Famicom Detective Club Reviews
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind are two great games of their genre. Nintendo invested a lot in these lesser known titles and the result is quite great. There's some great production quality behind these remakes, despite some minor flaws. If it your kind of game, give them a shot !
Review in French | Read full review
Leaving aside the game structure and high price that will cause you to hang out meaninglessly from time to time, adventures that you will enjoy are waiting for you.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
For those looking for playable murder mysteries, Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind are easily recommended. Though neither game requires too much hard thinking on the part of the player, both feature entertaining stories and characters, with enough interaction and drip-feeding of clues to remain engaging throughout.
You can tell a lot of love and care has gone into the recreation of this over decades old game, and I for one am thrilled to have experienced it.
I enjoyed my time with Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir. It tells an interesting story that puts surprising twists on some expected tropes. While there were elements of the UI that showed their age, once I got used to them and played the game on its terms, I was able to work through it without much issue. With the story taking its time to get interesting, though and being fairly short at that, it is hard to call this a must-play. Still, for fans who have been interested for many years, finally getting to play this in English is a treat.
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is a solid, enjoyable mystery to play. I loved exploring Myoujin Village and learning about the cast, or swapping between the orchestrated arrangement and original chiptune songs. The game is also a time capsule into Nintendo’s past and the early days of graphic adventures on console, and has aged remarkably well. I sort of wish they’d included the original version of the game, if only for comparison’s sake, but having the music is a nice touch. The game even comes with a Music Mode you unlock after completing it. It’s a nice touch. Will this title wow veteran visual novel and graphic adventure aficionados? Not really. But for its place in the genre’s history, I think it’s worth a shot.
But even if a couple aspects are off, it’s frankly remarkable how well this murder mystery holds up over two decades later.
Famicon Detective Club is a bundle package going the extra mile to satisfy long term fans whilst introducing newer gamers to the franchise. Although visual novels generally age well, this new port of both The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind wonderfully maintain the original feel of the games with some great new changes to make them future proof. They both feature truly spectacular narration as their stories unfold, and continue to keep things fresh with new themes interspersed at regular intervals. Both games look stunning as well, with superb visuals. Overall, this duology is perfect for lovers of visual novels who enjoy whodunnits with a side of horror and mystery added for good measure.
Like The Missing Heir before it, The Girl Who Stands Behind features an enjoyable and thought-provoking story, but its style of gameplay will take some getting used to whether you’re a connoisseur of visual novels or not.
Famicom Detective Club bundles two games for 60 euros. The fact that these are old games meant only for the Asian market is clearly visible. The dialogues are in Japanese and the games are clearly polished in various aspects. Still, if you like a good story or two and feel the connection with your inner detective (and have a lot of time on your hands) these games scream for you. The writing of Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto only justifies the price even more!
Review in Dutch | Read full review
This is a game that I can’t believe exists frankly, especially when you can go into the options and change the soundtrack to the original Disk System and Famicom versions. The Nintendo Switch has truly become enough of a broad success to allow room for experiments like this, even from Nintendo itself. And that rules.
Those with an interest in Nintendo's history should undoubtedly pick up Famicom Detective Club, and those simply looking for a couple of good mystery yarns will have a fun time with it too. Just be aware that it’s a very linear adventure, and once you’re done there’s very little replay value.
What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a classic question and one that is very special to each of us. For me, I wanted to join the police. I came close, but eventually, my career path took me down a different route. However, thanks to Rapid Reviews I still got my chance to achieve my dream. Famicom Detective Club puts you in the driving seat as a member of the Utsugi Detective Agency.
On the one hand, there are the very handsome graphics with great animations and a great voice acting. But then there are the repetitive passages and the problems with "finding your way", even though there are fortunately no dead ends. The decision will probably come down to gameplay and story. Those looking for fast-paced gameplay and unprecedented story will probably not be happy with Famicom Detective Club. However, if you're not averse to visual novels in general and can relate to scary stories from the 80s and 90s, you should definitely give the game bundle a chance.
Review in German | Read full review
The Missing Heir is a fun game with intriguing characters, a twisting though predictable plot, and a lot of trial and error.
The Famicom Detective Club games are excellent, highly traditional detective mystery stories. Some might see that as "quaint", "old", "antiquated" or even "simple." That's simply our cultural experience talking. The reality is that these games are highly relevant to the Japanese understanding and interest in the genre, and the core storytelling experience is so modern it's easy to forget that they're remakes of NES-era classics. Throw in some of the most stunning VN art from the very masters of the genre, and this little collection of two titles has every chance of becoming one of the sleeper hits of the year. And, who knows? If it finds the audience it deserves, it might just inspire Nintendo and Mages to make a new one. I'd be up for more Famicom Detective Club.
The remake of both games in the Famicom Detective Club series is primarily two good and interesting stories from more than three decades ago, with a relatively simple layer of adventure and detective for the present time. Although going on the beaten schemes, it is still nice to spend some time with them.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Famicom Detective Club is a fun adventure murder mystery game that will keep you engaged from start to finish.
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is a fun adventure game that does show its age, but it'll captivate you until the end.
The Famicom Detective Club has the feel of a modern adventure game, even if the gameplay still dates back to a time when I was in grade school. It's well voiced, looks great, and is a good if brief ride that shouldn't tire you out before we fall back in time about a century and a half in a couple of months.