Finally starting 13 Sentinels

dunno if I can make, like, A Thread on it since it's still new and I don't want to spoil stuff for people

Hitoshi Sakimoto's ability to write short looping pieces that literally never get old remains incredible

I've probably spent, like, 20+ hours listening to the Rabanastre music and it's still good lol

I love that Vanillaware has managed to establish a signature pose

like that specific head tilt and shoulder angle is in every game they've made and it's super subtle but they've done it so consistently that it's instantly recognizable now

everyone is cute aaaa

omg they made a whole hotdog-transition animation so they could get away with mirroring the base sprite this rules so hard

hold on this one is absolutely brain-melting

GOOD
ART

man there are very few art things that hit me harder than Really Elaborate 2D Parallax Reveals and aaaaaaaaaaAAA

what I didn't capture there is there was a whole scene with dialogue and walking around near the motorcycle, and then you interact with the bike to leave the scene and instead of fading to black he just drives off the edge of the level and reveals the cross street and sunset aaaa

twitter compression is unkind but like every frame reveals different details hhnngnggg

everybody please go buy 13 Sentinels so that Vanillaware can afford to do something like this literally ever again

it's..... extremely unclear how my units are taking damage? I think SOME attacks can deal friendly-fire damage, but some can't? The combat UI is chaos lol

there are 13 main characters and most of them have *multiple names* this a complete nightmare lol

Yuki Takamiya

with all the names and aliases and events and relationships you're supposed to decipher this game really needs some kind of conspiracy pinboard graph of red thread mode lol

actually come to think of it what I really want is just the computer from Outer Wilds. They're similar games in the sense that they're both essentially about Figuring Out What's Going On, but 13 Sentinels just has a big scrolling codex and Outer Wilds invented a whole UI for it

interesting that the combat mode is just named DESTRUCTION

like not "battle" or "defense" or anything suggesting a heroic struggle against the enemies

probably nothing to worry about

Extremely cool Robot Lore:
The combat system is turn based (ish), and if you remove all the pauses while the player is choosing actions, an entire battle lasts like 40 seconds

This is canon, because just operating a mech for more than about four minutes will *kill the pilot*

I've talked about this before but imo mechs are always best when they're so insanely dangerous and untested and incomprehensible that they're only ever fielded out of sheer panic and desperation

See Also: Evangelion's power cables, Into The Breach's whole mood

Interesting that like... "complicated plot, told in small chunks out of order, from overlapping POVs of multiple characters" has been a core feature of Vanillaware's games all along, but 13 Sentinels is the first time it's been, like, part of the game's actual pitch?

Like every time someone tries to DESCRIBE 13 Sentinels it starts with "so it's this elaborate plot network of interconnected characters,"

which is correct, but like I suddenly realize that also describes Odin Sphere and Muramasa too lol

like it's fun to play this and realize "oh hey, they've ACTUALLY been trying to do this all along, it's just this is the first time they fully committed to making the game ABOUT the narrative, instead of giving it a backseat next to a baroque and weirdly user-hostile action RPG"

oh man one of the characters refers to missiles as "flying bombs" because he's from 1945

starting to get to some of the bigger plot revelations and: they are very cool

you've heard of love triangles well get ready for the love second stellation of icosahedron

a very funny detail of 13 Sentinels is that the writing refuses to place any actual significance on the number 13, despite having a lot of other Important Numbers

like you start the game and it's like 13 SENTINELS and then the plot is like "so the 15 pilots of the 23 sentinels,"

Getting towards the end of 13 Sentinels and it's extremely good but man I have no idea how they're gonna wrap up any of the remaining 200 plot threads lol

Like it's starting to explain mysteries but every answered question makes all the remaining questions more complex

The amount of narrative-design effort that had to go into this game is unbelievable

it amounts to like.... an entire TV season's worth of writing, except you can watch the episodes in any order, and it still has to remain coherent AND ALSO possess a decent sense of pacing

Like the fact that it works at ALL is insanely impressive, and then in addition it's also some genuinely good-ass scifi mystery plotting

Reminder: Yuki Takamiya

anyway the combat interface is very abstract but Yuki Takamiya just kicked a 300-meter tall robot to death

yooooo I finished 13 Sentinels

please play 13 Sentinels it is incredibly good

against all odds, they really did manage to loop all of their absurdly complex plot threads into a conclusion that Works

I love all of these anime chaos teens so much

my brain is full of 13 Sentinels emotions and I have no one to talk to about them because only like five people bought this game

please buy 13 Sentinels it will give you emotions, in like the good way though

there are a million other games I could be playing but for some reason I've just been grinding my way through 13 Sentinels' possibly-endless(?) postgame combat mode

it's worth it because this extremely rad track only ever appears in postgame missions: