13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim Review: An Excellent Hybrid of Visual Novel & Mech RTS
Japan has been at the forefront of the visual novel genre. All the style from Steins;Gate to Zero Escape, the country has provided some of the most interesting stories to particular date. Now, Vanillaware takes a stab at the musical style with 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. I'm very glad to say that the game sticks the landing, providing incredibly appealing characters, a narrative with hatful of twists and turns, and some decently fun action-familiarised gameplay American Samoa well.
13 Sentinels: Auspices Rim is split between 13 protagonists, each with their ain viewpoints of how the events of the story unfold. The game's place setting primarily takes station in 1985 Japan, with some events taking place during the World War 2 era as healthy as in the forthcoming. The cast of 13 high school kids travels back and forth between different periods of time to learn just about the truth backside the Kaiju outlander invaders threatening their world. At the same prison term, they're tasked with taking them down in their Sentinel mechs too.
The spunky itself is split into three different sections: End, Remembrance, and Analysis. The former ii comprise most of the gameplay, with Destruction being the title's rattling-meter strategy (RTS) component and Commemoration being the visual novel portion. The Analytic thinking department is fair an in-game index normally found in visual novels that keeps track of the gimpy's traditional knowledge and all of the different footing you come across.
What's brisk is Vanillaware's approach to a visual novel. While most games in the genre usually just have players pressing one Oregon two buttons to advance text, 13 Sentinels takes a similar approach to Danganronpa. You can ascertain characters in 2D space and run around throughout the game's different settings in Vanillaware's signature beautiful artwork style. Anyone WHO's played the studio apartment's previous games such as Flying dragon's Crown and Odin Sphere will again gaze in awe.
The main gameplay mechanic in Remembrance is the Intellection Cloud up, where certain keywords in the text wish be added. Pulling up the Cerebration Mottle, players can interact with the keywords stored in them and also select them to use on other characters to advance the story.
The fact that characters can be dominated spell NPCs casually stroll along in their daily lives in the background makes 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim so much more engaging than a aboveboard press-X-to-continue ocular novel. Each protagonist's story has a flowchart, and to progress further into whatever particular one sometimes involves having seen a finical event in another character's story or consummated enough RTS missions in Destruction.
The game's RTS modality is astonishingly fleshed out. You have the 13 protagonists piloting mechs, and you can only bring six into a single battle. They're all split into four different roles: melee, all arounder, endless range, and flight support. The gameplay is pretty hastate.
There are three difficulty options: Casual, Normal, and Intense. The metropolis battleground is non-reference grid-based, and flight mechs are competent to roam freely around exploitation the Move command while ground mechs have to navigate exploitation roads. When you discove Kaiju, choose attack skills to blow them ascending. There are support skills too, meant to heal HP or provide buffs. All time a mech takes an action besides moving around the battlefield, such as attacking, it must cool down before devising some other move. Additionally, most skills price EP, just mechs also have the ability to use the Hold statement in order to recover a decent amount of EP until they can move again.
If a mech is low on HP, it also has the power to act out the Repair command, but that leaves the pilot vulnerable until the repairs are complete. Allowing equal a single pilot to die commonly results in instant mission loser, thus information technology's best to either move them proscribed of the way of enemy forces or summon a shield from other mech to nullify any damage for a short period.
There is No gear to equip, but past progressing in Remembrance and completing the different RTS missions, called Waves, you'll earn Meta-Chips. They are points that you can put over towards learning new skills, upgrading existing skills to do more scathe or cover a wider area, and increasing stats for each character. Additionally, complemental Waves earns you Secret Points, which you can use to unlock extra terms in Analysis. You'll receive a rank depending on how healed you do.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has very hardly a problems, just they're by and large in End. There are 10 missions in a typeset area, and they usually hold united azygous win shape, which is to eradicate every of the enemies. Fortunately, information technology is pleasant to completely decimate entire groups of enemies with your lasers and missiles. Only during the very few "political boss battles" — which is typically fair-minded a bigger Kaiju — will the objective be whatsoever different. There are bonus objectives tied to each mission leastwise, such As requiring you to use a certain character for that mission or having to hold out the metropolis's damage below a certain portion.
Also, IT seems like only a handful of Waves are relevant to the game's story, which occur either at the middle of a set or at the end. Everything else intermediate is equitable normal battles. I'm beautiful sure I got the identical exact triumph banter between the same characters in one Wave that I did in another about seven battles ago. I had to double-verification whether or not I had accidentally selected a premature charge I already beat. In general, I like in that location would have been tighter story integration 'tween Destruction and Remembrance.
Does the inclusion of End's RTS battles detract from the whole see though? Utterly non! Even after complemental the story, there's still plenty of gameplay near in Destruction, including post-game Waves, American Samoa well arsenic nerve-wracking to reach the highest rank along every mission. The fact that some character reference stories in Remembrance are locked behind getting to a certain point in Destruction encourages you to play the two modes evenly, which in release freshens up the gameplay.
However, there are not many aesthetic differences between units during the RTS battles. Some friendly units and enemies units are diagrammatical in vague silhouettes, wanting in personality and style. Only character and enemy portraits are decorated in Vanillaware's art.
This results in sometimes not organism fit to identify between different units and having to look carefully to fancy if you'Re right aiming where you want to. This portion of the game sure could stimulate benefited from having fully 3D colorized mechs or something on the map.
Additionally, in the later missions, when many Kaiju are on the map out and when missiles are flying everywhere, the game tends to lag even on my PlayStation 4 Pro. However, that's non a huge issue given that, when you're selecting skills, time stops and you can focus along your next move.
In any even, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is utterly wonderful every around. From each one of the 13 protagonists gets relatively equal screen time, and they're all brought to life aside both the great European country and Japanese voice tracks. You're sure to get your favorites, but it's incredibly satisfying to see how each of their stories intersects through metre and blank and coalesces into the battle for mankind against the alien invaders. This is one adventure you simply don't want to miss.
Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/13-sentinels-aegis-rim-review-an-excellent-hybrid-visual-novel-mech-rts/