13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Developer Vanillaware Publisher Sega Format PS4 Release Out now

There may be no more accurate summary of Vanillaware’s ambitious sci-fi saga than Benoit Blanc’s oft-quoted reflection on the whodunnit in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out: “It makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.” Both are absolutely true here: this visual novel/strategy hybrid has a plot that regularly sprints headlong down narrative cul-de-sacs only to manoeuvre its way out of them with a handy deus ex machina. Occasionally it goes off at tangents that at the time seem peripheral to the main plot, but later gain greater significance. It indulges in pointless but