All the way back in 2017, I played Persona 5. I picked it up on a whim the day after it released, because my friend loves the Persona series and recommended I get into it, and not too long after I was hooked. That same friend also gave me SMT4 around that same time and I didn't really get into at all. But it did get me more interested in Megaten as a whole. Fast forward to the Summer, I go to TooManyGames 2017. I remember seeing the Persona 5 collectors edition, man good times. Ah anyways, I also stumbled upon Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 inside a glass cabinet along with some other Megaten games. Naturally of them all, I was most interested in P3 and P4 seeing as I was a huge fan of 5. Knowing the price of the Raidou games, I wish I picked those up then since they were only $30 but in the end I bought both FES and P4. Oh, not at the convention btw. I bought them off eBay the day after cuz I realized you could get them for cheaper there. Anyways, to this day I still haven't touched vanilla P4 since I played Golden. But FES, I picked up and dropped several times over the years. I really don't know why it wasn't grabbing me but the furthest I ever until this most recent playthrough was the first full moon operation on the subway. Either way, I can say I've finally beaten Persona 3 FES and I'm happy to say I ended up enjoying it overall.

Let's start with the story. I think overall, it's good and has some really fantastic moments. The beginning scene where the MC awakens to his Persona, to the whole turning point in Junpei's arc near the end of the game (if you know you know) to the whole last hour or two. There's some super good moments throughout the game, I just wish the story's pacing was better. After the MC's awakening in the beginning, I found the story to be super slow up until the middle of the game where it starts picking up again. Then near the end before the grand finale I found it dragged a bit. Pacing-wise, I thought it was the worst of the nusona games but specific moment-wise it's some of the best in the series. I do think the whole theme of facing death head on and not being afraid of it and making the most of life is super strong though, especially in the end-game. They really hammer that theme into you by the end but it works really well.

The main cast is solid overall but it can be a mixed bag. I really liked Akihiko, Yukari, Junpei and Aigis by the end of the game. They all felt really fleshed out and I just liked them the most. Mitsuru is decent but I expected her to be better, idk why I found her somewhat bland. Fuuka and Ken are the definitely the weakest party members imo and a big part of that, besides just not caring about their characters as much, was their voice acting. This game has really solid voice acting (the 4 characters I listed at the beginning) and then it has some really awful voice acting (Fuuka, Ken, Shinjiro, the chairman). Fuuka especially man, she sounded more robotic than Aigis it's crazy. This no doubt took me out of the story a bit just cuz those 4 are so prominent. Oh and can't forget Koromaru, interesting that he's the only normal animal sidekick in which he doesnt actually speak but he's a good boy nonetheless.

Going into more of the game's characters, let's talk about the social links. They're a bit more hit or miss in this game compared to 4 and 5. Akinari may be the best social link in the entire series with how good it is. I was tearing up in literally every rank, no doubt due to the music that plays during it. Yukari, Maiko and Chihiro were probably my favorites then after Akinari. I didn't even think Gourmet King's was bad like some people say considering his whole backstory and everything making me sympathize with him. However, a lot of the others I just thought were decent, very meh or just straight up bad. The worst by far was Kenji's, one of the worst in the series imo and just such a nothing Social Link. Same with Bebe, just did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't love 4's social links either but I think overall they're better in that game, especially since there's no male party member SL in 3. Yeah that's a weird omission, along with being forced to romance all the school girl social links, just overall the weakest of the nusona social links imo. It's not a terrible first try at the social aspect tho, but it's clear it's the first game to try to tackle it. 5 definitely has the best social links I think even if there are a couple duds in that game as well.

Something I actually dissed on stupidly was the game's soundtrack. Idk what was wrong with me but I originally just thought it was out right bad (besides battle for everyone's souls) but have since realized it's actually a super great ost, liking it so much now I think I like it more than 4's soundtrack. 5 is still easily my favorite but never did I think I'd like 3's ost more than 4's. Some of my favorite songs were the aforementioned Battle For Everyone's Souls, Joy, Living With Determination, Memories of the City and many more. Honestly, absolutely insane how much my opinion on the OST changed but I'm super glad I can see now why people love it so much.

Just a couple of random things I liked before I get into the combat. I really like that in part with the theme of death, every single party member experiences the loss of a friend or relative throughout the story. It really makes the dorm's friendship more believable since they can all relate to each other. The 2nd awakenings are easily the best in the nusona games simply because they aren't tied to the social links and are apart of the main story. Really felt impactful, especially Junpei's goddamn man. Also really enjoyed the atmosphere, mostly in the Dark Hour and Tartarus. Seeing how each Tartarus block would look was fun.

Speaking of Tartarus, it's one of the most contentious aspects of the game (along with tactics of course). Some people really love it and some people despise it. Me? It's not terrible but it's definitely the worse of the Nusona dungeons imo (yes I like 4's more) and probably the worst of the PS2 megaten games in terms of its dungeons. Absolutely does not touch DDS1's dungeons for example, but I didn't hate it overall. At first, I was just not getting into it but after a while you get used to the flow of doing a bunch of floors, then social link stuff then Tartarus and repeat. Near the middle of the game is where I was sort of getting burnt out on it a bit, especially since you do have to grind in this game and around that point I feel like enemies weren't giving great exp. Maybe I was over leveled then, idk but near the end game I was getting loads more exp and my personas were actually good so I got over my burn out near the middle of the game. Either way, Tartarus is just meh imo. Thematically it works but gameplay wise it leaves a lot to be desired.

Funnily enough, I ended up thinking more positively on tactics this time around. I still definitely prefer controlling your party members, but tactics works really well for the most part. You just have to not be dumb and engage in the mechanic. If you simply set your party to act freely all the time, then yeah they're gonna do whatever and are more prone to do stupid shit. But if you set them accordingly then I don't see the issue at all really. In fact I found it fun the more tactics you got as you progressed. Though, one issue I personally had is when I want a group heal from Yukari. Someone is super low on health, while the others aren't as low but are still missing a chunk of their health. If only one party member has less than 50% of their health, then she'll single target them and that's it. In that case, I'd want to be able to control my party members but that was about it really. One more still doesn't touch press turn imo, and I'd take controllable party members over tactics I'd say but this game clearly is built around tactics and it works really well.

Honestly, super glad I ended up enjoying FES, even if it's my least favorite nusona and my least favorite PS2 Megaten game. I was expecting to actually dislike this one cuz that's how I felt the few times I tried to get into it. It has its faults but it also has its highs and yeah I recommend playing this even with Reload out now. It may fix some of this games issues idk, but this is still a good time I'd say. Going onto almost 7 years since I got into Persona and Megaten as a whole and I'm just happy to say I've beaten all the nusona games now!

the journey of thinking you've figured it out, scrapping that idea, then thinking you've figured it out again was worth playing. i really really liked how the game did its story, even if the story itself was just okay to me. and the ending was deeply whatever. some of the characters did stay in my head for a while, but for the most part I didn't find many of them super interesting. and i could take or leave the combat. didn't really contribute much for me, but it didn't take away from the experience. After playing it, the amount of people who declare it one of their favorite games ever surprised me, but to each their own, it just didn't really click with me, i guess. Very well made game, so me not liking it too much (i mean, i just feel neutral on it, not a lot of dislike) is not a dig at anyone who does. very glad that this ambitious game was so well received by so many people and i hope it inspires similar games!!! nonlinear stories rule hard. anyways, ryoko rules, my final message to the world

Review on Reddit with Images

IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE

-Fully voiced dialogue scenes in English and Japanese

-Sci-fi mystery story with romance

-Adventure game similar to point and click ones

-RTS/Tower Defense battles

-About 75% Story/Adventure and 25% Battles

-Relatively short game overall, ~30 hours to complete everything

INTRODUCTION

Vanillaware are relatively unknown in the gaming community, but those that have heard of them before, tend to associate them with games like Odin Sphere and Dragon's Crown which are also known by their beautiful graphics, designs and background scenery.

STORY

13 Sentinels follows a group of teenagers in 1985 Japan. Disaster strike as their town is attacked by mechanic monsters called Kaiju. To protect their town, these teenagers pilot the massive humanoid Sentinel weapons and fight against these creatures. That's only the basic premise of the story which gets more complex as I got further progress in the game. Despite the time period setting, the game is filled with heavy science fiction terms and theories. The story's timeline jumps around a lot and it is by no means a linear story. The complex story does becomes understandable as I gained more information and piece together the big picture that links everything together. The game is filled with many plot twists that kept me engaged and guessing up until the very end.

CHARACTERS

The characters are not written in any original way and can even seem familiar to those that are experienced with anime in general. However, every main character receive a good amount of focus for proper development (although one in particular is kind of lacking). While I would not call most of them complex or incredibly deep characters, they do all have some level of depth to them and each of them are unique from each other. Many secondary characters also play important roles in setting up the story and moving the story along. Each of them having an understandable motivation for what they do and some are similarly as developed as the main characters.

GRAPHICS

Fans of Vanillaware games know what to expect with the graphics. Beautiful 2D animation and graphics with a painting-like backdrop. 13 Sentinels' graphics and design is not a substantial leap forward from their previous titles, but they do still appear to be the best they have offered so far.

GAMEPLAY

13 Sentinels is split into two main gameplay areas: The Remembrance section which is the Adventure and main story portion and the Destruction section, which mostly consists of battles and some dialogue dispersed throughout. Roughly about 75% of the game is spent in Remembrance section to complete the main game at least.

The Remembrance section is comparable to a Visual Novel where the player is reading a lot of dialogue to advance the story. However, there is more player interaction by allowing the player to move the character on 2.5D areas. Sometimes, the player has additional options to move to different locations in a more non-linear fashion, but for the most part, it is a linear experience. Although it might be more accurate to say that it is like a point and click adventure game.

To complete a character's story, the player must view all of the endings in the story arc. Once when the ending is viewed, the player can go back into the character's story which may or may not put them back where they started, but with a branching path now available based on the information obtained in the previous route. For the most part, there is not a lot to do during these sections despite the free movement in the area and being able to choose who to talk to first if there are multiple characters on screen. There are minor puzzles that include having the character think about a key word or name to unlock new scenes and branching paths. With that said, the extra player interaction is appreciated and avoids reading countless dialogue back to back.

During the Prologue, the choice of character's story to view is linear, but once it is over, the player is free to choose whichever character's story is currently available. However, some characters will first require to be unlocked by progressing to a certain point in another character's story. Furthermore, a character's own story progress will be locked out at certain points in time until another character's event is viewed first or the player reaches a certain point in the Destruction section. That way, it is not possible to view one character's story from start to end without jumping around to many other characters.

The Destruction section consists of Real Time Strategy type battles. The map layout for each battle mostly resembles each other with the character's initial placement changing. The objective is usually to either defeat every enemy on the map, certain boss enemies or survive for a certain amount of time. Despite the RTS similarities, time does stop when inputting commands or viewing character's skills in action. Players may also freely pause the battle by pressing R3 to view enemy statistics. From a presentation viewpoint, the characters and enemies appear as very basic shapes and not in any significant detail which dampens the experience. Players should not expect gorgeous detailed mech battles.

Battles can become repetitive since objectives don't change much and enemy variety is not entirely wide, but there are a number of RPG customization that the player can put time in. Every character has experience, stats, and relatively unique Sentinels. The Sentinels are divided into 4 generations, each with different specializations. To take it even further, some Sentinels have certain armaments not available to other Sentinels in the same generation. Finally, each character have their own unique passive abilities that are unlocked as they level up to bring more uniqueness to the characters. Overall, the battles are not particularly amazing, but are more enjoyable then expected when compared to simply watching a trailer on it. The large number of enemies on the map will keep players engaged.

Probably the biggest flaw of the battles are the game's difficulty depending on what people want from it. Even at the hardest difficulty, the game is not too difficult. Strategy minded players might be disappointed on the lack of much strategy needed to not only complete the battles, but to obtain a S Rank as well. Despite the different customization options available, some options are clearly better than the others. With that said, some battles near the end are very difficult and will require exploring different strategies. There are extra optional battles available after beating the game, but as I have yet to complete all of them, I cannot say that they are particularly more difficult than the main story battles.

FINAL REMARKS

Fans of Visual Novels, JRPGs, or Anime will likely find some kind of interest in this game. It is important to keep in mind that despite the fairly sizable combat portion of the game, this is basically a Visual Novel at its core with some player input overall. As such, it is not a game that should normally be recommended for the JRPG elements of the game, but rather its story. Furthermore, the game is rather short depending on the person. It took me 28 hours to get the Platinum Trophy which the only thing that was notably excluded from it is the near infinite wave of Post Game battles. On that same note, there is not much Replay Value outside of just experiencing the story again, but by then, the major mysteries are already known.

The battles and gameplay aside, the story portion of the game has been very enjoyable which lingered on my mind every time I turned the game off.

I had no idea how much I'd love this game, and get invested in all of the characters. This game has a very unique way of telling its story.

You have 13 different protagonists to choose from and for the most part, you can go through the story in however way you want to. Every character has something called a thought cloud, that fill up with a bunch of different words, and clicking them allows you to see their inner thoughts on different topics, and in my opinion this was an awesome idea as it adds so much depth to every character. There isn't a single character in this game that I think is bad, or just okay. That's just how good the game is.

The story can be a bit confusing as you are progressing it, however this game handles that dilemma perfectly. It has an analysis section that gives you the ability to view descriptions of pretty much everything you will see in the game, and a menu that displays all events in chronological order. The best part is that they make sure it does not spoil you beyond the point that you are at in the story. The descriptions and events are all updated as you progress which is honestly just amazing as they really didn't have to implement this. I'm not sure if there are more games than this that utilize an analysis menu but if not, I hope more story oriented games adopt this feature as it really made the game THAT much more enjoyable.

The art style is just super stunning. Without being graphically intensive, its one of the best looking games I've ever played.

Honestly, you just have to play it to really understand what I mean. This game's story and presentation is by far the most ambitious and well crafted game I have played in a very long time, and you owe it to yourself to give this game a go.

I played most of it earlier this year. And I mean I was close to the end and I don't think I'll return to it

This game has a fascinating story with incredible concepts taken from basically every sci-fi story ever written. But the character story structure mixed with the destruction sections that gate your story progression make the pacing a terrible slog. I'm sorry, I think I'd try to finish this game if it wasn't structured like this, or if the destruction sections were just gone because they're really fucking bad even on easy.

I give it a positive score because I genuinely like what the story was doing, I don't dislike this game, far from it but those things I mentioned make it really hard to get the motivation to actually play it. Also the artstyle is impeccable.

8.5/10
I think 13 sentinels might have one of the finest narratives on the PS4, even then it isn't without a fault.

In retrospect I think the characters are just kinda average and the final buildup to the end maybe slightly lagging even though the actual end in itself is fantastic.

Although I think that's not the point. 13 sentinels IMO is meant to be a laid back experience, which makes u go " Wow it came together so well, I'm blown away; how did they manage that ".

It may not be refined, but for what it is and what it offers.. (Beautiful visuals, easy gameplay, a certain chill vibe, excellent plotting and structuring).. It's absolutely great. A laid back experience with a lot of depth, which misses a few beats and two.

13 Sentinels is a storytelling marvel.

13 separate stories, all complexly intertwined together that necessarily must be played non-linearly stuffed with twists and reveals and yet... it feels cohesive. It feels complete it makes sense (after a bit of note taking).

If you're anything like me, then you'll find the gorgeous 'Story' section of the game to be utterly captivating, scrambling to catch the next 'episode' of every character.

It's a shame the actual gameplay (in the 'Destruction' section) to be both visually stagnant and not fun to play.

Had the battles had fun combat this game easily would have been a perfect 5 stars. And the fact that with this huge caveat it still gets a 4.5 should be indicative of just how special the story here is.

When I saw this game's trailer, I thought Vanillaware was doing an Eva clone. So even tho I am a fan of Vanillaware, I felt I won't have fun with this game.

Now looking back to my platinum completion achivement... Yeah... THAT WAS AWESOOOOOOMMMEEEEEEE

I am a casual fan of vanillaware, I only played Muramasa and Odin Sphere and they were pretty fun but flawed experiences. When I saw 13 sentinels I thought it's impossible for them to do a good game with 13 different characters when they were struggling to do 5 characters(Odin Sphere). Not just that, all of the mechas and teenagers gave me the red warnings so I didn't buy this game. Then saw videos from youtubers I like and they put this game in their top 10s and I was really suprised. Does that mean I prejudged not fairly? Maybe there is really something here? So I jumped in too with wonder and found a really unique experience.

Game design
I said this game is unique experience isn't it? So it's best to start from here. This game does a non-linear/half-open design. What I mean is by this is once you finish the prologue you are almost free to do the story(walk/interact/talk) and gameplay(real time, top down strategy) in whatever order you please with some restrictions. The restrictions are, for example when you halved a character's story, it gets locked. To unlock it you need to read it's requirements and do that. It's the same for the gameplay too. When you finish half of the missions of that chapter, it gets locked and you need to do it's requirements. These requirements are most of the time simple things like finish this gameplay section or experience this character's story event or both. So game is not full open yet not linear either. Maybe this doesn't look like that unique to you but remember this. There is 13 characters in this game. It's my first time seeing a game that tries to do a giant 13 character story and at the same time tries to be a non-linear story but it works... mostly.. I said mostly because sometimes you get spoiled on another character's events or gameplay problems(I am gonna get to that). But still this is what makes this game great in my opinion, why? Because you never get the "full picture" with one character. When you combine all the answers and clues from all the characters you find the "truth". That's the thing that hypes you and results with 3am thoughts. I finished this character's story but in another character's story he acted different? What the heck is going on? I don't need sleep! I need ANSWERS! That's why this type of storytelling makes this game great in my opinion.

Story
It's starts as a generic aliens invades this city and these teenagers here to protect! Kind of cliche plot. But once you start to unlock characters you realize things are not that simple. Especially not because some characters are from the past and some of them from future. So you keep thinking how the heck they are gonna connect them to the present? And it connects. With metal gear solid levels of plot twists and implications. Not all of the twists are logical or needed unfortunately but discovering them are so fun that they didn't hinder my experience. Because rest of the game is that fun to uncover in my opinion. When it comes to characters on the other hand... I can't say I liked them as much as the story because of their cliche "anime" acting. Especially I felt less motivated because of it in the beginning because I can't take the one note gimmicky anime characters seriously anymore, but believe me it's worth it for the story to push on. My only stinker in the story was Hijiyama's section. Some parts were a filler also not just that it feels like someone forgot to include some interactable signs on some places(I am talking about the infuriating find money section). It's the only section that I had to look up a walkthrough for and it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth.

Combat
I saw lots of people that disliked gameplay sections and I am here to defend them. But there is things that I agree with them. Combat background looks lifeless and everything looks like a map symbols rather than character sprites. I kinda understand why they did it but I wish they give us a alternative screen that we can see the character and enemy sprites more clearly on the map.
But when it comes to this game is mindless... No!

I know why they think like that because there is two problems one is intense difficulty should be the normal option, because in normal mode there is literally no reason to use anything other than missile attacks, you can't get killed easily so just spam missile attacks bum you win, of course you would say it's mindless. On the other hand in intense mod every heavy-strong enemy can kill you in 2-3 attacks. So you have to use your defense, status effects, room breathers, emps, buffs, debuffs etc. You have to use your full arsenal to make sure your sentinels go unscathed, because if they do, you need to repair them for an additional minute and you rarely get that much time. So what? You Strategize. You don't sleepwalk anymore, because you use your brain now. It's that simple.

The second problem is a big one

The big problem with 13 sentinel is, how it's paced... Or to say how it's not paced. I already told that you can select 13 character stories almost in any order you want and also you can do battle whenever you want and... I can't believe I am saying this but this half openness kind of harm the game for the combat sections. Because doing battles feels not important for the story at first. Yet near a character's story finale, now you have to do it bunch of them at once so you can see how that character's story ends. Or quite the opposite, you feel warmed up and want to battle for a day long yet suddenly you can't progress because you didn't unlock enough story content. How can they solve this problem to begin with? Removing battle? No because they are core to the experience in my opinion. Making it fully open? No because then there would be no incentive to do battle for the player. Just scrap everything and make a more linear/straight game then? But it wouldn't be exciting to explore the characters then is it?

Then what? I would say just mixing the battle sections inside to the character stories would result for a better paced experience. After all battle sections wants us to choose certain characters sometimes so just match these battle sections with these certain characters stories. Also some characters gets unlocked later so you can also gradually up the challenge too! Of course this isn't the perfect solution, after all player can harm their playthrough with choosing a future character and but I think it would be a better integration then this current one.

After all you can't have both at once, linear game takes away from the unique storytelling, but opposite of that: too open game can make the pacing worse in my opinion. So my suggestion is the only way I can think to mitigate this issue.

Whoa I wrote a lot here. I wasn't expecting that actually. But anyway play this game. You won't be disappointed hopefully. Is this the best game Vanillaware had done? For the base game comparison, yeah it is! In my opinion. Not just that, I am excited to see what are they going to do next so hope I can see and play that. Thanks for reading everyone.