Thank you GhostLight LTD for the key!

I want to make a few things clear before we get this review underway. I have not been influenced by Christ Centered Gamer's moral scoring when when giving this game a score. Despite what people believe, I have no negative bias against Japanese pop culture. I have enjoyed extremely niche games of varying types despite people thinking I cant look past my own biases. That being said Omega Quintet is a boring game with strange design choices that make it an overall frustrating experience. Somewhere under all the "by the numbers" design is a unique title wanting to get out yet it never reaches that point.

Omega Quintet stars the verse maidens, magical girls who slay creatures called the MAD using song and dance. These monsters are spawned by the Blare, a strange black substance that turns organic beings into MAD. With the old verse maiden Momoka retiring, it's up to Otoha and the newest verse maidens to defeat the MAD once and for all.

So I want to talk combat first because that's probably the best part of the game. The battles are turned based; the unique selling point is that through proper use of skills you can delay the enemy's turn. They can do the same to you. Past a certain chapter, you learn harmonics. This allows you to have the girls do attacks all at once, and if you use particular abilities you can activate chain skills. As you slay enemies in battle you build up a voltage meter up to level five. You can use this meter to activate live concert mode for a certain number of turns. While in live concert mode all of your abilities are stronger.

The story I would usually judge based on the beginning, yet today we are going to start at the end. This story already targets a niche audience as it is and on its own I can't really hate it. However, the ending is where It becomes a major disappointment. If you don't do every single side quest in this game, you get locked out of the true ending. This game only has a bad ending and a true ending to speak of. The game's tutorials do say that side quests are optional. While it did tell me that they expire past certain points, I never knew they were that important. Without spoiling too much, the bad ending is basically everything is going to get worse but I won't give up. A game doesn't have to hold hands, but it should not lead you to a destination only to say, “hey I saw 100 dollars on the sidewalk today, I should have picked it up.” This also locks you out of the DLC story; two of the DLC's you can't access unless you complete the game's true ending.

Everything past the combat and story is just fluff, filler, and waste. In the visual novel style cutscenes in the main hub, it's mostly just cute and ecchi (sexualized) moments. You can unlock new outfits for the girls, but these only provide insignificant stat boosts. It's mostly just to dress up your anime girls in what you find cute. Equipment that actually boosts defense goes in a separate section from the girl's outfit. Each girl has a separate skill tree, but they all learn the same abilities, save for a unique super move and a passive that's special to each girl. One girl might learn a water move in a certain spot, another might learn a weapon skill yet both of them will have the same skill options. There are five weapon types, yet I see no reason to switch weapons out between the girls. Each one starts with the type of weapon that seems to be meant for them. By completing quests you can unlock camera motions and dance moves to make music videos for your girls. Yet there is no gameplay purpose behind it. While I get they wanted to work in the J-pop idol side to the lives of these girls, they should have tried to work it more into the combat system. Even the character Takt, the girls manager, feels like wasted opportunity. All he is in this game is an extra attack.

With morality, you're playing dress up with underage girls; a lot of the outfits are fetishized. You can decide what style of underwear they have on. The clothes ripping off in battle seems to just be for that perverted moment too, since the outfits are not the main source of defense. You can upgrade your outfits to be more durable. A Lot of cutscenes can also get quite perverted, from up-skirt shots to wet t-shirts. The violence is what you would expect, non bloody combat and the enemies just vanish upon defeat. Also they keep harsh language to a minimum. The magical element of this game isn't forced or added on.

I haven't played many Compile Hearts or Idea Factory games yet from the popularity these games have, I'm sure they can do better. This concert flopped, but Omega Quintet might improve, if they ever have another show.