For a couple of days we have been sinking our teeth into that massive meal that is 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, new title from Vanillaware and Atlus, published by SEGA. With the story coming to life and with several hours invested in the strategic sections we are ready to give you a taste of what the peculiar mix of graphic and strategic adventure hybrid between turns and real time can offer you.
From the fascinating art style typical of Vanillaware to a surprisingly effective narrative scheme, the first hours of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim they conquered and surprised us, giving us the hope of being in the presence of one of the best titles of the current year.
But exactly, what is 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim? We've seen a lot of doubts on the internet in this regard but the trailers don't help much to justify how much trust and commercial boost SEGA is giving to this new IP. However, after the first few hours we understand how difficult it is to present this title at its best. Everything 13 Sentinels does is done with an unshakeable confidence in their own, weird, vision of storytelling. The game is essentially divided into three sections, two mandatory and one secondary but which we suggest not to ignore at all: the battles, the story and the secret data are absolutely to be experienced.
At first glance it all seems normal, in fact it is not unusual for a strategic game to split into three similar sections - if you replace secret data with social relations, Fire Emblem: Three Houses follows roughly this same pattern - however the situation changes when you discovers, after the tutorial, that the three sections are semi-independent from each other.
In the initial menu, you can choose whether to access the battles, Remembrance (the story) or the archives, and although the three modes have links in progression, their development is spread over different events and even timelines. The strategic battles are in fact set at what seems to be the conclusion of the story, while the archives refer to documents of alternative timelines compared to Remembrance.
The narrative section itself, extremely interesting and diversified, tells events from thirteen different points of view and extends over a period from 1944 to 2064. All this could and should be confusing, but it works masterfully. This is because, as mentioned before, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim believes in its means and is not afraid to squeeze the maximum potential of each of its ideas.
There's still a lot ahead of us, so it's too early to draw conclusions, but the first seven hours of play are mind-blowing. The continuous change of perspective, the different ideologies, ways of speaking and even prejudices of the characters from different eras makes it all more likely and already at the end of the first seven prologues we are fond of most of the characters, excluding just those two or three that have not yet had space. The soundtrack does its job for now without surprising, but the sound design is noteworthy, with small choices that improve the experience and immediately convey the mood: for example, in the main menu the music is covered by the sound of the storm, immediately giving the idea of something mysterious and dangerous hidden behind this adventure.
The graphic style as we anticipated is delightful, although we admit that at first we thought it could become cloying quickly. As of now we still haven't gotten tired of the amalgamation of Vanillaware's classic fairytale drawing style with a much more modern and cool setting, however it may suffer from a general flatness in terms of art direction in the long run.. For these considerations we can only wait for the review which will obviously take place at the end of the adventure.
So let's close by talking about the most playful section of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, that is the strategic clashes. These usually consist in eliminating certain enemy armies or protecting towers, the so-called AEGIS. You can use up to six characters at the same time, divided into four different "mecha" that will have different specializations. As far as we have been able to try so far, playing on the highest difficulty, these sections defend themselves very well.
The gameplay is convincing and actually requires strategy, since the elements to be taken into account are many more than it might initially seem; even just deciding who to take with you for a fight can decide the fate of the battle, and the nervous breakdown system of the characters forces a constant rotation of the chosen team, thus leading to having to organize yourself better if you aim to accumulate good scores.
From the first hours of the game, we can only be satisfied with 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. The new game from Vanillaware takes the company to dive into a completely original adventure with respect to the fairy tale fantasy repertoire that distinguishes it, however the faith in every single singular idea of this project is shaping a product that has not really done anything wrong so far. The only pain in sight at the moment is the fact that in the strategic sections, the aesthetics are rather mundane, but outside of this 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim looks very promising.
► 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is an Adventure type game developed by Vanillaware and published by ATLUS for PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 22/09/2020
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a game to own at all costs: we decided to evaluate it with a 93%, if you are interested in learning more you can read the 13 Sentinels Review: Aegis Rim
