13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a sprawling mecha-filled, time travel epic set in the 80s that is one part hand-painted visual novel and one part RTS. It’s a fantastic game that any sci-fi lover will enjoy—so here are 14 non-spoiler tips to get you started and maximize your fun with the game.
Power Through the Game
13 Sentinels is about 35 hours long—and it’s a game you’re going to want to power through. The story itself is cut into two parts: the present—i.e., the battle stages—and the past—i.e., the story mode. If that weren’t complex enough, there are 13 characters’ stories to go through—but you can’t just go through them one at a time. Instead, you’ll constantly be switching through all the characters’ stories in a non-linier fashion. While you’ll likely be able to figure out when each characters’ events are happening in regards to each other, if you drop this game for a few weeks and come back, you’re probably going to be pretty lost—and will have to spend an hour or two rewatching various scenes in the game’s timeline viewer to catch back up.
Do as Much of the Story as You Can Before Doing the Battles
When the game begins, you’ll alternate between the various characters’ prologues and battles in the present. However, once the prologue is done you’ll have much more freedom. You can move onto more battles or progress through the various characters’ stories.
My recommendation is to do each and every characters’ story until you can no longer progress. Then do the next 5 battles before returning to the story mode and repeating the process. The reason for this is that the battles happen chronologically after the character stories. While the battles aren’t exactly plot-heavy, there are plot scenes before and after each battle that do contain spoilers for the story scenes—and honestly, the story versions handle these reveals far better.
Read the Mystery Files You Unlock
By completing battles, special objectives, and by using mystery points, you are able to unlock mystery files. These cover everything from the technology and enemy types to locations and the food our heroes encounter. But the ones you should be sure to unlock right away are those related to the characters—both main and supporting. Not only do they contain details about the characters you may have missed, but they are also continuously updated with new and important information as the story progresses.
Check Out the Timeline Viewer After You Beat the Game
Once you beat the game, you get an updated timeline viewer. Not only does it allow you to see the whole story and each main character’s individual story chronologically, but it also does the same for many of the supporting characters. It’s super helpful—especially in a story that plays around with time like 13 Sentinels.
Oh… and don’t forget to check out the end of the complete timeline for a secret extra ending of sorts.
You Can Ignore Your Score
On the battle side of things, you’ll notice that you have two things you accumulate, score and Meta Chips. Score is useful for getting S-ranks but here’s the thing, you’ll probably have no issues getting an S-rank on every single mission if you do one simple thing: never click the recover button on the mission loadout screen.
Basically, for every two battles a pilot fights in, they’ll need to sit one out. However, as you have 13 characters to choose from, you’ll always have a full team to play with. Sure, you’ll need to rotate your characters so you have a viable team but if you never use recover, you build up an insane score combo that all but guarantees and S-rank—well at least if you follow the other tips in this guide.
Score also allows you to unlock mystery files. You’ll get one or two unlock points per battle naturally—though with score boosting terminal skills you can get 20 a battle. For the majority of the game, this doesn’t really matter. However, once you’re near the end of the game and have unlocked every possible mystery file, mystery points turn into something far more useful: Meta Chips.
Maximize Your Meta Chips Before Upgrading Anything Else
While score can be basically ignored if you never reset your combo meter by recovering, meta chips are vital to you winning battles in the first place. Meta chips are the currency used to upgrade your sentinels’ stats, upgrade their special attacks, and teach them new special attacks.
You get some chips just by playing the story but you’ll get the majority of them by killing enemies in battle. You can increase the amount you get by upgrading the Meta Chip Magnification skill in the terminal. It’ll take about 45,000 meta chips total to upgrade it to max (15,000 meta chips to upgrade to level 6 Meta-System and 30,000 for level 6 Meta Chip Magnification). It may seem like a lot at first but it is the gift that keeps on giving so the sooner you do it, the better off you’ll be. (And remember even doing it partway massively increases the Meta Chips you get making it easier to max it out.)
Besides, you won’t really need to upgrade any weapons for the first few battles—not if you remember that…
Sentry Guns Are Your Best Friend
Juro, Iori, and Ryoko pilot second-generation sentinels. While these are the “all-rounder” type sentinels, you won’t be using them as anything but factories to pop out automated railgun turrets turn after turn. These turrets are the key to victory and they only get more powerful as you level them—which should be one of your top priorities.
You should always have at least one second-generation sentinel in every battle (unless the special mission objectives don’t allow it). As you go through the game, it’s best to launch Juro and Iori together. Then, when they are on cooldown after two battles, use Ryoko as she has the unique ability to launch 2 sentry guns at once thanks to her Hyper Condenser (which you should unlock ASAP). If you can, try to stagger their usage so that all 3 can go destroy the boss together every five battles.
For best effect, when on defense, put your turrets at the cardinal points around the terminal. Once that’s done, fill in the intercardinal points. This will get you maximum coverage. When on offensive missions—i.e., boss battles—put the first few turrets around the terminal but then start placing them in forward positions so that they can hit the boss themselves. Just don’t clump them up when on the attack as the bosses love their ultra-powerful AOE attacks that can kill a turret in one hit.
It should also be noted that Renya, Shu, Megumi, and Yuki can pop out autonomous interceptors. However, while helpful, they don’t hold a candle in power to the sentry turrets—and honestly, the fourth-generation sentinels have more useful things to do than pop out interceptors constantly.
Nenji and Yuki Are Your Boss Killers
In many levels, there are bosses, factories that pump out an endless stream of enemy units, or both. While railguns can do the job eventually, it’s far easier to rely on the melee masters: Nenji and Yuki.
Nenji, in his first-generation sentinel, can do more damage in a single turn than any other character. His skills are built around using (and abusing) Demolish Blade which both bypasses armor and does a ton of damage. His Hyper Condenser ability (which you should unlock ASAP) powers up Demolish Blade even more—enough so that most factories go down in a single hit. But in the rare case where that’s not enough damage, he can release his limiter to double his damage (and movement) for a short period of time. It’s truly insane.
Nenji’s only weak point is that his mecha needs to use roads to get where he’s going. Yuki’s fourth-generation sentinel, on the other hand, does not. While her flying mecha is supposed to be for support, her skills include Counter and Chobham armor—which means she takes no damage from small fry enemies and kills them automatically when they try. For bosses, all she needs to do is fly up to them and use her leg spikes. Most factories will go down to a pair of these attacks.
Keitaro and Tomi Are Your Shield Killers
Eventually, enemies start building shield towers which make all enemies in range a lot harder to kill—even sentry turret spam won’t be enough. These shield towers are usually positioned at the back of the enemy formation. Sure, you can send Yuki to take them out but it’s kind of a waste of her single-target attack skills.
The better option is your railgun users. In their third-generation sentinels, Keitaro and Tomi can take out shield towers almost anywhere on the map without moving using their rail guns. But what makes them better than Natsuno is that their rail guns are far stronger. Miura has access to the mega railgun which does about double the damage per shot. Tomi, on the other hand, has an unlockable Hyper Condenser which lets her fire two shots per turn. Of course, these don’t just wreak shield towers—almost everything other than factories will go down in a single shot. So they are useful in nearly all situations.
Anti-air Defense Flares Are Your First and Last Line of Defense
All the first-generation sentinels can use anti-air defense flares. These do two important things: 1) instantly destroy any missile that enters their area of effect and 2) do damage over time to flying enemies. The further you get into the game, the more important it is to always have a layer of anti-air defense flares over the terminal—as well as the turrets/sentinels surrounding it. In truth, there are some later battles where you might want a first-generation sentinel (other than Nenji as he has better things to do) to simply camp at base doing nothing but putting out flares and defending to restore EP.
Don’t Forget Your Flare Torpedoes/Gravity Missiles
All fourth-generation sentinels have the ability to launch flare missiles, gravity missiles, or both. Flare Torpedoes create a wide area inside which all enemies take damage continuously—be they on the ground or in the air. Popping one of these on an enemy spawn point will make everyone else’s job much easier. Gravity Missiles, on the other hand, do two things: 1) stop enemy movement for a limited amount of time and 2) group them all up into a nice bundle for missiles or railguns. Both are devastating throughout the entire game.
A Mix of Sentinel Types is Important
If it’s not obvious yet, 90% of the time you’re going to want a team that includes at least one of each type of sentinel. The only time you don’t want this mix is when the special mission objectives ask for something else. If your curious, my anti-boss team is generally Nenji, Iori, Ryoko, Tomi, Yuki, and Shu.
Character Relationships Effect Battle
While you may have a favorite team (like mine above), you’re going to be using every character—both because of special objectives and brain overload. While you should try to take at least one of each sentinel type, you should also consider their pilots. As you play through the story, you’re going to notice that certain characters are friends with/in love with other characters. Most of the time these characters get special abilities when paired together—with more abilities unlocking the higher level the pilot becomes. So if at all possible, pair your pilots with those they care about.
Embrace the Nostalgia
13 Sentinels is a love letter to 80s/90s sci-fi. From American films like Robot Jox and E.T. to anime like Sailor Moon and Macross, there’s an insane amount of references to other works. Half the fun of this game is picking them all out. So revel in that nostalgia—embrace it and enjoy all the little ways it is twisted to create this new and entertaining story.
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