I was apprehensive when I decided to give 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim a go. Visual novel games have never appealed to me, and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a long game with a lot of text and not a lot of gameplay. But I was assured that it was one of the best video game stories of recent years, and I had to give it a shot. After playing it, I still can’t say that I am a fan of visual novels. However, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim does take an extraordinarily unique and risky approach to the presentation of its story. 

Imagine a story that mashes together every single sci-fi concept that you can think of, with 13 protagonists whose episodes can be viewed in almost any order, and a non-linear presentation of events. It sounds like a complete mess, but 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim mostly pulls it off. The idea behind the game is that you follow the stories of 13 characters, each with 7-8 individual episodes. Each character’s story seems to take inspiration from a classic sci-fi trope such as aliens, time travel, giant robots, memory wiping, etc. Gameplay during these episodes typically

consists of walking around and talking to different characters. As you gain information, you gain keywords that are saved in a memory cloud that you can access at any time. These keywords are used to ask questions and unravel the numerous mysteries that permeate the world.

The gameplay is not particularly riveting, but the key appeal of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. There’s so many subplots, secrets, interpersonal conflicts, and twists that it can be difficult to keep track of it all. Luckily, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim does a great job at letting the player jog their memory by going into the archive and replaying scenes or get a summary of the key events in a given episode. 

Where 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim excels is how it masterfully intertwines all the main character’s arcs. While each character has their own story, they play key roles in each other’s lives. It’s fun to make chronological realizations as the episodes play out and you recognize where character’s scenes overlap and interact. I loved when I could notice other characters going about their stories during an unrelated episode. Even with 13 independent plots of perplexing sci-fi ideas, it all comes together thanks to the interwoven tapestry of threads. 

My time with 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim could be summarized as a rollercoaster. And I mean that literally. Like any rollercoaster with high peaks and thrilling drops, there’s a ton of buildup as you climb up the tracks to the summit. And while there were plenty of twists and turns and climaxes to pique my interest, there were more valleys that lost my attention completely. The pacing and length of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is its biggest flaw. The nature of having 13 different stories is that there are 13 plots to set up, 13 characters to get familiar with, and a ton of exposition to get the stories where they need to be before the action can kick off.

It’s particularly frustrating when you are absorbed by a given storyline only to have to go back to the start of a different character’s arc. It’s jarring to be knee deep in androids and secret agents only to be dropped back into discussing what’s for dinner and who a side-character has a crush on. These dramatic peaks and valleys of excitement are what sucked me out of the story the most. It’s also worth mentioning that I found the writing and characters to lean towards the young adult genre. There’s nothing wrong with that, but these days I’m not interested in high school romances as a key plot element.

While the visual novel detective episodes are the bulk of the game, there actually are some real-time strategy segments. You control the 13 main characters in their mechanized mega-robots called sentinels to battle against evil giant robots known as kaiju. Before each battle you can choose 6 characters to deploy, each with their own stats and moveset. These sections are… fine. I wouldn’t want to play a lot of these battles back-to-back but they do serve as a nice break from the barrage of exposition. 

Most of the complexity of the combat comes from the mission select screen. There are four different classes of sentinels: melee, all-rounder, ranged, and support. Their roles are obvious, but each character has an attack or two that are unique to them. It’s fun to experiment with different combinations and learn which attacks are the most potent. But once you do find out which characters and attacks are best, it becomes all too easy to just spam the same ones over and over again until victory. While it is fun to repeatedly destroy big groups of kaiju, it can get repetitive over the course of a few battles.

Part of what makes the combat seem repetitive and dull is the uninspiring visuals. Every single combat mission is set in the same generic city environment, and all the robots are also blocky abstract representations instead of unique sprites. It makes every battle feel a little same-y when you are looking at the same thing all the time. Which is really a shame because the game looks fantastic otherwise.

Just one glance makes it apparent that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has some fantastic character models. The characters visually pop and look great in motion. There’s something interesting about Vanillaware’s art style, and I can’t quite put my finger on what makes it look so distinct from other similar studios. It may be that the characters look incredibly natural, even just standing still. The characters breathe and sway instead of just remaining static. I truly don’t know what it is, but there really is just something about the characters that looks phenomenal.

I wish I could say that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim inspired me to play more visual novels. Unfortunately, the boredom valleys were too frequent and too long for me to truly say I loved the game. While there are some truly great twists, turns, and interesting characters, it’s buried within dozens of hours of trudging through tiresome dialogue. If you are a fan of visual novels, the story and approach to weaving 13 characters’ plots together is certainly unique and commendable. It is for these reasons I give 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim a 6/10. I’m not a fan of the genre, and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim didn’t do enough to change my mind.