Nitro Gen Omega - PS5 Review

Nitro Gen Omega by developer and publisher DESTINYbit—Sony PlayStation 5  review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes. 

Nitro Gen Omega may be one of the weirdest experiences that I've ever sat down to. Having lost the war to the AI and its robot armies, humanity is on the brink of extinction. Waiting for the end to quietly come while living in floating cities, not everyone is content to wait which is where our group of fools come in with their giant mech and quirky personalities. 

Described as “a sandbox tactical RPG of steel, fire, friendship, and shonen anime”, other terms such as spaghetti western have also been thrown in the mix. If I had to describe it? It's brilliant in its concept as I'm unsure if this has ever been done before. It's turn based in its combat with many other parameters involved. It's strategic in how you plan out your next move. Finally, it's overly cinematic in the best ways possible.

If that didn't make sense? Don't worry, there's a lot going on and the layers took some time to piece together. On the surface, you have your quirky characters that you can either design yourself, or simply have the game provide. Once you have all four, each is assigned to a section of your giant mech. Together, these four will work together as either best friends or rivals to get the job done. 

Your Driver, aka pilot, has the ability to move the mech between North, East, West, and South quadrants. They are also in charge of performing melee attacks. Your Gunner is in charge of, you guessed it, the long range attacks. Shooting the cannons, firing the missiles, there's a bit of variety in how each works. The Engineer is in charge of making sure your hulking machine doesn't overheat. They are also in charge of reloading the missiles and can vent exhaust for some local area damage. 

 

Finally, we have the Operator who is in charge of scanning for upcoming moves, deploying smoke screens and healing packs. At first, this seemed like it would cause battles to be overwhelmingly in the player’s favour. Four characters? Four actions for every other enemy(ies)’ one? Enemies also get multiple actions, can move around, and do other crazy special abilities so your team’s four is really not all that much in the grand scheme.

It’s what you do with these four actions that matters. In the beginning your mech isn’t going to be the most powerful, aka, it’s going to suck. Without relationships and rivalries, your crew won’t be able to pass or steal the baton from one another. This honestly didn’t seem like a bad thing as you are learning the ropes, however, because there’s always a “however”, the difficulty curve ramps up quickly whether you’re ready or not. 

Combat itself is where everything shines. Set out in a six part scene, the enemy and you will take turns setting up your actions. A bit like chess, you’ll always be in the second seat, which in this case is a good thing. You’ll get to see what their first actions are and then begin planning out your own. Once all four crew members have taken their actions: attack, move, deployed, simply passed, tossed the baton to a best friend or stolen it from a rival, it’s time to see the scene played out.

 

This is where the core RPG mechanics kick into gear. Damage values based on the mech’s parts, bonuses from crew members, dodging attacks, defending against special attacks, missing your targets, etc., each segment will update the mini map and the hit points values leading into a second turn to do it all over again. It’s not fast paced to set everything up, but it’s damned satisfying when you’ve done it right. Much less so when it all falls apart…

While learning the ropes, you’re going to have to take a lot of smaller jobs to get tiny amounts of money to be able to buy even your first upgrade piece. Each new piece that you can get your hands on will increase your mech’s hit points and offer new abilities for your crew to work with. The catch you ask? Each part needs a certain amount of energy to function and if your mech’s heart doesn’t output enough? You’ll have to go back into savings mode for yet another piece.

More than the mechanical parts, you’ll also have to worry about the biological ones. Your crew can be physically and mentally injured while in combat if your mech takes too many hits. Coming in clutch for victory will not always mean that no scars are left behind. When stressed, the efficiency of your pilots will be reduced as they need time to recover. If you continue to bring them into battle, it could lead to your defeat and possibly the death of crew members. In these cases, it’s best to have spare crew members and give your tired, stressed and injured crew the time to rest even if it means they won’t be getting experience to level up their abilities.

 

So in order to keep your crew in tip top shape, you’ll have to give them some time to relax between skirmishes. While traveling the skies between settlements and mission objectives, your ship has multiple floors with a variety of activities available. While new stations will require money to buy, they’ll all be worth it in the long run. Arcade games, Dance pads, cooking, gardening, playing board games, musical instructions, yoga, or weight lifting, each has its benefits such as reducing stress, increasing friendships or rivalries.

It’s a lot in the beginning when starting out with no money, barely any activity vouchers, and still needing to come out on top. It eventually all settles into place as the difficulty curve takes off and becomes the main struggle to conquer. So it’s a good thing that with all of that, gas, even at the end of the world, is so damned cheap. Flying this massive boat is not free and you need to worry about putting in enough fuel to make it between settlements and mission points. I really appreciated that this wasn’t the hardest thing to manage.

 

I overall enjoyed Nitro Gen Omega. While I found the difficulty curve a tad steep, the rewards for grinding out reward money to buy new parts and conquer the battlefields was satisfying. It won’t be for everyone, but if you like a challenge, mechs, and party management, this one is for you!

Score: 7.75 / 10