13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Part Two
Jan. 17th, 2023 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI guess my spoiler-free description is that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is half sci-fi visual novel, and half real-time tower defense tactics game with a moderately robust system of mecha customization.
The tactics battles are linear, but you can repeat battles to grind for experience or meet certain challenge conditions. You can choose the difficulty level for these battles, which end in victory automatically if the tower does not fall within the time limit. The visual presentation of the battles isn’t great, but they’re very easy to cheese through multi-target long-range missiles.
Meanwhile, the visual novel plays out in a series of roughly ten-minute segments. There are thirteen viewpoint characters, and each character’s story is divided into seven to nine episodes. Although some of the episodes have conditions that need to be met before they’re unlocked, you can switch between characters and watch these episodes in whatever order you like. You can also complete a lot of the story without doing the mech battles, and vice versa.
Although each individual battle and story episode is relatively short, there are a lot of them, and the game will take at least thirty hours to play. Unfortunately, you cannot choose what to do during the opening tutorial, which takes about two hours to complete. Because it takes so long, I think it’s important to let people going into 13 Sentinels know that the tutorial is not the actual game.
Also, the story segments are set up like a 2.5D (Paper Mario style) adventure game in which you navigate space and talk to NPCs. These story segments demand that you do specific actions in a specific order. This can be frustrating, especially because all NPC dialog resets between screens. What I would also tell people going into the game is that it’s okay to use a walkthrough the absolute second you feel frustrated with one of the story segments. These segments aren’t supposed to be complicated, and there’s nothing lost or spoiled by consulting a simple list of necessary actions.
The tactics battles are linear, but you can repeat battles to grind for experience or meet certain challenge conditions. You can choose the difficulty level for these battles, which end in victory automatically if the tower does not fall within the time limit. The visual presentation of the battles isn’t great, but they’re very easy to cheese through multi-target long-range missiles.
Meanwhile, the visual novel plays out in a series of roughly ten-minute segments. There are thirteen viewpoint characters, and each character’s story is divided into seven to nine episodes. Although some of the episodes have conditions that need to be met before they’re unlocked, you can switch between characters and watch these episodes in whatever order you like. You can also complete a lot of the story without doing the mech battles, and vice versa.
Although each individual battle and story episode is relatively short, there are a lot of them, and the game will take at least thirty hours to play. Unfortunately, you cannot choose what to do during the opening tutorial, which takes about two hours to complete. Because it takes so long, I think it’s important to let people going into 13 Sentinels know that the tutorial is not the actual game.
Also, the story segments are set up like a 2.5D (Paper Mario style) adventure game in which you navigate space and talk to NPCs. These story segments demand that you do specific actions in a specific order. This can be frustrating, especially because all NPC dialog resets between screens. What I would also tell people going into the game is that it’s okay to use a walkthrough the absolute second you feel frustrated with one of the story segments. These segments aren’t supposed to be complicated, and there’s nothing lost or spoiled by consulting a simple list of necessary actions.
