13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim Review
“An immaculate tapestry of storytelling.” Written by: Hunter (ReaperHunter23)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is one of the only major games that slipped through my fingers in 2020. It was released in Japan back in 2019 but got its worldwide release on September 22, 2020. In the couple of months following its release I heard enough mutterings and saw its gorgeous art style to put the game on my radar. The general idea of the game goes something like this: Kaiju monsters from the future are terrorizing 1985 Japan. The only thing that stands between the Deimos as they are called and humanity being wiped out is a handful of highschoolers armed with giant mechs. It may sound a bit silly but the game makes no apologies for it and I respect that. Let’s take a look to see if this wacky set up pays off.
Image Credit: Atlus and Vanillaware
The game starts off with a slow burning prologue that serves to introduce the first batch of characters and acquaint the player with the combat system. After the prologue you can start tackling things at your own pace. There will be three separate options to go to from the main menu. Destruction: Which is where all of the combative parts of the game take place. Remembrance: A typical visual novel adventure sort of setup, and how you uncover most of the story, and the third option is Analysis, which serves as a cutscene theater, timeline, and glossary, for the player to refer back to anytime they might start to lose the plot.
I’ll start with Destruction. The combat system presents itself as a pseudo, RTS game sort of system. The enemies move around in real time but as soon as you pull up you menu to command one of your Sentinels, time stops. The object of most of the missions boils down to either eliminating all of the kaiju or defending your terminal long enough for its defenses to come online. I have to say, I played the game normally and I did not find myself needing to be all that strategic while I played. My method for almost everything was to send my melee attackers at the really large armored enemies, and use my ranged guys with a variety of multi targeting attacks to deal with the smaller stuff and I never really had to think very far beyond that. There was one mission where I was inexplicably being destroyed, and ended up losing, but I tried again and wiped the floor with the mission and I was never super clear on what I did differently.
It seems like there were a bunch of other systems in play though that I never found necessary. There was a whole plethora of upgrades to give the various sentinels, but again I never found myself needing anything besides maxing out my armor piercing melee attack, and then maxing out the multi targeting missiles for the ranged guys. I’m willing to bet that the hard mode makes a fuller use of all of these other elements but as my experience stands the combat was just kind of there. Relatively inoffensive, but certainly not what I was there for.
As I mentioned before the Remembrance section plays out like a branching path visual novel. This is where the lion’s share of the story is experienced but I’m just going to focus on how its structured. Each of the 13 protagonists get their own story for the player to experience and each of these stories are segmented into a set of vignettes that don’t last anymore than 20 minutes most of the time. As far as what the player actually does in these segments: Its the typical 2D adventure game fair. Mostly walk around and talk to people. There’s the occasional presenting or asking characters about one of your key words normally a person of interest or an object they found. And of course depending, your actions will determine which branch of the story you see.
Thankfully, rather than the typical “make a decision between A or B that changes a detail” found in choice based games like a Telltale or Quantic Dream game, this game intends for you to see everything. Once you select a character you are shown a timeline of how their story branches and from there the typical adventure game triggers like “Talk to this person in the hall” Or “Find the soda can on the rooftop” will determine what branch you follow for that vignette. But each one ends with a detail or revelation that is crucial to the overarching plot, Once you select that character again you’ll be taken back to before the timeline branches so you can explore a different option and see a new key detail.
This part of the game comes with a fast forward button so that you don’t have to listen to the same conversations over and over again. A sprint button also helps alleviate the potential tedium of traversing through the same places several times. Another handy feature is that when examining the branches on the character’s timeline, oftentimes ones that you haven’t done yet can be highlighted and they will tell you the relevant key word for getting that particular path.
The game is also good at choosing when to make you stop. Each character will have part of their story locked off at a certain point, the lock lifts when you reach a relevant part of another character’s story, typically some sort of intersecting point. I feel like this is an effective way to curate the pace of the story since some of the mystery would be diminished if you ran through a character’s path all in one go. They'd be a known quantity every time they showed up elsewhere and that would be a bit boring.
Image Credit: Atlus and Vanillaware
The story of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is the reason to play it. The game takes an In Medias Res approach where the massive battle with the Kaiju that the Destruction portion of the game centers around , is for all intents and purposes the climax, but that’s also where the game starts you off. The Remembrance portion is all about each of the 13 protagonists journeys to the final battle. The comparison I keep falling back on is that its like how Octopath Traveler had its bevy of different stories playing out simultaneously but this game also has those stories intersect in a meaningful way. The non linear storytelling is quite effective in this game. Oftentimes I found myself just as fascinated by the placement of events as I did the action that was unfolding before me. It felt like a massive puzzle and I appreciated it for that.
Despite being nonlinear and quite wacky at times, I never found myself feeling like I was totally lost. The event theater in the analysis section is nice enough to put everything in chronological order so if I ever had any questions about how an event related to something else, it was easy enough to go and check. The glossary also helped provide clarity for all of the terms that the game uses that might take some getting used to and it provided clarity on what time period the characters came from and what their motivations seemed to be up to that point in the story.
As far as the characters are concerned I would describe them as good enough. There was not a protagonist whose story I disliked playing through. The moment to moment banter and the way the characters interact with each other was really entertaining. I really ended up liking Ogata and Kisaragi because of that. That being said, I don’t really think that any of them had an arc that I would write home about. Its easy to see why, all of the individual character stories were made more to service the progression of the mystery rather than the progression of the characters. But I feel like with a little bit of tweaking some of these characters could have had arcs that sit with me more.
Before I move on from the story I’ll offer one other small bit of critique. The prologue is a slow burn, which isn’t inherently a bad thing. But because its so focused on introducing characters and bouncing you around to the Kaiju battle tutorials it became a little hard to get a handle on what was going on. Its a small complaint because its only about an hour and a half and it isn’t that bad, I just found myself feeling like it was taking forever to get anywhere at the start.
Image Credit: Atlus and Vanillaware
Aegis Rim is another game with a gorgeous hand drawn art style. I found myself admiring the backdrops in this game pretty frequently. One of the game’s favorite shots is some variation of park or a bridge at sunset. It's easy to see why though, it's absolutely stunning. The other environments are excellent too, such as the city at nighttime or even the walkway of the school all have a very relaxing atmosphere to them. The character designs manage to all be pretty distinct even though most of them are just wearing school uniforms. Everyone gets their own thing to inject a bit of personality into their look. Another visual highlight was how they nailed the scale of the kaiju and Sentinels when you get to see them in the story sections. There was one scene that had one of the characters viewing a fight between the two from the window of a skyscraper that stood out in particular.
As far as the game’s music goes, while there weren’t a whole lot of songs that stood out in the sense of me wanting to go look them up and listen to them outside of the game I do think that the music did a great job at servicing the moments that were playing out in front of me. So even though I may not be about to listen to the OST in my free time, I would still be able to tell you what was happening in the game if you played it back to me.
Image Credit: Atlus and Vanillaware
Summary
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim gets a sound recommendation from me. Vanillaware managed to weave together an immaculate tapestry of a story out of the 13 paths they presented. Several of the game’s elements such as the excellent moment to moment writing and lovely art design all work to service the intricately crafted plot and I found myself captivated by the intrigue that the game presented. If you aren’t a fan of games with a heavy emphasis on story this probably won’t be for you. However if you are a fan of visual novels or RPGs that with a large focus on plot this is certainly a game worth checking out.