City Shrouded in Shadow, originally known as Kyoei Toshi (巨影都市), is a game developed by Granzella with the collaboration of Bandai Namco. In other words, this game is kind of the spiritual successor to the Disaster Report series. The game was released in Japan on 19 October 2017 exclusively for PlayStation 4. Let’s check out the trailer down below to get a close look at the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK67Qu3e8VE&t=147s

Now that you have watched the trailer, you already got a glimpse of what’s going on, and I’m going to talk about it down below. Let’s go to the in-depth review then!

• Story

You start the game making characters with the preset options. Basically, you can choose your gender, your occupation, & also your relationship with the heroine (Even if you choose to be a woman, the heroine won’t change into a guy). I’ll talk about it based on my gameplay experience as a male office worker who’s meeting his girlfriend at the park. But on his way there, a huge humanoid life form is starting wrecking havoc in the city.  Inside the chaos, you started heading to the park to meet your girlfriend. In the middle of the way, one of the monster’s attack hit the building near you, and you accidentally witnessed the transaction between some Yakuzas. They start chasing you & for some reason, it seems like the monsters are chasing you as well. And that’s where you learn that you have the power to repel them with the purple lights from your hands. Why are they targeting you? And what is that purple light that starts glowing on your hands? Can you get out of this alive? Play the game & find out about it.

As you can see in the sub-title of the game, “This is not the story of some hero, This is your story”, it seems like you can choose how you want to proceed with the story, just like Telltale games. But that’s where we are wrong. The game gives you a lot of choices in every event, but none of it actually affect the whole story progress. The only choices that affect the storyline are the one in Chapter 10 (First Half). The choices usually go like this. One serious answer & several gag / funny answers.

The main story of the game is to run away & stay alive. Not just from the monsters but also from the Yakuza you saw early in the game. The game has 17 Stage, each stage is 20-30 minutes long and basically what you are doing is just running & running & running. You will also get confused from time to time because sometimes it looks like they skipped a portion of the story. I mean in one of the stage, you just got out from the hospital, and in the next stage your on a small boat in the middle of the sea. Even you & the heroine won’t remember what’s going on. Pretty crazy, huh? But don’t worry, as everything will be explained in the ending of the game.

7/10 for the story. At first, i thought that the story was going to be epic, just like what was shown in the trailer. But to tell the truth, they only show us a portion of the good part of the story. Most of your choices won’t have a butterfly effect on the outcome of the event. There are two ways to enjoy the game. You can play this game seriously or comically, both will end up with the same result.

• Gameplay

Running
As I said earlier, the main point of the game is just running. What you are doing in the game is basically running from monster’s attack, avoiding the falling rubbles, crouching to reach the unreachable place, and stuffs. The basic movements are crouch, run, & roll.  In order to run, you’ll need Stamina. And to keep yourself alive, there are health points. You can check both of it on the upper left side of the game.

Once your HP turns to 0, it will be game over and you can restart from a checkpoint. In order to keep your HP up, you need to eat foods, which you can buy from the convenience store or get it from shiny points on the map.

Costumes
What’s interesting about this game is that you can change costumes into whatever you want, and it also allows you to crossdress by wearing woman clothes. Then again, changing costumes is important as it every costume will increase your HP/ST parameter.

You can find costumes in the game, mostly in hidden places. But you can also buy costumes at the end of every stage with the coin you found during the stage. Now, these coins will be lying all over the stage, and it will be counted at the end of the stage. Fun fact: your clothes can actually getting a damage if you are standing near the fire

Kyoei News
At the end of the stage, you will be able to check the news. The news that was shown will be based on your actions during the stage. For example, if you help people during the stage or talk to a specific character in the stage, it will be shown on the news. Also not to mention there are cameo characters from Disaster Report. Talking to them will also get you a piece of news.

Sub-quests
There are some subquests in the game. It’s kinda similar to the Sub-Quests of Yakuza series. You will find some people who are in trouble, try talking to them and solving their problem. They will give you some rewards & you will get a piece of news headline together with it. The subquests are sometimes easy, and sometimes annoying. Most of it can be solved by choosing the right choices, others are mostly fetch quests. But still, it feels so good to help people in trouble in the chaos. People with green conversation balloon are the people with sub-quests.

Quick Time Event
Of course, this kind of game will definitely have a QTE. But as a matter of fact, you don’t need to worry so much about it as you will only be using □ button. The QTE is usually used to evade the enemy attacks.

7/10 for the gameplay. In this kind of game, I actually expected more. Disaster Report has some puzzle solving, while there are almost none in this game. All you do is run, crouch, roll, & dodge the enemy attack. It gets boring pretty fast if you are looking for some actions. The game does give you freedom on how to dress up, but that’s just about it.

• Graphics & Performance

Now, this is the worst part of the game. Like really worst. To tell the truth, I already played the demo of the game back in Tokyo Game Show 2017. At that time, I was thinking that the game technically sucks. It tops up at 30fps, with 10-15 fps during explosions or when there are swarms of enemies. I blame the game’s engine, totally. The movement is so clunky that you will die a lot of time because of that. The button is not that responsive either (probably because of the fps drop). I found myself dying so many times at the end of Chapter 2 because of the fps drop, unresponsive button, & bad camera.

Despite all of that technical problem, the character model is pretty good. Their faces are looking realistic & not that bad, and also the details of small things such as wrinkle on the fingers & the costumes are quite details too. And also it captures the enormous size of the monsters like Gamora, Godzilla, and also Evangelion, Ultraman, & Patlabor. So it really feels like you are caught between. Check out the gallery below.

But this game definitely could be better. I played this on PlayStation 4 Pro, and it still has performances issues. If you see the environment of the game, it’s not exactly great. The explosions & fires feel kinda like the previous gen as well. I can’t blame it though. They are usually making mobile games, so this is their first official console game. I just hope they can do better for Disaster Report 4.

6/10 for the graphics & performances. I can’t lie about it because it feels really bad for me. Although I do admit the character models & details are pretty good. When all you have to do is run, and the fps is around 10fps every time there’s an explosion, I bet you will be annoyed as well.

• Sound & Music

To tell the truth, I’m impressed that they can use the original sound effect for each of the monsters & robots. I mean those A.T.Field SFX, Ultraman’s voice when releasing special attack, those beams SFX, everything is just awesome. And not forgetting Iida Mai who sings the theme song of the game. Iida Mai is a singer who’s singing the theme song for the Disaster Report series. Including the upcoming Disaster Report 4. One of the songs are “Futari no Sora” which you can hear on the trailer above, and then “Shadow” as the opening theme.

And the ending theme, “Mata ne” is a beautiful song. Iida Mai has been making names back when she sings the theme songs of Disaster Report series. The OST for the games is really good. But sometimes they play it at the weird moment. Especially “Futari no Sora”. They play it during the Sauna scene. Weird.

8/10 for the Sound & Music. I must say that I’m impressed they can regenerate the original SFX for each collaborating series. And as I am a fan of Iida Mai, the theme songs of the game are incredible. From the opening, insert song, & ending, Iida Mai did a very great job at it.

• The Verdict

To tell the truth, I expected more from this game. I played every Disaster Report game, including Disaster Report 3 which is Japanese only. So I kinda know what I’m going to get by buying this game. This game is a survival game, and it’s literally that. You have to run for your life. If you are looking for a great action game, then this game is not for you. If you are looking for a game that has an immersive storyline, then this game is not for you. If you want to take a break from playing serious games, and feeling nostalgic with Ultraman, Evangelion, & stuff, then this game is for you.

The Score 7/10
I loved the disaster report series, so I thought that I’m going to like this one too, but I don’t. Another advice from me is not to be fooled by the trailer. The package looks much more appealing than what’s inside it. I know a lot of people are interested in this game, but trust me. It’s different when you are actually playing it.

Erhanz finished the game with 8 Hours of gameplay, and already got the platinum trophy. This review is made based on his experience in the game.