Don’t Miss 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim While It’s 50% Off At Amazon (PS4/PS5)

Black Friday 2020 has brought an onslaught of game deals across PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC, and while we spend a ton of time talking about the discounts on AAA titles, Black Friday is a great opportunity to pick up some lesser-known games for your winter backlog. One such game is 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, which launched in Japan last year but released worldwide this past September. If you’re a fan of narrative-driven games, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a must-play, and it’s on sale for 50% off during Black Friday.

I started playing 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim a little over a week ago, and it already ranks in my personal top five games of 2020. It’s a cross-genre title, combining visual novel-esque dialogue scenes with realtime strategy combat that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. The premise: 13 high-schoolers are drawn into war against violent kaiju, which are destroying cities and threatening mankind’s existence. The kids fight back using giant mechs, or sentinels, and the realtime battles cover their time in the war. However, the narrative in Aegis Rim is anything but linear, and the game also includes adventure side-scrolling segments where you play as one of the teens and slowly put together their story. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is nominated for Best Narrative at this year’s Game Awards for good reason–its story is gripping, and though the battle sequences are fun, I’m most eager to see how all of these story threads interlink by the end.

Though I’m still in the early hours, critic Heidi Kemps scored the game a “superb” 9/10 in GameSpot’s 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim review after spending over 30 hours with it. “Despite what the box and blurbs might tell you, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim isn’t really a game about piloting giant robots. I mean, sure, you do fight off massive swarms of building-sized creatures hellbent on total destruction in an alternate-universe 1980s Japan at some points. But these seemingly model-kit-ready metal combat suits are just a plot device, a cog in the story,” Kemps wrote.

“In actuality, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a character drama: a twisting, turning sci-fi epic jumping through time and dimensions as it follows the lives of its numerous teen protagonists. Missiles, Gatling guns, and armor-crushing metal fisticuffs are merely a side event to the everyday drama of high-schoolers who find themselves unwilling pawns in a bigger game with the fate of the world at stake. And you know what? That’s great. Once the narrative of 13 Sentinels sinks its hooks into you, you want nothing more than to go along for the ride up until the very climax.”

See our guide to the best Black Friday game deals for more great discounts this week. We’ll be tracking more of the best deals as they crop up on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so stay tuned. For now, check out our latest Black Friday coverage.