Guide to achieving MAX affinity with Ayumi Tachibana – Famicom Detective Club

This guest article was submitted by @Cryptic_TX55 in collaboration with a couple of Famicom Detectice Club fans.

The Super Famicom remake of Famicom Detective Club Part II: The Girl Who Stands Behind had a few unique features compared to the original Famicom Disk System version. One of the more interesting additions is, after the epilogue, the player would receive a personality test that analyzed how they approached the investigation and interacted with other characters, alongside a compatibility assessment with Ayumi that would rate your affinity with her out of 20 hearts. Depending on your total heart rating, the player would be matched with other female characters in the game, such as the art student from chapter 4, the flirty student from chapter 9, or Ayumi.

The compatibility rating is determined by a number of factors, largely focused around how you behave around Ayumi. Treating her with kindness and care will raise your rating, while making her feel bad unnecessarily will lower it. Additionally, the rating can be affected if you take some small shortcuts in the game that allow you to visit certain locations early or skip specific dialogue. A lot of these options are fairly obscure though, and can be very easily missed.

Sadly, it appears that even if you had the ideal playthrough in the original Super Famicom versions, the compatibility test had some bugs which prevented players from obtaining a legitimate 20/20 heart rating with Ayumi. A video of what this looks like via cheats is below (courtesy of Luke soudaly-espinosa). Contains spoilers.

However, these issues have been resolved in the Switch remake of The Girl Who Stands Behind, and players are now able to achieve legitimate 20/20 compatibility ratings. Because this version is extremely faithful to the original, the steps are equally as obscure. So, a couple of us Famicom Detective Club fans put together a guide that should help other fans make their way toward a max rating.

The main contributor here is Luke soudaly-espinosa on Youtube. He has a lot of arcane knowledge of the Famicom Detective Club games, and is the main reason I myself was able to get the max rating. He did the bulk of the research on this topic. C heck out his YouTube channel here.

I myself took his research and tips, along with doing some testing of my own, and formatted it into a (hopefully) easy-to-follow guide. I am @Cryptic_TX55 on Twitter. I’ve also contributed a capture of my 20 heart rating which you can see below. Contains spoilers (of course)!

I can’t say with 100% certainty that there is nothing I missed, but I was able to achieve a max heart rating multiple times while fast-forwarding and brute-forcing through dialogue except for the specific moments listed below (I also usually slowed down during all interactions with Ayumi, just to be safe). It’s also possible there are some things in the guide that aren’t actually required for a max rating, but better safe than sorry! Just be sure to follow the guide carefully, and probably make some back-up saves as you move along.

	LOCATION	CHARACTER	ACTIONS
CHAPTER 1	Detective Agency	Ayumi	In your initial four dialogue options with Ayumi, ask about her alibi last. Protagonist will word the question a bit more carefully. (If you ask about her alibi too early, she will say something like “You’re accusing me? That’s horrible.”)
CHAPTER 2	At the Mirror	Ayumi	You have the option to show Yoko’s ID to Ayumi. I selected Show, but when prompted with “Are you sure?”, I chose no. Additionally, just never show Yoko’s ID to Ayumi the entire playthrough.
CHAPTER 3	Detective Agency	n/a	Specific timing here: Just before the end of the the chapter, at the detective agency, after you’ve Speculated, but before the game transitions to Ch 4. (It’s the next day at the office.) If you Think, you’ll have the ability to select Yoko’s house as a travel destination immediately. Do so and go there.
CHAPTER 4	Yoko’s House	n/a	Again, just to stress, your first destination for the chapter should be Yoko’s house, NOT the school.
CHAPTER 4	Art Room	Art Student	Disclaimer: it might not actually matter much how you interact with the art student. In my 20/20 playthrough, I was nice. To clarify a bit more, in your initial engagement with her she’s always going to snap at you. I just only asked her about Kaneda once, and only asked about the legend once.
CHAPTER 5	Front of School	Ayumi	When looking for an isolated place to talk with Hayama, go to the front of the school. Talk to the student there. If you “Think”, the protagonist should wonder how Ayumi is doing, and you’ll gain a new dialogue option with the student. He will tell you Ayumi ditched class.
CHAPTER 6	Detective Agency	Ayumi	While Ayumi is sad, you have the option of showing her the letter and her photo. It’s not required that you show her the photo now in order to get 20 hearts, but if you choose to do so, you’ll get some unique dialogue and it will affect her reaction in the next step–instead of being surprised the protagonist has the photo, she’ll know he has it beforehand. Her surprised reaction is funny though.
CHAPTER 6 OR CHAPTER 7	Detective Agency (CH 6) or Front of School (CH 7)	Ayumi	There are a couple of additional times you can show Ayumi her photo. The first opportunity is at the end of CH 6, after you’ve speculated, and Ayumi is getting ready to leave. You can show her the photo before she heads out (she’ll end up leaving protag behind when she fails to convince him to hand over the photo). The second opportunity is during CH 7…you can do it as early as possible, outside the school. You will get similar dialogue where Ayumi fails to convince the protag to hand over the photo (you can probably even show her in CH 8 or 9 if you see her, but get it out of the way early). Personal testimony: I’ve always showed her the photo in CH 7, but the CH 6 version is funnier.
CHAPTER 7	Old School Building	Hitomi & Ayumi	Only ask Hitomi about Yoko once. You should be able to engage with Ayumi without Hitomi turning around and crying.
CHAPTER 8	Art Room	Ayumi	When prompted to choose between going to the detective agency and going to the art room, choose to go to the art room.
CHAPTER 8	Art Room	Komada	When asking Komada about various topics, there will be a point where he’ll get frustrated and leave the room. JUST BEFORE that happens, look at the drawing on the wall. Komada will not get frustrated and leave.
CHAPTER 8	Art Room	Ayumi	At the end of the chapter, after speculating, make the art room your first destination for CH 9.
CHAPTER 9	Art Room	Ayumi	When talking to Ayumi, after you ask about Yoko once and Shinobu once, look at Ayumi. Protag will ponder that Ayumi is acting weird. You will then get a dialogue option to ask Ayumi how she’s doing. I chose this option multiple times until I got repeat dialogue. Proceed with the rest of the conversation as normal. The important thing here is that you ask Ayumi if she’s doing OK, which is missable dialogue.
CHAPTER 9	Art Room	Komada & Ayumi	When Komada shows up, if you’ve done the above, you’ll have the option to ask him about Ayumi. Ayumi will chime in and say she likes hanging out with the protagonist, assuming your affinity with her is high. Then she will leave the room.
CHAPTER 9	Front of School	Girl	Don’t walk her home. If she asks, you can tell her no. You can also just avoid the question by not exhausting all dialogue options with her. It doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t say that you’ll walk her home. For the record, my 20/20 playthrough I went through all of the dialogue options and showed her Ayumi’s pic, but this shouldn’t be required.
CHAPTER 9	Art Room	Komada	This is more of a warning if you’re fast-forwarding through dialogue. After you’ve been to the faculty room, you’ll talk to Komada in the art room again. When he’s about to tell you about Urabe, be sure to make asking about Urabe your next dialogue choice. If you ask him about unrelated things, he will get mad and leave. If you’re reading the dialogue at normal speed, you’ll probably easily avoid this naturally.
CHAPTER 10	no specific actions
CHAPTER 11	no specific actions
OBVIOUS			Probably want to avoid being weird with the female characters in general. Not everything will affect the score with Ayumi in the end, but just be a gentleman anyway.