13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (2019)

We've got a friend who's been staying with us for the past two weeks, and it was they who finally convinced me to start 13 Sentinels. I'm so glad they did. Piecing together the disparate narrative threads alongside them and my wife has been one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I've had in years, and the story at the heart of all those threads is one of the best I've experienced in the medium. It's heartbreaking, heartwarming, funny, thrilling, and, above all else, brimming with love.

If you're going to play this, you're going to play it for the story. It's a shame that the RTS half isn't as engaging as the visual novel half; it's by no means poor, and it's incredibly satisfying to watch the little dots that represent your mechs pour missiles into a zone, or leap halfway across the map to slam down onto a group of kaiju, but there's a reason the devs included a Casual difficulty in there.

There's so much to unpack in the story that I'm simply not going to, as much of a cop-out as that is. Even the trademark Vanillaware horniness is dramatically pared back, so it's much less embarrassing than usual for all involved! Win, win, win. This is a remarkable game that deserves to be played.

Part of the Millennium Challenge (2020).

I've finally moved this to my "In Limbo" shelf, which is what I do when I'm considering dropping a game but haven't committed to it fully yet.

For a narrative-heavy game, the tutorial really failed to set up any kind of compelling hook. It really just tosses out a bunch of disjointed pieces of the story and goes "Don't you want to know what's going on?" And the answer, unfortunately, is "No, not really."

It did improve somewhat after the tutorial because I had more freedom to explore the different narratives at my own pace but it still failed to get its teeth into me. The knowledge that I'd have to play through a bunch of RTS sections I don't have much interest in to progress isn't helping either. And then there's the pervy writing and art and just...eghhh.

Maybe this ain't it, folks. I'll give it some time but it's hard to see myself coming back to this one.

The way the story slowly unravels in this game is amazing. I wont say more thats how good it is. Though the romance for all but like one couple was really rushed. But this isn't a romance its a giant sci fi story so thats ok.

The more action? gameplay is ok. But since its in the same game as one of the best visual novels ive ever played it feels very unnecassary

I picked this game up since I had heard so many recommendations and praise for it. Some have coined it to be one of the best narrative experiences of 2020.

Right off the bat, I felt disappointed. The pervy vibes and sexualization of the characters right away were so offputting. How can the nurse's single banker be bigger than her head? Why must she wear a catsuit? Why the fuck do they need to be naked inside the mechs and put in very specific poses? I found this really gave an unserious and stupid vibe right away.

I held on though, since the story was intriguing. My main issue is the presentation here, and the off-putting pacing it proved for my playing experience. I didn't hate the RTS part, but I wasn't interested in it either. I could however only avoid it for so long until I needed to play it to progress the story. However since I didn't want to play this part this was so many hours that by the time I got back to the story, I had forgotten most of the plot.

The second thing breaking the pacing is the gameplay loop of the stories. To have to pick between all these characters and I don't know which order or where to go, I would end up playing the same character stories on repeat until I could no longer progress with the same one, skipping to someone else then rinse and repeat. Since I didn't ever really get into a flow, I just wanted to lay down the game each time one of the very short story loops was done. It just wasn't an enjoyable format to me.

The gameplay itself was pretty annoying too. Often I would run around or listen to thoughts, confused about how to progress. More often than not this was just not clear and I ran around in a confined space for a while before understanding what to do, or think about.

And now for the final saving grace, which should have been the story. I thought it was pretty great. It was ambitious and they managed to pull it off really well! I think the thing lacking for me was that I really didn't get attached to or care about any of the main characters AT ALL. They all felt flat and I felt more prone to disliking them than liking and caring for them. As a whole the main plot delivers some satisfaction, but it was certainly not THAT great.

That was my rant, spent a lot of time with this game and felt a bit frustrated with it too, so needed to write my feelings out about it. I will read some other reviews to see what people found so amazing about it. Was it worth it? Maybe... Some music was really cool.

I find this information interesting because I didn't realize I played my Switch quite this much in 2023. Possibly because a lot of this play time was in the early half of the year and the first half of 2023 is a bit of a blur, lol. But it's very interesting because that's more than both PS5 and Xbox separately. But it is only 17 hours more than PS5, so it seems those two were my main conventional consoles in 2023 (I say conventional because I suspect Steam Deck might be the runaway top console of the year for me).

13 Sentinels is one of my favorite pieces of science fiction ever, across any medium.

The story and characters are excellent. Go into this as blind as you can. It's looks and sounds absolutely beautiful.

Unfortunately I can't praise the gameplay as highly. The gameplay isn't bad, it's just not as compelling as the narrative, art, characters, etc. It's fun but not interesting enough and lacks challenge.

I highly recommend 13 Sentinels. It definitely deserves more love and attention than it has currently received.

9.0/10

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim by Vanillaware is a love letter to the Sci-Fi genre. The game is inspired by countless anime and movies from Evangelion to E.T.; yet also manages to put its own unique spin on the genre. What starts as a cliche plot of high school students piloting Sentinels (mechs) to fight Kaiju, is only the tip of the iceberg. The game surprises and delights until the very end. This, coupled with beautiful hand drawn art and an excellent soundtrack makes 13 Sentinels an unforgettable experience.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim tells a very complex non-linear story. This is not an easy game to comprehend and the developers trust in the player’s intelligence to figure things out. The story is a wild journey through numerous historical and futuristic periods. You will play as characters in 1945 Japan during WWII, in 1985 when Japan’s economy was booming and even in the far future in 2065 where energy guns and droids are commonplace. The common theme throughout these periods are that there are Kaiju that appear and Sentinels that fight them.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, like other Vanillaware games, is esoteric, niche and interesting. The game can best be described as part adventure game, part Visual Novel and part RTS. The game is divided into three sections, Remembrance (the story), Analysis (the in-game wiki) and Destruction (the combat). Unlike a traditional video game with one or maybe a few protagonists, 13 Sentinels, as the name suggests offers 13 playable protagonists with meaningful relationships and interactions with one another.

The Remembrance section plays like an adventure game mixed with a Visual Novel. You move your character around talking to people and using the Thought Cloud (an inventory-like system) to interact with things. There is a handy GUI on the top-right to indicate when there is a new entry in the Thought Cloud and whether a Thought can be used to interact with something. These sections are relatively simple to play through and can be completed by exhausting every option. There IS one tricky part in an early chapter of Fuyusaka's story. If you have trouble feeding a cat, I suggest looking up a guide because the solution to the puzzle is unintuitive.

The Analysis section lists all of the terms that the player has encountered as well as bonus Case Files that can be unlocked with Mystery Points earned playing in the Remembrance and Destruction sections. While an in-game wiki doesn’t sound particularly interesting, I found myself routinely going back to the Analysis section each time I finished a character’s chapter. The Analysis section does a wonderful job at explaining when and what happened in each scene making it easier to decipher the non-linear plot.

The Destruction section is the weakest part of the game. The gameplay is an RTS Tower Defense game. If you imagined explosive, bombastic fights between building sized mechs and monsters, you’ll be severely disappointed. All friends and foes are depicted merely as icons on a blue grid map. Before each battle, players can choose to activate up to 6 Sentinels, while the rest of the crew offers passive benefits. There are 4 generations (types) of Sentinels, ranging from hard hitting melee bruisers to flying support classes. In combat, the objective is usually to protect the Terminal (base) for up to 2 minutes or destroy all foes. Don’t be fooled by the short amount of time because the Kaiju start appearing at a rapid pace. Time stops whenever a Sentinel is ready to engage, allowing players to plan out how to defeat the Kaiju.

On Normal difficulty, the game is not very challenging. It doesn't take much strategy or effort to earn an S rank in battle. In fact, I only remember losing once throughout the entire game. The game does introduce some difficulty with the bonus objectives. Bonus objectives unlock Case Files in the Analysis section. The bonuses are often locked behind special challenges like limiting one’s Sentinel choices or beating a map under a certain time limit. If you don’t want to deal with any of the hassle of earning these bonuses, the game provides a Casual mode for players only interested in the story. I haven’t used Casual Mode myself, but I’m guessing it makes the combat even more trivial.

Like all other Vanillaware games, their style of art is the white elephant in the room. The developer portrays female characters in an overtly sexualized manner: the unrealistic body proportions, amount of skin shown, the body postures, you name it. 13 Sentinels is relatively tame compared to their previous works, but it does portray naked high school students (with private parts obscured) and a woman wearing an extremely tight fitting leather outfit. To be honest, it didn’t bother me that much, but I want to mention this in case you might be playing this game in front of others like your significant other, roommate, kids, etc.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a gem, meant to be savored for as long as possible. It’s the kind of game you want to discuss endlessly about after completing it. It’s also the kind of game where you don’t want to talk too much to avoid spoiling another player’s experience. Even when you think you know where the plot is headed, the story will surprise and shock you. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is an easy recommendation for Sci-Fi fans or anyone who is itching for a good mind-bending story.

I recently played through 13 sentinels and it might just be the most interesting video game I've played in my entire life. I've never seen a game tell its story like that, and it helps that the story is really good! It's become probably my favorite game I've played this year.

It's a game about 15 time-travelling teenagers who have to fight off an alien invasion. Even if the premise sounds generic at first, the story is definitely this game's strong suit. The story does get infinitely more interesting as it goes on, however I literally cannot say anything more about it without spoiling it. There's an infinite ammount of twists and turns that give this game the craziest story i've ever played through.

My favorite part has to be the fact that, in the end, none of the characters really know what's actually happening. Everybody keeps giving you their thoughts, but none of them are correct. And I love that. It makes you want to keep playing. It makes you want to find out for yourself what the hell is actually going on. And it's genius.

The game does get a bit confusing at times, since you basically have 13 different stories happening simultaneously. And even when you finish one of them, the rest will reference stuff that happened during it. It gets so convoluted with so much information to try and keep track of that you will innevitably get confused as you're playing. Honestly, you'll learn to ignore the times this stuff happens, since you can just keep playing and you won't miss much.

The game is half RTS, half visual novel. And both parts are fun. But if you had to pick what the weakest part of the game was, it would definitely be the RTS. You're just looking at a radar screen instead of the actual giant robots fighting the kaiju, so the visuals get repetitive and boring towards the end. The difficulty curve is a bit weird, it starts super easy but by the final area it seems impossible to get any S Ranks without grinding. And the stat changes feel so minuscule that you're not even sure if it's worth getting them. I thought it was fun to play through, but It does feel a bit unpolished so I wouldn't blame anybody if they didn't like it.

Presentation-wise, the game is amazing. The game is almost entirely made using 2D sprites, yet the few 3D assets they use throughout the game don't feel out of place. The giant robots are stylized in such a way that seeing them in the paper-like world still feels natural. The music is also really good. Special shoutout to Seaside Vacation for being the best song ever made.

I would really love to keep talking about the story for hours and hours, but the game is best played blind. The story is absolutely bonkers, and the twists wont stop showing up until the credits roll. It might not be a perfect game, but I still loved every second I played through the game. 10/10

13 Sentinels is an exciting and enjoyable game that's very tough to put down once you get sucked in. It can be dense and a bit overwhelming, but slowly piecing together what's going on is very satisfying.

The story structure is the game's most unique aspect. Each of the 13 playable characters (yes, really) gets their own smaller story with its own perspective. Though the game locks some scenes behind others, you can generally choose what order to approach these stories in. There's a feeling of making your own path through the game, but also a planned flow from start to finish that makes sense. I found the overarching plot and world-building to be pretty fun, as well as a lot of the humor, unique scenarios, and interpersonal drama found within characters' own stories.

One nagging issue that's always in the background is the odd disconnect between that main story and the large-scale RTS combat. I have little complaints about that combat, but it can be decent fun. It just feels like an afterthought tacked onto the game for most of its duration. You can ignore it for hours on end, but certain story bits are somewhat arbitrarily gated behind it. The player has to either randomly stop the story to do a battle here and there, or do a bunch of them in bulk every 5-10 hours. It's not a great experience.

A more pervasive annoyance is the constant stopping and starting of dialogue scenes. You have to reposition or talk to people again several times mid-conversation. This meaningless interaction is annoying and disruptive to the flow of spoken dialogue. That plus some under-baked adventure elements and the aforementioned combat make me feel like the game is afraid to become too visual novel-y. It's an understandable goal, but the execution ends up distracting from what the game is actually good at.

Those negatives aside, the game does excel at its primary goals. The complex structure and content of the story pay off well, with some nice "a-ha!" moments and a solid sense of closure on most of what it sets up. You get some cool moments of stories coming together that only really work in this weird format. The art is also nice, particularly in more futuristic and action-packed scenarios. Character designs and personalities are very recognizable and memorable, crucial for a game with this many to keep track of.

I highly recommend this game to fans of "mind-bending" anime sci-fi nonsense and complex narratives in games, particularly if you're into that anime style. I'd love to see Vanillaware do another game like this that trims some of the fat for a more focused experience.

When I read that this game has real-time strategy game play, I was pretty hesitant to try it, but was so intrigued by the character designs and the story. I thought I was going to be put off by a gameplay style that I never explore, and I'm so glad I got over my hesitation and just tried it.

Story: What a ride. You explore the narratives of THIRTEEN characters at different paces, so of course the pieces of the stories are just thrown at you to figure out what happened when, who knows who, how these events affected those events, and it's honestly way more fun and enjoyable than I expected. Remembrance, where you primarily explore the story through the characters, is set up like a side-scrolling visual novels, where you interact with characters in the scenes, consider keywords to prompt dialogue, and and go through a flowchart to track all the possible sequences in your path. When you make wrong choices, you will restart the day again to revisit the options again and get yourself on the right path. Your choices in keywords and direction of the narrative will influence and advance the narratives of other characters as well.

Analysis This section allows you to read all the notes, character stories, and glossary to review all the information you have uncovered. You will also have points to unlock additional item information (not all of it is really that interesting though).

Gameplay This takes place in the Destruction mode, where you will select a limited number of characters and their Sentinels (mecha) to fight, based on their skills and requirements for each battle. You fight against "kaiju" that comes in waves, so you have to plan out the battle plan for each of your characters to attack, defend, heal, and strategize. You can move them around the map (each character with their limitations on travel), and you can replay levels to achieve all the points. You can further enhance all the Sentinels with meta-chips you earn to boost their abilities.

Characters The character art is awesome, and each so uniquely fitting to their personalities. There are 13 different main characters that you explore, and additional side characters you will meet. The relationships are pre-determined, so you will eventually connect with the character you are destined to be with. Speaking of art, the backgrounds are stunning and beautiful.

Highly recommend! Don't be like me and see "real-time strategy," and think "ah, that's not a game for me."

Wow, where to begin? This game took me for an insane ride. I honestly don't know where to start. I don't usually waste my time too much with primarily narrative games. Games like Discworld and Broken Sword always eluded me, as they were too slow and the payoff never seemed to be there for me no matter how many hours I tried to pour into it. 13 Sentinels though, holds a very special place in my heart. I have added it to my shelf of extremely respected games dubbed "The Mantle of Awesome", and so it sits beside things such as Earthbound, Zone of Enders 2: The 2nd Runner, and Ghost Trick.

Sadly, this is one of those games that you just cant talk about without giving everything away, so for the first section of this review i will talk about the mechanics of the game and be very loose in reference to how things work, and then later I'll be a bit more specific.

Suffice it to say, if you aren't into primarily visual novel style games, you might not enjoy this game. There are battles, symbolized by little voxel style units and highly detailed attack animations, but since Vanillaware (One of my favorite game companies) spent the majority of their budget on the voice acting and the art, you can tell as you play this that they cut a few corners on the battle system that is integrated into this game. That doesn't mean its not good! A lot of great things have been invented because of a lack of money. (Just look at Star Wars : A New Hope). It's not about resources, its about resourcefulness.

The battle system is still very fun and challenging. It's sort of like an ATB system (Active Time Battle System) wherein you are given a chance to pause the action at any given time and then issue orders to your units, and then continue the flow of time. The units are represented by little voxel style animations. There is no grid, but units do have to follow the line of the streets and each city and battle has a different layout, though flying units have free reign and can move in any direction as far as their circular range meter allows them to. The animations for the attacks are all very descriptive, but you dont actually see these actions take place, but the symbols for the units interacting with each other to signify the attack. (Sort of like Fire Emblem). This does a very cool thing, since the animation for the attack is so detailed, you sort of imagine how the attack would carry out against the units. It works quite well, and saves the studio from having to animate the attack effect on every unit.

It wouldnt have worked any other way anyhow, as during any given battle you go up against thousands of units. So i understand why they went this route, because otherwise it would have cost a fortune to make.

As for the story, you get it in little pieces. Each character knows a little bit of what is going on, and its up to you to use your aggregate knowledge playing with all 13 sentinel pilots in order to uncover whats going on within this world, what someone is doing and how to stop them (or even if you should, or even if you have a chance!)

The way the story unfolds is like something out of the greatest mystery novel ever written. You get snippets of time, back and forth, in between all of the characters, and your understanding of whats going on and how things function in the universe grows exponentially, over and over again. It's a thrilling narrative rollercoaster that I would recommend to anyone!

I dont think i could possibly talk about the game anymore with out giving at least some of it away. This marks the section of the review that will contain spoiler content, so please be advised. I will not mention details that are too specific, but some story elements will be given away. You've been warned.

Let me just say, that there is pretty much no one here on the cast that i don't like. All of the characters definitely have their own wonderful personalities, and their motivations never give me pause to question whether or not they are properly tied in with the storyline and make sense. My favorites being Yuki and Hijiyama. Yuki's assertiveness to help her friends is so friggen admirable, and the way Hijiyama is such a stand-up himbo, he's just too cool! Nevermind being awesome enough to just straight up fall in love with someone whether or not they are a boy or a girl or even a robot.

Ok, real spoiler talk. I love robots. I want to be one, I would totally fall in love with one, and I will watch stuff about robots all day everyday. The story of Keitaro implanting himself into a tiny scout robot and then helping the characters in a later world reset was awesome, and when he died on the bridge I legit cried.

Kisaragi is a bit OP, seeing as how he/she/they always knows whats going on. The same goes for Renya Gouto. You don't get the majority of their content until way late in the game, because they uncover so much and what's happening within the world has to be a slow burn. Though I do really enjoy their characters, they remind me a lot of Death Note's L and Light.

The ending really made me smile, because every loose end gets tied up. All of the versions of every character gets to find some semblance of peace. They even bring back the lovely moe Miwako, who is technically not real. No one is except for the 13 Sentinel pilots. But hearing them say they are working on a way to materialize the digital versions of the people in the world gives me a bit of hope. It also ends in such a way that makes it like... the bad guys weren't really bad guys all this time, they were really trying to help in their own way.

This is a reminder for myself, in case I forget, just like all of the reviews I post are really just me trying to remind myself "Hey, you played this... you beat it". Anyways, the gist of the story is that everyone is living out in these space stations that are made to look like different periods of time, so when they travel from one station to another they aren't actually traveling backwards or forwards in time. The main goal of the space stations is to prepare the sentinel pilots for waking up and recolonizing the universe. Something happened a long time ago that infected all of mankind with a type of virus that ended up killing everyone, and the space station is actually like a seed for mankind to grow back and prosper again. The worlds get "reset" everytime the kaiju robots come and destroy all of the space stations. The characters are all actual reincarnated versions of previous people from way in the future (technically, way way in the past). Once Ms. Morimura switches bodies and talks to Renya at the park, that's when the whole can of beans gets spilled. It turns out, the space stations themselves aren't even real, they are digital. So resetting the world isn't actually a physical ordeal, all the destruction of the towns and the people are actually just ones and zeroes. Each reset has been to prevent the growth of the virus that also previously ravages mankind from the previous genocide in the future. Renya convinces her to let all of the pilots play out this last reset in order to finally defeat the algorithm that is set to keep them there. ALL of the battles that are happening in the game are actually taking place right at the end of the entire story. Once the team beat the final battle of the kaiju, they are all able to escape into the real world and begin colonizing and repopulating the stations and eventually the universe.

A funny bit, is that there is some worry about the civilians during the battle campaign. But since nothing there is real, it doesn't actually matter how many civilians die. But, being the wholesome crew that they are, they still thought it was important to save the lives of their family and friends. It must be a weird feeling, to find out that your mother and father aren't real. All the care and the love that they showed you was just programming. Some characters feel really weird about this, while others resolve to say that it doesn't matter whats "REAL" as long as what they feel is real. This is why they bring back Miwako, who ended up dying earlier in the game. The appreciation for digital life is something I've always enjoyed, in stories like Ender's Game (Jane), Star Trek (Data, Doctor), and even Moon (Gerty 3000), the characters show an admirable dimension of loyalty and care for their "real" counterparts that makes them so awesome.

Uncovering the mystery of the world within 13 Sentinels was probably the greatest narrative adventure that I've ever had in my life. There were many times when I had to go to work the next day and needed to go to bed, but instead I just stayed up playing this and went to work tired, except I wasn't tired, I was hyped with curiosity!

The way that the game gives you little clues, and each "episode" with included clues ends on a cliffhanger style bit of information absolutely drove me. I probably haven't been this in love with a game since... Maybe Ghost Trick.

It has everything! Time shenanigans, talking cats, ghosts, evil robots, giant mecha, reincarnated robot androids, tiny little adorable robots, traps (both the physical kind, and the crossdressing kind), kaiju!, strategic planning, teleportation, a story that spans across thousands of years, amnesia... You name it! And pretty much every trope you could possibly think of gets integrated in a very clever and fun way.

If you've got time to manically obsess over a game, do pick this one up. There isn't a ton here in terms of replay value, though the simulation battles do offer an extra campaign of difficulty if you want more. Its extremely challenging and I got stuck on one battle in particular for quite awhile.

I will probably come back and add edits to this review later on.

I didn't even realized this game was released until The game awards back in December 2020. So by that time I was really tempted to buy it, and then in February I think, it went on sale, I believe 50% off. So, yeah, I had to swoop in and buy this game (along with a bunch of other games on sale at the time). So I finally got around to playing this game on March 13th and it lasted me until the 23rd. My Play Time was about 53 hours long. For the price I paid for this game, definitely well worth it. Well, without further ado, lets make like Steve from Blues Clues and jump into my review.

Gameplay-There's two different gameplay modes to the game, a mode called Remembrance. In this mode, you will take on the role of the 13 Protagonists of this game in a visual novel kind of style. You don't have to do much in this game mode, just enjoy a pretty lengthy story that will confuse the hell out of you most likely. Go left or right to find the person or object of interest in the scene. Press triangle to enter your thoughts and select a keyword to respond to someone with or get a flashback scene. As for the other main mode, it's called Destruction. This is the mode that is more on the action side for people who don't care about VN's. It's a RTS (Real-Time Strategy) style mode where you take command of the 13 protagonists in their Sentinels and fight off the invading Kaiju in the final battle that Remembrance was leading up to. I personally have no real interest in RTS games or mech stuff but I was extremely interested in this game the moment it was revealed (E3 2017), that I looked passed the RTS style gameplay and mechs, and gave this game a try anyway. Thank goodness I did, because this game is a masterpiece in my eyes. The RTS style gameplay isn't really that bad to be honest. I always feel like they look too complicated, and figured I wouldn't understand how to play them. But I found myself understanding most of the mechanics in the battles. You have four different types of Sentinels: 1st Generation, 2nd Generation, 3rd Generation and 4th Generation. Each Sentinel Generation excels at their own thing. 1st Generation sentinels are great at Close combat. 2nd Generation Sentinels are effective at both Long Range and Close range combat. 3rd generation Sentinels excel at long range combat, and finally 4th generation Sentinels are best at using support skills. The Battles end after you Clear out all the Kaiju on the battle or the timer runs out. You will lose if any of your characters are killed or if your terminal is destroyed by the kaiju. You can only bring a total of 6 Sentinels into battle with you and if you use them for a certain amount of battles then they'll get this brain overload status which means they can't fight for that battle and it'll take 1 battle for them to be usable again, you can press the square button on the character select screen to reset their brain overload status if you really want to use that character but it will reset your consecutive win streak, which adds a nice bonus to your score the higher the win streak so it's kind of encouraged to let them take their break and get some exp for your other characters. After Battles, you'll get Meta-chips which lets you learn or enhance abilities for the sentinels or the terminal, eventually you'll also be able to use them to enhance your characters stats. Each battle has bonus objectives and if you do them successfully, you'll get a mystery file, you'll also get a second mystery file for every battle you get a S rank for the first time on. Mystery files are for the third mode of this game, called Analysis which is just mystery files you get from destruction and playing through Remembrance which recaps stuff about characters, places, story, food, Sentinels attacks, etc. Analysis also has the stories events you can rewatch/play which is something I'd like to play with, I'll explain why on my story portion.

Story-Okay, this story is a masterpiece for me, it's So good, It's pretty confusing and after finishing the game, I'm definitely not sure about certain stuff and trying to understand somethings just makes me more confused and that's why I love it so much, a game that can end and feel truly concluded, the answers are all there in the game, but it can still make you think and question if you actually are understanding the situation right, it's hard to explain but I like that questioning feeling the game left me with. Also the reason I would like to replay this game through the event viewer is because this game happens in all different orders and it plays with time a lot, a lot of events will take place in different time periods and the order we witness them is confusing, but the event viewer has them in chronological order if you watch them from all events. so it might be a bit more helpful for me to actually play the game in chronological order and see if I understand stuff better. But aside from that, the Characters are all incredibly amazing, they all feel extremely relevant to the games plot. They're all unique and play a key role in the game. I really don't want to spoil the story for this game, so what I will say is, if you haven't played this game, buy it. it's amazing and it's worth it. Also there's a ton of great ships in this game lol.

Art-This is what caught my attention to begin with. When I first saw the characters moving in the school in the E3 2017 trailer, I was captivated. The visuals are so unique and I kept thinking how it made me think of Odin Sphere, so I looked it up and realized it's developed by the same company, Vanillaware. So that's nice to know they clearly have their own style they do well for their games, and they definitely gained me as a fan. I never really got to do much in Odin Sphere when I played it on the ps2, but now I definitely want to get it on ps4 and enjoy it and keep an eye out for any of their future titles. The Characters in this game all look so unique, every character has their own actual body type, not modeled the same at all. They all have their own unique stance and movement and it just looks and feels so fresh.

Sound-The soundtrack is phenomenal. I would put it on the same level as Nier Automata's soundtrack. During the events, I just feel like the sounds that played, really worked great with the situation that was happening. There was so many osts in this game that I enjoyed, a few examples (And I fully recommend you listen to them) are: Self Sacrifice, Brat Overflow, [DEOXYRIBOSE], Seaside Vacation, Edge of the Future, Lysine, and so much more. They all felt extremely incredible. I played this game in English but you can change it to Japanese audio if you prefer. Personally I enjoyed the English voice acting and there was a lot of great voice actors I've come to love throughout the years in this game. The voice acting was good, but I will admit, I do feel like they could've pushed for more of a impact. like in Yakuza 7, I played it in Japanese and would like to see it in English still but that ending scene was extremely impactful with the voice acting (probably the most impactful scene of emotion in any game of 2020 tbh). Or in Final Fantasy 7 when Cloud sees Sephiroth and lunges at him, the scream he lets out was great and I felt the anger and hate he felt towards him. I would've loved to see that kind of voice acting for this game, but I didn't. So the voice acting was just good to me.

Score-Wow! This game was incredible to me overall, I'm so glad I bought this game and got to play through an incredible story that this game tells. I would recommend this game to anybody who just wants a great story with a great soundtrack with beautiful art and areas and an incredible cast of characters. It was a masterpiece in my eyes and now I am conflicted for what my game of the year for 2020 would be after playing this game. It's definitely between this game and final fantasy 7 remake. I definitely give this game a 10/10

PROS

• Nice art style with great mecha designs
• Ambitious narrative is initially quite intriguing

CONS

• This is probably going to rustle some jimmies, but I'm starting to despise these Japanese VNs with branching event trees that force you to replay the same narrative sequences over and over again and take different paths just to experience the game's core plot. It always feels like a complete waste of my time, and I find it absolutely antithetical to the central game design principle of meaningful player choice. No, I don't care if it's thematically explained in-game by some sci-fi gobbledygook. I hate it.
• Loaded with arbitrary and obnoxious gating mechanisms to advance the plot
• Unintuitive inventory system that mostly represents thoughts in your character's head but other times actual items
• Characters are a bland hodgepodge of anime tropes and fan service
• Abstracted visuals during combat sequences utterly destroys immersion
• Cheap animations and the overall feeling of game stretched beyond its budget

In my opinion, this is one of the best games of 2020 and it ended up going under everyone’s radar. It’s published by Atlus and developed by Vanillaware, it’s also a PS4 exclusive for now. I don’t think this game can go under any specific genre, but to put it simply it’s basically half visual novel and half real time strategy (although it’s simultaneously turn-based strategy, it’s confusing)

The story is literally one of the best I’ve ever experienced in a game, top 5 for sure. It’s a sci-fi story about 13 individuals who have the power to pilot “sentinels” which are basically mechs. It’s almost impossible to explain anything else about the story without spoiling it, but trust me it’s SO well written and there’s a million twists and turns throughout. It’s presented in a great way where every scene is seen out of chronological order, which is slightly confusing at first but it’s not too hard to follow once you get into the swing of things. It feels amazing when you put each piece of the story together in your head, and you won’t know the full story until the VERY END.

Each and every single main character in the game is great. Of course, some are weaker than others, but there’s no character that’s genuinely bad. The voice acting is also top tier, it’s sad that they went all out to make a full English voiced western version of the game but it ended up not selling super great.

The combat is nothing too special, but it’s good for what it is. The amazing battle themes make the battles seem way more epic and intense though. The soundtrack as a whole is just perfect. Another amazing touch is the art style which is so CLEAN, every setting and character is drawn beautifully.

Anyway, that’s 13 Sentinels. It’s probably not for everyone since there’s a lot of dialogue, but I still recommend it for everyone to at least give it a try. I went into this thinking it was gonna be a generic anime mech game about high school students, but what I got instead was a masterpiece of storytelling and I can’t wait to see what this studio has in store for the future.

9/10