in The Girl Who Stands Behind, which is clearly not something we dislike. This tragic tale, born in the tragedy of the murder of three female students eighteen years earlier, resonates again in our time when the Utsugi Detective Agency must collaborate with the police to investigate the strangely similar death of a young boy, Eisuke Sasaki.

In this new episode, you will first find your favorite characters: your apprentice detective – to name yourself – always so funny, insightful and touching, but also his faithful colleagues such as Ayumi, for whom he cultivates an eternal crush, and his mentor Shunsuke Utsugi who, as usual, likes to follow his own trail. A very nice cast to which is added a nice handful of easter eggs and some new faces.like Junko Kuze, an irascible inspector and her second, Daisuke Kamihara, a first-rate bumbling idiot who will have a hard time being perceptive during the ongoing case. The ensemble constitutes a gallery of varied and endearing personalities ready to invest body and soul in a particularly dense investigation. And if the twists and turns have always been legion in the license, today they are less classic, more surprising, and coupled with interesting themes that touch on the morals of Japanese society.. Sakamoto makes a huge leap in terms of storytelling, regularly offering us scenes of beautiful intensity and an almost constant mysteryalthough the start is somewhat gentle. The construction of the investigation is generally quite traditional in its form, but it remains always enjoyable, until reaching the apotheosis in the third part of the game, which will for sure make the experience memorable for any big fan of Famicom Detective Club. We promise you that.

Like back then

Before going into more detail about the intrinsic qualities of Emio, let’s recall the nature of the game, which although extremely popular in Japan, still only finds favor with a niche audience in France: Famicom Detective Club is a series of investigative visual novels. If you’re not familiar with the genre, imagine clicking through scenes from a Japanese soap opera, with naturally very limited interaction, as the format demands.. A principle that is quite appreciable for those who like to indulge in it, but which, inevitably, considerably restricts the possibilities of direct exchange with the scenario. Also, Sakamoto’s saga has never really let anyone investigate on their own. It occasionally offers its player the opportunity to pour out their thoughts in fill-in-the-blank texts to retrace the thread of a chapter at the end of a sequence, suggested more as a reminder tool. The rest of the time, on the investigation scenes, or in the interrogation rooms, You generally have to embrace the very strict logic of the game, even if it means suffering a certain frustration.

Research is conducted by following a very classic action plan among a series of options, such as “Ask/Listen”, “Watch/Examine” and “Travel”. Imagine yourself in front of a witness: you will sometimes have to question him on all the elements of the investigation before being able to obtain a reaction from him about a composite portrait that you have been impatiently chomping at the bit to present to him since the beginning of your meeting, but to which he has so far only responded with vague ellipses. An illogical process that can be quite time-consuming when you struggle to trigger the right action that will unblock your situation (especially since actions that are useless to progress are not grayed out)and which unfortunately has not benefited from improvements over the episodes, constituting once again the weak point of the game. Other elements, less major, but still important, have on the other hand been simplified, like the notepad. More pleasant to consult, it is absolutely essential to recall the slew of names involved in our dark affair. And then, for the first time, An episode of Famicom Detective Club comes to us with a French translation, which is excellent.. A highly appreciable argument for the long and generous hours – I counted ten of them – of narrative which are offered to us.

The top of the basket

If there are any flaws, the immersion is nevertheless difficult to shake, especially thanks to a formidable voice cast that delivers full dubbingpolished animations, and an extremely appreciable high-definition visual rendering. Famicom Detective Club can still rest for a long time in the top basket of visual novels, propelled by the superb 3D models of characters with a retro look, effective minimalist animations, and a sense of detail that we applaud: while our interlocutors move their lips and fidget, in the background, sketches occasionally occur in richly constructed settings. The general atmosphere is also on top, sublimated by omnipresent music that fits each situation very well, right down to the horrific jolts that the story offers us at times. A treat for the eyes as well as for the ears.

Conclusion