13 Sentinels is a JRPG released in 2020 for the PS4 and 2022 for the Switch. It was developed by Vanillaware and produced by Atlus. The game follows 13 characters using sentinels (mechs) to defend the planet from being destroyed by an unknown force. It's split between side scrolling story segments and real time strategy combat.

The story takes place in different periods of time in a nonlinear structure. You gradually unlock more characters as you go, showing different perspectives on events you've already seen and expanding on previous dead ends. The story is really best experienced with as little information as possible, so I'll be purposefully vague here. There are many twists as it goes and some are pretty shocking.

The gameplay plays out in real time combat against waves of enemies. There are four different types of sentinels and you can usually choose whoever you want in your party for each mission. You can customize the sentinels in terms of abilities and stat points, so there are many ways to approach fights. You're graded by damage taken, damage prevented from the city, and time taken. The points you earn from a higher grade in battle can be used to unlock archive entries that compile plot points for reference. There are a lot of names and parts of the story to remember throughout the game, so this is actually more helpful than it sounds. A highlight for me personally, is all of the voice lines for each combination of pilot you can have in your party. Having the characters communicating (yelling) at each other as the intensity builds is a nice touch.

It's too bad it's not out for PC, but I recommend it for JRPG fans and fans of (general plot theme spoilers)

time travel and generally weird distortion over time.

reminders:

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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

  • Tapirs10 [undecided,she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    :niko-wonderous: me when the RPG I started playing has nonbinary as a gender option and the character sprites you can choose are independent of gender. In a game that started development in 2012. The industry has no excuse for not having diverse casts

      • Tapirs10 [undecided,she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Game is pokemon reborn, a fan game made in RPG maker. It's essentially if pokemon was made with actual passion behind it. The story seems significantly better than official games but I am only like 10% through it and that is a low bar. It's a bit darker/edgier than the official games but in a way that is good not grimdark. And there is queer rep in it, not just in player choice but in other characters. Cain has dialogue that is slightly flirting and doesn't change based on player gender, so there is some bi rep there. An old man npc mentions "my husband" and I am sure there is more to come. The main dev is trans, so if you like things by queer creators there's that. So far it seems very good. If you like pokemon games and queer rep play it.

          • Tapirs10 [undecided,she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            It's good. Just be aware that it is a big difficulty increase over base games. The first gym took more tries for me than the elite 4 of a platinum challenge romhack

                • Cromalin [she/her]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  i didn't have too much trouble with that, so hopefully this won't be too hard for me

                  also, i looked at their website, have you played pokemon rejuvenation? do you know if that's any good, or what's the deal with it?

                  • Tapirs10 [undecided,she/her]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    Yeah you're definitely good then. The reason I mentioned difficulty is because the first gym is electric and you have no access to ground types besides marshtomp at that point so you can't rely on having super effective stab moves, and there is a team of 6 with actual decent ai/tactics. I've not tried rejuvenation, but I have heard of it in the same context as reborn.