A Song For The World! - Omega Quintet

Hello beautiful people of the Internet! And not so beautiful ones... hehe. We apologies greatly for yet another delay in reviews. Ren was too lazy last week (We were busy!) so we decided we needed more time to play this game to bring you a real review. So! Without further ado, it's time to show off Omega Quintet!

At the basics of it, Omega Quintet is a JRPG with a lot of bright colour and charm. Well what do you expect? It's a Compile Heart RPG, that's about all it's got going for it. Now now Sin settle down a little, you've played this one, it's not 'just' a Compile Heart RPG this time. I get that it's got the same sort of... uh... feel to it, that other Compile Heart RPGs have- You mean it's basically an all girl cast fitting about every freaking Japanese stereotype you could possibly imagine, and it's littered with needless fanservice that is a disrespect to every good JRPG out there? That kind of Compile Heart feel!? Uh... Well... yes... but that's kind of what Compile Heart do, let's be fair their JRPG's aren't exactly Final Fantasy or Pokemon quality, the fit a niche and appeal to a... uh... different kind of audience... yeah that's right! A different kind of audience! So... Perverts like you then? I get it, no wonder you buy all their games... I am not a pervert!

Compile Heart RPG's... Pointless fanservice at its pointless finest

Ugh! Anyway my point is that this particular title is a lot more in depth than the everyday RPG they throw out three or four times a year. Seriously, it gets to me how they can make them all so quickly when playing them takes FOREVER. Let's forget about that for now, but that's probably why they're not as popular as more 'quality' JRPG's. The point is there seriously so much more to keep track of and learn in this game it's hard to get to grips with.

You get to change the party's formation as is pretty standard for JRPG's, but in this *turn based-combat* RPG each of the different weapons have a different effective range. Attacking an enemy in the back line with a hammer like an idiot for example will be much more likely to miss, and far less damaging than if you attacked with a Sniper weapon for example. While the differences from this aren't exactly game-breaking, and you can ignore this mechanic for the most part on easier difficulties, optimising your attacks is pretty key as the enemies get stronger... which would be fine if you could properly plan for each fight. Except that's harder than you would think, enemies spawn in random locations in the combat screen so there's no guarantee your AoE abilities will hit all of them every fight. And even more annoying is both you and your enemies will have moves that can knockback and it happens all the time! It's extremely difficult to keep your targets at an effective range so you'll often just end up plowing away at them until they die. There's a lot you have available to play with in combat, it's kind of refreshing to have so many mechanics for great players to really shine. Between knockbacks, delaying turns, the 'voltage' of the battle and bonuses granted when certain moves are used after another there's enough features to get to grips with here that the whole experience feels extremely rewarding for no apparent reason. That's a good thing though right? Totally.

Omega Quintet is one of the few JRPGs that can see you fighting up to ten monsters at once, and it's a pretty impressive spectacle.
Don't usually get to use more the four characters at once either.
Not like this at least. It's nice.

It's great that the combat feels so much more fun than most JRPG's, it doesn't really feel like it gets boring but that's where my praise ends. The story as usual from our friends Compile Heart is about as flat as Sin's chest (What was that!?), the world is being overrun by a dark force called Blare which is mutating people and animals into dark, killer creatures. Our only salvation are the Verse Maidens (Read: Freaking teen idols!), a collection of quirky and colourful teenage girls in true idol-esque attire that defeat Blare and the MAD (those are the monsters) with the power of...! Of.... Oh I can't do it... I love the game but just... It doesn't sound so bad when you're actually playing the game but explaining to the world that they win through the power of song and dance just feels humiliating... They sing, you can hold concerts for them and even produce and upload your own music videos with the girls... They really went all out with the idol theme on this one... It's not even a bad thing, it's implemened well and everything it's just... WHY!? Why IDOLS!? And the 3D dances just make me cringe so hard they look so awkward! Argh!

How does a team that spends so long fighting monsters even get to rehearse! And how can they always look so happy!?
Aww... You're just jealous...
I AM NOT!

The game continues to play the whole idol thing up by explaining that the Verse Maiden's power comes from the support of the fans, and the fights are broadcast with an announcer that you the player get to hear over your battles. Over. And over. And over again. It's like Omega Quintet taking a leaf out of Persona's book as the announcements feel very similar, mentioning a MAD's weakness to you or how injured one of your party are, except it's also doing it in the style of a narrator from an episode of 1950's Batman in that every other freaking comment is basically screaming "Will our heroes survive!? Find out... In five bloody seconds after the next combination of attack inputs!" She's uh... not a big fan of idols and divas...

If you pan the camera down enough on the field the girls will cover their skirts and tell you not to look. It's a unique and nice little tou- Ow!
You... Pervert!

With all that said though Omega Quintet still has its charms. The girls are all unique to extremes: The main heroine Otoha is a energetic young girl that always dreamed of being a Verse Maiden except she's also a nervous wreck that can't get anything right when she finally gets her chance. There's also Nene, a quiet and shy girl that says some really morbid things in secret and loves sniper rifles. She's exactly my type of girl. I always knew you swung that way Sin... I-I DO NOT! REN YOU IDIO-

So that's all we have this week everyo-
Hey! Don't cut me off like tha-
I refuse.
Wha- You can't jus-
I just did. Look forward to next weeks post everyone! We hope this one was worth the wait! Until then beautiful readers! We love you all!
Grrrr..... REN! You're going to pay for this!
Oh be quiet Sin... You're such a diva.
... What did you just say...?
...Ah... uhm.... N-Nothing!