Some Thoughts on Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind
Once again, I have jumped into the world of Famicom Detective Club as we played through The Girl Who Stands Behind, and I have to say that I found the game to be very enjoyable. It actually moves the story into the past, as we learn how our character becomes a detective. It still has the sense of finding new clues and pushing an investigation forward, but it also continues the same irritating game mechanics that came in The Missing Heir.
As stated, The Girl Who Stands Behind is technically the second game in the series, but it actually set as a prequel. We meet our unnamed character as he is on the run from the police when he runs into Shunsuke Utsugi, the founder of the Utsugi Detective Agency. He sees something in us and decides to take us in and start training us to be an assistant detective. When a student from a local school comes up dead, Utsugi tasks us with leading the investigation. Through twists and turns, we are then taken on a wild mystery that spans over 20 years in the making.
As with the first game, The Girl Who Stands Behind plays out with you choosing actions from a menu as you select items on the screen. Most of the commands in the game are simple, with things like Use, Look, or Speak depending on the thing you are interacting with in the game. As you unlock clues via dialog or finding items at a location, it will help you push the main story forward. It seems easy enough until you realize that you sometimes have to ask the same question multiple times to get the full answer from a person. It is a frustrating detail that can stump you if you don’t know that questions can be asked multiple times to get the full answer.
The Famicom Detective Club games are remastered titles, created from a game that was released on the Nintendo Disk System back in the late 1980’s, and I have to say that the remaster process for these games are fantastic. The game looks to be recreated from the ground up with brand new animated screens, and newly added motion to some of the animations. You can tell a lot of work went into these remasters, and it really does make for a great gaming experience.
The story here is interesting as you come across a local high school girl that has been murdered, but she seems to look like another woman that went to the school over 20 years before, and is behind the legend of, “The Girl Who Stands Behind”. It is said that if you see this girl behind you in a mirror, you are destined to die. It seems our current day victim was researching the death of the girl in the legend and she died because of her curiosity. As you progress, you will be taken on a tale that twists and turns, and will leave you questioning who actually did the murders. It is nice when a game can hold you in suspense to the end.
I have to say that I did enjoy my time with Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind. Yes, the dialog choices and search options can be extremely frustrating at times. But the story that is told and the way that it keeps you on the edge of your seat to the very end is super enjoyable. You even get the bonus of seeing how this story ends up leading into the first title if you watch the credits. You have to deal with some frustration, but you will find a lot of enjoyment here, especially if you can find them on a rare sale on the Nintendo Store.
