Everything I said about price and presentation in my previous review of The Girl Who Stands Behind applies here too. The Missing Heir still sounds and looks amazing, but it is still overpriced. What I want to touch on in this review are the story and gameplay, which are vastly different from the second game.
I found the story in The Missing Heir to be fantastic. In the second game, the event you're investigating happens right at the start, meaning you're following in its trail the whole time and not much new is happening, you're just slowly uncovering the mysteries of that event. I wouldn't have chalked that down as a bad thing if this one didn't play out so differently. In The Missing Heir, things are constantly happening around you in the midst of the investigation, persistently alternating your course of action, and making things way more exciting. It weaves many more threads into the story, posing a lot of questions that kept me on the edge of my seat for all of my six hour sitting, and all of these threads tie up well. One of my complaints about the The Girl Who Stands Behind was that there was no character building for the protagonist. He felt like an empty vessel for the player, and I didn't think this one would be any different, but I'm pleased to announce that I was wrong. This game sets a great foundation for the main character, as this is a story that would not have worked without him, so it's disappointing that the second game didn't take that development anywhere. I described the second game as feeling like a one-off Ace Attorney case, but I'm now realising that that's not a good thing.
So the story is really good and much better than the second game's, now what's different about the gameplay? It's terrible. Every complaint I had about the second game's outdated adventure gameplay is amplified here tenfold. It's so incredibly frustrating, and I'd recommend that anyone playing this one keeps a guide on hand at all times. There were a couple of redeeming qualities about it though. Rather than have you pick from a list of potential answers when making deductions, this game pulls up a keyboard and asks you to type your answer instead. I found that this was a clever little way of making me feel like I was piecing things together myself, even if it only happened twice. The other noteworthy gameplay element is that there's a minor first person dungeon crawling section at the end, which was nothing to write home about, but it was a welcome surprise and a nice change of pace.
If you absolutely have to try one of the Famicom Detective Club games at full price, get this one. While its adventure gameplay made me want to rip my hair out, its excellent story and presentation kept me engaged the entire time. Both of these games plus maybe two or three more cases of equal length would have made a great package for $60/£50, but if that happened back on the Famicom, the Ace Attorney series we know and love may not exist today. Famicom Detective Club will always be the older brother in the shadow of the Ace Attorney series, but these remakes will ensure that its influence will never be forgotten.
I found the story in The Missing Heir to be fantastic. In the second game, the event you're investigating happens right at the start, meaning you're following in its trail the whole time and not much new is happening, you're just slowly uncovering the mysteries of that event. I wouldn't have chalked that down as a bad thing if this one didn't play out so differently. In The Missing Heir, things are constantly happening around you in the midst of the investigation, persistently alternating your course of action, and making things way more exciting. It weaves many more threads into the story, posing a lot of questions that kept me on the edge of my seat for all of my six hour sitting, and all of these threads tie up well. One of my complaints about the The Girl Who Stands Behind was that there was no character building for the protagonist. He felt like an empty vessel for the player, and I didn't think this one would be any different, but I'm pleased to announce that I was wrong. This game sets a great foundation for the main character, as this is a story that would not have worked without him, so it's disappointing that the second game didn't take that development anywhere. I described the second game as feeling like a one-off Ace Attorney case, but I'm now realising that that's not a good thing.
So the story is really good and much better than the second game's, now what's different about the gameplay? It's terrible. Every complaint I had about the second game's outdated adventure gameplay is amplified here tenfold. It's so incredibly frustrating, and I'd recommend that anyone playing this one keeps a guide on hand at all times. There were a couple of redeeming qualities about it though. Rather than have you pick from a list of potential answers when making deductions, this game pulls up a keyboard and asks you to type your answer instead. I found that this was a clever little way of making me feel like I was piecing things together myself, even if it only happened twice. The other noteworthy gameplay element is that there's a minor first person dungeon crawling section at the end, which was nothing to write home about, but it was a welcome surprise and a nice change of pace.
If you absolutely have to try one of the Famicom Detective Club games at full price, get this one. While its adventure gameplay made me want to rip my hair out, its excellent story and presentation kept me engaged the entire time. Both of these games plus maybe two or three more cases of equal length would have made a great package for $60/£50, but if that happened back on the Famicom, the Ace Attorney series we know and love may not exist today. Famicom Detective Club will always be the older brother in the shadow of the Ace Attorney series, but these remakes will ensure that its influence will never be forgotten.
Reviewed on May 16, 2021
mugi
2 years ago