Thanks to NIS AMERICA for the review code
Title: Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories
System: Nintendo Switch
Price: $59.99
Release Date: 04/07/2020
Story
A game originally intended to launch in 2011, only to be cancelled by Irem after the Tohoku Earthquake, (which also pretty much led to the death of Irem publishing games as we know it) this was later revived by Granzella, made up of the staff behind the original PS3 version!
Indeed, you can see why Irem held off on it within the first few minutes, as the core plot revolves around you being caught in the middle of a super devastating earthquake that hit Japan. Buildings ruined, paths missing, people lost and confused, it’s up to you to use your survival to help those in need and focus on escaping the city in a week.
Despite this dark setup, the game doesn’t hesitate to get insanely goofy pretty quickly, letting you toy with a lot of morality questionable and even stuff outside the fourth wall. In all honesty, maybe that isn’t a sensible approach to take for a plot similar to one of Japan’s worst events in decades…
Well, time for a snap judgment review, as it’ll quickly become apparent why I couldn’t stand this game for long, after finally getting down to cover it here in late 2024.
Presentation
To describe this game’s presentation in a nutshell, especially this Switch port, I’ll sum up a memorable experience. In the intro parts of the game, I was walking around, looking for survivors, when a building fell in front of me, smeared vaseline on my game, and dropped the framerate to near single digits. Then I turn around, and the game sped up a bit and felt like nothing happened, only for me to enter a building and have it chug the game badly due to the lighting of the lobby.
Disaster Report 4 is quite bluntly, a technical disaster, though apparently it was that way on everything, even older PCs and PS4. (though with the advent of PS5, I’m told that version runs great via Backwards Compatibility), with just this Switch port having the more noticeable aspects to it, like the aforementioned dynamic resolution making the game look smeary.
In handheld mode especially, the game just looks like a blurry mess, so much so that it’s honestly funny at points. Docked mode still does this a lot too though, but I at least found the resolution to be a bit more tolerable when playing on the TV, even if the game still ran inconsistently. This isn’t a high octane action game or anything and thus the framerate dip won’t impact your play too much, but I am still baffled at how such a simple looking game still manages to make the Switch scream in agony. At the very least, the game is a lot easier for me to deal with than Arc of Alchemist, so this at least isn’t a bad Switch port due to lack of trying, but it wasn’t one I had fun playing in long sessions due to said visual insanity giving me actual eyestrain after a while.
Gameplay
The main goal of Disaster Report 4 is to go out and help figure out a means to manage the next several days, help people in need and further get deeper into Japan to witness and figure out how to deal with the disaster aftermath and escape the ruined city. In terms of how you actually accomplish that goal, well, that became my first challenge with Disaster Report 4, next to the game’s terrible Switch performance, since your next objective isn’t always clear.
That isn’t a bad focus to have for a video game, mind you! Telling you to just go off and play and figure out the next solution yourself is the core to a lot of retro games, and being that this was a series from the PS2 era, I wasn’t fully opposed to the idea of being lost for a while. Indeed, fiddling around for a good hour or so, I found myself some hidden secrets such as a compass, several opportunities to mess with my morality points by scamming a group of passerby by scalping Bandages, and taking on a quest to help find a teacher’s missing students.
I can at least give the localization team some props for making some of the multiple choice options decently funny. Still not really a fan of the game itself being inconsistent with tone and bordering on being insensitive with the subject matter, but oh well. Playing through it more, I eventually talked to everyone I could look at, finally equipping myself with the new gear I picked up, and progressing the game further. Finding newer people, taking on their quests, and slowly realizing a sinking feeling as it felt like I was just going in circles trying to open up the next area.
This just is an old RPG trope, but expanded fully in the worst possible way; remember how some older RPGs encouraged you to talk to everyone in the town before it would finally let you free? That’s what Disaster Report 4 does, over, and over again during the time I could tolerate it. With the help of a walkthrough, (since yes, I broke down and pulled one out after fumbling around the first area for an hour straight with little progress) I finally was able to make faster progress, but I really don’t see how you could figure out the best optimal ways to progress without outside help; sometimes it actually is more beneficial to take a morality hit for the sake of extra money or to benefit yourself in the moment, while sometimes what seems to be the most courteous action hurts you. A very weird tone, indeed.
Then as I finally made it slightly further in the starting area, spending up to nearly my second hour opening up more quests and getting goofy items to dress up my character, not counting the DLC stuff I was shameless enough to acquire solely to see if any of it would make the game better. Well, at least I have screenshots fitting for the holiday season, now. Eventually, I started to have to manage my stress stat, and dealing with my HP bar as more disaster struck, and the ways of remedying the former continued the weird tone of the game, pretty much making it non-serious by the point I threw in the towel as my Switch felt like it was in extreme pain trying to render this mess of a game.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Disaster Report 4 is quite a mess, and somehow managed to defy what I remembered experiencing when playing around with it several years ago. Despite the serious concept of the story focusing on a bad earthquake, the writing just never really nailed it for me, with the game feeling more and more in bad taste the further I progressed in it; even the few times I found something funny it always ended up feeling like an accident I shouldn’t have been laughing at, and some of the writing ended up aging badly, surprisingly enough.
Yeah, the Switch version looks hideous and performs shakier than a fault line, but I can’t help but say it might add to the charm of this game at points, especially when other versions aren’t that much better unless you brute force it via PS5/advanced PCs. The game is still very playable and isn’t at all dependent on reaction time, so I argue the low framerate and visual quality leads to this quirky experience being more unique on the platform, just for the amusement of a big crowd or crumbling building causing your framerate to dip to single digits for a bit.
That being said, the MSRP of $60 is definitely a steep choice for this game, and one I absolutely cannot in good faith recommend you buy this game at under any circumstance. If you’re really up for wacky insanity, wild tone shifts, and going in circles a lot until you eventually figure out the tedious gameplay loop, I’d advise waiting on a sale, but you’re better off doing so for digital storefronts due to how the physical copies can be unusually hard to find.
Do you want to wait for the Switch 2 for this version, if you can handle the loop? Maybe it would be wise to do so. Or just embrace the insanity, either way. Needless to say, I still bounced off this one quite hard despite really trying to push through to give this a proper review, and I can’t help but feel that a better framerate wouldn’t have made much difference. If anything, the low performance makes the game funnier!
I give a Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories a 3 out of 10.