Over the weekend, one of 2020's biggest sleeper hits, Vanillaware's 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, celebrated the second anniversary of its Japanese release. To commemorate this, publisher Atlus announced that the game will finally be making its way to Nintendo Switch next April. While 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has amassed a big cult following since its quiet western release in September 2020, many fans of Atlus' titles passed on Vanillaware's latest storytelling marvel, and hopefully that is about to change with the upcoming release of this Nintendo Switch version.
As many of its fans will often say, 13 Sentiels: Aegis Rim is truly a masterpiece in gaming storytelling, and a game that deserves the high critical reception that is has gotten. Here is why Switch users need to play 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim when it comes to the platform in 2022.
A Modern Masterpiece
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was developed by Vanillaware, the studio behind multiple beloved JRPG titles such as Dragon's Crown, Odin Sphere, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, however it stands out from any of the titles the studio is known for. Besides 13 Sentinels' consistently beautiful artwork, a staple of Vanillaware's games, it is primarily a visual-novel style adventure game with turn-based strategy combat scenarios. While this may sound confusing, and in some cases uninteresting to fans unfamiliar or uninterested with either genre, it's the groundbreaking narrative at the centre of the game that makes it a modern classic.
The game follows thirteen Japanese high-school students in the 1980s who, unbeknownst to some of them, are pilots of mechs known as "Sentinels." The game is split into two distinct gameplay portions, "Rememberence" chapters, which are visual-novel style sequences artistically in line with Vanillaware's other titles, featuring narrative-driven 2D side-scrolling sequences, while the others are "Destruction" sequences, which are minimalist turn-based strategy sequences in which the player controls a team of Sentinels as they fight Kaiju.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim's story is told in a fresh, non-linear fashion, requiring players to bounce between the stories of its thirteen protagonists and slowly unravel its many mysteries piece by piece. For most of the game, just as the player thinks they are close to uncovering a mystery, the story will introduce five more pieces to the puzzle. The game's narrative rewards player's investment and intrigue, and by the time the credits roll, fans will likely want to go through the entire thing again to finally comprehend the threads that have been dangling over them for its 30 hour run. There's a reason that, before the game even launched in the west, 13 Sentinels had already been nominated for prestegious storytelling awards such as the Seiun Award in "Media" for 2020.
Fits Like A Glove
One thing that caught 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim players on PlayStation 4 by surprise was that, with the exception of Vanillaware's gorgeous 2D artwork, the game features somewhat of a minimalist approach to visual design. This is especially noticeable in regards to its turn-based strategy sequences, which could be mistaken for any number of low-budget indie games. This isn't a knock against the game, but there is one important reason that the game is designed like this. When 13 Sentinels was first announced all the way back in 2015, the game was revealed to be in development for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita.
The Vita was actually the target platform for the game all the way up until that version's cancellation in 2018, along with the subsequent delay of the game to 2019. This means that for most of the game's development, 13 Sentinels was intended to be a handheld game, and its visual design makes this clear with how easily adaptable it is to a handheld platform. It's believed that the Vita version's cancellation was due to Sony's abandonment of the platform (despite its underground success in Japan,) so now it's easy to see why the game is such an easy sell on Nintendo Switch. Not only is 13 Sentinels a perfect fit for the platform, but it offers fans an experience they were robbed of with the cancellation of the PlayStation Vita release of the game.
The Nintendo Switch version of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is nothing short of a match made in heaven, and allows Vanillaware to follow up on a version of the game it never got to see through to completion. Better yet, it puts one of the best games of last year into the hands of even more fans and likely means big things for Atlus and Vanillaware's commitment to the platform going forward.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is available now on PlayStation 4. The Nintendo Switch version will release on April 14th 2022.