by Stephen DeckAlso available on Windows
Review written by Stephen Deck; originally published on 07/17/2018 on Teacher by Day, Gamer by Night
Omega Quintet is another love-it-or-hate-it Compile Heart JRPG that, as anyone who’s familiar with Compile Heart’s games in the past decade or so can tell you, plays exactly like every other JRPG Compile Heart has made. I, personally, think that’s a fantastic thing. It also means, however, that you didn’t like one of Idea Factory’s and Compile Heart’s other recent JRPGs, you probably won’t like this one, either, since it’s basically the same game with different characters.
So the story of Omega Quintet is pretty familiar for Idea Factory fans. There’s this world-threatening evil phenomenon that’s spawning seven or eight different monsters each of which have approximately half a dozen palette swaps and destroying human civilization, and only a small group of scantily-clad young girls possess the ability to fight this evil. These “Verse Maidens” have the ability to weaponize their voices…or something…which allows them to slay these monsters and sing the portals spawning them out of existence. Yep, it’s exactly as stupid as it sounds, but for the specific type of weeb that loves Idea Factory’s shenanigans (read: me), it’s gloriously stupid. Leading this group of ladies is their “manager” and the main playable protagonist, Takt. I say playable, but that’s only technically true; he’s “your” character and who you run around as in your home base, but he isn’t usable in dungeons, and he’s only usable in battle in a support role, adding an occasional weak bonus attack or taking some of the damage of an enemy attack for your party characters.
The gameplay is your pretty standard modern turn-based JRPG. You pick a character to be the “leader” of the group who becomes the character you see while running around, and you explore dungeons to find items, plot flags, and bosses. There are no random encounters instead opting for Idea Factory’s recent norm of having contact with monsters in the dungeon start a battle. When you get in the battle, the combat is pretty standard. Rather than having a “your turn/enemy turn” format, the turns are based on each individual character’s stats and actions. You get a certain number of action points each turn, and the more of those you use, the longer it will be until your next turn. If you just use one action and then defend, your character’s next turn will come a lot sooner than if you used all four of your hypothetical action points to attack. There are some other nuances – using “Harmonize” to have all of your characters attack repeatedly one after another in a giga-combo of death – but that’s the basic. You have four basic types of attacks. First, if your regular attack that doesn’t use any energy. Then you have magic attacks that use special energy and have particular elemental affinities. Third, are your “mic” attacks which also use special energy but are based on the type of weapon you have equipped rather than a specific element. Fourth are a kind of special or super attack. These are technically still mic attacks, but in addition to using a large amount of special energy, they also use “Voltage” which can be charged up to 5 points by dealing and taking damage. These aren’t attacks that you’ll use often because of the voltage and energy requirement, but they deal devastating damage when you do use them.
When I mentioned the mic attacks, I mentioned that they were based on what type of weapon you’re using. There are six (but really five) types of weapons. The type that I don’t really count is the sword because only Takt can use that weapon type, and that’s also the only weapon type that Takt can use. The other five types, however, can be used by any of the five girls and can be changed at any time although each weapon has an affinity stat with each girl that can be leveled up by using that weapon type and determines how many action points they get. These five weapon types are the battleaxe, the spear, the sniper rifle, the brass knuckles on steroids, and the fan. Each of these weapons has varying levels of effect based on the distance between the character and the enemy.
Your battles are broken down into 8 “levels” with regard to field positions. There are five rows on which enemies can be, and your characters are on three rows. In general, you’ll want your longer ranged characters like those with sniper rifles or spears on the back rows, but that’s not always the most advantageous place as battles get more complex. Suppose that your enemies are all on the fifth row of the enemy plane causing a serious drop in damage and accuracy for short-range characters even if they’re on the front row. That would be too much distance to have your sniper on your back row, so in that case, you’d want to move them upfront even though that opens them up to more damage. On lower difficulties, this isn’t as much of a concern, but it will make or break a fight on higher difficulties. You can tell a certain weapon or attack’s ideal range by the color of the enemy field when you have the attack selected and are choosing a target; green indicates the ideal range, blue indicates a good effective range, yellow indicates a sub-optimal range, and red indicates that it’s a seriously out of range attack. Even in the red ranges, your attacks will still do damage, but they’ll suffer big penalties to accuracy and damage upwards of 25%. Likewise, if your attack is in the green range, it will enjoy a boon to accuracy and damage upwards of 25%.
My biggest problem with the game is the character development. They’re almost all ass holes. Seriously, like they’re all total jerks to each other. They’ll have moments now and then of being cute or sweet, but for like 90% of the game, they’re dicks. I’m totally cool with having one or two characters with generally rude personalities, but it’s pretty much the entire cast of the game. The only one who’s mean a minority of the time is Otoha, and that’s mostly because everyone’s always being mean to her so she’s the target more than the one doing the targeting. It just kind of put a damper on what would otherwise have been a cute harem titty anime game. >_< The game DOES, however, feature a separate set of hit points for your character and your character’s clothes, and when those outfit hitpoints reach zero, then you’ve got a cute anime girl fighting in her underwear. I love this game. :’) There’s also a music video choreography minigame of sorts, but it didn’t seem to have much effect on the core game, so I never really messed with it.
Omega Quintet is a pretty standard Idea Factory/Compile Heart JRPG. Have you played Megadimension Neptunia VII? Then you’ve pretty much played Omega Quintet. There are a couple of little gimmick differences along with the character and setting differences, but in terms of mechanics and actual gameplay, they’re pretty much exactly the same. Idea Factory doesn’t really push the envelope far, and its games are pretty niche, but if you’re like me and dig that niche, then you already know that this is a great game. My one big complaint is the ending. There’s a normal ending and a true ending, and the normal ending is…not really an ending. It’s basically “After the final battle, nothing changed, so let’s keep killing monsters to protect the city!” That’s it. No resolution whatsoever. Other than THAT, though, I had fun. I’m probably being a little more generous with this score than I should be, and I did start to feel a little bit of game fatigue towards the end, but all in all, I really enjoyed Omega Quintet and the few little unique elements it had. I’d recommend it for fans of titty anime games.
