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.
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.