Could never find a good middle ground with this game, unfortunately. Game didn't feel or reward free-form, sandboxy gameplay enough to make me want to approach it that way and the more structured, medal stuff didn't feel skill based or fun enough for me to willingly bang my head against it. Felt like I was always constantly unsure what to do with this game. I appreciate the concept, the art style and the different types of levels though. The devs clearly had some fun working on this game and it shows. Maybe I'll try it again some day.

This is a really unique game to me because it's a game that just does not work and the devs didn't try to do anything smart with it at all. A story told through narration where there's no sound because the player is "deaf" is something that can only be done through subtle storytelling that's built around that game but the devs sought it fit to instead do the most boneheaded thing which was to make a normal beat em up game and then simply removing all the sound from it, until you play through it a second time and oh wow now you can hear what was really going on!

Problem is you're sitting through your first playthrough watching a five minute cutscene where people are talking and the camera is focused on people's faces and you just sit there stoopified and nervously giggling to yourself because nothing is happening because you have no sound! You can't understand the scene because you're supposed to hear the dialogue! But they don't want you to! Even more more bizarre is the main character who's deaf is apparently understanding what people are saying in the cutscene but you, the player, aren't! Oh my god! Also the combat is bad, the story itself isn't that great when you hear it....

Like, I'll be honest, this game is bad but I kinda have to respect the developers for putting it out the way it is. I'm not saying they're secret genuises or deserves to be awarded for the state of the game but, a game published by a major name in an age of hyper polished, railroaded safe experiences that are terrified about offending or leaving players lost, I have to appreciate it just a little bit for what it is. A total mess that could've been stopped many times but instead was given the go ahead and even a spot at an E3 conference. In 2018. Man.

They sure took a lot of TIME to make this! It was taking so long, I thought it was SCIENCE-FICTION! Vanillaware more like ABANDONWARE! Ohohohohoho I like this game, I'm glad it came out.

Vanillaware, getting bored of making great action titles, decided to take a page out of their oldest book, or grimoire specifically, and made a RTS visual novel hybrid game. I guess I should talk about the RTS stuff first since it's the easiest to talk about and also probably the most uninteresting of the two. You basically have these sections where you control the mechs that are being piloted by the main characters of the story. It's all played out on a really cool looking, minimal computer grid and you do your usual tactical battly stuff. The main goal is to defend the terminal that the kaiju are trying to attack and it's pretty decent. There's some really cool moments in it, like the one where the idol sings or the final mission, but overall it's nothing special. As much as I like the minimal aesthetic, I could have maybe used a few more details to highlight specific things because sometimes little details can get lost in the grid, such as enemy attacks that are off screen. Also they made these little animations for when your hovering over abilities to show what they do and they look really cool! But they don't include them in the actual game when you do the move and I think they missed an oppertunity to maybe add them to the actual fights to add some impact to your attacks? Like they don't even need to play all the time, just like maybe when you get a kill with the move? Or a lot of damage? Just something to make the battles feel a bit more spicy. Overall, Destruction mode is cool but alright. Play it on the highest difficulty if you want anything close to challenging.

Anyways, the real show stopper is the Rememberance section of the game which is pure 100% visual nov-ahem, I mean, adventure game? Whatever, basically you control a character and you talk to people and you discover things and there's a lot of text and sometimes there's "puzzles" and sometimes there's branching choices. This is where all the story content of the game is doled out over 13 (!!) different playable characters, who all have their own story unravelling through this universe and a lot of the time said story threads will roll into other character's as well, all in the middle of this greater overarching plot about saving the world from invading kaiju! This is definitely the most ambitious and well done part of the game and even if doesn't pull it off perfectly, it should be praised for taking on such a colossal task and doing it well.

My favourite part of this section, and the entire game, is the amount of twists. The game has a really amazing knack at constantly keeping the players engaged in the story and the universe by just dropping plot bombs on the regular and forcing the player to constantly think about the narrative that's being presented to them and how everything pieces together. Like I enjoyed the many hours I spent just sitting/scrolling through menus after finishing a character's story segment, thinking of how it affected what I thought I knew about them or the world, thinking of how "Well if that thing is that, then that means that this isn't this!" etc. etc. I would say that the puzzles in this game are terrible (god fuck that coin stuff it's so bad) but in actuality the puzzles are incredibly strong in this game because the story IS the world's biggest puzzle! Jonathan Blow is a tiny brainlet when compared to 13 Sentinels! Anyways, what I'm saying is the twists and constant recontextualisation of the plot is really well done and it's definitely one of the most entertaining experiences I've had since La Mulana 2.

I really enjoyed the characters as well, my absolute favs being the old boys: Miura and Hijiyama. I really enjoyed their initial character parts of being these dudes who were used to old military japan and general lifestyle of the 40s being teleported into the excess and electronica of the 80s. There's something really tough about a soldier of the 40s, willing to die for their country, travelling to the future and finding out that their coutnry in fact lost the war and surrendered. What does that mean for Japan? Is old Japan gone now? What is his life purpose now? Should he even be living right now? Will the guilt ever go away? Well, they kinda get over it fast but for those moments it was cool! Also individually they have some good stuff, Muira with his fucking "oh my god WHAT" 2188 story sections that appear in the early game and Hijiyama with his bond and connection to Okino through the game's events.

Everyone in general has some quirk or moments that I really appreciated and nobody was really a bad character. Gouto and his inquistive back and forth with Chihiro over the truth of her and the world was incredibly entertaining. Yakushiji with her "magical girl" cat schtick where she blats dudes. Natsuno's E.T. quest. Shinonome and her reality altering headaches. There was a bunch of cool things to latch onto and I really enjoyed going through each character's different situation and cadence. Even Miwako and Okino, who aren't playable characters, I liked a lot. In general, story stuff is great. It's the main reason to play this game and it does a fantastic job and I totally recommend playing 13 Sentinels for it.

Also, how have I gotten so far into a Vanillaware review and not brought up the visuals??? As expected, the visuals are incredible. The amount of details and effort put into each game's painted backgrounds look amazing, Vanillaware are really untouched in this field and thankfully they've seen no reason to slack off on the style. Also, whoever decided to set the entire game during the golden hour deserves a medal because not only does the golden hour OWN but it also helps make the background look that much more awe inspiring and nostalgic. The presentation wouldn't be as good without the music though. The OST for 13 Sentinels keeps up with the Vanillaware standard and manages to help bring the perfect amount of whimsy or cyber based dread whenever nessisary. Shout out to the idol song they made as well because it rules.

There are some problems with the game though and this is where I'm going to caution and say SPOILERS AHEAD because there's some things I can't talk about without spoiling to describe why this game is mostly top shelf material but just has a few things that bug me. Like how it goes for the "in the end it wasn't real" kinda thing which I don't hate the game for, and I feel like it kinda earns it with making everything else leading up to it so interesting, but that also makes it more disappointing? When you have all these twisting paths and huge bomb shells and constant unsurity and then in the end it can be summed up with "it wasn't real they were in a computer"...i don't know...like I said, I don't hate it but it feels a bit too simple for my tastes. I also feel like they kinda dropped the ball with Shinonome because the most interesting thing about her, to me, was that she was the villain! Kinda! Like she's the reason why the kaiju invasions were happening and her 2188 self seemed to be a little psychotic and I was interested to see where it would end up and it's sad that the game kinda drops it and forgets it in the end. I feel like the game brings it up with a "ahhh sorry about that guys!" "it's okay!" thing (i can't remember specifically) but I do remember being pretty bummed that the game doesn't really end up doing much with Shinonome. In the end she just becomes lovesick headache waifu who doesn't remember how to stop the virus in the sentinels. Was kind of a let down.

Also, I just wanna bring up how bad the romance in this game is. Like, feel free to yell at me that I missed some sort of point with them being destined to be with someone else cus of their previous selves or something but the way people just get together in this game is so...forced? And lame? Which makes me think that maybe I am missing some sort of point but none of the relationships in that game felt real and they sucked. The absolute WORST offender though being Ida and Space Idol Kisiragi at the end credits! I had to use my personal vomitorium to purge that out of my body.

And this isn't really a complaint and more of me trying to reason with myself why it's not a five star game but if you've played a lot of japanese games or know popular culture or played stuff like the Zero Escape games then maybe some of the narrative stuff might not surprise you as much or be as fresh as it would to other people, which I guess is why I'm trying to figure out why it wans't as mindblowing for me as it was for other people I've heard talk about the game. I don't know, this paragraph is my personal blabbering part.

Overall though, I only get nit picky and overly analytical with games that I really enjoyed or wanted to enjoy and 13 Sentinels is definitely the former! Wonderful presentation, going through the story is an amazing, almost puzzle box experience and the large cast and scale of the game really makes it something to be admired. The moments I'll remember from playing this is sitting at the menu and just staring into the screen, in my own mind, thinking of the game.

God bless.