2.5/5 ★ – jkrgamer's review of Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club.

A little too needlessly obtuse, and a little too overly dark right at the end, which gave me some tonal whiplash. I partially played, and partially watched a walkthrough. Good stuff first: the production value is insane. I have never seen a visual novel this pretty, ever. Not sure if that still justifies the $50 price tag, but it still super impressed me. I also think the writing is nice, and as a piece of detective fiction the slow burn of new info coming to light, with the main characters always smartly qualifying their deductions, feels really refreshing. I was also surprised to find that 95% of this game is actually quite lighthearted and full of great humor, kind of like an ace attorney game! I didn't expect to laugh at the weirdo characters as much as a I did, or the main character's internal monologues. I said 95% though, because despite the initial premise being a little dark, it goes FULL-ON dark right at the very end. And while I should've been prepared for that, it still disturbed me enough to have a sleepless night. Please take the game's rating seriously, as the games depictions of suicide, self-harm, and domestic violence may bug you even more than a more traditionally violent horror game from other game devs, which is quite ironic considering this is from Nintendo. Finally, the obtuseness. It doesn't make sense to me that there are so few moments where you actually make deductions, making this really more novelly than detective-y, AND YET there are SO many moments where the game doesn't tell you what to do. Selecting the same dialogue option over and over again, but then being expected to "think" before selecting it again, just isn't intuitive. "I'm sorry, you were SUPPOSED to click on the characters face and THEN press the dialogue three times before we progress this scene, you IDIOT!" It's like the dialogue-equivalent of pixel hunting. Just make the game entirely a novel with no guessing. So, not for me in the end, but I really did enjoy the narrative before it got too heavy. I feel like they could have made this T-rated and held back a bit, but maybe more people will appreciate how far it takes things. I've learned my lesson though, when the ESRB says there's disturbing imagery, I need to go play Animal Crossing instead.