City Shrouded in Shadow (2017)
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This is not the story of some hero. This is your story.
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— Tagline |
City Shrouded in Shadow (巨影都市 Kyoei Toshi, lit. "Shadow City") is a survival role-playing game developed by Granzella and published by Bandai Namco for the PlayStation 4. It was released on October 19, 2017 in Japan. The game utilizes the license to multiple franchises revolving around giant monsters and/or robots: Godzilla, the Ultra Series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gamera, and Patlabor.
Gameplay
City Shrouded in Shadow has the player assume the role of a civilian in the fictional Ichi City. It can be played from a first- or third-person point of view. The game features action and dialogue choices throughout; these rarely affect the game's story, instead mostly determining how the character behaves and interacts with others. The game consists of 17 stages through which the player's character and their allies must progress. Most of the game involves avoiding the threats posed by giant creatures, though, in some levels, more direct threats come in the form of yakuza hitmen. Some levels allow the player to control vehicles, including cars, motorcycles, and even a Type M-5 Abraham mecha in the seventh stage. Throughout levels, save points are available, also allowing the player to refill their health automatically. At the end of each stage, an overview of the level is shown as a newspaper, where the player can purchase clothing items with currency collected during each level.
Plot
Stage 1
The game starts with the protagonist character in the rain at night, witnessing a brief purple flash in the sky. They immediately find themselves thinking about meeting up with a certain Yuki Kono (who can either be the protagonist's childhood friend or lover) in a nearby park. Suddenly, the area is attacked by a being who appears to be Ultraman, who shoots bullets of light at nearby buildings and may end up stepping on the protagonist should they get in his way. Eventually, the real Ultraman appears and battles with his impostor. In the resulting scuffle, the protagonist accidentally stumbles upon an illegal transaction being made by yakuza head Ryouji Shibata, who sends his partner Katsuhiro Muto to dispose of the protagonist. Once the protagonist gets away from them, Ultraman forces the fake to drop his disguise and reveal himself as the shapeshifter Alien Zarab, who knocks the hero away, notices the protagonist, and fires at them if they call his attention. After a short encounter with journalist Hideyasu Otsuka, who is out to sell the story of the battle, the protagonist and many others run from the rampaging alien. It is here that the protagonist discovers that they can magically dodge danger quickly due to possessing a strange purple light. The level ends with the protagonist meeting Yuki at the park and Ultraman shooting Zarab with his Specium Ray.
Stage 2
The protagonist and Yuki are in a subway when their train stops and the power cuts out. One by one, as the people try to find their way out, they are attacked and killed by wandering Soldier Legions, human-sized insectoids guarding a massive plant taking root inside the subway. Eventually, the protagonist meets Otsuka's assistant, Risa Kashiwaga, who hands the protagonist a new phone to replace the one they threw as a distraction for incoming Soldier Legions. After escaping to the surface and evading more of the monsters, which have formed a horde and are feeding on the panicking crowds throughout the streets, they meet a police officer who offers to give them a car to escape while he intends to stay behind and hold off the incoming horde. As the protagonists drive away from the Soldier Legions, Gamera flies in to deal with the situation.
Stage 3
On a bridge being struck by lightning bolts, the protagonist suddenly finds themselves in a car chase, Shibata and Muto hot on their tail. Just as they are cornered, they are saved by the timely intervention of Detective Toru Fujiwara, who the yakuza thugs seems to fear, the gangsters retreating after a tense standoff. The protagonist then continues to try and make their way across the bridge, which begins to fall apart due to an overhead battle between Mothra and Battra, with Yuki almost falling off at one point. Riding a motorcycle, they barely evade Battra's eye beams and make it to the other side just as the bridge finally collapses.
Stage 4
Within a skyscraper, the protagonist suddenly spots Shibata and Muto looking for them. They also come across Otsuka, who offers to distract the thugs for a price. The protagonist escapes to the basement, which is then broken into by a terrorist-piloted Grau Bear labor, which grabs Yuki and takes her hostage while targeting the protagonist. Once they make it to one end of the basement, the mecha lets Yuki go and takes a vault full of valuable documents and money. Fire breaks out in the building as the protagonist briefly escapes another encounter with the yakuza and comes across Miho Yamamura, a girl who mistakes Yuki for her dead sister. The protagonists can briefly encounter the Grau Bear, now dangling from a ledge, and take the contents of its open vault before the mecha falls. Pyro-Busters enter the building to stop the fire, though one gets stuck as it tries to crawl through a narrow corridor, while an AV-98 Ingram police labor breaks through a wall and finally rescues the protagonist, Yuki, and Miho. As they share a quiet moment on the labor's arm, Muto and Shibata, still on one of the upper floors, stare down at the protagonist.
Stage 5
While making their way across the city, the lights glow brightly as the Fourth Angel arrives, slashing down several military vehicles trying to bomb it. In the chaos, Evangelion Unit-01 is deployed to fight the Angel, which shrugs off the bullets from the mecha's minigun. After the protagonists have dinner in a curry restaurant, the chaos intensifies as Yuki is briefly trapped in a ring of fire. The Angel gains the upper hand as it grabs the Eva's head and spears it in several times in the eye. The Eva goes berserk, and, ripping apart the Angel's protective Absolute Terror Field, beats it to death with its bare hands. The protagonist eventually arrives to the hospital to meet Miho's father, Shinji (not to be confused for the Evangelion pilot). As Miho is sent away, Yuki admits that she isn't Miho's sister, while Shinji thanks her and the protagonist for bringing his child to safety.
Stage 6
By midnight, the protagonist, stranded in the middle of the sea with Yuki, are taken in by a ship called Shibazakura, which, on the behest of young researcher Hitomi Fukazawa, is out to investigate large marine life in the area. The level is relatively silent and peaceful, with the protagonist and Yuki allowed in the sauna and having conversations with Captain Mitsuo Katagiri, who plans to retire soon, and his second-in-command Tetsuya Oda, who asks the protagonist for assistance in helping him express his love for Hitomi. By midnight, the ship encounters Godzilla, who razes the ship with his atomic breath in anger. The level ends with both the protagonist and Yuki, the only two survivors of the attack, stranded once more in the middle of the ocean on a boat, coming across a picture of Oda and Fukuzawa.
Stage 7
The yakuza ambush the protagonist and Yuki once again. After a chase and an intense hiding game in a warehouse, where they trap the thugs, they come across two Ingrams on a mission, one being the unit that saved them earlier. Just as the police labors crawl past, the protagonist encounters the J-9 Griffon aerial labor coming out of hiding. It defeats the military Abraham labors sent to subdue it as they make their way through the docks and various warehouses to meet up with Risa. Coming across numerous crates, the protagonist bashes their way through by piloting a fallen Abraham labor. They meet Risa on the other side, who provides them with a motorcycle and tells them to follow her.
Stage 8
The protagonists are once more in the city, which is being ravaged by gravity bolts. Making their way past the villainous three-headed space dragon King Ghidorah, who is locked in combat with his archenemy, Godzilla, they collect a package within the building of IT company Hyacinth Soft, whose employees still continue to work normally despite the two monsters fighting just next to their building, and move to the next district by train. As the monsters continue fighting and blasting beams at each other, causing the ground to shake and buildings to crumble, Risa, who doesn't make it in, tells them to go on without her and deliver the package to the National Cosmic Ray Research Laboratory. A news report reveals that several people have died in the ensuing battle, which took place around two in the morning.
Stage 9
The train is suddenly picked up by Kyrieloid, who eyes the people inside before tilting the train in an attempt to shake them out, only for Ultraman Tiga to appear and save them. After a brief scuffle, the two assume their aerial modes and take their fight to the skies. While making their way across the bridge, other survivors, who blame the protagonist for the demon's arrival and further believe in this should the protagonist show their powers, throw rocks at them. As they walk past the protagonist, Kyrieloid falls from the sky and crushes them before resuming the aerial dogfight. Making their way through the chaos, the protagonist and Yuki eye the combatants for one last time as they run off.
Stage 10
The protagonist runs into the yakuza once again. However, just as Muto corners them with his gun, he is swooped up by a Gyaos. While making their way through the burning, Gyaos-infested city, Yuki gets snatched by an incoming Gyaos. The protagonist can either choose to hide so as to not let her sacrifice be in vain, at which point Yuki will somehow be able to return to them, or get themselves snatched up by a Gyaos to save her from their nest on a building. When the latter choice is made, another angry Gyaos flies in and chases them on a walkway on the rooftop, but Gamera comes up and saves them by blasting the Gyaos with a fireball.
Stage 11
Finally arriving at the National Cosmic Ray Research Laboratory, where the staff are bent on researching the strange lights in the sky the protagonist saw before, the humans suddenly find themselves besieged by Dada, a three-faced alien scientist walking and teleporting around the building, shrinking people with a Micronizer Device for his own research. Eventually, the protagonist manages to retrieve needed data for the scientists, who finish their findings in the presence of Otsuka. One staff member suddenly flickers, turning out to just be a disguise of Dada, who shrinks another staff member and attempts to go after the rest, forcing the protagonist, Yuki, and the remaining NCRRL staff to escape the building.
Stage 12
In the middle of watching a show, the building the protagonist is in gets cleaved in two, revealing the Fifth Angel, who is soon confronted by Evangelion Unit 01. The protagonist, Yuki, and Risa, who was also in the building, escape as the Eva, at first seeming to retreat after the Angel disarms it of its minigun, rushes at the monster's core with two knives while getting stabbed in the chest with the Fifth Angel's whips in the process. They watch on as the Eva walks away, pushing the Angel, which explodes in a cross of light soon after. As Risa leaves, Yuki and the protagonist get knocked out by Shibata and Muto, who turns out to have survived.
Stage 13
Tied up in a building, the protagonist and Yuki can only watch helplessly as Muto and Shibata look over the city, telling them that they know that monsters somehow appear wherever they are. Their plan succeeds as Godzilla walks in and roars while the gangsters leave their captives to die. The protagonist manages to scoot away and find scissors to cut their restraints as Kiryu is dropped off to halt Godzilla's rampage. After a brief fight of beams, bolts, and missiles, during which the protagonist researches Shibata's shady W&P weapons company, Godzilla roars one last time at the mecha, which powers down as planes arrive to retrieve him, and walks away. Muto arrives to check on the protagonists and, finding them unbound, tries to subdue them again. Just then, Kiryu goes berserk, walking towards and firing missiles at the building, allowing the protagonist to get away from the thug. Yuki and the protagonist watch as Kiryu marches through the building and into the distance. A news report reveals that the machine run out of power after 30 minutes, allowing the government to retrieve it.
Stage 14
The protagonist comes across a gamma wave shockburst, and sees Ultraman Belial shrug off the combined attacks of Ultraman and Ultraman Taro. On the roof of one building, they find a scientist with a broken leg who refuses to leave and let go of the opportunity before her as she types down her research about the giants on her laptop. Yuki and the protagonist carry her through the sewers as Belial continues to overpower his foes, with some of his attacks breaking through the ground and sending debris flying, then drop the scientist off somewhere else. Just as the evil Ultra seems to have beaten the two warriors of light, Ultraman Zero appears to aid his comrades. Surrounded by the heroes, Belial resorts to hurling around cars before the three Ultra warriors finally shoot him down with their beams.
Stage 15
Told by their previous savior Detective Fujiwara to meet him on a rooftop, the protagonist and Yuki find the Eighth Angel slowly descending on the city, as metallic walls extend from the ground. Suddenly, Muto and Shibata ambush them again, trying to run them down with their car as Evangelion Unit 01, its hands pierced by the Angel, strains to hold off the massive threat and prevent it from crushing the entire city. Meeting with Fujiwara, the protagonists are then cornered by the Yakuza, who end up in a standoff with the detective. Evangelion Unit-02 arrives and attempts to stab the Angel's core with its knives, while Evangelion Unit-00 rushing in to restrain the Angel so its core can finally be destroyed. In the chaos, the Yakuza grabs Yuki and run off with her. Fujiwara, who called the two civilians just to serve as bait for the thugs, wakes the protagonist up and tells them that they have to go after Muto and Shibata.
Stage 16
Meeting Risa in a crumbling area due to the Legion Plant growing through the streets, the protagonist encounters Gamera landing before them to destroy the flower and prevent its explosion. With a choice to either use a horse or motorcycle to follow the train of buses heading out of the city, the protagonist and Risa rush under Gamera and evade the Soldier Legions with 70 seconds to escape the city before the plant explodes.
Stage 17
By sunrise, Risa and the protagonist arrive in the same park where the protagonist met Yuki, with Ultraseven and the two-headed bird-like kaiju Pandon fighting close by. With his Emerium Beam waning out, Ultraseven, already weakened and forced on his knees by battle fatigue, is beaten down by Pandon, who bats away the hero's Eye Slugger and begins dousing him mercilessly with its fiery breath. Meeting and joining up with Fujiwara and Otsuka, the protagonist climbs up the same building where he accidentally stumbled upon a Shibata and Muto's yakuza transaction, distracting the thugs long enough to save Yuki, just as Ultraseven regains his wits and begins to fight back more vigorously.
On the rooftop, just before they can all get a waiting helicopter, Risa shoots the protagonist in the leg and, standing alongside Shibata, Muto, and four other yakuza members armed with pistols, reveals herself to be part of the W&P company. She says that, while at first they wanted to silence the protagonist for having discovered their illegal actions, they decided to observe them, having noticed the protagonist's magical powers and the fact that monsters appear wherever they go, which the company wishes to exploit, weaponize, and profit off of. She has given the protagonist her phone so Shibata and Muto can track his movements, and offers the protagonist a chance to join them. Using their power to heal the gunshot, the protagonist runs to the others while evading the bullets. Just as the thugs surround them, halting their escape, Ultraseven knocks Pandon down, causing a tremor that sends the thugs falling off the building to their deaths. The protagonist manages to grab Risa and, depending on the player's choice, can either save her or drop her.
Just when the helicopter takes off, leaving the protagonist and Yuki on the roof, Yuki, who turns out to be an alien who tried to escape the "shadows" and gave the protagonist part of her powers, thanks the protagonist for the time they spent together and returns to the sky in a purple flash. The protagonist awakens in the helicopter, being the only one who can remember Yuki. In the end, it is revealed that no one has any idea about the nature of the mysterious purple lights, the monster attacks have destroyed everything in a 120-kilometer radius, Risa is jailed (if she was saved by the protagonist) and her company is in the midst of a crisis (with W&P representative Reiko Kamio arrested), Toru Fujiwara is discharged from service due to his dangerous method of risking civilian lives to catch criminals, and Hideyasu Otsuka made a lot of money with the stories he got out of the recent events.
The game ends with eyewitnesses saying that the protagonist (who is noted as being present in all the game's incidents) was last seen in "Go-go Curry", eating two cups of super large curry, with his whereabouts afterwards being unknown.
Appearances
The objective of City Shrouded in Shadow is to survive and perform tasks amidst the existence of giant entities encountered in the 17 levels of the game. Some giants are benevolent, such as the Ultra Crusaders, Mothra, and Gamera, only posing a threat due to their gigantic size and the massive collateral damage they cause. Others, like Evangelion units, labor units, and Mechagodzilla, are created or at least deployed by humans themselves, though the Type-5G/1C Grau-Bear is piloted by a terrorist, the Type J-9 Griffon was built specifically to combat police labors, and Evangelion Unit-01 as well as Kiryu can go berserk due to an internal soul. Most monsters are malevolent, seeking to hunt, kill, conquer, or destroy, with some like Soldier Legions and Kyrieloid actively targeting humans, while others are neutral and indifferent to human life and infrastructure.
For the most part, civilians seem to be completely unaware of — and surprised by — the presence of the various giants, which are implied to be anomalies associated with (or perhaps even manifested into reality by) the purple lights and Yuki's enigmatic nature in the story. The sole exception to this are the labors, which are discussed like a normal part of life by the various characters the protagonist can meet in the fourth and seventh stages of the game. Regardless, while most are terrified by the giants, or urgently doing tasks because of them, there are some stages where civilians continue to nonchalantly eat, converse, study, rest, and even work like nothing is out of the ordinary despite being aware of the monsters before and around them.
Although there are five franchises coexisting in the setting of the game, each one has its own exclusive levels themed after it. There is no crossover in the sense that none of the characters from different intellectual properties ever meet each other.
Kaiju, seijin, mechas, and vehicles
Ultraman
- Ultraman – Stages 1 and Stage 14
- Alien Zarab / Imit-Ultraman – Stage 1
- Kyrieloid (Second Generation) – Stage 9
- Ultraman Tiga – Stage 1
- Dada - Stage 11
- Ultraman Belial - Stage 14
- Ultraman Taro - Stage 14
- Ultraman Zero - Stage 14
- Ultraseven - Stage 17
- Pandon - Stage 17
Gamera (Heisei trilogy)
Godzilla
- Mothra – Stage 3
- Battra – Stage 3
- Godzilla – Stages 6, 8, and 13
- King Ghidorah – Stage 8
- Mechagodzilla Type-3 Kiryu – Stage 13
- AC-3 White Heron – Stage 13
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Mechagodzilla Type-3 Kiryu
Mobile Police Patlabor: On Television
- Type-5G/1C Grau-Bear – Stage 4
- CRL-98 Pyro-Buster – Stage 4
- AV-98 Ingram – Stages 4 and 7
- AV-98 Ingram 2 – Stage 7
- Type J-9 Griffon – Stage 7
- Type M-5 Abraham – Stage 7
Rebuild of Evangelion
- Fourth Angel (Sachiel) – Stage 5
- Evangelion Unit-01 – Stages 5, 12, and 15
- Fifth Angel (Shamshel) – Stage 12
- Eighth Angel (Sahaquiel) – Stage 15
- Evangelion Unit-02 – Stage 15
- Evangelion Unit-00 – Stage 15
Gallery
General
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Title -
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Evangelion Unit-01 teaser -
Alien Zarab and King Ghidorah revealed -
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A pair of AV-98 Ingram units -
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Rebuild of Evangelion characters, with original human characters -
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Mechagodzilla Type-3 Kiryu and Rebuild of Evangelion characters, with original human characters and franchise costumes -
Humans
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Ken Misaki (default male player) -
Miharu Matsuhara (default female player) -
Yuki Kouno -
Katsuhiro Muto -
Ryouji Shibata -
Miho Yamamura -
Shinji Yamamura
Ultraman
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Ultraman teaser -
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Ultraman fighting Imitation Ultraman -
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Ultraman Tiga teaser -
Godzilla
Videos
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Trivia
- This is the second game published by Bandai Namco to utilize the license to the Godzilla franchise after 2014's Godzilla, not counting the "Tokyo Martial Law" expansion to Ace Combat Infinity.
- City Shrouded in Shadow is the third video game to officially feature both Godzilla and Ultraman, after Battle Soccer: Champion of the Field and Battle Baseball, and the first to feature Gamera alongside either character. However, as none of the characters from different franchises meet each other in this game, Gamera could not encounter either Godzilla or Ultraman in a game until 2023, when his GAMERA -Rebirth- incarnation was added to Godzilla Battle Line.
- This game is one of few games to feature a kaiju incursion from a human perspective, along with Godzilla 2: War of the Monsters and Gamera: Gyaos Destruction Strategy.
- This game includes all of Toho's "Big Five" kaiju, albeit with Battra replacing Rodan. Aside from Mechagodzilla, which is based on its Millennium series incarnation, all of the Godzilla series monsters in the game are from the Heisei series of films.
- Of all the game's giants, only Ultraseven and Pandon were never revealed or even teased until release. Pandon is also uniquely the only kaiju from the Ultra franchise present in the game, as the rest are kaijin or seijin, including the Ultras themselves.
- Although the Eighth Angel was shown in the teasers of Evangelion Units 02 and 00, as well as the second trailer of the game, it was never really focused on or promoted specifically.
- Although the game is based on encounters with giant entities, the eleventh stage is unique in that the danger comes from a single Dada agent prowling a building in his human-sized form, stalking down and shrinking humans to collect them as specimens. This leads to Dada himself being unique among other monsters; his sole attack, a blast from his Micronizer Device, can be resisted for short periods, he can be fought (albeit just with shoves), and he is the only monster that would not kill the player, deliberately or accidentally, as he instead shrinks the protagonist down to add to his collection of samples (however, Dada is shown killing other humans characters by shrinking them to oblivion).
External links
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