4/5 ★ – LCSnoogs's review of Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir.

I got into visual novels with 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, and I've grown more interested in them since then. I was surprised to find that Nintendo was the originators of the genre with the Famicom Detective Club. I can see the influence this game has. It reminded me a lot of Root Film, another detective visual novel I played earlier this year, with Famicom's murder mystery around a wealthy family that is potentially supernatural. Unlike that game, The Missing Heir is about solving one mystery that grows bigger over the course of the game. The Missing Heir was also a more frustrating experience. It seems the developers didn't bother updating the gameplay in this. The story is about a teenage detective who has recently suffered amnesia while investigating the death of the matriarch of the wealthy Ayashiro family. To find clues to solve the mystery, I had to question people connected to the family and look around environments for points or objects of interest. The frustrating part is in the questioning. I'm used to having to ask the same question twice to make sure I get the all the information the question has to offer, but this game sometimes required me to ask the same question 5 times or maybe even more. Then there are times where I had to ask one question that goes nowhere, ask another question that goes nowhere, and then ask the original question again to proceed through the story. The game doesn't bother giving a hint in some of these cases either. Too many times I had to resort to just selecting every option I had to see which one would lead to an answer that will progress the story. This gets worse in the cases where I had multiple people to question and multiple places to visit: go to one place, exhaust all options with all characters, go to another place exhaust all options with all characters, and then go back to the original place to finally get new information. Luckily, the game's story is good enough for me to push through this bullshit. The Missing Heir is surprisingly dark for a Nintendo game. There are multiple murders that happen throughout this game, and I was required to examine the corpses too. Many surprises and twists I didn't see coming. There was a feeling of dread from chapter to chapter as it felt like any of the characters I met could end up dead. The game's art is bright, colorful, and pleasant to look at with simple but beautiful animations, so seeing a corpse can be quite shocking. The game could've used more upgrades in the gameplay, but I enjoyed my time with this game. I'm excited to get to the prequel.