Thoughts About the Second Hour
Yesterday I finally finished up my play-through of the Switch version and yes I cried during the very final cutscene lol
But then I went back to my new PS4 save and continued on...
Here we are starting to get into the longer prologues... I was able to blast through three of them + tutorial battles in the first hour, here we slow down a little
I'm not sure why exactly the English localization was unable to use H.G. Wells's name in-game but the whole "that one author" thing is awkward as hell, especially with the JP voice track on. when I said in my last thoughts post that the localization was dodgy, well... this is kinda what I mean lmao. I figure this is some copyright-based limitation but it's still silly, especially when the allusions to The War of the Worlds are so explicit otherwise
that said I find it interesting that the world of 13 Sentinels has stand-in fake names for movies from our own, but The War of the Worlds (and its author) is explicitly name-dropped. I just find this interesting because you know what movies they're "not" talking about otherwise (Godzilla, E.T., Terminator, etc.). this may perhaps be due to something we find out later
I love Minami, honestly... this game has really great female characters. I think most of the guys are actually kinda boring (their scenarios are much more interesting than they themselves are, let's put it that way) but the girls are all *chef's kiss*
I also love BJ... you can tell, after he gets oriented, that he thinks Minami is kind of A LOT
I was playing this and going through the last part of Minami's prologue thinking, wow I just love all of this... honestly the end with the Hi-Quads looming in the background (and the one suddenly standing up to look at her on the ridge) is one of the best moments of the early game
this isn't the first time Lonely Struggle is played but I really love this track and its use here... the whole soundtrack is pretty great but sometimes it's easy to forget it's a game soundtrack. Lonely Struggle in particular sounds like it came straight out of a Godzilla movie
Ogata showed up before in Hijiyama's prologue and I didn't like him there, either lmao
finally getting to the battle tutorial section... out of all the sentinels, the 2nd gen and 3rd gen are the ones where I'm reminded, oh yeah, these things are basically walking tanks. 3rd gen in particular are slow as fuck for most of the main campaign
I'll talk about Miura more when I get to his prologue but I think he is actually one of the better-written guys in the game... out of all of the boys I think he has the most nuance, unfortunately on the surface he's kinda boring lmao
another blink and you'll miss it bit of foreshadowing: "this was his last gift to me"
then we get to Yakushiji's prologue, which has to be my favorite in the entire game... all the scenes are really well put-together and memorable, from Kurabe showing up in the sentinel right up to the "contract" scene with Fluffy
another thing we are shown very casually: Kisaragi comes from the same "time" as Yakushiji
I remember this being the first part of the game where I was really truly disoriented... you go from 2024 (hmm) to 1985 (hmmmm) with a flashback to 2025 (hmmmmmm) and I was like wow there's just something kinda cray cray about this. the time traveling seemed very significant when it was shown in Hijiyama's and Minami's prologues but here it's happened so casually and without comment lmao so when the talking cat shows up it doesn't even seem that weird tbqh
when I said the game doesn't spoon feed you information, this is all what I'm kind of talking about... you already got shown that there's something up with Kurabe in his prologue (the documents in Morimura's office), but here we find out three things: he's a time traveler (and from very, very far into the future), he actually was Juro Izumi, and he's suffering memory loss. Kisaragi is also from Yakushiji's time period but we know she's also in 1985 at the same time, as shown in Fuyusaka's prologue. time travel was introduced in Hijiyama's prologue and now everyone can apparently do it lmao. the game does eventually provide explanations for all this but the explanations are usually only stated once and never brought up again
I love the scene with Fluffy, he's honestly a great character. once you know who he actually is all of this is very funny and also note that he never once lies to Yakushiji lmao
do note that no matter what you pick during the "choice" Yakushiji actually refuses to make a contract with Fluffy... she either sarcastically "accepts" or just straight up says no
two great pieces of music play in this prologue, Impending Doom (which was first played in Kurabe's prologue) and A Clause with Claws, one of my favorite tracks in the story sections
finally, the battle segment... we're introduced to sentinel recovery here but during my first play through, I never used it. I forgot it was even a thing to be quite honest until I was browsing YT comment sections and someone mentioned how they almost got a game over in one part of the game... and I was like "oh yeah :o"
I don't like Ogata but I do think he and Kisaragi are a good couple lmao
little tangent: if I ever harp on about how I forgot some significant detail in the tutorial section it's because... the second time I picked this up I believe I played up to a certain point and then put it down for a couple weeks . as much as I love this game, for me it didn't really pick up until a certain series of events several hours into it. the early game is equal parts entertaining, confusing, and honestly kinda boring (which is why I didn't zip through it when it launched, and even back in 2020 I only got about 8 hours into it before I stopped playing). but on a repeat play through you can see just how tight and well-written the narrative actually is. it's just the game is really really invested in getting you to think it's about one thing when it's actually about something else entirely :v
I really love the little drone icon on BJ's projected screen.... bless