Famicom Detective Club (Nintendo Switch) Review

Famicom Detective Club (Nintendo Switch) Review

Famicom Detective Club (Nintendo Switch) Review 


Hello Guys today Today I will review both Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club The Girl Who Stands Behind, a visual novel duology sold separately starting May 14th for the Nintendo Switch. So first what is Famicom Detective Club?



Well, Famicom Detective Club is a pair of interactive visual novels consisting of two games: Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir, which originally came out for the Famicom Disk System in 1988, and Famicom DetectiveClub: The Girl Who Stands Behind, a prequel to the first game released in 1989. 

Both games were well received in Japan, butare only now being officially localized for Western audiences 30 years later in the form of full HD remakes. 

Was it worth the wait? 

I’m going to say yes it was! Despite predating similar games in the detective/mystery genre like Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton, or even Zero Escape and Danganronpa by a goodde cade or more, Famicom Detective Club manages to be engaging from start to finish, thanks to a complete overhaul of the visuals, sound, and UI by developer Mages, who worked in conjunctionwith the original Nintendo team responsible for the series. 

The result is a solid pair of spine-tingling murder mystery adventures that kept me entertained for sixteen hours total, or about 8 hoursper game. 

Both Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl That Stands Behind star a teenage detective attempting to solve homicide cases involving vengeful ghosts and shady characters who clearly know more than they let on about the supernatural occurrences plaguing their town. 

In order to unravel the mystery behind eachcase, the protag will need to do things like interview and closely examine witnesses, search for clues in different areas of town, gather evidence, and speculate on each pertinent fact of an investigation. All of these things are done by using thed-pad or left analog stick to vertically cycle through the detective command menu, which is divided into a series of neatly stacked and compartmentalized options for you to choose from. 


                                   


In the original ‘80s version of the series,this interface was split between an awkward set of squares that featured a character portrait,the command menu and the dialogue box.. But here Mages did a great job bringing the UI into the 21st century by having the visuals fill the entire screen and including a lessintrusive command menu that features clean, easy-to-read text, a dialogue box that only appears when a character is speaking, and having the game menu (which includes savedata and in-game settings) conveniently appear and disappear with a simple press of the plus button on your Switch controller. 

There are also some new quality of life improvementsadded to the Switch versions of the UI that I really appreciate. One is that while looking for clues (whichis a fairly smooth and responsive experience), you can press down on the control stick tospeed the cursor up so that you can more quickly examine your surroundings. 

Another is that you can hold down the left trigger button to speed through dialogue. Now, normally I wouldn’t recommend this as the dialogue flies by so fast you basically skip entire conversations, but luckily you can always review what you’ve learned about your case and the people involved in the handy dandy notepad feature--which was actually introduced in the 1998 Japanese port of The Girl That Stands Behind and wisely carried over to both Switch titles. 

There’s also a helpful feature that highlights newly available command options you’ve unlocked during conversations, as well as the ability to recap the story before resuming a save file. Having said all that, story progression is one place where the UI could still use some improvement. 

Even after exhausting all of my options in the command menu and following the subtle hints the characters would drop about whatto do next, there were times when I STILL got stuck and couldn’t progress the story. 

Clearly I was supposed to ask questions, examine things and ponder my situation in a particular order, but WHAT that order was wasn’t always clear, even with the addition of helpful audio-based hints that alerted me to when I’d stumbledon to an important visual or verbal clue. 

It didn’t help that sometimes certain options like say “open” or “take” would pop up seemingly prematurely in the detective command menu when there wasn’t anything to open or take just yet. 

This caused my progression to stagnate a fewtimes and it was a bit of a bummer. However, if there’s an upside to this, it’s that I learned I never wanted to give up on the dulogy. It was just too interesting to put down. 

Both stories --written by Yoshio Sakamotoof Metroid fame--are an excellent blend of drama, humor, mystery, and a few very tensemoments (in fact The Girl That Stand Behind features a legit jump scare at one point). BTW, since The Girl That Stands Behind is a prequel, you can play the series in whatever order you want. 

Which game you want to start with comes down to a matter of preference. Both are intriguing and start strong: In The Missing Heir, your protagonist (whom you can name whatever you want) wakes up at the bottomof a cliff with amnesia...because of course he does.

Now normally I’m annoyed by thelazy amnesia trope in video games, but in this case it actually works, since part of the story is finding out who your protagonist is and what happened to your hero while investigatinga string of deaths plaguing one very rich and potentially evil family. 

Mean while Famicom Detective Club the Girl That Stands Behind starts with the same protagonist (who’s name you can conveniently carry overfrom one game to another) running from the cops. 

You then learn why he’s a possible futitigve,how he became a young detective, and how he got caught up in a creepy unsolved murdercase involving a blood-soaked high-school girl thought to have died 15 years prior. Both mysteries feature a surprising amount of twists and turns that I really enjoyed, although neither quite sticks the landing due to too many red herrings and certain small but crucial facts being deliberately with held until the very end, making the reveal of the culprit feel rushed and confused. 

It’s also a little disappointing that there’s no branching story paths or variety of endings. The dulogy is pretty linear--and it’s also pretty forgiving, so even when the games do something cool like give you the option of either typing in answers to crucial questions or choosing the answer from a list of options,there’s no fail state or bad ending that you have to worry about, which robs the duology of any replay value. 


                                       


Still, you might want to stick around for the post credit scene in The Girl That Stands Behind since it’s got a pretty interestingand humorous moment that you won’t want to miss. Now, If I had to choose one over the other,I think I’d recommend playing The Girl That Stands Behind first. 

Although the Missing Heir has an overall more memorable cast, and a cool mini game where you have to navigate a creepy maze in the first person, I feel like The Girl That Stands Behind offers a better and spookier case that kept me guessing until the very end, some really nicely animated cut scenes, and one of the funniest character introductions I’ve come across in years (seriously, there wereat least two scenes involving this character that had me belly laughing). 

It would have been great if some of the moretense story beats were accompanied by an HD Rumble effect to ratchet up the suspense,but there’s no HD rumble to be had in Famicom Detective Club. 

It’s not a huge loss though, and I didn’treally feel the absence of touch screen controls, gyro controls or any other bells and whistlesthe Switch can provide, especially since all I really cared about is the fact that the games look good and play well. 

Speaking of looking good, one of my absolute favorite things about Famicom Detective Club are the gorgeous visuals. Instead of the 8-bit graphics of yore, theduology now features quality art and detailed animation that includes characters with livelyfacial expressions and a dynamic world where the wind stirs the grass or sunlight dapplesalong the surface of water. You can tell that Mages carefully recreatedeach setting and character from the original dulogy but gave the visuals the polish anddepth that they need for the 21st century. 

This new coat of paint looks good both inhandheld and docked mode, and I love it that Mages even had the forethought to includeanimation cycles in the background while you’re investigating; it adds to the feeling that the protagonist is living in a very real and dynamic world.

Complimenting the beautiful visuals is the fantastic Japanese voice over. The original games had none but now Famicom Detective Club features a fully-voiced cast of characters. You can choose to turn off the voice over in the settings if you like, but I wouldn’t recommend it. 

There’s a lot of emotion and depth that each character brings to the story when they’re fully voiced, and the acting in this game is great. Keep in mind there is no English track, but considering the game is very tied to Japanese beliefs and culture, that’s not necessarilya, bad thing. Plus,(and yes I’m pretty advanced in Japanese)the localization is on point, so you’re not really missing anything by not havingan English track. 

You’re still getting the full story. Along with some great voice over comes some very good music and sound. Both of these were limited back in the day,but now Mages has brought the audio up to date with clearer and more realistic sounds. Better yet, the excellent soundtrack is now available in both its original 8-bit form, and a beautiful, fully arranged version thatbrings out the real potential of the music. 

The Girl That Stands Behind even includes the Super Famicom Version of its soundtrack (since it got a Super Famicom port), and BTW,if you complete the story for each game, a very cool music mode unlocks with all of the arranged versions of the soundtrack for that game, so if you enjoy the music as much asI do, you might appreciate this extra feature. 

In short I think it’s safe to say I liked the Famicom Detective Club games a lot. 

Although they’re a bit limited by theirlinearity and slightly confused story progression, all in all they’re an entertaining pairof titles that will most likely appeal to fans of Phoenix Wright and other interactivenovels that involve murder and mayhem.

BTW if you are interested in getting both titles, there’s some good news: each game is only 1.9 GB so you don’t have to worry about them taking up a lot of space on your Switch, and if you decide to buy them bothat the same time on the Nintendo eShop, Nintendo will give you $10 off the second purchase,which isn’t too bad. Not great, but not bad. 

At any rate, if you like solving mysteries,enjoy the writing of Yoshio Sakamoto, love beautiful graphics and good game music, thenI’d recommend at least picking up one of these spooky interactive novels. 

Thanks so much for reading guys, and for all things, stay right here on INFOSG. 

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post