Quarantine Control #32: Echoes of Sentinels in Another World

These Quarantine Control entries have always opened by briefly documenting how morbid things are in the world, with the Covid-19 pandemic and many democracies being in danger simultaneously. The former especially reached a fever pitch this week. This newest Covid wave, the second or the third depending on the expert you listen to, is proving to be the most dangerous yet, with the US in particular setting new records for cases, breaking those achieved during the previous height in the spring. There’s a lot happening, but the virus is still out there, despite people going through with having gatherings anyway. Even with treatment for the virus improving, it’s still not a pleasure to go through. It, surprisingly, did not disappear after the election, despite what a certain person implied.

Good thing we have entertainment to distract us from the hell unfolding in the outside would, huh? Man.

 

Angela Moseley

Elections took place last week and instead of spending the night following the horse race, I took my chances on gaming. Given that it took until Saturday to have a victor in the race, I believe I made the right choice. Is anyone actually shocked that the lame duck president won’t coincide that he lost his reelection bid? Of course not– this is our reality now. Fortunately games are still a great escape from reality.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (2020)
Source: PS4
Episodes: 1 video game

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is the third Vanillaware game I’ve played. The other two games were Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Dragon’s Crown. Those games had similar elements of hack and slash fun, but 13 Sentinels is unlike anything I’ve seen from Vanillaware. Going in, I had a vague idea it had RTS elements, but I wasn’t prepared for the tight integration of both the story and the RTS modes. When I livestreamed first impressions of this game in September, I had barely scratched the surface of what to expect in terms of story and gameplay.

After I picked up from where I left off in September, I was quickly taken aback at the complexity of 13 Sentinel’s story. If I’m being totally honest, at 20 hours I only have a fuzzy idea of the main plot and its overall driving forces. This is largely due to being a tale that unfolds in a non-linear way, told through a series of vignettes for each of the 13 characters. At the start, the first six characters are unlocked easily enough, but conditions for unlocking more characters or further progressing in the story quickly escalate. Progression becomes a cycle of having to play through the game’s three modes—Remembrance, Destruction, and Analysis. You need a given character’s story to unlock a difference character’s story in Remembrance mode, to clear waves of enemies in Destruction mode, or to unlock files in Analysis mode. All of these modes actually play brilliantly off each other in terms of gameplay.

Destruction mode, aka the RTS game must be occasionally played before progress can be continued in Remembrance mode. Of all the types of games I’ve played throughout the years, I probably have the least amount of experience with RTS titles. I expected the game to steam roll me on normal, but I’m surprised that I’ve been winning every round with the highest rank possible and have been able to meet all or most of the win conditions. This mode of the game has the 13 characters piloting giant mechs, aka the sentinels to combat kaiju. The kaiju in this game are less like giant monsters and more like strange excavating machinery that has been weaponized.

Unfortunately, the battles take place on a massive 3D city grid with a blue icons and rings representing the sentinels and pink pixelated icons representing the kaiju. There are no epic fights drawn in Vanillaware’s gorgeous 2D art style, just icons pushing against each other on screen with lasers, missiles, and gun fire added. 2D talking heads in the form of a video projection represents the characters whenever they talk. In terms of moving, navigating to find kaiju when they first spawn on a map can be a pain, especially when all you have is a mini-map to rely on. Complaints aside, Destruction mode can be fun once you start unlocking abilities and more strategy is involved. At this point, I’m not very deep into this mode and I’m just waiting for the difficultly to ramp up.

Playing through Destruction gives you access to Mystery Points, which are used to unlock files in Analysis mode. This mode is a glorified files archive. You can learn more about characters and events as they are unlocked by playing the story or by using those Mystery Points to unlock information sooner. Going the unlock route also grants removes lock conditions for characters in Remembrance mode.

Remembrance mode is the meat and potatoes of 13 Sentinels. It is where the entire story unfolds. Playing this mode also grants Meta Chips which are points used to unlock abilities for sentinels in Destruction. As I said earlier, the story itself is complicated because of the vignettes and the non-linear progression. You play as the characters Juro Kurabe (who was once known as Juro Izami), Iori Fuyusaka, El Sekigahara, Keitaro Miura, Megumi Yakushiji, Natsuno Minami, Nenji Ogata, Renya Gouto, Ryoko Shinonome, Shu Amiguchi, Takatoshi Hijiyama, Tomi Kisaragi, and Yuki Takamiya. It’s difficult to piece together where everything started, who’s being manipulated, who’s outright lying, and who’s actually telling the truth. It doesn’t help that several characters also have amnesia. So far I understand that in the 2100s mankind was set to explore new worlds, but someone or perhaps an organization decided that humanity shouldn’t have a future. So they sent the kaiju to destroy civilizations on Earth. 13 teenagers have the ability to pilot sentinels and protect humans from the kaiju.

For some reason the teenagers also have the ability to travel through time to effect history in order to give humanity more chances– just in case they fail in a particular timeline. The kaiju also seem to have this ability because why not. Various eras of humanity are traversed with everything converging in the year 1985. Several factions want to use the sentinels to either help or harm humanity in the long run. Naturally, things get wild because of time travel. Adult versions of the teenagers have their own agendas, and everything from nanomachines to talking cats is involved. Take some of my synopsis with a grain of salt, as I still don’t have a complete picture of the story. Nevertheless, seeing all the individual threads form the tapestry has been exciting.

On a final note 13 Sentinels has an amazing variety of sci-fi shout-outs, references, and homages. I’ve come across references to Godzilla, Star Wars, Akira, The War of the Worlds, E.T., The Terminator, and even Puella Magi Madoka Magica. There’s probably more I missed, but this game acknowledges sci-fi nerds in a huge way and I’m here for it.

I can’t see a reason not to recommend 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, especially if you own a PS4. It’s probably one of the most interesting games Vanillaware has developed to date.

 

 

Geoffrey Barnes

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age — Definitive Edition Demo (2020)
Source: PlayStation 4
Episodes: It’s just a game demo

I’d read several good impressions about Dragon Quest XI since the original version released in Japan in July 2017, a moment in time that feels like it happened ages ago. People who played it when it launched in the country attested to it being one of the best games in the franchise, and one of the best Japanese RPGs in this console generation. That’s high praise despite recent consoles not receiving as many JRPGs compared to the PlayStation 2, Super Nintendo, and even Nintendo DS eras. This left me with no choice but to download the demo for, ahem, Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age — Definitive Edition (goodness) that arrived ahead of this version’s release on December 2nd.

This is the same demo that released for Switch ahead of its release, for a version that will literally be the same one released on that system a year ago — complete with graphics downgrades compared to the original PlayStation 4 and Steam versions. It’s billed as a ten-hour demo, which gave me the impression that it would present a significant portion of the game but cut the player off upon reaching the ten-hour mark, which it fortunately didn’t. It presents more than enough content to get a feel for it, but I came away surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

What I enjoyed most about the content here is how it feels like a JRPG without compromises. Most developers who’ve stuck with the genre have needed to compromise in some way with their titles since the PS2 era, dropping features that would have cost too many resources with increasing production values. Overworlds were the biggest feature, but open fields that guided the party from one place to another were also reduced in size. Even the behemoth Final Fantasy series wasn’t spared, as the three numbered single-player games in the franchise released during the PS2 era dropped overworlds, and they haven’t returned in the same way since. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King was one of the few games released during the era that didn’t cut any features compared to its predecessors, and DQXI endearingly continues that trend.

There are also several sizable towns big enough that I had to learn the layouts available to roam through in the demo. The development teams for the DQ games can create all these resources because the games sell millions in Japan alone, which makes these features even more worth cherishing upon seeing them here. I’m sure there are several more impressive examples awaiting in the main game.

The “Classic RPG with a New Sheen” features are combined with another key one: Turn-based battles. They’re remarkably similar to this from the DQ franchise’s more-than-30-year history (back when it was known as Dragon Warrior to English-speakers). The battles are remarkably similar to DQVIII’s, involving characters attacking one by one with nice animation, especially for the cute enemies. There’s an option to move during battle, but I didn’t see much of a point of using it, and it can be turned off to have the camera present a larger and dynamic view of the battle.

I have few complaints with what I’ve played, and the only key one is how the battle system can only be used to its fullest for a short time here. The demo roughly covers the game’s first ten hours, but most of the travelling and battles only involve the mute protagonist and Erik. It’s not until literally minutes before the demo ends that two other characters, Veronica and Serena, are fully usable for a full party of four. But I wouldn’t say this is a problem with the demo per se: It serves its purpose in providing an appetizer for the main course. There’s a good reason why the save file here will carry over to the final game, though I’m not sure if I’ll keep my file due to my desire to upgrade character stats differently.

As you can tell from reading the above, I enjoyed my time with the demo. It’s just the kind of breezy entertainment I needed at the moment, what with the world perpetually being on fire. This is the kind of game I like to play during the Christmas holiday, one that will last at least 60 hours, like any other classic RPG. With this port’s December 2nd release, the timing will be perfect.

 

Joseph Daniels

Restaurant to Another World
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12

The isekai genre is a broad one.  There are many ways that one can journey into another world, most of them involuntary.  You’d think the barriers between worlds were brittle like tissue paper, considering how many of these shows there are.

What if you could choose to go to another world whenever you’d like, though?  That’s the mechanic behind the mirrors in Cornelia Funke’s MirrorWorld series.  Jacob Reckless can travel from our world to a world that is technologically a few centuries behind our own, whenever he wants, just by activating one of the many mirrors found around either world.  The fourth book was just recently released in German and I eagerly await the English version.

A similar mechanic was created for the Star Trek Expanded Universe, a bar called the Captain’s Table, where only those who have commanded a vessel of some sort (there is a focus on starship captains, considering this is Star Trek we’re talking about) can enter and have a mug on the house, provided they tell a sufficient story in exchange.  A series of books were written about this concept starring various captains from throughout Star Trek history, from Christopher Pike to Kathryn Janeway, and a few years later, an additional short story collection was written to give captains like Jonathan Archer a chance to visit the Table.  You won’t have to find the door, the door will find you, as long as you’ve sat in that captain’s chair.

Now, imagine if you could only use the magic portal every seven days, but you actually could find it because it always appeared in the same place each time.  Every week on the Day of Satur (I get the feeling this sounds awkward because it’s being translated from English to the language of the other world, then back to English), a certain restaurant in Tokyo closes to traffic from Earth, and opens to traffic from a world filled with dragons and elves and mermaids and still plenty of humans, too.  Doors appear in various places in this other world in order to permit its citizens to partake in food unlike anything they could’ve dreamed of.

The restaurant serves Western food as interpreted by the Japanese, and apparently its sole chef is such a good cook that all of his patrons keep coming back every week to eat food that’s almost supernatural in its quality.

You might be wondering whether there’s a crisis that needs to be solved or an ongoing struggle that the characters need to overcome like you usually see in an isekai anime, but this is not that sort of show.  Restaurant to Another World is an anthology series, but unlike The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Pet Shop of Horrors, characters don’t die from cruel twist endings.  As such, I wish I could’ve followed these characters more.  The series developed a bit of a backstory to the dragons, for example, and then only featured two of them.  A third is suggested to be the “blue god” that Arte prays to in order to transform her mermaid tail into dragon legs so she can walk on land and partake in the food at the restaurant.

I’d also love to have gotten more of a look at the economy of this other world compared to Earth, since it seems that currency is uniform across all nations in this other world, in stark contrast to the economy of Earth, where each and every country has its own currency and even two nations with the same denominations (dollars and cents, for example) have to calculate the worth of their tender against other nations.  100 copper coins is equal to one silver coin, and 100 silver coins is equal to one gold coin.  If you’ve played Guild Wars 2 or World of Warcraft, you’re already going to be intimately familiar with this method of currency.

There is a certain suspension of disbelief required to not only enjoy watching Restaurant to Another World, but if episode seven is any indication, there’s a suspension of disbelief required to enjoy eating at the restaurant, too.  There are some unspoken rules that seem to be in place, and these rules apparently prevent a shipwrecked man from seeking salvation with any of the other patrons of the establishment, or even from getting to know each other beyond what their favourite foods are.

Sadly, this is only a twelve episode series, but it’s also based on a series of light novels, and there is also a manga available.  If you enjoy this show, it might be worth it to seek those out as well.  You won’t even have to wait until the Day of Satur.

 

It feels like Armageddon is being unleashed in the outside world, which could accurately describe what’s happening in the US hospital system with Covid cases rising at a staggering rate, and the death count is sure to increase in the weeks to come. The safest place remains in the house, though there are plenty of reasons to take to the streets these days. What a time.