13 Sentinels is a masterpiece and it’s even better on Switch

polygon.com:

We’ve published thousands of words about why you should play 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, an audacious video game that combines a century of science-fiction tropes into something unpredictably new. Its story is universal by multiple definitions of the word, and its structure successfully blurs the line between a visual novel and a master’s thesis in genre fiction. That said, I understand why most readers skipped #15 on Polygon’s Top 50 Games of 2020 list.

Like the game’s teenage protagonists, always a step behind the kaiju hellbent on destroying the world, 13 Sentinels has suffered from bad timing. The title was released on PlayStation 4 in the weeks before the PlayStation 5’s launch, a bad time for a 2D game that probably could have run on the PlayStation 3. Today, the game finally debuts on Nintendo Switch. With few major releases over the next month, hopefully, this little masterpiece will finally get the big audience it deserves.

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Okay, so it’s great, but why should anyone actually play this game with no connection to an established franchise, superhero, or general intellectual property? Because you’re unlikely to play anything that’s both this polished while being this batshit — in the best possible way.

The story takes place in 1984, along with a handful of points in the past and future, as early as 1945 and as late as… well, I won’t spoil that for you. You play through