I want to update, because today I finished ファミコン探偵俱楽部：笑み男 (Famicom Detective Club - Emio: The Smiling Man)
Very highly recommend the VN, 10/10. The Switch-only availability will be a problem for a lot of people no doubt, but it’s a fantastic read. You can sort of tell from the premise involving a serial killer that it’ll be dark, and yeah, warning that especially near the end for the epilogue it’s pretty upsetting. Interesting contrast because most of the investigation itself is cozy. But the story being told here is really impactful and satisfying imo, and the way the VN puts a lot of emphasis on the aftermath of these crimes, ripple effects on everyone around, makes it really interesting. Plus it’s just beautiful, high budget for a VN with constant new characters and environments every few minutes.
As Japanese learning it’s nice too, obviously can’t texthook but I found the writing easy enough to get by with little trouble. Every single line is voiced, even the MC and their thoughts, so that helps. There’s a log to replay the voices from to make lookups easy, etc. The only problem is there’s an extended cutscene segment (sans subtitles) in the epilogue, but the dialog in it isn’t too difficult and you’ve probably come across everything they say in it by then more or less, as it’s basically putting the pieces together. You already know the broad context and the type of words appropriate for each part so it’s really not hard.
