Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir

Famicom Detective Club holds your attention from first the first frames and to the credits, even if you know the genre like the back of your hand. Every piece of the story works in a tandem, creating a dark and twisted adventure with believable characters. Every session with Detective Club is an adventure of its own, and when you put the game down, it's hard to not delve on what will happen next.

The fact that Nintendo would remake Famicom Detective Club at all might be one of the most welcome and unexpected surprises of this year, and they’ve turned out remarkably well—dated puzzle design notwithstanding. An art style that combines the best parts of visual novel stills and fluid animation helps to lay the groundwork for a pair of truly engrossing detective stories. The way each mystery unfolds as you piece together the clues is nothing short of masterful, with the atmosphere, nuanced storytelling, and emotional underpinnings to tie it all together beautifully.

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, entirely modern, 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.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir & Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind provide us with two remarkable stories. Furthermore, artistically the game is impeccable, which is due to its polished anime-like graphics as well as its tracks and voice acting.

Mystery fans and visual novel fans alike would be remiss not to check out this brilliant revival of a classic title, but they must be prepared with an extra set of thinking caps that otherwise shouldn’t be necessary.

By today's standards, there's nothing revolutionary about Famicom Detective Club, but that doesn't stop both games from being really solid experiences. Despite a bit of predictability in the plots, both stories were incredibly engaging and nothing short of a complete joy to play through. It's easy to see that Mages really took a lot of pride in crafting a quality remake here, since every little detail shines through. If you're at all curious to see what these games are about, you owe it to yourself to give at least one of them a look.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir succeeds at being a modern remake of what once was a lost piece of Nintendo history. Alongside its prequel, it’s a memorable revival of a true trailblazer in console adventure games. The storyline is well written, featuring layers of mystery and speculation that are worth investigating, and the polished visual style makes the classic adventure relevant to modern genre fans.

While it sometimes feels its age in terms of gameplay, Famicom Detective Club is nonetheless an excellent Visual Novel. The two proposed surveys are pleasant to follow while the visual rendering impresses. Its sublime artistic direction, mixing the new and the old, is practically worth the detour on its own. And too bad if the whole thing sometimes lacks interactivity, because the essential is there. We take pleasure in following these budding detectives in their discoveries. Too bad these very successful remakes do not benefit from a French translation despite their prohibitive price.

And it would be a shame that after reopening the Famicom Detective Club "case", Nintendo does not follow up on the saga, because here is the material and there are the characters to give life to a long and beautiful series of detective stories.

With an amazing story full of murder and mystery, Famicom Detective Club is a remake worth investigating.

Despite a few now-outdated design decisions, we were positively surprised how well these games hold up after over 3 decades. The effort that was put into the updated presentation together with the well-written stories and characters make this a package well worth your time.

This classic piece of Nintendo history lives up to its promise of an engaging and thrilling mystery, but the gameplay can sometimes feel too dated. [Issue #4, p.54]

If you're a fan of visual novels, adventure games and/or mysteries, I think you'll enjoy what Famicom Detective Club has to offer. Just be prepared for the gameplay to test your patience! [Issue #53 – July/August 2021, p. 19]

Famicom Detective Club: The Two-Case Collection is a masterful remake of two original games that are over thirty years old and which now become accessible to many more players around the world. If the original gameplay formula is largely left untouched, the audiovisual presentation is given a thorough renovation that brings it closer to a contemporary experience. This detective adventure is now fit for a modern audience and it's well worth the hours spent on it.

Until now, Famicom Detective Club duology had never been officially released to the western market. Now these adventure games from late 80’s are here with new graphics and full localization, and they’re well worth your time. [Issue#253, p.68]

Many outside of Japan didn't experience Famicom Detective Club before, which is a true shame considering just how good these visual novels are. Each has a compelling story and is well worth playing, especially now that they both have been remade with such care and attention. Anyone who enjoys adventure games or mysteries should definitely give these a try, as they easily rank among the best of the hidden gems on the Switch.

Famicom Detective Club has a wonderful art style, intriguing characters, and compelling mysteries to solve. However, the one aspect that lets the game down is its repetitive gameplay aspects.

The Famicom Detective Club duology is, at its core, a beautiful set of remakes that will please players that can look past some of the dated mechanics.

The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, while mechanically similar, offer pretty different takes on the detective game. Do you want to slowly unravel the conspiracy behind a powerful woman's death in a quiet village? Or, would you rather chase down a murderer in a high-octane, spooky thrill ride? The former is better executed, but both are worthwhile opportunities to dust off your magnifying glass.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is impressive if only for the fact that a new lick of paint and a few tweaks here and there leave it feeling so close to a modern game in so many ways. It will at times betray that illusion with some frustrating progress-blockers, but for the most part this is a great choice for fans of adventure games or even just a good mystery story. Mages has done a fantastic job of updating the game’s presentation, too. This isn’t the kind of game we’re used to seeing from Nintendo, particularly when it’s reaching into its classic library, but I’m glad it’s finally available to a wider audience.

Despite some progression issues in the first half, Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is a gorgeous adventure that is well worth experiencing on Nintendo Switch.

The Famicom Detective Club games are gorgeous to look at and provide interesting supernatural mysteries for you to uncover. If you like manga, anime, or murder mysteries, these interactive visual novels will be right up your alley.

Nintendo and Mages does an excellent job taking one of the first visual novels and one of the rarest Nintendo games and bringing it to a modern audience with fully revamped art, an orchestrated soundtrack, and fully recorded voicing. The mystery is a blast to solve and the characters are delightfully terrible at hiding things which gives the whole thing a classic Murder She Wrote vibe. Lack of replayability may make the price point hard to justify for a 30-plus-year-old game, but the experience is excellent, especially for people like me who have always wanted to play this but never had the ability to.

Frustrations aside, Famicom Detective Club still manages to captivate all the same. It’s a miracle that these two Nintendo classics were ever localized, let alone as a global simultaneous release with these remakes. It was a blast to join the Detective Club after so many years, and I can only hope one day we can see a similar remake for the series’ 3rd game, sales permitting. If you’re at all a fan of either the Visual Novel or Japanese Adventure game genres, you owe it to yourself to experience this vital part of their history.

Famicom Detective Club is not terribly complicated by modern standards. The games show their ages in spots, and can be frustrating to figure out, but this is absolutely the kind of murder mystery stories I’ve been looking for. The true strength of these remakes is how they made me feel nostalgic for an era of video games I wasn’t even alive during. They recapture the feeling of classic ADV titles while modernizing just enough of the experience to keep the games accessible. The mysteries offered are both fresh, yet comfortably late ’80s. Bigger budgeted “Visual Novels” are always welcome, and a push for them to be played worldwide is even better. I think Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind is the stronger of the two, but this is a great package all the same. If you’re fine with some tedium here and there, this is a glowing recommendation from me.

Despite an arcachic trial and error gameplay, Famicom Detective Club is your best chance to know two Nintendo classics.

Despite the not-so-popular price and the game mechanics of their time, the Famicom Detective Club series is an interesting work and a video game restoration operation that could open the door to other similar episodes. Rebuilt from scratch, with beautiful two-dimensional graphics and enriched by the dubbing of all dialogues, the two games retain intact their charm and are proposed to new generations in a truly sumptuous. The genre of belonging, however, is to be taken into account, since the developers have done very little to modernize the playability of the work, which is - in the long run - slightly cumbersome. Although the interactivity is not comparable to the most modern investigative games, Famicom Detective Club has an undeniable vintage charm. Despite a few too many stereotypes, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind are two stories that deserve to be experienced.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is a captivating window not only into Nintendo’s past, but also into the past of adventure games as a whole. While it retains some of the gameplay frustrations that plagued the genre back in its earlier days, The Missing Heir offers a gripping murder mystery at its core, wrapped in video and audio upgrades that freshen up the experience for a whole new generation of would-be detectives.

The Famicom Detective Club remakes are living history, and a chance to catch up on what you missed out on, either by being too young, or not being able to speak Japanese. Though The Missing Heir has its faults, those faults are largely down to "that's just how games used to be", and it's held up remarkably well all the same.

If you want a high-quality visual novel, a good mystery story to follow, and a time capsule of game design all in one, the Famicom Detective Club remakes feel like a solid call.

Famicom Detective Club is a blast from Nintendo's forgotten past, a package made with love and respect to the original material. These are nice mystery novels, somehow bogged down by old game design and an archaic UI. Still, we recommend them to all the fans of the genre.

Famicom Detective Club is not the new Ace Attorney that many were hoping for, that much is clear. The new graphic design makes a huge (and obvious) step forward compared to the original, but the investigation mechanics really feel the weight of the years and might not meet the favour of less patient players. Two good stories, but condemned to a lethargic narration despite their objective merits. Recommended for visual novel lovers and hardcore Nintendo fans.

In this type of game where 95% of the time we are reading, knowing the language is important in order to fully enjoy the adventure. If you can read in English, Famicom Detective Club brings you two games for the price of one and two interesting stories on Nintendo Switch.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir really shines on its art, sound and, more than anything else, the story. In what should've been most important though, gameplay, even with several improvements, it still shows its age. It falls short of being a masterpiece but it is still a solid addition to anyone's Visual Novels library.

For the most part, you’re in for a few solid crime-solving sessions in the shoes of an absolutely unqualified amateur detective – a role most of us are pretty familiar with playing (in life, and in games). There are mysteries to be found in these solid remakes of the old Famicom Detective Club series, and they are well worth solving.