13 Sentinels, Aegis Rim

Context

13 sentinels was developed by Vanillaware and published by my beloved ATLUS. It’s an interesting mix of VN style narrative with a RTS combat. I was interested in playing this game namely due to its overwhelming positive reception in the PlayStation community. So, did this game live up to the hype I read upon? Let’s find out.

My Setup

This game was originally released for PS4 and has a PS4 Pro enhanced edition. I played this game on my PS5, but since this game is nowhere near demanding enough, I wouldn’t have seen any differences apart from maybe the auto-HDR feature of the next-gen.

Sound and Music

I think that this will carry over throughout the entire entry, but I would say that it’s minimal until it’s not. What I mean by this is that for the most part, the music that Is played throughout this game is more of a background layer in the game than if I were to say a JRPG where the music is a huge part of it. But like I said, until it’s not, meaning that there are some scenes where the music kicks in and just elevates the entire experience to a 10. I won’t say specifically where, but I’ll link said section in the footnotes. The music, for the VN portion when it’s present is very much there to emphasize plot moments and scenes, for example suspenseful music for suspenseful scenes etc.

For the RTS portion, when have a techno centered OST that mixes incredibly with the combat sounds that game produces and intertwines them together to make it feel like a more uniform experience. Like I said, my favorite moment of the game is during one of the battles and a particular song is played.

Graphics and Presentation

In terms of graphics in very much the same way as in the music portion of the game, you don't really notice it until there is an extremely beautiful scene beautiful, beautiful color palette during a sunset, for example to just make it all blend together in a very minimal but beautiful way and it enhances the experience of playing a visual novel style game. In short, the graphics or not something to be impressed by it in a way until it strives for that emotional impact through the actual representation of what is happening on screen. Again, this being a minimal game in terms of presentation there isn't much to say about it but keep in mind that it is a very beautiful game in its own way.

The game in some ways in extremely straightforward one, the main menu has three different options. Firstly we have the remembrance part which is basically just the story where you select it and then you have 13 different protagonists to choose from where you can then play their story I'll go over that part more in the gameplay section. Then you have the archive where you can review different story scenes and replay them if need be. Finally, you have the combat section. And like the archive you can replay any battle over again.

Gameplay and Story

And here we come to the meat of the game let's start with the story Burton Sentinels a very particular game where you play as 13 protagonists each one with their own story that intertwines with all the other protagonists.

Now I’m going to talk about the combat, simply because it intertwines very closely with the story. In the menu, you can select who is going to be on offense, the rest will either be on defense or not participate. To introduce some variability, the game has aa maximum of 2 battles per protagonist before needing a cooldown of one battle. This forces the player to analyze and think ahead before deploying a strong character when not needed or before a boss fight.

The reason that I had to introduce the combat preemptively was that since you have a lot of playable characters, the game must reign the player back if they advance too far with certain storylines. This is done by either blocking said character until you witness another character’s event or beat a certain level in the combat sections. Overall, this system is largely beneficial to the player, breaking up long sessions of story with some much-needed action to introduce some higher tension points in the playthrough.

To go a lot more into the story would induce some heavy spoilers since even talking a bit about the story would already spoil some of it, but to give a quick summary; This is a science-fiction based story with a ton of references to pop culture. The premise is that the world is being invaded by aliens and all the protagonists must fight them back with their sentinels, these giant pilotable robots. The story is insanely complex at the beginning since you don’t see the entire picture, combine that with the time travel (did I mention there’s time travel?), the characters shifts, flashbacks make for a very confusing story… Until it all starts fitting back together to make for one the most satisfying story’s I’ve played. When you get to connect the dots and start seeing how it unfolds, it’s a game where the first playthrough will always be unique since you’re kept in the dark for most of it, but on subsequent playthroughs, it might lose some if it’s charm but you’ll fully understand what is going on.

For the combat, it’s divided by area, with 2 sets of 5 waves, wave 5 being a boss battle. Like the story, some areas of combat are blocked off until reaching a certain % of the overall story or a certain character’s path. The combat is focused around either defeating enemies or defending until a timer expires. The game throws hordes of enemies at you with a good variety of enemies thrown in as you progress through the stories. In terms of progression, the game has a currency in the form of meta-chips which you gain by killing enemies and completing certain sub-objectives. The chips can then be used to upgrade you weapons or get new ones to counter the new enemy types. There are as well party skills that can be used and upgraded.

The combat is incredibly fun and addicting and really complements the story well.

Bottom Line

Overall, this game was a fantastic 30 hour experience, with an incredible story, fun combat, I can now understand why this is referred to as one of the best PS4 exclusives you can buy.