Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (Review)

Published on 12 Sep 2024

I finished Emio. It’s definitely a Famicom Detective Club game, through and through, for the good and the bad. If anything the 18+ is almost a red herring on what you might think the game is like if you never played those remakes.

The 18+ rating is definitely warranted, but it’s almost unfair how it might make you think the game is very mature when it’s still very light hearted but serious when it needs to be. If you are sensitive though, there are definitely moments you will definitely feel bad about.

I dunno however if the story is better than The Girl Who Stands Behind, to me. It’s still good, and there are definitely good ideas in there. It’s very good at giving you the clues to figure out what’s going on before the end. Maybe a little too good, but maybe that’s on me.

However, you really need to be caring about stories and characters, because else you wouldn’t really enjoy it, and you need to be methodic in the menuing because it’s just that, after all. If you’re a sucker for sad stories though, this gives you that. It’s a mood killer for sure.

I did notice the game can be different depending on how you play it, but I need to look further about that, but I’m not really in the mood to look at let’s plays of that to see how different it can get.

If you didn’t play the remakes, or at least The Girl Who Stands Behind, I highly suggest you should. Nintendo should seriously take the time to localize those games in more languages.

By the way; yes, the music is very good.

I just got reminded how Emio was sometimes summed up as a “horror game” because of the teaser, but it is definitely not that.

For some though, the teaser was definitely felt like a betrayal, but it makes for a good teaser in a roundabout way to convey the base urban legend.