5/5 ★ – politestories's review of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.

I picked up this game on a whim back when I saw a glowing review from Yoko Taro along with a plea for people to buy it, I'd played a few vanillaware games in the past so I knew their games were good quality, absolutely beautiful if a little simple and I could always expect a very decent game. However I don't think anything could of prepared me for this. The story is in main focus here with you controlling 13 different protagonists, these are set up in a way where you can pick and choose who to play at certain points (however it will block you off from seeing some scenes unless you progress to a certain point in someone else's story), this is cleverly set up so that as well as the big over arching mystery each character has their own little ones that seemlessly interconnect with each other. It's really cool when something gets revealed for one person that drastically recontexualizes the story for another! The freedom to choose also lets you progress which parts you are personally most interested in, the characters all share and equal amount of love and screen time it's such a joy to go through and makes the story even more compelling since I found myself really caring about these kids. The graphics are absolutely stunning, this company is known for this but it's mostly reserved for fantasy style games. Here we have gorgeous Japanese scenery, soft sunlight blanketing sleepy class rooms, even the city ruins are eerily beautiful and haunting. The characters while believably looking (mostly) like young japanese students but all so different and unique from each other, their personalities just shine through in their designs and each movement they take feels lovingly created. The gameplay might be the "weakest" link here depending on who you are, sections of very basic adventure gameplay are spliced with a very simple RTS, but I don't think that's a bad thing, the story sections prevented the gameplay segments from getting stale, they're quite easy but that's all the more reason to bump up the difficulty. The battles set the tone so well, I couldn't even explain to you the emotion I got during one of the fights where "Seaside Vacation" played as I was blasting up kaiju in mechs and the music where you're just trying to last long enough in the last fight just suddenly DROPS to the main theme of the entire game is just such a great experience, I wish I could wipe my memory just to play through it again for the first time. If I have one complaint it's entirely that as soon as Morimura showed up I was taken out of it a little bit, I like booba as much as the next guy and I have played Dragon Crown e.c.t so I should of known what I getting into but when the story is intense and emotional and suddenly big slappy comes along it feels... Unusual. But this is really just a nitpick, she is a great character and thankfully she isn't especially prominent. This is a game you can't miss at all, if you buy one game this year you have to make it this and I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again