We are closing out the year with an intriguing game from several years ago: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim! In brief, a bunch of teenagers battle kaiju across several generations, from 13 different perspectives. I feel like I heard a lot about this one when it first came out: it's visual novel style, its episodic storytelling, and the bananas kudzu plot that you need to disentangle over time to make sense of what's even happening. But I tried to stay in the dark so I could approach the story fresh, which is exactly what I'll be doing here. Here's what HowLongToBeat.com has to say:
Enjoy, everyone -- should be quite an epic end to 2023!
Nooice nooice nooice. Ordered a PS4 copy off eBay so that should be arriving within the week.
I remember hearing a lot of buzz about this game from Chris Plante of Polygon/The Besties, though I think I remember his recommendation being playing on Easy to blast through the strategy segments and get to the good story stuff.
Regardless, excited to get started!
I’m in, playing on Switch.
Been wanting to play for a while. I'll be watching for a sale this month to jump in
It is on PlayStation plus extra so it might be worth getting there if you have PS. you get lots of other things to.
Started it for a little bit earlier in the week just to get a feel for it. Big fan of Vanillaware, so the visual design is right up my alley. The graphical design of the fights is interesting, as well. Just did the tiny little intro section which took no more than an hour or so. I hope to be starting in earnest on Sunday.
It is on PlayStation plus extra so it might be worth getting there if you have PS. you get lots of other things to.
Yeah I noticed. $38 I think it was for me to upgrade the rest of the year. It's a possibility.
Started into the game last night, go through the prologues for Kurabe and Fuyusaka plus the two little battles. I am loving the art style and the story seems pretty interesting. They are already hinting at some mystery and possibly having to poke around the edges of the scenes to discover secrets. Little less thrilled about the combat so far. It's that weird mix of turn-based and real-time combat that does not work at all for me. Once you issue an order to a unit you just have to let the enemy wail on you while you wait for your turn to come back around. And I am sensing in the future you won't want to just take your turn immediately, but "wait" for enemies to be in better positions before you attack. I will see how it pans out, but as TheMostRad said, I may drop the difficulty to easy to deal with it as little as possible.
Good luck to all of you playing for the first time. It's a great game 
I remember hearing a lot of buzz about this game from Chris Plante of Polygon/The Besties, though I think I remember his recommendation being playing on Easy to blast through the strategy segments and get to the good story stuff.
I think the only poor choice is to leave the difficulty on normal. Turn it up to the harder difficulty if you want to try engaging with the systems at play. Turn it down to easy if you want to blaze through without thinking.
The combat system really started to grow on me as the game progressed once I turned it up to hard. It forces you to think about your character progression choices outside of combat and make relevant in-combat decisions to deal with the strategic threats in a way that lower difficulties do not. On easy and normal, you can mostly just spam cooldowns without giving too much thought to what abilities you use.
That doesn't work on hard for long. You will be overwhelmed if you don't build proper teams and use your abilities in the right ways. By the end of the game, your screen is absolutely filled with enemies, and linking all of your abilities properly to deal with them is extremely satisfying, both visually and tactically.
I think the combat system in this game is both overlooked and underrated because so many people just drop it to easy after the first few stages, before the more interesting character abilities and enemy variants come into play. It's hard to fault anyone for doing so, as it is rather dull early on, but I strongly suggest at least trying it out on the harder difficulty for a while if the combat system seems remotely interesting to you. Otherwise, drop to easy and cruise.
Also worth noting, I read somewhere that they re-balanced the difficulty on the Switch version. I have no idea what those changes were or if they were also applied to the PS4 version.
I will also say that if you are trying to get all the trophies on the PS4 version, you can do it on the casual combat difficulty. For me, playing casual while trying to get all the bonus objectives and S ranks was a nice break from the story.
My copy arrived too, and I started the prologue for Kurabe. Only about 15 minutes in, but loving the art style so far.
My PS4 copy has arrived and safely installed, and I finally had a chance to sit down and clear Kurabe's prologue. Any reservations I previously had have been wiped away by the juicy red meat of Mysteries™ dangled before me and I'm ready to pursue it.
Freakin' love a mystery, dawg. Delicious, nutritious sci-fi mystery.
Nutritious is a great way to describe this game. Here's a recipe for you all:
(Just in case, this isn't a spoilery video.)
I loved this game, hope you enjoy it too.
I'm now a few characters into the prologue, having just cleared the girl who is obsessed with a movie that is similar to, but legally distinct from, Steven Spielberg's E.T. The game has its hooks in me now.
Definitely felt for Hijiyama when his yakisoba pan fell on the ground. That gang deserved what was coming to them.
I completed the full prologue today and the mystery is pulling me in. I want to know what is happening/what happened. There is definitely going to be a lot to dig into with this one.
If I hadn't already 100%'d this game a couple of years ago, I'd be right there with y'all. As it is, I'll be reading along excitedly; I had forgotten all about Yakisoba Pan, but now I think I need to make some.
Hmmm... this one will be interesting to designate spoilers for since the Remembrance section is pretty free form in advancement so far. Some stories look like they will interlink, but others may be unrelated.
For example, I have done some advancement on Natsuno post prolog and...
Her story has four branches immediately. So far I have unlocked the top two paths, which resulted in two more characters being added to the Remembrance screen. And I am not sure if I could have missed that top path the first time around or not, but there are apparently two other ways out of the situation she starts in.
Edit: Also since the mystery files can be opened in pretty much any order it seems, we may want to spoiler any information or thoughts we draw into the rest of the game from those?
Mystery files mechanics:
It also looks like Mystery Files can update as you go through Remembrances, and probably even battles.
So I have a question about the Mystery Files. I know you can unlock them by spending MP. But it also sounds like some just unlock through experiencing the story, in Rememberance mode? So is it best to save the MP and see what unlocks as you play the game? Or to target spending MP at certain times?
So I have a question about the Mystery Files. I know you can unlock them by spending MP. But it also sounds like some just unlock through experiencing the story, in Rememberance mode? So is it best to save the MP and see what unlocks as you play the game? Or to target spending MP at certain times?
You can't waste mystery points, so you can spend it whenever. Personally I saved up for when I wanted to read a bunch of stuff.
I have definitely had the post Remembrance screen tell me I had new mystery files but nothing had changed on the mystery file screen, so those may be new ones I can unlock.
Okay, I'm a bit deeper now: cleared the prologue, beat the first two battle missions after the prologue, but definitely haven't done any more of the story yet.
I'm enjoying the battles so far. With the defined streets that some Sentinels have to use, the game gives me some tower defense vibes. I'm playing on Intense because I've heard the lower levels are too easy; nothing has been terribly tough, yet, but I can definitely see that I will need to be a little deliberate about how I time abilities and where I place my Sentinels. That need to be conscious of choices is often the sweet spot, for me, in RPG battle systems. As far as upgrades go, I've been dumping a lot of chips -- or whatever the currency is -- into upgrading the overall "level." I want to buy the score upgrade and the chip multiplier upgrade before I spend currency on anything else, as I figure this'll pay off down the line.
The story is definitely engaging and I like it a lot! With having cleared the first two battles, I've unlocked the ability to progress with Shu -- I might start there. I would say I'm curious about everyone's stories right now, but probably going to start with Shu and Iori. I kind of want to wait to expand on Juro's story until after I've seen a few others.
One of my favorite things about this game is the ability to chose which stories to advance. It's approaching an "open world" adventure game.
Does the mech battle stuff get more involved?
How far in are you?
Does the mech battle stuff get more involved?
A little bit, but don’t go thinking that it’s going to turn into a proper mech battle game. It’s a visual novel with some occasional action segments.
How far in are you?
Not very far. I don't know how invested I should be expecting more fights or not.
If you haven't yet gotten through the prologue, I think you'll see that when you do, the fights will get to be a bit different. Here's what changes after the prologue:
- You can select a difficulty level. "Intense" seems to be recommended, if you want the battles to be more engaging.
- You field 6 mechs at a time, and can choose from all of the different characters, which means you can choose from all the different "generations" of mechs. In the prologue I think it's typically 2 or 3 at a time.
- Characters can level up, and I think every several levels they gain some kind of ability or passive buff. You can also buy new gear for your mechs and upgrade their gear, and can equip more stuff on each mech (up to 6 things, I think) to give them more abilities.
Taking a look at the manual in game it looks like you will need to cycle which pilots are active too, as there is a type of exhaustion mechanic.
Yeah, every 2 battles they get exhausted, and recover after sitting out a battle. You can also rest the whole party but that resets your score multiplier, which lets you earn Mystery Points faster -- and maybe those chips for improving mechs, too.
Well thanks to PSN sale I'm in. Did 2 prologue battles and 3 stories. Oh there is a lot of sh*t happening here between dreams and
time travel and people calling each other different names.
Well... This!
My PS4 copy has arrived and safely installed, and I finally had a chance to sit down and clear Kurabe's prologue. Any reservations I previously had have been wiped away by the juicy red meat of Mysteries™ dangled before me and I'm ready to pursue it.
Freakin' love a mystery, dawg. Delicious, nutritious sci-fi mystery.
I dived pretty deep into Yuki Takamiya's story line and wanted to share some thoughts. Hopefully this spoiler tag isn't spoilery itself as I am 57% done with her remembrance section. Only other post-prologue story I have done is Natsuno Minami at 37% (top two paths in the chart)
Yuki Takamiya musing through "The Pilots' Mark"
We see that Yuki is involved with the Men in Black (SIU), which seems to be an entity opposed to Shikishima Industries, which best I can tell is the root of the Sentinels and this whole time travel/alternate dimension situation. It seems like there is some kind of overlapping dimensions going on, as in "Girl With Red Glasses" there are apparently two Tomi Kisaragi's, as one is spotted chasing Natsuno and one is with Iori at the front gate. We also have potentially multiple Ms. Morimuras as in Ei's prologue we see someone resembling her dead in the alley but she is still active as the school nurse. Ms. Morimura is even more interesting as in Shu's prologue we see him talking to her in 2065 where she is piloting a Sentinel alongside him, however in 1985 she is giving the memory suppression pills to the other pilots, preventing them from recalling why they traveled back in time.
Ryoko Shinonome is also tied up in Yuki's story as she is working for the SIU and tying to track down Natsuno, but is under Ms. Morimura's care and taking those memory suppression pills. What really through me for a loop though is in "The Pilots' Mark", Ryoko is there to confront Yuki seemingly knowing a lot about the Sentinels, then Gouta and Ms. Morimura also show up. Before this I had kind of placed Ms. Morimura on the anti-pilot side, but she also seems to be working with Gouta and Shikishima (which we see in Shu's prologue) so I am starting to think there are multiple copies of people running around in 1985. There is still a whole lot going on that I am not seeing since I only have information from Yuki's perspective, but it has me very intrigued.
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