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13 Sentinels: I'll Be Back to the Future War of the Worlds

Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Interceptors and sentry guns are indeed great. I discovered this eventually, and they really trivialize a lot of battles. You will hit a point, even in normal, where you really need the proper loadout and characters to win. For me, that was the penultimate battle, and it's a case where having melee folks and boosting your speed and power at the cost of defense comes in really handy. (There might be another approach, but it worked for me.) Until that battle, I'd S-Ranked everything, although once I got through it I also S-Ranked it (on Normal).
 
Positronic Brain

Positronic Brain

Out Of Warranty
(He/him)
I got a lot of mileage from Usami's skill, since it was useful to keep armored enemies from ever reaching my melee guys.

While battles were easy (which is great because I hate RTSs) I did love the exhaustion and bonus mechanic, which forced me to juggle who went into which battle. Otherwise I'd just dropped my Sentry and Drone deploying units every battle and called it a day.
 
Juno

Juno

The DRKest Roe
(He, Him)
Pretty much every battle I had my 2nd generation units place turrets on almost every turn they could. They're very good, especially when you get Ryoko's upgrade that allows you to place 2 turrets in one location
 
Paul le Fou

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Yep. Ryoko, Megumi and Renya get MVP not-infrequently, despite almost never moving from the terminal or doing anything but deploying their various support units.

I have 7 or 8 characters' stories done. Patrick, I think it was, said something above about how the back end of the game doesn't have too many bigger or more interesting reveals, and I've noticed that a little bit - all the "wow wtf" twists are frontloaded to the early-middle of each character's story, and then the latter parts are mostly about all the interweaving branches getting characters into place for the final battle. Heck, some of the endings even feel a bit abrupt or underdeveloped; like Iori's, who will probably be (if she's not guaranteed to be) most people's first character finished, has all these clues about dreams, about her connection to Juro and to Morimura, and then the last chapter almost feels abrupt as it explains (specific story spoilers now) how Morimura was trying to load her memories into Fuyusaka then kinda just gave up when it didn't work, and then Iori was like, "I'm going to fight to protect everyone!". I noticed some big moments in Hijiyama's story despite being late in the game, only to realize his individual story was still around 50%.

I look forward to going back through the encyclopedia and seeing the characters' scenes down the list, so I can place them in chronological order overall and where they showed up in other stories relative to their own. Certain characters more than others (Lookin' at you, Sekigahara).
 
Positronic Brain

Positronic Brain

Out Of Warranty
(He/him)
Some stories do end abrutly because either that's where the character's personal stake ends (although they still do stuff, but in other people's paths) or because they are bound by their genre. Each one of the 13 stories is a riff on one kind of genre story, and Iori's[/ISPOILER ]is clearly a romance shoujo, which does a great disservice to the character and to her plotline, I'm afraid. But some of her stuff will be picked up later.
 
madhair60

madhair60

Video games
find it difficult to get past the "school children getting naked and mounting the controls" thing to be honest.
 
Peklo

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Like talked about upthread, the context is different. I was able to, say, see Amazon from Dragon's Crown and inhabit her as an avatar and read wish-fulfillment, power fantasy and exaggerated idealization into the fabric of those sexualized interactions and depictions for a multitude of genre and subject-specific reasons. Applying similar to 13 Sentinels is a markedly different challenge, because what at a glance can seem "tamer" is contextually much more troubling. From what I've seen of the game, the frequency of this type of exploitation is lesser than in other Vanillaware projects--the issue is that more than ever, it should not be present at all.
 
MrBlarney

MrBlarney

(he / him)
So I just started playing this after finishing Pikmin 4, and yeah, I need to let out a few thoughts? No, not about the weird nude mech piloting thing (though it is decidedly unnecessary), but the wacky timey wimey BS that surrounds the game's story as a whole. I'm only nine hours into the game, and there are hooks all over the place in this thing. Going through the prologue, I expected there to be just four time periods to keep track of, some kind of 'every forty years' kind of deal. But then they introduce more periods up through the late 22th century. Additionally, they bring in characters that look like the main characters, but have different names? I feel like this is a game I'm going to have to play exclusively until I complete it in order to keep my mind wrapped around all that it's trying to feed me.

As for the tactical side of the game, I decided to just jump into Intense from the start. Gotten two S ranks and one A rank so far, but I think a lot of that is coming from the fact that I put most of my Meta Chips back into the Meta System rather than my Sentinels. I figured that given how many Chips I had from exploring the initial story paths that I'd be fine on making an early investment in score and Chips generation. On the other hand, I didn't expect beelining those improvements would be so pricey. I'm not sure if I need to go back and get an S-rank on that third stage or if I should avoid the grinding urge. It's only the first three stages, but the game feels lenient enough that I should be fine pushing forward with my current strategy. Then again, the game's emphasis on mysteries does want me to unlock as many information files as possible...
 
MrBlarney

MrBlarney

(he / him)
I have already brought myself to a little over 50% completion on the Reminisce and Destruction components of this game, and it certainly has been a ride so far. The game's doing a good job of both closing off mysteries as well as opening new ones. I like that it's not just backloading all the explanations, but dealing things in and out at a reasonable pace. I don't know if anyone else cares, but if only for myself, I'm gonna post some guesses for the overall scenario based on what I've seen.
I think I've only seen about half of them, but I'm guessing that every protagonist has a 2188 counterpart. Each of the protagonists is a clone of their 2188 originals, through Project Ark, and the UFO. The UFO underlies (literally) a controlled community within which the Ark colonists live, governed by Universal Control. Maybe this is to support them until the surrounding planet can be terraformed to a state that humanity can spread back out, or maybe that's just how the colony has to be set up to sustain humanity?

It's not yet clear to me why the Deimos have been turned against humanity, but it seems as though the DD426 infection put a wrench into the defenders' use of the Sentinels, causing them to lose the 2064 battle catastrophically. I'm mostly on the belief that the nanomachine injections from the Magical Gun are being used to neutralize and counteract the DD426 code, allowing the Sentinels to be used again for the final battle. But it's also confusing since I originally thought that the adult, original Izumi was the voice behind Yakushiji's Fluffy, but why would he want to re-activate the Sentinels? (Also, what's up with the fact that Fluffy's actually a phantom entity? Nanomachine tomfoolery? Is it similar to Kurabe's hallucinations of his pal Shiba?)

I'm actually still not sure if the adult Ida, Izumi, and Morimura we keep seeing are the 2188 originals, or if they're third instances of those individuals. What is Okino's angle on identifying and controlling the D-Key? I don't think I have everyone's alignments worked out either. A stray thought entered my mind: what if the Sectors are physical locations designed to be like different time periods, and time travel is just spatial travel instead? I'm sure my questions will be answered, and any misconceptions will be corrected, in due time.

As for how the Destruction battles have been going so far, I've gotten a number of A and B ranks, though still mostly S. I've had a few instances of units being drawn to critical health, but I also haven't been in major danger of losing a battle yet. So Intense is feeling like a right level of difficulty for now, where I don't need to work that hard just to get a passing grade, but I'll need to plan things out (or come back with higher levels) to get the S ranks. A little bit of going back to full-clear everything in Area 1 has helped give me the funds to actually kit everyone out, including building out the unique traits of each unit's Sentinel. It's also nice to see the Pilot Skills also lean each unit towards a specific kind of playstyle.
 
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