13 Sentinels Aegis Rim is a story about 13 people who can control Sentinels to save the world from an impending threat. This game may not look much on the surface but once you get into its story and combat, you won’t ever want to put this game down. Let’s take a closer look into the game.
13 Sentinels Aegis Rim is basically two games in one that are intertwined with each other. It has the Remembrance mode and the Destruction mode. Remembrance mode is the game’s visual novel component. And it entails the story of the game and the story of each of the characters that you will be controlling. The Remembrance mode will have branching stories for each character and some character stories gets unlocked once you progress into one of the other character’s story. Some character’s story will also need to be unlocked by playing through the Destruction mode.
Destruction mode is the game’s battle mode. It’s basically where most of the action takes place. The games mechanic is very understandable and the game even takes you through a series of tutorial battles that will get you familiarized with what enemies you will encounter and the many actions that you can take against them. The game feels a lot like a tower defense game because you are trying to prevent enemies from destroying the Terminal. The battlefield for each encounter is the city and you will have to destroy the enemy all the while protecting the Terminal from getting destroyed.
You will have thirteen people that you can deploy for battle but you can only deploy six of them on the offense. While the rest of the party will serve as your defense. Each time you deploy a character, they will gain points that will increase their Brain Overload meter. Once this meter is full, the character will become unusable in the next battle. Of course, you can prevent them from getting an overload by using the recover button but this resets your win streak and streak bonus which is tied to how much Meta-chips you gain at the end of a battle. Meta-chips are the game’s currency that you can use to upgrade and unlock new abilities for your sentinels. The one thing I noticed right away was that you can adjust the difficulty of your battle to your looking. From casual to normal to hard, this game has it all for anyone who has a preference for their encounters.
The battle concept has me really hooked because it’s very interesting to balance between which characters you’re going to take to a certain battle at the risk of them getting a brain overload and not be usable for the next encounter. This becomes a risk when you find out their skills is just what you need in that next battle. You are not also able to look ahead and find out what enemies you will be encountering so you will just have to bank on faith that whichever enemies you will be facing next will require the characters that you have left. You could also just recover at that point but you might not want to lose your win streak and streak bonus.
Playing the battle mode will also get you to obtain Mystery Points that you can use towards unlocking the Mystery Files. These files are unlocked through the story mode that can then be further unlocked with a Mystery Point. The battle mode will also have story related conversations that you won’t want to miss as it’s basically the future part of the game while the story mode is the past part of the game.
13 Sentinels Aegis Rim has very interesting characters and because you get to relive their stories one by one, it doesn’t really feel that overwhelming and each character is given enough airtime that you really get to know and understand each of their intentions and roles they play as part of the story.
The visual novel part of the game has amazing visual art that feels like it’s coming right out of a comic book. The battle mode however, only gives you a top down view of the game and the characters and enemies are just pixel versions of theirselves. I wish they would have given us a fullblown image of the sentinels and the enemies you’re fighting as it would have been cool to actually see them in battle. You do get to see these Sentinels in story mode but that does not satisfy your curiosity on how they would look like in action.
The music of 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim is really amazing and sometimes I would just find myself pausing the game and just listening to the music. The battle mode music really fits the atmosphere and ambiance of the game, letting you get into battle mode mood and makes each kill more satisfying.
Overall, 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim is a fun, and enjoyable take on the Sentinels and Kaiju battle. With a story so elaborate and intriguing that you would want to see through the storyline and figure out what is going on in this game. The battle mode feels simple but at the same time complicated which makes every battle encounter unique and will test your strategizing skills. I recommend this game to people who are into visual novels, strategy RPG and time travel.