do i have to play this series in order?

[turntechGodhead]

i noticed the first 3 arent on steam and was wondering if i needed to play the others to understand this one.

[Bread]

I'm a little late but no, all the disaster report games are separate. Think of final fantasy as an example, they're all in their own universes and have their own standalone story. Disaster report is the same.

My best recommendation if you do want to play the older games though is definitely disaster report 2 or better known with its US region title as Raw Danger.

[SilentWraith]

This game does feature some characters and some very minor references to past games. All the Disaster Report games are in the same universe, the previous games are more linked with direct references. This game had taken a different approach due to having to recreate this game initially because of it's original cancellation from the 2011 Japanese Earthquake. But I do recommend the first 2 games.

[Paul]

don't bother with this one, i've played a couple of hours and it's awful. just play the first two. part three is ok but it's where the rot started to set in gameplay-wise, i think that was mostly because it got nerfed to run on psp.

the first two are action adventure games with some character dialog scenes and platforming, lots of big action scenes one after another like a disaster film.

the third one has slightly nicer graphics but you're just running around in large open spaces not doing much.

this one is worse. you move from one very pretty hub location to the next where all roads are blocked off except one and all the npcs are just standing around, you can't really interact with them, the ones that you can talk to you occasionally get a quest from but theres no quest log, no idea of what to do or where to go. it seems very constrictive and linear. from the looks of the walkthrough you can lock yourself out of a ton of content from making a wrong dialog choice.

i finally gave up on it when i had to "impersonate a businessman from a rival company and buy hundreds of thousands of yen worth of stock from some guy in a burger joint" - which i can't afford to do because i had no idea i would have to save money to play the stock market in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ "survival" game set in an earthquake struck city. absolute crap.