#game-review #finishedgame2024 # 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim  [Console:: Nintendo Switch] [Status:: Beaten] [Approximate Start Date:: 2024-08-08] [Finish Date:: 2024-10-24] [Clear Time:: 37h 17m 27s] [Total Play Time:: 37h 20m] [nReplays:: 0] ## [Rating:: 82] Heyyyyyy cool sci-fi game that actually feels kind of unique to itself # Playthrough Notes - Started to play on Switch # My Thoughts - I probably won't be replaying this one anytime soon. Great story one a first go and only mediocre non-VN gameplay. LOVED the VN presentation though, especially walking through scenes and feeling like it have agency over the plot progression. - emphasis on mecha and kaiju, I can't help but think this is a writer exploring the media of their youth - This feels like it's made of the same "stuff" as [[Attack of the Friday Monsters - A Tokyo Tale]] - The characters are excited to rent and share video tapes - War of the Worlds influence is cool, especially with the design of the tripods - Okay and then Billy Kametz gangster guy (Nenji Ogata) is in "Edge of Tomorrow" scenario - And Natsuno is in an E.T. Plot with BJ - It feels like this is trying to be the "canon" giant mecha anime-based media of the 2020s. - Clearly drawing from [[Neon Genesis Evangelion]], of course. - tracing the ideas of old and new - school building made during the way - maybe it would be better to follow temporal displacement - This game's got a banging ost - reminds me of oopona at some points - I'm not even bothering trying to figure things out before they happen in an active sense. Sure, in passive I've been able to observe things, but I'm not worried about trying to put together the whole plot before it happens. - I have to assume that this is what Primer is like (the movie) - Peter delete this when you're done I Just wanna feel how it feels on my fingertips - This was Erin trying out my new keyboard lol, I'm going to keep it. - Dude, I'm not even going to TRY and attempt to decipher the plot of this game, I'm just taking it as it comes as a whole. - In that sense, I didn't try to put all the pieces together as I went, I just sort of let things fall into place and it worked well? as a result Ididn't ever feel like I needed to consult the order of the events taking place until I actually realized I could do that in the first place. - There's something so annoying yet really funny about the game being like "you borrowed the code form a videogame to program the sentinels?" and then in the "tower defense" mode you're basically playing the fictional video game itself. - It's so stupid but I kind of love it. Mighty Kaiju Deimos being a movie that was then adapted into a game which was then adapted into a giant mecha fighter protocol for "real world" defense is just so.......... - And then everyone kissed and got married and had babies, yaaaaaaaay the end :} ## On the Story Progression and Interfacing with Time Jumps in the Structure of the Plot - [[Separating the slow-paced story and the high-stress combat into different modes makes 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim much more approachable]] - until i dont have a choice - The disjointed aspects of the different types of gameplay is no doubt going to be used for an interface thing later on, I feel. Like they're going to take the interface with the "select which mode you want to play!" and just throw it into the plot once you've cleared every major storyline. - the story scenes system reminds me of the fragments from [[Zero Time Dilemma, Zero Escape|Zero Time Dilemma]] ### The Visual Novel is much more compelling to me than the battle sections You know that feeling where you have to choose between two options and both seem equally interesting, so you flip a coin and late fate decide, and when it lands Heads you think "ooooh but I actually like Tails more" and your decision is already made as a result? That's me with this game's Combat and Story, respectively. Every time I approached the game I asked myself "Do I want to do combat or story?" and every time I found myself saying "I think I want to go with the story today.". Maybe it's the fact that it's so easy to S-Rank each mission, maybe it's because a lot of the systems aren't really explained all that well (I found additional menus like halfway through this side of the story), or maybe it's because the fights on the normal difficulty really aren't super difficult. Whatever the case may be, I am really not inclined to keep doing the battle systems. I find that whenever I'm playing this game I'm trying to more or less chunk out a few of the story sections in a span of about 10-15 minutes. the game is great in that regard! But then the tower defense sections are a lot longer and a lot more stressful. I don't want to play those sections right before bed in the way I would with the VN sections. I have to block out time to specifically play those parts instead! #### Imagine the Combat as a LAN party Maybe I just want to play a single player, co-op starcraft like game. I think that would be incredibly cool to link up with up to 5 friends, each take control of one of the 6 sentinels and just play defense for like 2 minutes. That would be a REALLY cool adaptation of the otherwise only "fine" combat, even if it is a bit unrealistic. ### One side of the gameplay limiting the other As of October 14, 2024 I have now completed 85% of the story and am now cordoned off from the rest of the plot until I clear basically the rest of the combat mode. I think that shouldn't be too hard to do, but given my busy life rn, we'll see how long it actually takes me to finish this. ## The Combat and the Problem of Nebulous Numbers - [[Floppy Numbers that Mean Nothing - The Combat of 13 Sentinels]] (piece I'm writing about it) - There's a lot of numbers and systems to the combat that honestly mean very little to me. On a fundamental level, I understand the stats: HP, EP, Power, Defense, Speed, and Recovery time. The problem is that I don't have a good intuition for what each numerical value means for these stats. There's not a good benchmark for what a "good" speed value is versus a "bad" speed value. - The thing I enjoy so much about the visual novel section is the fact that I feel like I have control over the characters even when the scene just needs to be moved forward with the press of the action button. But in the combat, I have no idea how boosting my Sentinel's "Base Stats" leaves any impact at all. I don't know if my controlled actions have any consequences. - The character abilities are something I've gone through about 80% of the combat progression before actively trying to consider how to use effectively. I didn't know that Amiguchi gets a stat boost for each girl in the strike team. I didn't realize Ogata gets more powerful as his HP lowers. "How much more powerful?" I found myself asking, because clearly it didn't leave any kind of impact in the regular play otherwise. - What the hell even are "combos"? They give me more points at the end, but I've never really considered how to rack them up. - I wish there were a "effective damage" total image on the output of some attacks. I, a literal applied mathematics degree holder, do not have the mental acuity to calculate 80 $\times$ 36 in my head in a moment of tense combat. Just tell me that in addition to the base power (86) and the number of times the action hits (36 times), what the effective total damage output of that SHOULD be (2,880). - Here's what I mean: ![[13sentinels_combat_math.png]] - ## Trauma of Temporal Displacement - the trauma of time travel itself and what jumping between times does to someone. - i'm kind of smitten with characters that are temporally displaced. Keitaro Miura's story is especially interesting to me because he's a youth from 1945 who, in the throes of the Pacific War is thrust into 1985 and is generally unfamiliar with the huge technological upgrade - to answer "why does this game's plot points in 1945 make me feel sad?": it's the fac thtat innocent people are at the mercy hundreds and hundreds of years from now, and because I already know what happens in Japan in 1945.\ - It's really interesting to have hijiyama, a character exist in 1985 who is a temporally displaced youth from 1945, as a metaphor for the Japanese soldiers who still didn't believe the war was over. - I find his character to be fun in that he only trusts the foods he had in his time. - Tomi Kisaragi is also interesting because hse's sent BACK to 1985 and laments that she doesn't have a smart phone and can't find anything because the internet doesn't exist yet. - Apparently they're not even time traveling lol - But that doesn't change the fact that they initially thought they were, and the reactions are corresponding to this. ### 1985 in the context of Japan - why 1985? - Yes, obiovusly the 40 year length jumps, but 1985 is a very specific time in Japan. One of prosperity before economic collapse. sort of a time that is nostalgically idealic, it seems. ## notes about voice actors - Ah, this is the "Allegra Clark has a crazy impressive range" game, got it. - They had everyone double up on characters / play the character in VARIOUS different phases in life. Very cool direction. Nice work Christian LaMonte. - shu amiguchi's VA (mick wingert) is the talking flowers in [[Super Mario Bros. Wonder]], which now that I see this fact, I can 100% hear it - Amiguchi and Ida being the "same person" makes sense because their voices DO have the same sound. It was initially harder to figure out, but I can hear it now.. - I picked out erica Mendez, as Minami immediately lol, she sounds just like Maki in V3 - it's really funny they gave the magical girl hunter character to Christina Valenzuela. She's playing almost the same character she did in [[Madoka Magica]]. - Also picked out Ben Lepley very quickly. He has this cold calculating voice that works well for Gouto. - I figured out that the old bearded man character was Gouto well before they revealed it because it sounded like Lepley. - I think in general if you can match the voices to characters, then you can determine additional information about each character. so perhaps looking up Voice Actor information in itself is a spoiler landmine. - But this also works as some minor foreshadowing too, since this was how I was able to deduce the fact that the old man was Gouto - But then BJ is actually an AI Miura, which was a voice filter applied to Zach Aguilar's voice - In general is seems like the VA are doing AT LEAST double duty. - I could kind of tell that Miyuki Inaba and Tomi Kisaragi would be related since they're both voiced by Cassandra Lee Morris - this is beyond the fact that the previous Kisaragi had a hit called "Inaba Rabbit", which like, you can only reuse names in fiction if they serve a purpose. ## Control Scheme is awkward on a Joycon at first The initial control scheme wasn't really clear to me. I think this has to do with the fact that the game was ported from the PS4 which has a controller that's better suited for using both the left stick and a d-pad compared to a joycon. Menuing, especially in combat is a little jarring and requires a little extra mental effort to know what the heck I'm doing. I think playing docked, on a pro-controller will help significantly. ## Feels like an Anime - Prologue is exactly 25 minutes, length of an anime episode ends and when a pilot episode would end - second "episode" begins with some heavy handed anime tropes, feels like episode 2, of that makes sense. Feels like I'm playing an anime. - This is probably more of a case that it really wants to emphasize the visual novel parts of the game. - SEASIDE VACATION MOMENT - thirty one hours of gameplay later: yeah no shit sherlock ## Incredible Visuals in Story Mode - The lighting in most scenes is absolutely incredible. - the reds in 1945, and how they bleed into purple at points. - I'm a big fan of the afternoon sky in the classrooms in 1985. The way it makes the space look almost sepia toned to imply the past is wonderful. - Yellow colors - plasma matplotlib is that you? - I wonder what happens if you gray scale some of these images / scenes? - The nurse's office looks green for some reason - The cyan on the rooftop during Yuki Takamiya's sections is so lovely. I love how they use the blue to really emphasize how high in the sky the sun is. It's broad daylight, she's "skipping class". - The dark blues of the city at night - everything in 1985 is caked in golden hour malaise once you realize "this isn't actually 1985" - Especially on shinonome's route. - Putting the "visual" in visual novels - They really use the settings to their highest possible means ## So Who are "The Bad Guys" in this story? - Obviously we have the kaiju which are the obvious front-facing antagonist, but who is *behind it all*? - on shiba: that mf is absolutely not real - i think only juro can see him - he's voiced by Ben diskin I think, and the only other diskin character is fluffy the cat. - This is Lind of a cheap way to suss things out, but they're 100% having the characters' VAs lean into their range here with Juro Kurabe (Chris Hackney) and Iori Fuyusaka (Allegra Clark). - so Shiba is PROBABLY a hidden antagonist. - Huh how about that, he's actually Juro Izumi, and that's who 426 is. Great. Awesome. - Yakushiji being an unwitting pawn? ## The Music ### Seaside Vacation as a Boss Theme - SEASIDE VACATION is a Boss Theme :U - lol this was such a whiplash moment and I kind of really liked it as a means of contrasting the hardcore electronic fight themes otherwise. - The power from this song comes from the contrast it holds compared to the previous battle themes with regards to the human inclusion. The previous battle themes are all electronica of the highest order, invoking old intense classics like Dodonpachi for example, and focus of the robotic nature of the combat at hand with the pounding synthesizer melodies. Seaside Vacation, in contrast, has absolutely none of this electronic sound: it is a soft, optimistic idol song with more common orchestrated backing track. It is a decidedly human piece of music to listen to after more "mechanized" set of battle themes. It reminds you of the humanity of the fighters, and what the stakes of the combat truly are: the fate of everyone's futures, no matter what the hell the circumstances are. also ignore the fact that the person singing is supposed to be an AI construct. - I do appreciate that it vanishes once you reach the Twintail EX construct to emphasize how Inaba is past horizon in orbit and the dread of knowing that everyone has to last 14 more hours of fighting - If I had to guess this is is going to be the credits theme too. # Favorite Moments / Memories - # What were you doing when not playing this? - # Relevant Links