13 Sentinels Aegis Rim (PS4)

[brat-sampson]

If you're into wicked mecha/Kaiju/time-travel/multiple character/High School anime/End of the World/Visual Novel/sci-fi/talking cat type nonsense, this is utterly brilliant.



Like, remember how Shibuya Scramble had 5 characters, with a complex inter-woven narrative? This has 13. *And* time-travel. And it still works. It's clearly a work of love through and through, with every scene getting that Vanillaware magic look. Apparently it's been in the works for the best part of a decade and it was a real struggle to secure a Western release, partly because of the weird gameplay style (It's a point-and-click/visual novel at the same time as being a real-time unit strategy game, with progress in each locked behind progress in both, like you literally choose what you want to play from a menu) and partly because of the difficulties of having what might be one of the most ambitious stories I've ever seen in a game, nay anything.



There's dreams, which may be visions of the future, there's a cut that says '6 months later' while cutting to a scene taking place 45 years earlier, there's a robot, there's these 13 linear narratives and one chronological one and there's a game that refuses to make you stick to any one of those 14 options and still makes the whole thing hang together and be engrossing. There's even full English VO, which had to be produced largely under Covid, and is still pretty good, though Japanese is included if the honorifics start to grate or something.



Definitely worth a look if you're remotely interested. If you liked Shibuya, or 999, or Danganronpa, or just generally any gonzo Japanese Sci-Fi though as with all things of this nature, the less you know going in, the better really.

Also, if you're wondering why the thing has 13 bloody characters:

The plans for 13 Sentinels were created during when the development of Dragon's Crown was heating up, so I wasn't really able to make art for the project.

However, I have a mission to draw a New Year's greetings illustration no matter what, so I drew the project art for the 2013 New Year's illustration. It was a bit forced, but I went and did the presentation for the project proposal to that company with just that one painting.

As it was something to be made public, I made the '13' from 2013 part of the title without much planning. The original plans were to have 7-8 protagonists, but I easily decided that 13 characters wouldn't be that much extra work. That decision ended up coming back to bite us." (laughs)