The charm of detective stories is often like magic, we often can only see the appearance but can not peek into the core, so we follow the protagonist of the story layer by layer from the perspective of the reader to solve the puzzle, and finally face the truth, we will admire the ingenuity and complexity of the whole logic. A truly good detective story will attract readers through a complete story throughout, and on our quest for the truth, we will face doubt and denial again and again, and the closer we get to the final chapter, the more itchy we are.
This May, the "Famicom Detective Club", which was once released on the FC platform, was also remade and landed on the Switch platform, in fact, if you just look at these two works from the perspective of the story, whether it is "The Disappearing Heir" or the prequel "The Girl Standing Behind" has indeed achieved interlocking and fascinating, these stories have so far had a lot to play and scrutinize, and their brilliance has not been eroded by the years. However, it is a pity that we still can't ignore that this is a text adventure game, if we look at these two works from the perspective of the game, it is naturally impossible to avoid the problem of poor gameplay, and the whole game flow is basically like watching an animated electronic novel. Considering the pricing of the digital version of about 240 yuan per film, and the physical version only sells the daily double version of the collector's version (it is worth mentioning that the two games in the physical version are integrated in the same cassette, the icons of the two games will pop up directly after inserting the cassette), so this time we may also recommend that you be a cloud player and enjoy the exquisite story, of course, if you like the feeling of unveiling the mystery yourself, then this game can still bring you surprises.
Previously, we mentioned in the Switch May Buyer's Guide that the original "Disappearing Heirs" was released in 1988, and "The Girl Standing Behind" that came out the following year was its prequel. Time and language and other reasons make the influence of this series in China extremely limited, so for many players to play this game on Switch will experience a new story. In addition, although the story of the two games is related in sequence, the main line is relatively independent, so no matter which one is played first, it will not affect the experience. After completing the two games, you will also find that the details will be tandem together, learn why we became detectives, how to meet the assistant Bumi, let us have a better understanding of the ins and outs of "Famicom Detective Club".
In Vanishing Heirs, the detective we play wakes up under a cliff, and like the protagonists of many films and novels, we temporarily lose our memory. As the story progresses, we learn that we are an assistant to a detective agency, and before the amnesia, we are investigating a commission about the death of a large family manager, and in the process of this investigation, a series of murders are staged one after another, the deceased is related to the heir of the family, and our goal is to find out the real culprit behind the murder. "The Girl Standing Behind" pulls the story back to a few years ago, telling the story of one of the horror cases that the protagonist remembered most after becoming a detective. The body of a female high school student was found by the river, and the deceased had investigated the horror story "The Girl Standing Behind" circulating in the school. In the process of investigating the case, this female high school student murder case and another murder case fifteen years ago are intertwined, as detectives, we must dig out what kind of connection between these two murders spanning fifteen years and what kind of secrets are hidden. Both works are quite well polished in terms of storytelling, but as a detective game, its overall adventure story will still be greater than the reasoning of the game, or in fact, we do not need to do too much reasoning during the whole game, and from the perspective of the background of the game, the information we know and the information presented by the story are not equal, which makes the reasoning another layer of discount.
In terms of gameplay, both games are relatively simple in design and very similar in operation. And because the progress of the story is completely a linear narrative of chapter advancement, there are no branching options in the middle, so all we have to do is to gradually advance according to the plot. Most of the time our operable area is concentrated in the menu bar in the upper left corner of the screen, which contains multiple options such as moving, inquiring, displaying, taking, calling, viewing, recalling, etc., and to advance the plot, you need to interact with these character scenes. Like most word adventure games, these two titles are filled with a huge amount of dialogue and text content, so players need to calm down and carefully read each sentence during the game to sift through the valid information.
As we said earlier, both "The Vanishing Heir" and "The Girl Standing Behind" are relatively weakly playable, and a large part of the reason is that we are constantly talking from beginning to end. Many times, without ideas, we need to repeatedly try each option on the menu bar, especially in the inquiry column (that is, dialogue) in the later part of the story, there will be many questions that can be inquired about, which makes our mental work more than the operation on the finger. At the same time, some key dialogue messages require us to click on the same question multiple times to trigger, which also causes a card problem to some extent. If you're in the same survey scene for more than half an hour and don't get nervous, you're missing some important information and conversation. In addition to dialogue, there will also be some characters in this work who need us to find clues in the scene, but the design idea of this link is actually similar to the dialogue, often there will not be many hints, and we need to think about it ourselves. So although it seems that we are decent detectives, we are actually just a plot-driven tool who does not know where to go.
A large number of text dialogues make it inevitable that the experience of this game is relatively boring, but thanks to the semi-real-time animation of this game and some interesting text design, the overall game atmosphere is still a lot more lively. Obviously, examining the body of the deceased is a very serious matter, but our unruly little hands can move around the screen, and even attract the soul of the coroner to ask", "Are you thinking about something H?" Interesting dialogues like this are not uncommon throughout the game, and some scenes also harbor Easter eggs, and the joy of finding out their agents is no less than the thrill of solving puzzles. In addition, the semi-instant animation also brings some additional surprises, such as a passerby passing by the window during a conversation in the café, and it does not take long for a passerby to appear behind the protagonist and light a coffee. These passers-by don't have much of an impact on the plot, but they do add a touch of fun and realism to the game.
As a remake, Famicom Detective Club has also put a lot of effort into the graphics and music, all the characters and scenes have been redrawn to make the game more modern (although the graphic performance of "The Girl Standing Behind" on SFC is already very positive, and even more of the flavor of the times), and almost all the characters can find personality characteristics from the standing painting. But then again, xuanxin presided over you is really not the trial grown-up from the "Reverse Judgment" crew next door? In addition, in order to avoid the scene screen appearing too static, most of the scenes will add some dynamic details, in fact, if you look closely, the distant clouds in the outdoor scene are slowly fluttering, which will make the overall atmosphere of the game more comfortable. In terms of auditory experience, the music of the original FC platform can not be considered outstanding because of the limitations of the times, and this remake has a wealth of orchestration changes, with modern re-arrangement, which indeed fully renders the overall horror suspense atmosphere of the game on the basis of preserving the original taste. Finally, the voice actor lineup of this game is also gorgeous, Megumi Ogata's neutral voice line gives the young protagonist a different kind of charm, and The assistant Bumi who is dedicated to Hiroko Tsuguchi is also very gentle, and the excellent dubbing can indeed alleviate the boring feeling caused by the huge amount of dialogue to a certain extent.
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After more than thirty years, it is undoubtedly a blessing for today's players to learn about these two works in a new way today. The beauty of a good story is that whenever you open it, you will be attracted to its subtle content. Just as Masashi Yokomizu's novels are best-selling to this day, and Conan Doyle's legend of Sherlock Holmes is still alive and well, the reinterpretation of Famicom Detective Club reminds us of the fact that there was such a wonderful and interesting detective game in the history of Nintendo. But still back to the beginning of the problem, as a visual novel game, the story of this work is much greater than the playability, for those who only want to enjoy the story, the process of moving towards the truth is still somewhat boring and monotonous, of course, considering that the two game processes are not long, the price is not low, whether to pay for the classic or more depends on the player himself. In the end, Nintendo's choice to launch a remake of "Famicom Detective Club" at this point in time is actually more interesting, is it also intentional to restart the series? After all, the story of a detective is not out of date in any era.