Right off the bat, I must point out this game's biggest flaw: its pricing. One Famicom Detective Club (FDC) game is $35, or £50/$60 for both, and in Europe you cannot buy them separately. For a remake of a Famicom adventure game/visual novel that took me under six hours to complete with virtually zero replayability, this pricing is just unacceptable, and I can't recommend this game to anyone if the price stays this way.

Nevertheless, The Girl Who Stands Behind is pretty good. The best point of comparison I can make is that it feels like a long and loose Ace Attorney case, the ones that have nothing to do with any overarching plots. There is almost nothing in terms of character building for the protagonist, and the little that was there felt shoehorned in. This is the second FDC game, which I played first by recommendation of the one review that I read before buying, meaning that there might be better foundations laid out in the The Missing Heir, but I wouldn't count on it. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, since the game was intent on feeling like a one-off episode, and it executed that well.

The story was intriguing, and it had enough twists and turns to keep me guessing for the almost one sitting I played it in. It’s about a dead high school girl and a rumour about a ghost in said school, with a more serious tone than the light-hearted Ace Attorney series. I was promised a bit of horror by that one review I read, but it didn’t really deliver until the very end, and even then, it was very tame. It’s very linear, meaning that you won’t have to piece together the puzzle yourself, but the game does a good job of addressing deductions the player might have made, eliminating most of the annoying dramatic irony that comes with detective media like this.

In terms of its success as a remake, it’s excellent from a presentation standpoint. The new art direction is great, with a fair amount of charm that complements the story well. The characters are expressive, and the backgrounds are intricate. I’m told that it’s even prettier in the first game, which is set in the countryside, where this one is in the city. It’s fully animated and voice acted too, making it feel like a step above something like the older Ace Attorney games. The rearranged music was surprisingly nice, with options for the Famicom versions too if you want a more authentic experience.

FDC’s remade presentation brushed up well, but what doesn’t hold up so well today is the adventure gameplay. One of the reasons I played this one first was because I was told its gameplay is less obtuse than the first game, and if this is “less obtuse” I shudder to think about what The Missing Heir is like. You have to pixel peep for the inanest things. You have to exhaust every dialogue option for a character multiple times even if their only response is “…”. It’s just not elegant in the slightest, and even though I got through it easy enough, I found myself eyerolling at some of the ways to progress. It’s a shame that the gameplay was largely untouched considering the effort that went into remaking the presentation.

Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind is well done remake and a fantastic homage to detective media that fans of Ace Attorney will enjoy, although you’ll need to have some patience for its outdated gameplay. Like I said before though, I can’t recommend that anyone buys this until the price has been slashed by at least 50%, or you’ll come away from its short runtime feeling very unsatisfied. That being said, it’s time for me to go buy and play The Missing Heir.

I’ll be very bare minimum with my review.

I enjoyed the mystery/gameplay of this one but I enjoyed the characters and overall story of the Missing Heir.

Both masterful in their own ways. Despite some frustrations in gameplay (like have to ask a question 3 times sometimes with no real indicator to do that), it’s a really great story. I say this for The Girl Who Stands Behind and The Missing Heir.

The mystery in this one really got me. The mystery of The Missing Heir was fairly predictable (for me) but this one had me guessing beginning to end. I was also half right about the ending and that really tore me apart lmao

Anyways, if you don’t mind $20+ (USD) for a VN, definitely nab it. However, if you are a time = money person, the games are both 6ish hours which is considered very short for most people. If that isn’t your jam, might be worth waiting for a sale.

Regardless, I enjoyed both a ton.

Finished this one second, after The Missing Heir. I thought going into this that I would like this more than the first, because of the school setting and supernatural plot. But I ultimately feel pretty equal on both of them, with only preferring this one slightly for small reasons. The biggest of which is you can definitely tell they learned a lot after The Missing Heir on how to make a good Visual Novel, and as a result I used a guide MUCH less in this one. I actually didn't even need to look at a guide once up until the 7th or 8th chapter. There’s significantly less cryptic BS in The Girl Who Stands Behind and is a lot better for it. I’d say this starts out more engaging and is better paced, with twists sprinkled in each chapter. But it also took longer to get to the major twist as opposed to the other game. Ultimately, there both pretty good for there time, but if you were dead set on only playing ONE of these for whatever reason, I would say play The Girl Who Stands Behind. I was flipping through the art book afterwards though and as far as these go as Remakes, I really wish they went with the Super Famicom style or even the 80s Famicom Disk System style. Those designs are so much more charming and would have added immensely to the vibe of games that are already set in 80s Japan. (The only character I really hate the design of though in these remakes, is the main character. He’s so ugly and punchable.) But I guess theres always the originals for that, so maybe one day I’ll play a fan translation. These remakes seem to be very faithful to the originals from what I could tell.

The Girl Who Stands Behind does a good job of already improving some of the weaknesses of The Missing Heir; with the Think command generally helping push the player forward better than the Remember command of the previous game's amnesia setup. There's more flexibility in investigation options as well, surely tied into the Super Famicom introduced Player Evaluation after the credits. Add in the intrigue over the way a ghost story rumor haunts the entire cast, and it became obvious why The Girl Who Stands Behind in particular is the fan favorite of the series.

A pretty significant improvement over the first game! The very first thing I noticed is that you have a "think" command which usually points you in the right direction when progression is unclear. Due to this addition, and smarter narrative design, I was able to make my way through the game with substantially less Googling than its predecessor.

Due to the much smoother narrative progression I found myself much more immersed in the mystery here. Again, much like the first game I don't think this mystery is all that special compared to other works in the genre, but the memorable characters and fantastic music really elevate it. One other thing that stuck out to me was the creative uses for your actions. I don't want to get into spoilers here, but just imagine your "talk" command doing something very different than usual in specific scenes. Every time they subverted the game's mechanics in this way was very impressive to me, especially for a game written in 1989.

The Girl Who Stands Behind builds on the first game and improves the game design with the incorporation of a "Think" command that often gives a hint in what to do first. In general, TGWSB seemed less obtuse than The Missing Heir in moving the game forward but I did end up consulting a walkthrough for the last half of the game anyways. The characters were also more interesting and likeable in this game than in TMH, especially fan favourite Ayumi.

The story is still rather predictable but I would say less so than TMH and is just as engaging. Personally, I preferred TMH's story but that's more personal taste than anything to do with TGWSB's story which is just as fantastic.

I really hope to see a third game in the series at some point in the future as the Famicom Detective Club remakes are really a gem even with its outdated gameplay.

I really dislike writing these together but I wanted to be able to say everything for certain in terms of how you should go about playing it and comparisons between the two.

I'm not going to really talk about story too much because the story is the game and the game is the story but imagine a kid who's gotten into some trouble but a detective takes him under his wing. This is his first proper mission without his teacher. (He's still there but he's doing a different case).

This is an Ace Attorney style game from before Ace Attorney was even born. This visual novel has the added bonus of gorgeous graphics, designs and animations. Sometimes there are even little things in the background to catch your attention like a kid messing around in his shoe locker, it's pretty funny.

This even has Smash history. Yep. Ayumi was a Smash trophy in Melee and I believe even a spirit in Ultimate.

If I've hooked you, then let's proceed.

So which game should you play first? Originally, the games released with the Missing Heir and then the Girl Who Stands Behind released after as a prequel. I feel like it wouldn't be a wrong answer to play it either way because you learn more about these characters. Playing this The Missing Heir will give you insight to the main character because it's an amnesia story. It can add context to certain scenes in TGWSB, if you want to already have those scenes in mind, you should start with TGWSB. If you want to get the context first then play TMH. It's nothing major in terms of plot points. Neither is mandatory to enjoy the other. I personally played TGWSB first but I think I'd have rather went with TMH. But I'm also the kind of person that likes playing sequels and then going back to the ones before it, it doesn't cause me as much issue as some other might have.

There's also a naming system that allows you to carry over your chosen name (as long as you have the save data) from one game to the next (doesn't matter which order). You don't have to do that though, it's just a fun little continuity thing. As far as length goes, my Switch says "Played for 5 hours or more" for each but it matters how you play visual novels. The text boxes are voiced but you can just skip those if you want, I kind of do half and half.

There are some points where it feels like you will need to ask the same questions over again even to the same answer because there are only so many options. I don't think it runs the same way as Ace though where you have to ask in a specific order to get the desired answer or penalizes you for guessing wrong. In fact, I didn't look anything up until Chapter 11 where you have 4 places you can visit around the school, I did every option for every area but how it works is that you have done that option already but it wasn't triggered yet because you had to do something else so I guess something I did triggered the Old School Building's surroundings because ended up being the solution. It also had a mysterious "Open" option. I've noticed that sometimes it'll have an option already available that can't be used yet (like checking the trash can) but that Open option was never relevant to that area.

There are no romance options or alternate endings but there is a "personality test" and "compatibility" with Ayumi at the ending of TGWSB but that's actually gained by what order you ask things (when interacting with her specifically), as well as looking at other girls too many times but it doesn't affect anything, just what sentences you get at the ending to say "what kind of person you are" but I feel it could've benefitted by giving you actual choices to determine those things especially with a game as trial and error as this. It's just not as clear cut as I'd like it to be and the reward seems lacking.

What I will say is that The Missing Heir seems like a proper sequel graphically. I mentioned the animations with the last game being good but this improves upon it even further, which is odd considering these remakes released at the same time and I suppose were developed at the same time.

I liked TMH more than TGWSB but as a report card for both games, I think that the story is decent, Ayumi is great, the animations are exquisite, but the gameplay is sort of lacking. I've played a few visual novels so I know that sometimes you can get lost with options and have to test the grounds but sometimes you do everything and then need to do it again and don't even know why you're doing it. Sometimes they correlate to what the character is saying, and you can pick up on it but that's only sometimes. I think that's part of the reason I liked The Missing Heir more, is that I played it with a walkthrough and I played TGWSB blind.

Maybe I'm more used to the way this series plays, but this one felt much more polished and well-paced than its predecessor. Yes, there are still frustrating moments where you're trying every possible command, but they're more far and few between--it's more often clear what the next command should be. I also felt that the game did a better job about restricting your dialogue options to realistic choices, making it less tedious to go through the entire list if you don't know how to progress. Regardless, enjoyed this one and definitely would recommend this one over The Missing Heir if someone is to just play one.

A better game than The Missing Heir. While there are some points where you can get easily lost between the dialogue choices, with one choice buried among many choices, it's a far better game as it features more visual elements that help enhance the story, as well as just having a more interesting story overall, one that focuses less on surprises and repetition, but focuses on more twists and a darker tone. While I was still able to predict the killer long before they were set up, I still enjoyed my time more with this game than The Missing Heir.

Its entirely possible my fondness for this game relies on using a guide, as this old Famicom game requires very specific triggers and steps for story progression. That said, I found this to be a much more enjoyable game than the previous Famicom Detective Club.

The Missing Heir's story (which is the main reason to play these games) is a vast conspiracy with a mastermind and different parties at play and so on. Its narrative twists are novel for the era but not all that impressive in the modern day. Ultimately, when you learn that Yoshio Sakamoto wrote the game in three days, its like... yeah that makes sense.

In comparison, The Girl Who Stands Behind really charms you quick. The different tragedies and character motives outlining the cast just feels stronger than the game's predecessor. Instead of a tangled criminal web all dancing to the tune of one mastermind, the game feels more like a set of disaster dominoes and poor decisions of ordinary people. Its technically a smaller scale story. There's less victims and less inheritance to fight over. But that also makes it feel more personal and realized. The tragedy works.

While the gameplay hasn't been updated from the 1980 originals, the visual spectacle of these two games is astounding. The first game already made me just sit on a pause screen and bask in all the lavishly animated character designs. The Girl who Stands Behind keeps up the pattern and demonstrates just how stunning a visual novel can look when its given a huge budget to work with.

I'd like to think we'd get a remake of the Satellaview game someday, but I think that ship is never sailing.

'Famicom Detective Club' is an outstanding series of too few games. It is ripe for a revival. I prefer the story of 'The GIrl Who Stands Behind' to 'The Missing Heir;' this the sequel game to 'Heir' but the prequel story. 'Stands Behind' is a good, creepy (suprisingly adult) horror story. It is a ghost mystery with an emotionally satisfying explanation that smartly doesn't strip away all of the supernatural intrigue that comes before it. I'd recommend this one for the Halloween season. My one gripe with 'Heir' applies here as well: the pattern of actions required to advance the story is not always intuitive. But just as in 'Heir,' there are never too many actions possible, so it's usually easy enough to brute force your way over the speed bumps along the way. Excellent game. I'll start praying now that Nintendo gives this same treatment to the Super Famicom Detective Club game, 'Lost Memories in the Snow.'

Gameplay wise, identical to the Missing Heir so all the issues I had with the first game are still here with this one too unfortunately

That said, this one had a story I preferred, characters I liked more and an excellent soundtrack that really sells the eerier vibe this one has. Again the story is pretty down to earth even with the supernatural element of the girl who stands behind with a lot of the twists being easy to spot. Once again though there was a few things towards the end that genuinely caught me off guard and even spooked me.

This gives much more of an insight into Ayumi as a character with her playing a more prominent role in the story and I've come to appreciate her as one of Nintendo's historic characters now.

I'm left craving more FDC now after two short but sweet games. There was a third one on the Satelliview service which starred Ayumi so I'm hoping these do well enough for Nintendo to look into remaking that one too

The Sakamoto redemption arc continues! This one is a smoother experience than The Missing Heir on a gameplay front while still forcing you to use your brain to figure out how to progress. Once again, this is a great murder mystery, though compared to the first I didn't think the twists and turns along the way were quite as engaging. That said, it all delivers in the finale, which is executed way better than the first game's. The soundtrack in this one is also an improvement, providing a real sense of ambiance and dread. I'd definitely recommend playing both this and The Missing Heir if you have any interest in VNs or mysteries, they both are really satisfying.

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I liked it.

Most of what I said for The Missing Heir still applies to this one, but this one has a more compelling mystery and a much stronger ending. I like how you get to spend more time with Ayumi in this one as well. One thing I will give The Missing Heir over this though is that as cliche as the rich family's mansion in the countryside is, I like it more than japanese high school. It was also interesting that they give you a detective evaluation at the end of the game but it's kind of a waste since the game is structured in a way that doesn't really appeal to playing logically. Also I forgot to mention it during the Missing Heir thoughts but it's really nice how every background character gets a unique portrait and voice even if they only have like one line of dialogue.

Mejora a su pareja de baile, pero sigue siendo demasiado clásico.

Pros:
- Se nota que vino después de "The Missing Heir" pese a ser una precuela. Muchos más personajes y una historia mucho menos lineal.
- Se ahonda mucho más en el personaje de Ayumi, que quedaba un poco desangelado en el primero.
- La idea de mezclar dos casos al mismo tiempo aporta mucho dinamismo a la narración.

Contras:
- Sigue siendo demasiado restrictivo en su avance, obligando a elegir ciertas opciones en un orden muy concreto para avanzar en los diálogos.
- Algunos personajes, como el detective principal, están realmente desaprovechados.
- Su duración es demasiado reducida, teniendo que simplificar mucho la resolución de la historia.

I played this one second after playing The Missing Heir first, and I gotta say, I'm quite happy with that choice. The Girl Who Stands Behind is the second game to release, the prequel, and also, MARKEDLY improved over The Missing Heir. A better story, a livelier cast, a look at the protagonist's employer Utsugi, and the introduction of his coworker Ayumi, and her origins in how she gets involved with the Utsugi Detective Agency.

I think the general mystery is more appealing and done better than The Missing Heir, with a much better mystery/paranormal slant of a haunted school, the murder of a young woman who was investigating the mystery, and the way things twist and turn.

I was actually a bit spooked by a few parts, surprised by a few twists, and suitably freaked out by the climax, it was done very well. Some of the writing is still basic, but the cast is fun enough that while this won't be one of the all-time greats, it was still pretty fun.

I played most of the game with the original Famicom music and wow, that Famicom music is pretty good! While the arranged music is good, I would definitely recommend playing it with the Famicom or Super Famicom music!

Most of the game is improved in terms of gameplay, in the sense that, for most of the game things don't feel like such a guess at what you have to do and what specific order you have to ask or do things in... until the end. Come chapter 9/10 (of 11), things start getting a lot more convoluted of what you have to do and when, and I had to break open a walkthrough to get it right, and as I was coming closer and closer to the truth and the big climax, it was pretty frustrating!

Overall, I like it. It's a fun game and if you're looking for something to scratch your mystery game itch, I'd definitely recommend it! I think the presentation in this game is even better than the last one, and it's a great, slick remake, even with its issues.