The marketing for Compile Heart’s latest PS exclusive, Omega Quintet, promises music, harmonies and idols. Often labelled by some media as a mix of turned based RPG and idol-simulator, how much of all this is accurate and how is the game, exactly?
Let’s go through each aspect of the game at a time.
General gameplay:
The office is your hub/base of operations, where you can craft or disassemble items, access the PVS (discussed later), customize the looks of your characters, accept main story missions, experience optional sub events and talk with the girls.
From there, you can leave to access either the World Map or the Town Map. The latter will be somewhat familiar for Neptunia fans as instead of being an actual town with NPCs it’s just a menu where you select points where avatar NPCs with strange names will give you side quests to complete. These side quests can have some obscure prerequisites and you have to complete all of them if you want to get the true ending, so you might want to be careful before completing main quests to make sure you don’t miss any, or use a guide if you don’t mind.
The World Map lets you choose dungeons where you’ll do battle. These are an improvement over previous Compile Heart games, with some of them being pretty damn huge and with multiple branches. I only got to fully explore the first dungeon by the time the game was about to end. This is also partially because not all areas are accessible from the get go. A few key ones are locked behind main story progression while others require upgrades for the specific field abilities of the characters you have, which are obtained by completing side quests. Stuff like breaking down walls, discovering invisible items, hacking computers, etc.
Going back to the office, let’s talk about the crafting system. As you’d expect from most RPGs, monsters drop items; usually there’s a normal drop and a rare drop. These are called materials and they need to be disassembled first (will become unable to be delivered for side quests). There is also a raw material exchange option that lets you trade an higher tier material for a bigger amount of lower tier ones (for example, 1 of X for 4 of Y, X being the higher tier drop). You need the materials to craft new Mics (the game’s word for weapons), and Amps. Amps are special items that increase the power of the characters. They are very important for the hardest content of the game because they provide the biggest boosts, which can come in the form of high stat increase, elemental resistances, exp/currency % boosts. You can set more than one in each character but you’ll need to spend currency to strengthen the power of an outfit in order to do so (which will also increase the durability of the outfit.. also important because your outfit can break during a battle). Also, when outfits are ordered for one character they cannot be used equipped in a different girl, so you’ll have to be careful with your options, as the strongest amps can be pretty expensive.
Needless to say, you can also craft recovery items with the materials you collect, nothing to add there.
Battle system:
Of course, the main component of the gameplay is the combat, and this is probably the best thing about this game. There’s a lot to it and I’m gonna try to explain it as best as possible.
First, let’s start with the basics that are common among many games. It’s turned based. There are elemental spells, elemental resistances, status ailments, ailment resistances, etc…
Then there’s also turn order, as you’d expect. There are some twists here though. One will be discussed ahead, while the other is flash effects (whoever lands on a turn order “sphere”/placement) that provide all kinds of buffs, like SP/HP recovery, higher accuracy, extra damage, etc. You have to be careful to not let the enemies land on these spots though, as they also benefit from them. This is where turn order manipulation comes in. Everything you do in combat has a “wait” value attached to it. The higher it is (proportional to the move’s power), the more that character will be pushed further down the turn order. So weaker moves or defending can be beneficial in the long run. But it doesn’t end there, as you can also use moves with special effects like “Wait damage” or “Turn delay”, which increase the wait value for your target enemy, pushing them down the turn order.
Keep in mind though, enemies can “break order”. With weaker enemies it can happen randomly, while tougher ones have set conditions that’ll make it happen (like reached under a certain % of health). Break ordering means that after your current character finishes its turn, instead of following the turn order the enemy will take the turn immediately after, which can be devastating if you’re not prepared. More on this later on when I discuss difficulty.
There is also a Voltage system that’ll be familiar to Neptunia players, with 5 levels. Your voltage gauge increases the more hits you land on enemies and gets consumed when special attacks are used or when Live concert mode is activated (discussed later).
Another mechanic is the Overkill system. In this game, you don’t just settle with dropping enemy AI to 0. You are encouraged to do your best and inflict 2x their HP in damage. Basically, if an enemy has 10k HP, if you are able of doing 20k damage in one turn (or, most likely, one harmonic chain, see further down) you’ll get an Overkill. This gives you a guaranteed Rare drop from the mob as well as additional % bonuses at the end of the battle. Needless to say this’ll be quite hard to pull off with stronger enemies and attempting it can be risky, by unleashing so many moves in one target and leaving you vulnerable to the others’ turns. But hey, that’s how risk and reward works.
Now, for the layout of the combat; your characters placement in the field can be preset before battle in the “Change order” menu. The enemies also have their own placement that always changes with random field battles (bosses are preset). Why am I talking about placement? Well, for one, the first obvious thing is that you’ll want your girls close, so that aoe recovery spells/items can reach as many of them as possible, but not too close because of enemy aoe attacks. More importantly though, is the “effective range”. All offensive moves in this game, whether they come from you or from the enemies, have an effective range that goes from green (optimal) to red (weak). This is based on the distance between the attacker and the target. You’ll want to have low range characters in front, mid in mid and Nene (long range/sniper) in the back, though the random nature of enemy placement can break your plans; close might be too close and far might be too far. If you want optimal conditions you might have to change placement often. Thankfully you also have the ability, to a certain degree, of controlling battlefield placement mid-battle with attacks that either do Knockback or Reversal (the opposite of knockback). However, enemies can also do the same to your girls unless you have equipment or passive abilities that negate those effects. Overall the effective range system adds a nice layer of depth to the combat and can encourage you to use weaker attacks for the sake of unleashing stronger ones under optimal placement, or to push a troublesome enemy into his low effective range area while you deal with the squishier ones first. Among other possible combinations.
There is also a “Follow” combo system that’s easily to explain. Basically, both elemental and mic/weapon attacks have a “type” associated with them, as you’d expect, identified by the attack icon in the UI. Attacking in sequence with the same type creates a “follow” chain, where each time the power of the attack increases. So, if you do 4 attacks of the same type in succession, each will be stronger than the previous one.
Next up, we have the Harmonics and Live Concert modes. Harmonics is a mode that, when enabled, allows you to combine the turns of all the characters that are lined up next to each other in the turn order UI, rather than using them one turn at a time. The main draw to doing this are 2 things; the link system and the chain skill system.
Link system works similarly to Follow, but the other way around. Instead of using the same types of attacks, you’re supposed to constantly chain different ones, though it can’t just be any one; each type can only be linked to another specific type. The battle UI tells you which ones work, so rest easy there. Anyway, link chains don’t increase damage, unlike Follow, nor give you any immediate benefit, but they do increase the Link Bonus at the end of the battle (also discussed later). Or, if you want the benefits of both Follow and Link systems, you can create a follow chain, link it with another follow chain, then with another follow chain, etc… The link bonus will be smaller because you’re only creating one link at a time but it’s better than 0 and you still get additional damage from follow.
As for chain skills, these are attacks that combine moves by different characters into one big powerful move. Some are elemental or mic based, while others are specials that’ll consume voltage. Here’s a clip showing off some of them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7MaO5xTTmg
They can also be useful for combining high damage with special effects like Turn delay or Rare steal (steals a “Rare” drop from the target, you can see in the video two stolen drops).
Moving on from harmonics, we have Live Concert mode. This is a mode with 5 selectable levels, each one consuming 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 voltage levels. Each level has effects associated with it, like increased Skill damage or status negation or reduced wait time, etc. You can customize these levels to your preference. You can’t just set your favorite to level 1 and then never consume more than one voltage level though, because obviously the higher the concert level, the higher the effect. So if, for example, you set extra chain damage in Level 1, the extra % will be smaller than if you set it at level 2 or 3 and so on. Live concert also comes with a bonus; requests. The idea is that, as your “concert” (battle) is being broadcast on TV, random viewers make a request in each turn. It can be things like wanting you to make a basic attack, an elemental spell, a chain skill, reaching a certain combo amount (like 50 or 100 hits), etc. Fulfilling these requests will increase the Request Bonus at the end of the battle. Whether you comply with them or not is up to you, once again balancing risk and reward.
To finish this section, it’s time to explain the post-battle bonuses I’ve been talking about. At 1:40 of the video I posted about, you can see a list of bonuses.
Combo, Link, Voltage, Simultaneous defeat, skill finishers, overkills and concert mode requests. The more of these things you do, the higher the % bonus. This bonus will be applied to the end battle rewards for EXP, currency and proficiency progression. That clip was recorded fairly early in the game, got a 140% bonus but with some crazy moves and in long battles against tough enemies you can get up to crazy amounts like 800%. Not easy to pull off at all though. Regardless, it’s a nice way for the game to encourage you to do your best even in field battles against weaker enemies, making them less boring than they usually are when you fight underleveled enemies in most RPGs.
PVS:
This is where the “idol-sim” part comes in. Which is a bit misleading tbh. You don’t actually manage or sim, what do actually do is create custom PVs with 5 “dance themes” to choose from. It’s just a bonus/optional feature that you can ignore, although personally I love it. You can customize a lot of things, like vocal tracks (you can choose who sings which part), around ~80 (I think) dance moves to choose from, camera angles and focus, outfits and make up… Here’s a few I made with the included songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7fYE5FIpdQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE5RjreZStk
Or you can also do some extra editing and use other songs, if you feel the 5 included aren’t enough, like I did here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4VvSFGDKoU
The game doesn’t let you import though, you’ll have to edit it yourself either in Sharefactory or on a PC.
You don’t have to do any of this to complete the game. But if it’s your kinda thing then you’ll enjoy it. I’ve spent hours on it and plan on doing many more PVs.
Progression/growth:
I’ve read people comparing the system here to that of FFX and it’s somewhat accurate. It’s called disc analysis and you have to go through orbs in order to reach skills, upgrades and passive abilities, which you buy with points. Points are obviously gained by levelling up, and some orbs have prerequisites, which can just be other orbs or a certain proficiency level with a weapon. Also, all orbs (albeit in different positions/slots) are available to all characters (except 4 passive abilities unique to each). So even though they are specialized in one element and one mic type, you can, and should, give them some unnatural spells, which can be useful for chain skills if a certain spell isn’t available from the character that’d usually cast it. If you’re wondering what the cost of going off the “best route” for a character is, it’s that the moves cost extra SP and also have higher wait values. In the case of mics this can be offset by levelling their up their proficiency, though.
There’s also a cost for min maxing your way through the orbs. Reaching the upgrades for your strongest moves early on can be a problem because the upgrades don’t just improve their power, they also increase their SP cost and wait values. So the obvious orb path is not always the best one, as you might find your character running out of SP in an instant.
Graphics:
Don’t expect much here. It may be a PS4 exclusive but it still looks like a small PS3 JRPG would look like. There is no fancy lighting or high res textures. I have to hand it to the battle animation though, it looks really good as you can see in the battle clip I posted above. The customization options already mentioned also give a nice flair to both battles and PVs.
The story is told through a visual novel style 2D art as you’d expect from Compile Heart, with some 2D “CG events” once in a while. The art looks good, again as you’d expect from CH, though I think something’s horribly wrong with Otoha’s proportions, one of the few cases in CH history where I think the 3D model looks better than the 2D one.
Music:
A lot of great themes to choose from. I’ll let you discover most of them yourself, specially the opening and ending themes, but here’s a few personal in game picks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPZmydTEZu4&index=18&list=PLfseE3JLZwXyyuC7gmb1vzLt8jexCz3eg (chill story time)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBmTlLogcOU&index=17&list=PLfseE3JLZwXyyuC7gmb1vzLt8jexCz3eg (battle #1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZEtfzDxBi8&list=PLfseE3JLZwXyyuC7gmb1vzLt8jexCz3eg&index=12 (battle #2)
Story:
The premise is simple. There is something called the Blare that enshrouded the world and made people and animals it touched crazy, and the plot takes place in a city that’s cut off from the rest of the world due to the fact that’s entirely enveloped by Blare (thus leading to the belief that there is no actual “rest of the world”). In this city, people survive thanks to the Verse Maidens, the girl idols who fight the Blare and inspire the common folk to give them “hopes and dreams”. The whole thing is played up as a bit of a parody of idol culture/fandom and has its good points and bad points. The bad is that the pacing could be better. It starts off okay, setting up the characters and the reunion of all the girls. The mid section of the game has some optional funny events with the Verse maidens but the story takes what I’d describe a boring hiatus as not much happens then, specially if you go around doing all side quests like I did (it probably goes by faster if you ignore these). The humour isn’t as good as in the Neptunia games, but it’s still funny. In particular I found Aria, the “mysterious” Verse maiden, to be very funny, though mostly after she gets more comfortable with the rest of the cast, which takes a while. She’s definitely the highlight of the later episodes in the game, both for this reason and another… which I can’t talk about because it’s spoilerific. One specific “twist”, you’ll see coming from far away (the game wasn’t trying to hide it either), so that’s not the issue here, but rather the way it all ends, which will depend on whether you obtain the Normal ending or the True Ending. In the reviews I’ve read, people disliked the Normal ending and criticized how obscure the requirements for the True ending were. What do I have to say there… Well, the Normal ending is a bit sad, yeah. I wouldn’t call it unsatisfying, though it’s a bit abrupt. It’s basically a “Bad ending”, even if they called it Normal. It’s not poorly done, it’s just sad/negative, which I suppose some will claim doesn’t suit the game due to its light hearted nature. I don’t agree with that but whatever. Regardless, the True Ending is much longer. Seeing as how there are trophies for this and not for normal, I recommend you go for the True ending and then watch the Normal one on youtube (it’s what I did). The requirements for the True ending are easily accessible on the Internet so check those out.
Difficulty:
I’ll start right off by saying that this aspect of the game is a mixed bag. On one hand it does things well by offering levels of difficulty for everyone. There’s Normal, Intermediate and Advanced. AKA, Easy, Normal and Hard. Don’t be fooled by the names, Normal can be seen as the equivalent of Easy due to its description as “for those who want to enjoy the story”. And that’s what it is, it’s too easy. Good for people who don’t understand the intricacies of the combat system (seems to be a bit common...), too easy for anyone who does. Advanced, on the other hand, is too hard for a first playthrough. It was designed for NG+’s sake, so it’s probably best if you go with Intermediate first, then transfer to Advanced if you want to keep playing. Sounds good so far, right? It’s suitable for anyone. There are two things though..
First is the fact that side content is locked under difficulty level. If you want to truly access all the game’s content, you can only do so in Advanced. I’m fine with NG+ being required to complete everything, personally, but some might not be, because they might not want to restart the story to access it. And as I said, playing in Advanced in your first playthrough is not recommended. Speaking of NG+, the system is similar to Tales of, where you spend currency (coins) to choose what gets transferred over to NG+. Not everything carries over.
Second, order break, which I talked about previously. It’s absent in Normal, fairly common in Intermediate, and very frequent in Advanced. Order break is good because it keeps you on your toes, making sure you don’t get too carefree and tempted to just mash X until the end if you encounter a blue/underleveled enemy, as even those can surprise you with crazy order breaks and demolish you. The bad part is that in some cases, it’s too random. It being triggered by certain conditions is fine because it’s a matter of learning the patterns and if you die you’ll die with that knowledge. But unfortunately there’s a certain RNG that’s frustrating and some battles can start immediately with order break, in which case you’ll probably end up reloading the save so that you can get a turn first. To put it simply, they should’ve kept random order breaks less common (but still there!), while the regular, preset order breaks are fine. If this game marked huge improvements in combat, exploration and music for Compile Heart, difficulty balancing remains an issue that they’ll have to keep trying to tackle.
Length: I finished my 1st playthrough after 60 hours, but I did do all pre-ending (yes there are post-ending side quests… a LOT of them) and spent some hours on PVs, so cut that down by maybe 20 if you’re gonna breeze through the main content. Taking into account NG+ as well as post game content this is easily a +100hour game for completionists. And the platinum is quite tough, haven’t gotten it yet.
Verdict: 5 puddings out of 5… No, I don’t give scores. There is no TL;DR version.
