Omega Quintet Review

Although it looks like an RPG from the screenshots, Omega Quintet is more like a mashup of an RPG and a visual novel. There is an overworld and in-depth turn-based battles like your average Final Fantasy, but the character interactions are the driving force.

The first thing that happens is a brief rundown of recent history — this fog-like portal stuff called Blare has turned some of humanity into monsters, called MAD. It’s forced ordinary people into hiding as only a few select females are born with the power to combat Blare. That power? Singing. Due to this, their battles against MAD and the Blare are shown on TV, apparently usually to those stood out in the streets, but that works out well for the lasses as being more popular gives them more power! Why does it give them power? I’ll tell you the exact in-game answer. It just does.

The PS4 badly cropped it, but they're all wearing monocles because I wanted them to.

The average singer, or Verse Maiden as they’re called, can expect to combat Blare for up to five years. As the game begins properly, we’re introduced to the most popular Verse Maiden ever: Miss Momoka. She’s so popular that she has been a Verse Maiden for twenty years, but needs to retire as she’s losing power and, I kid you not, her manager keeps saying she’s too old at thirty-something. It’s like this game was made just to poke fun at the music industry.

Cutscenes aren’t very enjoyable in Omega Quintet. The characters are almost-static images talking at the screen as they natter to one another. You can see them breathe and blink, but any change of pose is simply just a different static image. Sometimes it’s voiced (quite well, I’ll add), but a lot of the time it’s just endless text boxes which, along with the static images, means I had to avoid playing this whilst sitting too comfortably or too late at night, or fear falling asleep. This is a PS4 title, released in 2015 by the well-established developer, Idea Factory. The PS2 managed cinematic-quality cutscenes, so two generations later I shouldn’t be yawning whilst reading a videogame.

The character list is a complete trope-fest who don’t get along, like one of the many ensemble lists on TVTropes.org. The smart, shy one; the strong, big-boobed one; the weird one who talks to her cat; the older one who mothers the others; and the young ditzy one — these are the titular quintet of Verse Maidens. There’s more, but I don’t want to bore you and really only one more needs to be talked about: the tough guy who “isn’t” in love with the girl, whom we get the pleasure of playing as — Takt.

Here being asked by three girls if they can use him. I'm serious.

Teenager Takt and his childhood friend Otoha (I hate her, oh so much) are in a crowd of people watching Miss Momoka fight the Blare and MADs. When she finishes, the pair wander off so Otoha can practise her singing as she wants to be a Verse Maiden. Suddenly the Blare (a Blare? I’m really not sure) appears in front of them and MAD come out. I think that’s what’s supposed to be happening, but the cutscene is absolutely terrible… Miss Momoka is sent to help, as are two other Verse Maidens: Nene and Kanadeko. However, given Momoka’s tired state after her battles, saving the pair takes a lot out of her.

Now, would it surprise you to learn that Otoha manages to beat the MAD and close the Blare all by herself? If so, you’re doing very well reading this and I bet your parents are so proud of you! Of course, Takt has a go and apparently hurts himself doing so, but whenever he speaks there is no image because it’s his point-of-view. He later tries it again and we’re told it does absolutely nothing to the MAD, so that’s what I’m going with.

From the moment of waking up back at The Office, the home base, Takt and Otoha are told the bare minimum of anything right up until the instant it happens. It’s also where everything continues going in completely expected directions. Otoha is made a Verse Maiden, whilst making everyone wonder if she was dropped repeatedly on her head as a baby, then as a child and recently as a teenager. Takt is a guy, so obviously can’t become a Verse Maiden, not that he would be able to do the job if they made him one. However, Ayumi (Momoko’s manager) decides he can become Otoha’s manager and bodyguard because she’s useless without him, due to being unable to sing — her one job — when he’s not near her.

Takt providing zero bodyguarding as his friend is shoved into the breasts of a fellow Verse Maiden.

Do note that by this point in the game it has been about an hour, and I had done maybe seven battles, which take under a minute each due to controlling the super-powerful Momoka. Before Otoha even meets the other girls, which happened after two more story missions, I had seen about 50 tutorial screens. Like the cutscenes, they are lifeless, silent screens of text that go so far as to talk about things that you literally cannot do yet! The phrase “You must complete a mission to unlock xxx.” is not uncommon, and every single one is ended by a message asking “Message will close. Is this ok?”, with ‘No’ highlighted by default. Even when there are three tutorials in a row, each ends with that message.

Deep breath, calm blue ocean… At the Office, you can also buy from the shop, break down materials you find in the world and craft. Crafting is pretty much a requirement, as you can accessorize your girls and change their clothes. I’d love to say “Nothing pervy!”, but you can decide on which underwear style they wear, as well as clothes and shoes… Now, being idols, clothing is important to make a good impression on fans. It’s also important during battles, because it can be ripped by MAD attacks, so you have to keep an eye on the damage. Yes, the reason you can pick undies is because you will see them, should the dress rip...

So with that, let me talk about the battles. Every move has an attack effective range, which will mean some characters will need different weapons to be more effective at various ranges. Each combatant waits their turn as their image moves up the bar on the right of the screen, which is useful for gauging team attacks (once you unlock them). Being idols, Mics are what their weapons are called — which is a silly thing to call a pair of fans or a giant hammer. Using a Mic, item, defending, or a special move will use up action points, so you have to plan carefully until you unlock more action points, or kill MADs if there are multiple enemies in one battle, which increases your action points by one until the end of the battle.

Battles are sadly over too quickly sometimes.

Skills are like element spells and Mic skills are special moves tied to your weapon, though they both use the same source of SP (think magic points). With enough action points you can string skills and attacks together and try to get Overkill. To do this, which rewards you heavily after the battle, you have to do an attack or string of attacks that does the equivalent damage of all of the MAD’s remaining HP plus it’s maximum HP. For example, if it has 1HP remaining but had 200HP at the start, you would need to do 201 points of damage. It can be tricky to plan, but very rewarding in the long run.

After a battle you get money, experience and approval. As that increases, you unlock new quests, so you might need to go back into areas and clear more Blare as you level up, so you can unlock even more quests. It also levels up Takt, so is well worth trying to get, by doing well in fights.

Takt tags along on missions, being the manager, and can be assigned to one Verse Maiden at a time, but switched during battles. He helps do follow-up attacks and can defend the girl he’s assigned to. However, he can only be used four times per battle, so you have to choose your opportunities carefully as you get further in the game.

One thing I forgot to mention about The Office, is the Promotional Video System (PVS). You create a song and dance routine for your girls — because they’re teen pop idols, remember. By doing more such as viewing optional events, and increasing your approval rating, you might unlock new dance moves, songs, camera angles… You can also do your own dance routines using the PlayStation Camera, though I don’t have one so couldn’t test that. You decide the song, the camera angles, which one gets the spotlight, who sings at which point… It’s very in-depth, and shows that the game is fully capable of doing animated cutscenes — the developers just decided against them.

Both the PVS and one of the thousands of tutorial screens, in one screenshot.

Graphically, Omega Quintet doesn’t exactly stun. It’s a game that could easily have been a PS3 title, maybe even a Vita exclusive. There’s a lot of love and attention to detail in this game, sadly it’s not graphical detail. It’s a shame because the soundtrack is pretty great. As you might expect from a game starring almost exclusively anime-style pop stars, it has a lot of J-pop songs. And as a fan of some J-pop, I truly enjoyed them.

Overall, the uninspired graphics and, frankly, terrible generic writing badly mar a game that could have shone. The battle system is far too complex for me to explain sufficiently, with a skill tree I didn’t even get around to mentioning, an assisting fighter and many different weapon types, which should have been the main selling point of this title. “World gone bad, chosen ones can save it” is as generic a plot as you can get, and on a platform startlingly devoid of JRPGs it would have sold regardless of that, had Idea Factory pushed the battles to the forefront.

As it is, we have a great battle system and the ultimate in the sheer amount of customisation features, hampered by a metric-butt-ton of boring dialogue, dragging cutscenes which are boring to watch and boring characters. Omega Quintet could have been so much more.

Now you too can dislike Otoha! And see some 'plot'...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWlSid1LWz0