Classic Review - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Most Japanese turn-based tactics games I played tend to stand out quite a bit. At first, it has to do with their story, which is told with a non-linear narrative and some provide multiple story junctions. Most games like these I've touched on range from Fire Emblem: Three Houses to Tactics Ogre: Reborn.
They have branching paths, unlike XCOM, every character is essential to the story campaign and progressively gets stronger in gameplay. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is the same but has only one story, it is also told in such a jumbled order, you need to have Carl Sagan's level of intellect to piece it together. That's because all of these characters are from different timelines.
Each character owns their respective Sentinel from these different eras, and they have to use them to thwart an alien threat that has a nebulous agenda against humanity. Unraveling such ploy while battling alien kaijus with mechs has a certain ring to it. Fun gameplay but mixed in with a sinuous plot.
Life Is Precious
Taking place mainly in a high school from 1985, characters introduced with their own prologues, where their stories jump from present to the past of the year 1945, to the future of 2025 and 2065, and beyond. There is cohesion in the telling, but still confusing when putting all the pieces together.
Now, it sounds like a cool Sci-Fi concept and considering other media like Bokunaro and SSSS. Gridman were subversive in the mech genre, 13 Sentinels does the real cool thing by letting the greatly written characters tell their story. The name's kind of eponymous, because it is about 13 people. Thrust into a war that they have no idea if they're even winning or not.
It's interesting how it taps into their story and conflicts by intertwining one with the other, continuing to play unlocks the other one and in-between the battle mode is activated. Which is simple as playing the tutorial, trying to ease me into understanding how it plays.
For me, this continued with 13 of them until the game split between the story mode and the battle mode. Locking out half the characters. Both modes have to be played in order to progress further and unlock the other too. And it didn't help that part of the story is told through situational bits, chronologically fragmented. How did this character die, why is she here, how did he get here, why are they being chased, etc.
I got left with so many questions. While I have to keep taps and remember each plot thread, if not, I can take a recall in the archives and clear up the confusion. But the other challenge is piecing together the jigsaw puzzle that has so many threads linking to so many different things.
But I am a sucker for those kinds of games in a way, I like the cool Sci-Fi premise involving time traveling, on top of the alien threat that is being fought by mechs, government agents trying to stop us as if there's a conspiracy in it too. I only managed to play upto 7hrs, and I can take a good guess that it leaves more questions first.
Vanillaware is known for giving their premise this sense of intrigue and mysticism under the guise of amazing visual presentation and crazy concepts inspired by other source materials. This game doesn't follow conventional rules of storytelling, in place of being subversive with great writing.
Add an actual good EN/JA dub, and the immersion itself is well created to suck me into its experience. I think I've said plenty about my first hours playing it, but the combat mode is a different thing entirely. Both function entirely different, in combat mode I got to blow kaijus to smithereens.
Complex Combat System
The combat introduces itself at first as an isometric turn-based strategy game. When I was given command of a unit, I was tasked at moving them first. For attacking enemies, there was the action menu to pick which kind of attacks I want to launch my targets.
Using an action would disable unit for a split second, that doesn't sound like much, but when giving orders, time pauses in the game and the enemies make their moves very swift. Some of these attacks uses EDPs, if they run out, I'll have to put it in defense mode for a few brief seconds to recover. If my Sentinels take too much damage, there's repair mode, but their drivers are exposed.
This basic design sounds a bit tricky, and yet there's also more. Each character uses a specific type of sentinel, going from; Melee(gen 1)>All Rounder(gen 2)>Long Range>Flight Support. To be honest, I never paid much attention to these details because I was trying to random press anything to destroy the kaijus on the screen.
That's because the game was going easy on me first, in fact it does get easy within the first 8hrs playthrough and my difficulty was set at normal. Even then, it does really look visually spectacular. Like playing a miniature Geometry Wars tactics in WarGames.
But it does get hard, and the mission objectives started to change. From defending the Aegis center within a certain time limit for extra points, to taking enemy carriers while they dispatch small air grunts, and so on. The enemies are focused on damaging the Aegis, so if that defense goes down to 0, it's game over.
The melee attackers are close range units, and are bulky frontliners. But useless against air units. All-Rounders are built nearly the same as gen 1, except they are used for any situations. The weak links are the long range and flight support, they can dish out so much damage if used well. Though are susceptible to easily get destroyed and maybe get their pilots killed.
Which is why it was essential to learn the classes and how to use them properly. During battle, the Meta Gauge is left for use during difficult situations. It has an EMP to take down aerial units, so that melees can dish out full damage. But more options like reducing cooldown, healing units, increase attacks, and so on become available when unlocked.
Before the mission, I can choose a number of pilots out of 13 and purchase/upgrade different attack actions they have. I saw that I could also upgrade each sentinel overall, but that requires me to progress further. I also found out that the gen 1 melees can have aerial weapons later on. There is the matter of the story, which means combat missions are blocked until the narrative is progressed.
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Infinite Timelines
It's hard to convince anybody else to play this, maybe because of its esoteric nature. But I can tell by putting my time into it, I was sold on a majority of the things this game has going for. The gameplay is solid fun, while the story is a real head spinner, also having intrigue and well-written characters to heavily invest into.
I guess my years of playing games has managed to get me through even some of the most difficult aspects of it. It also helps that Atlus added a good dub to help understand and follow the plot.
It stands as one of those cool games that people growing up with Shin Ultraman or Neon Genesis Evangelion will be super into. I wish it got released in PC though, that would really do a lot with its sale potential and reach.
