Omega Quintet is the first game by Compile Heart for the PlayStation 4, the first JRPG for the system, and also the first retail game for the PS4 to utilize Playstation Move. It was released in the West by Idea Factory International in early 2015, and was then ported to PC in 2017.
Tropes present in Omega Quintet:
- A Taste of Power: You first start the game as Momoka, a veteran Verse Maiden who is at level 100. Enemy levels are in the 90s and below.
- Action Survivor: Godou and Takt are otherwise normal humans that fight Blare. Godou to buy time for other people to evacuate, Takt along side the Verse Maidens. After excessive exposure, as well as having an apparently empowering effect on the girls, some characters begin to question just how normal Takt really is but eventually drop it due to records of pairing men with Verse Maidens to unknown effect in the past being known. By the end it's revealed that Takt is roughly 30% Blare due to an attack as a child and he goes further to 40% by draining Godou to cure him. Godou himself shows signs of being a Blare hybrid after his recovery.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Live Concert mode. It's cool, and it certainly has its uses, but the Voltage required to activate it would be put to much better use by using team supers with Harmonics. Provided you manage to manipulate the turn counter properly, it's possible to easily overkill bosses with Harmonics.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Despite being one of the nicest, most polite of the Verse Maidens, Nene has some extremely dark aspects to her personality that peek out from time to time. For example, there is her suggesting underhanded, illegal tactics to upstage Kyouka, when she steals the spotlight at Otoha's debut, and everything about her being a Gun Nut, from her love of shooting enemies to death, her treating the smell of gunpowder as one of her favorite scents, and her room being ''booby trapped' to the point that Takt walking in unannounced is a legitimate danger to his safety.
- Black Comedy: Constantly. Though the setting is a crapsack with a bright coat of paint on it, there's still plenty of Compile Heart's signature ridiculous humor. One example is the incredible contrast between Nene's shy, nervous wreck of a personality and the numerous dark aspects about her, like how unhealthily she loves guns, having to disable booby traps before leaving her room, and giggling as she's shooting Blare to death and swooning about the delightful smell of gunpowder.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: A very mild case. "Pursuit" is used for several battle elements where "Follow-up" would be more appropriate.
- Calling The Old Woman Out:
- When Shiori goes one step too far in using Kyouka as a pawn in her spiteful popularity contest with Momoka by saying she shouldn't team up with the other Verse Maidens and defeat the Blare rampaging through the city, Kyouka lets her have it.
- On a more comedic note, Takt oftentimes gets this with Momoka, pointing out her numerous moments of hypocrisy. Some examples include: her telling the girls to work hard when she's an infamous slacker; Momoka talking about the girls not getting out much, upon which Takt counters with Momoka's being an anti-social shut-in outside of Verse Maiden work; and her other pieces of advice that are rich, coming from her.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The game starts taking advantage of its crapsack setting in chapter 7. If you thought things were bleak and terrible in the opening chapters, you really haven't seen anything yet.
- Clothing Damage: A Verse Maiden's costume will eventually rip as they come under attack. It has serious gameplay effects, as it will deactivate any passive AMP bonuses, prevent you from using the Live Concert mode for dealing serious damage, and render the Verse Maiden much more vulnerable to damage and less capable in battle.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Aria was pegged as a special case from her reveal, but this is surprisingly Played for Drama. She's not just a Strange Girl, but rather suffers from difficulty communicating and possibly cognitive interference after being overwhelmed by Blare.
- Crapsack World: People live in a world without hope and are being killed by monsters that can't be harmed by people. Going through the various records you find laying around, things were considerably worse once people realized there was a way to fight back but before the concept of Verse Maidens was introduced. Girls revealed to be capable of fighting off Blare would be abducted, experimented on, used as political bargaining chips, and forced to fight. Things began to improve when they started pushing the idol angle for PR but even then they're still lying to the girls about some details, such as the idea that popularity equals power not actually having much basis in reality, that they'd be better served with proper combat training over pushing for popularity.
- Crapsaccharine World: The bright and colorful aesthetic, combined with Show, Don't Tell, means it can take a while before one realizes just how bad things are. The City of Adventure the game is based in is completely cut off from other hubs of civilization - and however many of them there are, it's not many. Governments have completely collapsed, taking currency with them; the populous survive on an Energy Economy. Mind-affecting Blare can appear anywhere without warning, and even if it's been cleared from an area, giant, vicious mutants remain. The city limps along thanks only to the efforts of teenage girls, the only ones capable of matching the mutants and clearing Blare. Most of the populous have fled, half are nuts and cling to Verse Maidens as they only hope they have; the other half are apathetic at best, nihilistic at worst. Takt suddenly gets a lot more sympathetic when you realize he's intended as a product of his environment, not a reasonless Jerkass.
- Cutscene Incompetence: The party tends to be rather inept in combat when there's a cutscene. Even if they stomp something either before or after the cutscene, odds are they'll be having trouble with it when you aren't in control. Several times, you can utterly demolish a Blare, even a boss Blare, and suddenly new, off-screen enemies will appear and almost overwhelm them.
- Emotion Suppression: Individuals corrupted by Blare that still retain their humanity are left with extreme difficulty in expressing emotion.
- Expy: A group of monsters in series centering around music that kill people and can only be harmed by a handful of people, The Blare sound strangely similar to The Noise. They both even have sound based names.
- Fake Difficulty: Once you get to chapter 6, enemies start gaining moves that can hit the entire party multiple times and inflict every single ailment (including instant death) in one attack. The rest of their attacks are just as pitifully weak as they were before, but they love to spam their new, incredibly powerful move, to the point where boss battles amount to hoping the boss/mooks don't use that attack enough times to wipe your party (2-3 uses, for those wondering) and don't order break before you're able to heal.
- Fashionable Asymmetry: Aria's casual outfit
◊ in the most extreme levels. She wears a black stocking on her right leg, her ankle bows have mismatched colors (white on the right, black on the left), wears a wrist cuff on the right hand and a tulle sleeve on the left. A bit justified, since her appearance is meant to fit her airheaded nature of her personality. - Glory Days: Momoka and Shiori alike are both fighting a popularity contest for popularity neither of them are even entitled to anymore. Momoka is aging severely and suffers from constant pains and exhaustion while Shiori tries to use Kyouka to live vicariously through her fame.
- Guide Dang It!: Good luck getting the true ending without a guide, it requires to complete nearly every sidequest in the game, some of which have very specific requirements to show and you'll lose access to them after a certain point. It's very easy to miss some side quests as you had no idea there were even there to start with as you didn't have a particular item on you.
- Gun Nut: Nene is absolutely obsessed with guns, being in love with their functionality in combat, the smell of gunpowder, filling her own bullets, and pretty much everything else about them. It's telling that when she's faced by the prospect of losing her Verse Maiden status, she isn't worried about the Blare or her disappointed fans, it's that she won't legally be able to use her gun anymore. It's also implied she's not beyond illegally carrying firearms; she's only authorized to use her mic but allegedly has several concealed firearms on her person at all times. The one person that tried to investigate ended up in the hospital the next day.
- Interservice Rivalry: Shiori personally trains Kyouka to humiliate the main office's Verse Maidens, and by extension Momoka. Ayumi gets fed up and ends it by fiat when she debuts all the girls as a quintet.
- Ironic Name: Takt, German for "a musical period", starts the game utterly lacking in any musical talent or interest in getting into show business whatsoever.
- Mistaken for Gay: In order to make Takt's presence on the broadcasts non-threatening to the fans, Ayumi starts spreading this rumor about him. Takt doesn't push the issue - the alternative was crossdressing.
- Musical Theme Naming
- Takt after German takt, meaning any kind of musical period like a measure or bar.
- Otoha after Japanese oto, meaning sound.
- Kanadeko after Japanese kanaderu, meaning to play an instrument.
- Nene after Japanese ne, meaning sound.
- Kyouka after Japanese kyouku, meaning a song or otherwise any type of musical selection.
- Aria after the English aria.
- No Social Skills: Kyouka, most likely due to being raised and mentored by Shiori who saw her as her pawn for getting vengeance against Momoka. Averted for Aria, which is surprising considering her character type. Aria's issue is that while she has them, she doesn't quite know how to use them, due to her terrible memory and self-inflicted isolation leaving her without talking to people for years.
- Older Than They Look:
- Momoka is in her 30s, probably closer to 40note , but she can still pass for a teenager. It's emphasized by her stage tagline, "Eternally 17.", and Shiori even insults her by saying how unnatural it is for her to still be so baby-faced after 2 decades or so.
- Aria started her career much earlier than the other four girls. However, she's happens to look younger than the other girls.
- Only One Name: None of the characters are shown to have surnames.
- Popularity Power: Verse Maidens get more effective fighting blare the more popular they are as idols. Allegedly. The mechanism for this is poorly understood, and there's strong speculation the girls might have been better off with proper combat training and equipment instead of a spotlight.
- Spoiler Opening: It's made rather obvious that Kyouka, despite being initially introduced as a rival Verse Maiden working for a different agency, will join the group and help form the titular Quintet.
- Stage Mom: Shiori is a variation, raising Kyouka as a solo Verse Maiden to try and show Momoka up by proxy. It's of particular note that Shiori herself was a Verse Maiden, paired up with Momoka. When Kyouka points out her antic are risking people's lives, she locks up.
- Statuesque Stunner: Kanadeko is notably taller than most of the other party members, and is in fact slightly taller than Takt. She also has the largest breasts.
- Support Party Member: Takt is attached to one Maiden at a time, following up their attacks or helping defend them.
- Title Drop: The party eventually gets the name of Omega Quintet.
- Tsundere:
- Takt is a Rare Male Example. While on the surface he's blunt, disconnected, and doesn't seem to give a damn about anything, when Otoha is genuinely in trouble, the heroics start without a second thought. He's also this for the party, as he gradually warms up to them and starts doing more as their manager than he previously would've. His attitude is implied to be because of the Blare attacking him as a child.
- Kyouka is one, but almost nobody lets her behaviour slide. Otoha and Kanadeko are either oblivious or too stupid to realize it, Momoka and Takt don't care for how she acts and act as if she said what she's thinking, rather than what she says, and Aria isn't able to understand it, leaving Kyouka flustered as a result. Everyone else (aside from Nene, who is too timid to actively talk to someone that contrary) doesn't seem to bother with it.
- Turn-Based Combat: The game follows a menu-based combat system, with a timeline deciding turn order. Manipulating turn orders of both your party members and the enemies plays a huge role, as it will decide who gets random buffs and more importantly, chaining skills and activating Harmonics mode where your characters can act simultaneously for potentially massive damage.
- What the Hell, Player?: Angling the dungeon camera up a girl's skirt will make that girl pull her skirt down and chew the player out.
