To me, City Shrouded in Shadows is pretty special, even if by most conventional measurements the experience could be considered mediocre at best. I am hopelessly biased to love this game, and I really did enjoy the experience of playing through it because, to me, this game was basically a miracle.

Let me explain.

Years ago, my younger brother and I started trying to find unusual and interesting quirky games to play on his PS2. I think, as much as anything, this quest was influenced by a concurrent interest in quirky and stupid movies that we would watch and enjoy together, so basically we had terrible taste in movies, and that birthed a terrible taste in games. Still, our love for obscure stupid entertainment proved fruitful, and we created many fantastic memories playing games such as the cheesy awesomeness of the Earth Defense Force series and watching (and laughing at) incredibly bad movies like Feeders 2 and Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. In the midst of our sometimes masochistic media consumption, we discovered a pair of games that we absolutely fell in love with for their uniqueness and humor, and which had us craving for more. Those games were released in the United States as Disaster Report and Raw Danger respectively, but both games were actually in the same series created by developer Granzella and published by Irem—who also created the fantastic and criminally overlooked Steambot Chronicles.

Anyway, as I was saying, Disaster Report and Raw Danger were localized versions of the first two games in the Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series of games from Japan. The third, a game for the PSP, was never officially localized. These games are about survival, and in some ways take inspiration from survival horror tropes—albeit they are not particularly scary, and the (raw) dangers you face are not monsters. Instead these games are about natural disasters, and your attempt to survive in the midst of them while unraveling mysteries, saving lives, and collecting ridiculous clothing items. The first game (Disaster Report) features an artificial island ravaged by an earthquake, and the second game (Raw Danger) is about surviving a flood.

My most vivid memories are of the second game, but both are worth playing, with the second refining and tweaking many of the gameplay mechanics of the original. Both games feature many money shots and crises as buildings collapse or water bursts forth or other nasty situations materialize, such as gangsters and other drama. The sheer novelty of playing a disaster movie was by itself appealing on its own merits, but Granzella did one better by making the games intentionally hilarious, with many gut-busting dialogue branches and just insanely strange events happening in both games. I mentioned before about collecting ridiculous clothing, and by that I mean throughout both games you find various clothing items and outfits that you can mix and match, and which become increasingly bizarre as the games progress—various uniforms, crazy hats, anything crazy and silly. These clothing items remain on the characters throughout cut scenes as well, which make their inclusion all the more fantastic. That sense of absurdity also expresses itself in some of the events and dialogue. Given that the games also have multiple endings, there is a LOT to enjoy.

When we heard there was going to be a PlayStation 3 sequel, a Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 4, my brother and I were ecstatic. Early screenshots looked fantastic, and the promises of new gameplay mechanics and characters were mouth-watering. But our hopes were soon dashed by the horrendous 3/11 tsunami and nuclear disaster in Fukushima. In an attempt to be sensitive to the immense suffering of the disaster, the publisher canceled the game (which was going to feature another earthquake) because, presumably, they were afraid people would be upset at the themes which mirrored real life so closely. While of course the real-world toll that the Fukushima disaster wrought upon the lives of the Japanese was far and away more tragic and heartbreaking than the mere cancellation of a video game, nevertheless as fans we were still sad to see all the hard work of the developers seemingly go to waste, especially as the game was reportedly nearly finished.

And as the years passed, it seemed there would never be another Zettai Zetsumei Toshi game, especially because developer Granzella struck out on their own. I remember talking with my brother about the situation. We spoke wistfully of games we would never get to experience. And I said, “You know what I would really love to see? A Disaster Report game with monsters, where you are just a normal human being trying to escape from giant beasts that are destroying the city. It wouldn’t be about fighting the monsters, but escaping. Of course, it would be especially cool if we could get Godzilla or something in the game, but I know that will NEVER happen. It’s just a crazy dream. We can’t even get Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 4!”

Those of you who know much about City Shrouded in Shadows probably have guessed where I am going with this review. After all, City Shrouded in Shadows was developed by Granzella, and it really is a spiritual sequel to the Zettai Zetsumei Toshi games—to the point that some of the characters from that previous series basically make appearances in this game as well. And, as big kaiju fans know, City Shrouded in Shadows not only features Godzilla, but also many other Toho monsters… as well as beasts and heroes from the Gamera, Ultraman, Evangelion, and Patlabor franchises. The gameplay, too, skews very close to the pattern established by the ZZT games, and if anything is even stranger and quirkier than those games.

In short, City Shrouded in Shadows was for me a gift from the heavens. I just could not believe that this game even existed, even could exist. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined my wild wish could actually come true, and would actually surpass my craziest fanboy dreams. (Actually, the same year City Shrouded in Shadows was announced, I received another miracle—the announcement of Shenmue 3! That was a truly magical year as far as games go for me.) To make things even better, eventually Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 4 actually was released on PS4 in 2018! (Yes, I preordered that sucker back in the day, and it has even been released Stateside with a localized version!)

The fact that in the end I was able to purchase City Shrouded in Shadows the game and play it with my brother over break Christmas break when I was back in the States, translating the ludicrous dialogue for him on the fly along the way, laughing at absurd event after absurd event, just felt like a true gift from God.

So the fact that the game arguably has many, many flaws in execution pales next to just how lucky I feel that the game exists, and I just love it anyway.

But still… I should jump in and actually tell you more about the game itself.

Gameplay

There are several parts to the gameplay. Most of the time in the game you are on foot interacting with the environment or running away from monsters. As you are interacting with the environment on foot, you also must engage in dialogue with a multitude of NPCs. Finally, there are a number of vehicle sequences that spice things up. Let’s look at each in turn.

Interacting with the physical world comes in several forms. First, you can walk or run, as well as crawl. As you run around the city, you can also collect various goodies, from food to books to pieces of clothing. There are also other collectibles in each chapter of the game, and at the end of each level you can purchase more items and costume bits. While some of the items you pick up are necessary to solve puzzles or move the plot along (such as when you have to deliver love letters between two awkward love birds on a ship), and while food is used as part of the health mechanic, the game is easy enough that most of the items that you can pick up are superfluous to finishing the game.

For example, the costumes confer various bonuses, such as increased stamina to run longer distances, or more health. (These bonuses can be affected by what shape your clothes are in, though, as your outfits will get torn up and ruined if you get knocked down a few times.) These bonuses can be useful, but it would be pretty easy to finish the game with just one costume. The main point of the costumes is to add humor to the game, and some of the costumes are quite hilarious and out-there—and the game encourages the player to crossdress as well, to much hilarity. The costumes sometimes affect the conversations as well, although rarely—I wish that more had been done with that aspect. For me, I love the sense of humor of the game, but the fact that the items and costumes are so inessential limits the gameplay.

Some of the items do add to the story of the game, such as some important documents you retrieve late in the game, as well as a series of novels which you can actually read in-game. These can be fun diversions of course, and they add to the fun-factor of the game, at least for me.

Potentially the biggest part of the gameplay, however, comes from the conversation possibilities. NPCs are everywhere, and your character can talk with almost all of them. Frequently they have little to say—some are just shocked by the appearances of the monsters, for example. However, sometimes they provide the player with sidequests, the completion of which can affect the story in what seem to be relatively minor ways. Still, the interactions can be truly bizarre and hilarious, and many of my favorite parts of the game come from the outlandish conversation choices the game gives you and the situations that arise in the game.

Let me give a few examples: Early in the game a group of gangsters start to hound the main characters (they get really annoying), and throughout the game there are many encounters with them where you might have to sneak about or just run away from them. During one of these encounters, the main character and his female companion are hiding in an office hiding from the gangsters and you accidentally make a noise. In order to cover up your blunder, you then must choose from an astonishing list of fake animal cries that the main character can perform to make the thugs believe it was just a critter that made the noise—and these animal cries range from a dog to a cat to creatures that I had never heard of and beyond. As I recall, there are well over a dozen choices, and it just made me laugh out loud.

In another section of the game, the main characters are hiding out in a Cocos Curry restaurant (a real restaurant that apparently helped finance the game or something), and the resulting conversations inside are pretty darn funny as you can end up eating way too much and make yourself sick.

Also later in the game, you run into one of the developers from Granzella (talk about meta) who wants to marry this woman, but the woman’s father is against the match, and you receive a copy of a game he has helped develop and are asked to talk to the father. As mentioned before, several characters from the Zettai Zetsumei games also make appearances, such as a creepy lady in a jewelry store obsessed with stealing all the gems, and a brief encounter with a pervert. Both the jewel nut and the perv had appeared in the previous games in minor roles. These touches add a lot of amusement for big fans like me.

The humor extends to the monster encounters as well. Very early on, when you see some monsters, you can decide how to react—and one of the reactions is to take a selfie! Later, when a hot woman bumps into your character, one of the reactions you can choose is to compliment the woman on her butt. For many of the conversations, there will be one choice which is just off the wall and funny, and for me it added a lot to the game.

These conversation choices do have at least some effect on the narrative. Early in the game, you have to decide whether the main character is a male or female, what they are doing in the city—such as whether they are having fun in the city on a day off or just got off work or something. Regardless of whether you choose a male or female avatar, you are planning to meet a girl in the park—and you can choose from four or five possibilities of who that girl is to you, such as a good friend, an acquaintance, someone special to you, or even your lover. So you can have a lesbian relationship if you like. Over the course of the story, you can also develop the relationship of the characters as well, deepening romance or staying friends (if you become a couple, you can choose the girl’s wardrobe at anytime in the game as well).

However, the effects on the story are pretty minor. If you choose to play as a female avatar, the dialogue choices that I saw were essentially identical to the dialogue choices you would have had as the male avatar, just with a different voice actor, and maybe a few vocabulary differences. While I was hoping that there would be some significant differences between the male and female stories, they seem to be virtually identical, with some tweaks here and there.

When I played the game with my little brother, though, we tried to talk to everyone and do every side quest, and it can be pretty rewarding. For us, it was great.

The game also includes many big action moments, where the main character has to run or drive or do something crazy to try to escape from a monster or disaster, and there are sometimes puzzles, like when you have to search the piles of Gyaos crap to advance in the game. I will cover more about the action sequences in the controls section, but suffice it to say, they are fun, but often awkward and a little bit unsatisfying.

Story

The story of City Shrouded in Shadow really doesn’t make much sense and is arguably one of the game’s greatest weaknesses. Though it is exciting to see a game with so many monsters from so many franchises (and heroes and robots, too), as best I could tell, the game doesn’t explain their presence well, and the various famous beasts sometimes aren’t really used effectively. It all comes across as nonsensical.

But let’s start with a bit of description about what happens. The game begins with the player choosing who they want to play—a man or a woman, as well as your job, and who the girl is that you are meeting in the park. As mentioned before, the story doesn’t seem to change much regardless of which sex you choose, so it doesn’t really make a lot of difference.

On your way to the park, you are interrupted by the appearance of Ultraman and a fake Ultraman facing off against each other. You still manage to find the girl, but things get worse… you accidentally stumble upon some gangsters stealing cash, and they take chase. As the game goes on, you travel from one place to another in the city, trying to survive and protect your female friend/lover while more and more monsters show up at random, a reporter with ulterior motives keeps appearing and disappearing, the gangsters attack again and again, and various other plot points weave in and out of the narrative.

And again, it is exciting to see Ultraman, several Ultra kaiju, Godzilla, Mothra, Battra, King Ghidorah, Gamera, Gyaos, Legion, the Patlabor robots, and even Evangelion units, but monsters and characters from different franchises never cross paths. Instead, you just have a chapter where you run into Godzilla, then later a chapter with Gamera, then a chapter with Ultraman, etc. Sometimes the chapters are barely connected in any way. At one point I was in the city, and then in the next episode I was in a lifeboat being rescued on a ship, and I have no idea why. Then we have an episode or two on the ship, and we return to dry land afterwards. It’s really nonsensical.

The monsters are sometimes used in interesting ways, with a quest looking through Gyaos droppings being especially memorable. But again, since the monsters show up and disappear at random, a lot of the narrative momentum gets lost fast. There are individual exciting sequences (running away from Legion soldiers in the subway was thrilling, and the sequence where Mothra and Battra show up was dang cool), but they never seem to mesh and make a satisfying whole.

Again, though, side stories sometimes add a lot more meaning to the game, such as a little boy that you save and some of the tragedies that play out around you. But the main story, for me, just doesn’t work.

MASSIVE SPOILERS

There were some parts to the story I frankly didn’t understand, but things kind of lead up to a climax in which the main character continually develops his own super powers (basically limited to glowing purple at first), and then it is revealed that the girl you meet is actually an alien or something and the appearance of the monsters is somehow related to her. You are also betrayed and there is some conspiracy and… well, it all turns out fine in the end, but then the girl just disappears and… I don’t know, I don’t think I really understood it. But even if I had, there is a sense that everything is just ridiculous anyway, and so frankly it was hard to get invested.

Graphics

A lot of people complained about the graphics in this game, and it’s understandable why they would do so… though for me I didn’t really mind all that much. It is true that the game does not live up to the standards of a PS4 game. The animations can be stiff, and the framerate is honestly inconsistent. The models, too, certainly don’t measure up to AAA titles like Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War.

But for me, I didn’t care much. None of the games in the Zettai Zetsumei series were ever going to win awards in the graphics department, and that was never the point of the games anyway. They are quirky and different, and it is from that quirkiness that much of the enjoyment derives.

Plus in my opinion the monsters look quite good. Battra and Mothra look very impressive (to me at least) as they woosh through the air, Gamera’s appearance is detailed and memorable (if brief), and the EV-1 looks just as much at-home in the game as Ultraman, which is no small feat. The size of each monster and hero is conveyed well as the world shakes and monsters stomp and smash around you, and sometimes it’s a fun ride.

But no, this is not a graphics powerhouse to show off to your friends. This is a unique experience, and not everyone will appreciate it for what it is, and in my book at least that’s fine… even if I would prefer the framerate at least to stay stable.

Audio

Similar to the graphics, a lot of the audio feels cheap. Most of the game, as your character navigates the environment, there is no music—just the gentle tapping of your shoes, or background noises like monsters in the distance, or people yelling. Some of the sound clips sound poor or repetitive, such as when the Legion creatures skitter about. The sound can be a bit… chintzy.

Still, the monsters have appropriate sound effects—at least as far as I noticed. Gamera has his familiar reverberating roar, Mothra chirps and squeaks, Ultraman yells his “shuwatch”. I can’t speak for high fidelity as I have a crummy TV, but anyway, at least from a bare minimum standard, you can recognize who the critters are supposed to be.

And there is some music… generally not GOOD, but it exists. Much of the music plays over menu screens or kicks in during action sequences or over the loading screen, and it tends to be generic electronic stuff and either hopelessly unmemorable or the kind of earworm you don’t want. Most of it feels maybe just a half-step above duty-free music.

That said, I liked the opening rock-tinged J-pop number with females vocals and a punchy sound. The lyrics, too, seem at least somewhat related to the content of the game, touching on “walking on to meet you” which… that’s what the main character does, I guess.

Controls

Again, with controls, there has been a lot of understandable complaining. The controls can be a bit stiff as you navigate about and try to switch from running to ducking, and it’s easy sometimes to get caught up on things on accident. Again, if you have played one of Granzella’s previous games in the genre, then none of this will be surprising. I wanted the game to basically play like a stiff and rough experience because of my nostalgia for other Granzella games, so for me, this was not only expected but desired. But I am weird, and most people will prefer something more polished.

And for the vehicle sections, I agree that they… kind of suck. There are multiple points in the game where you will get a chance to drive a vehicle, such as a car or a motorcycle or even a Patlabor robot. As stiff as controlling the main character can be, controlling the vehicles is generally worse. The driving model is weak with very limited physics, and while the driving sections are usually set up so you can have a money shot of some crazy explosion or jump or what have you, the actual gameplay leading up to the money shot is awkward enough to make them a bit un-fun. Even driving the Patlabor robot is clunky, and one may well wish that these sections had received a bit more TLC.

One more thing: The camera angle is often awful. While you have a choice to switch from first person to third person and an angle that allows you to view the monsters more clearly, often the view can be obstructed by other fleeing humans, or monsters, or you can’t see where you are supposed to go clearly. It can get really frustrating, especially with sudden QTEs that require precise button presses leading to damage or death combined with the whirling camera. The controls can be a struggle that can taint the gameplay badly if you aren’t going in to laugh with a friend.

Replay

he game is built for replay, as one might imagine from the description above, but at the same time it should be obvious that the City Shrouded in Shadows limits its own replay value in some very significant and unfortunate ways.

Obviously a huge part of the game consists of dialogue trees and choices, and a big part of the enjoyment of the game comes from seeing the results of those choices and the multifarious reactions from the huge cast of characters. Those choices you make sometimes can make a sizable difference, at least in the side missions. There is no guarantee that you will complete the side missions after all.

But despite the fact that the side missions can offer some variable fun, the main quest feels like it is on a track and you can’t get off. Yes, your choices can affect the relationship status between yourself and the mysterious girl with you… but she won’t leave. She will always tag along with you, so far as I can tell, and the events will be about the same no matter what you do. As you play, a sense of fatalism stole over me. Choosing the different dialogue options often seemed to have no real affect on the gameplay or story, and over and over again the story seemed to push me into the same story beats. And as mentioned before, even switching the gender of the main character doesn’t seem to change the story in an appreciable fashion.

I have not finished the game multiple times yet, but at least from playing it one and a quarter times, the replay value seems fairly limited even with the appearance of choice. Given that Granzella’s previous games in this genre sometimes had some big storytelling changes depending on the choices you made in-game, it’s too bad this ambitious monster smash-up (apparently) limits the changes to a significant degree.

Overall

City Shrouded in Shadows is an anomaly in the world of giant monster video games. While it certainly follows the pack of kaiju games in not being particularly good, at least along the traditional levels upon which quality is usually measured in games, nevertheless even with its bizarre and incoherent storyline, clunky controls, and spotty graphics, the game has an undeniable charm for those who appreciate their media with a distinct “Japanese” flair for the unusual and quirky. Personally I loved this game despite it’s flaws, but many kaiju fans will find the experience considerably lacking even if you can understand the Japanese. You’ve been warned.