You’d think after previewing Ace Attorney Investigations Collection I’d be done but no. Nintendo dropped a free demo of its fourth instalment of the Famicom Detective Club series earlier this week, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, which I decided to check out since I’m riding the detective train.
Emio is very similar to the Ace Attorney series, but I was surprised to learn that it’s a much older; the first game was released in 1988. The first two games in the Famicom series were remastered for the Switch in 2021, and its last instalment came out in 1997.
READ MORE: Preview | Ace Attorney Investigations Collection (Switch)
We’re On The Case
The demo starts quickly; within moments of starting your day at the Utsugi Detective Agency, you’re investigating the death of a young high schooler. Oddly, his head is covered by a paper bag with a smiley face on it. Even weirder, this seems to be a copycat of a cold case 18 years ago.
Players can investigate by selecting various options on the top left menu. It’s a little strange as you don’t get an indication of how many times you have to go through certain options to progress. I realised I had to continually select the same options to progress, until I started getting the same answers. When I got stuck, I found using “Think” helped direct me to the next action.
As with the Ace Attorney Investigations Collections remaster for the Switch, Emio doesn’t allow for touch screen for investigating areas, which would’ve made it easier to look for clues. It’s also missing the “Autoplay” feature to skip lengthy dialogue when characters ramble and you have to do a lot of reading. However, there is a very handy “Review” feature which appears when you load back into a save, giving you the lowdown on where you’re in the story.
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Make sure to read (or skim) your “Notebook” before case reviews, which test your knowledge of the case. Fear not though, answering incorrectly doesn’t do anything except make you disappoint the characters. No harm there. The characters are an interesting bunch, with one detective being particularly random and weird. But what’s an anime without a funny side character?
Case Closed
It’s clear this is more of an interactive story game and it leans into it brilliantly with its crisp animation. Cut scene animations are also more like anime scenes, making it easy to lose yourself in the world.
Emio’s storyline is also very intriguing and left me wanting more. Nintendo is pulling an interesting move here and will be releasing Chapter 2’s demo on August 23rd at 11am AEST, and Chapter 3’s demo on August 28th at 11am AEST. Players who downloaded the first demo will automatically receive the other chapters at the above times, as long as their Switch systems are connected to the internet. Save data will also be transferred if you decide to buy the full game.
You can pre-purchase the game now for the Nintendo Switch before its release on August 29th on the Nintendo store.
Watch the trailer below:
