13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Part One

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a super fun game, but it’s at least thirty hours long and difficult to talk about without spoiling the premise. I think that what the game does well lies in its details, not its basic premise. I also think this premise is one of the most common tropes in contemporary sci-fi media, and I feel that “spoiling” it would make a discussion of the game much more interesting.

Also, if I were to say something like, “To simplify the plot without spoiling it, 13 Sentinels is a game about teenage mecha pilots who get caught up in time travel shenanigans,” it’s pretty clear that the spoilers have something to do with the time travel. And because the time travel doesn’t behave like time travel, it’s difficult to talk about it as such. The game’s user interface itself is relatively spoilery about what’s actually happening, and there’s no real way to describe it while being coy about the premise.

I’ll keep thinking about how to write about 13 Sentinels. Basically, I want to figure out how I would sell the game to someone like myself, who heard “tower defense game with teenage mecha pilots” and went NOPE for a full three years before finally giving it a chance.