2018: How to Win at Omega Quintet

I finally finished getting the Platinum trophy in Omega Quintet this evening, and feel I’ve had a thoroughly satisfying time with that delightful game. It remained fun for all of the 170 hours I played it for — excluding the Order Break-happy bosses in the DLC dungeons, which can fuck right off — and I’m pleased that Compile Heart has got off to a running start in the PS4 era.

One thing I noticed, though, is that there aren’t many guides out there for Omega Quintet. GameFAQs doesn’t even have an FAQ page for it, though the discussion boards are quite active. As such, it’s fairly likely that there are people out there who want some hints and tips about how to get good, particularly as in its later hours (and particularly post-game) Omega Quintet can get quite challenging.

Here are some helpful tips, then. These all assume that you have progressed at least far enough in the game to have the full party of five.

• Arrange your party either in a straight line formation, an “M” or a “W” shape. Whoever is in the middle slot (I recommend someone like Otoha or Kanadeko, since they have high Stamina) should have Takt paired up with them. The reason for this is that this means Takt can cover the maximum number of party members with Group Defense if the party is hit by an area-effect attack.
• Speaking of Takt’s defense abilities, always use them. Not only do they reduce damage, they also cause status ailments to be resisted by all party members being hit by the attack, even if you accidentally hit Pair Defense instead of Group Defense on an area-effect attack. Neither Pair nor Group Defense will block stat drains, however.
• In the early game, stick with the girls’ default weapons — spear for Kyouka, fists for Kanadeko, hammer for Otoha, gun for Nene and fans for Aria. In Disc Analysis concentrate on unlocking and upgrading the relevant weapon skills; you can always branch out later.
• Also in the early game, consider specialising each girl. Kyouka’s high Vitality (speed) makes her ideal as a “buffer” since she usually goes first in the turn order, so equip her with skills like Scorch Choir, Chorale, Bastion and Charge to allow her to buff up the entire party’s stats. Aria, meanwhile, makes a good healer due to her high Divinity, while Nene makes a good “mage” with her high Knowledge stat. Otoha and Kanadeko are your de facto physical attackers, so concentrate on getting their weapon skills up to scratch as soon as possible, then choose elemental skills that complement and support the others.
• Go for big bonuses when you can. You earn bigger bonuses the bigger the number of hits in a single combo (i.e. before an enemy gets a turn), the more enemies you defeat simultaneously (on a single turn; doesn’t have to be in a single action), the more HP you Overkill an enemy by, the more Links you get (more on those in a sec), the higher your Voltage is (more on that in a sec, too) and the more Requests you complete if you trigger Live Concert Mode.
• Links are your way to earning lots of experience, EP (money) and Approval (which unlocks quests). Pay attention to the type of attack the interface says a skill “links” to, and use them in this order whenever possible. The more links you chain without a break, the bigger your bonus at the end of a fight.

• Links also help with earning Voltage, but the most reliable means of bumping up the Voltage meter is to get lots of critical hits. To do this, use area-effect attacks and reduce the enemy stats as much as possible. If the damage numbers that pop up when you hit something are red, that’s a critical hit and will earn you Voltage. Note that only physical (Mic) skills will critical; E Skills will not, so even though some E Skills hit lots of times over a wide area, they’re not good for earning Voltage. They are, however, good for earning bonus actions through the hit count.
• Consider Chain Skills when picking discs to set on each girl. Some are more useful than others. By far the most useful of all is Cosmic Fan, which you obtain late in the game. This requires four different girls to cast Cremation, Legato, Aubade Crush and Absolution. It hits for a bunch of times, but its main benefit is that it reduces all the stats of everything it hits — and it covers a wide area. If you have the slots for it, give all five girls Cremation, Legato, Aubade Crush and Absolution, because this way you can case Cosmic Fan five times in succession if turn order lines up correctly and you use Harmonics.
• Speaking of Harmonics, use it whenever you can, but don’t waste it. Manipulate the turn order by using abilities or items with low wait times, and don’t forget to use Takt’s Pursuit to knock enemies back in the turn order. Ideally, you want each Harmonics to have all five girls ready for action, preferably to hurl out some Cosmic Fans and debuff the enemy into oblivion.
• Order Break is the most annoying thing in this game, and it’s not immediately apparent what triggers it if you’re not paying attention. The specific conditions vary according to the party of enemies you’re fighting — certain enemy lineups in the post-game will even cause an immediate Order Break at the start of a battle, even if you got a Surprise Attack in on them. The most common conditions for triggering Order Break are reducing an enemy below 50% of its HP, Guard Breaking an enemy and defeating an enemy. Consequently, you want to try and avoid meeting any of these conditions until you’re in a situation where you can unleash the Harmonics combo from hell to obliterate everything in a single turn.

• Speaking of the Harmonics combo from hell, here’s how to kill pretty much everything in the late game with ease:
  • Level up all five girls’ hammer or fan skills to at least proficiency level 7. The quickest way to do this is on the lower levels of the Training Facility dungeon, which are also good for earning a lot of experience. Hammers are recommended in preference to fans, but it will depend what equipment you have available.
  • Learn Takt’s Special Fanfare skill if you have the skill points for it, and assign this to Level 2 Live Concert. Special Fanfare significantly increases damage from Special Skills, so it’s important for finishing battles quickly.
  • Make sure all five girls have all four Cosmic Fan spells. (Cremation, Legato, Aubade Crush and Absolution).
  • If you’ve kept developing Nene as a mage-like character (Knowledge-focused equipment), also give her Flame Typhoon and Raging Vortex.
  • Give all the girls Earth Assault.
  • Make sure all the girls have the main area-effect skills for the weapon whose proficiency you’ve levelled. Important ones are Ultimate Crush and Howling Earth for hammer, Light Crescent and Herd of Artemis for fan. If you have the skill points to spare, upgrade these and the Cosmic Fan spells as much as you can.
  • Fight a weak enemy somewhere and end the fight with Voltage level 5. Note that if you return to the Office, your Voltage will be reset, so if the tough enemy you want to kill is out in the world, you’ll need to defeat a weak enemy in a world dungeon (Verdant Greenbelt is a good bet), while if you’re in the Training Facility, you’ll need to defeat a weak enemy on an early floor, then move directly to the floor the fight you’re struggling with is on without returning to the Office first.
  • Surprise Attack the enemy you want to beat if possible. This should see all five girls’ turns lined up at the start of the battle. If there’s a gap in the turn order, escape if possible and either reduce the Vitality of the speediest characters by removing Vitality-boosting equipment, or boost the vitality of the slowest characters (Nene is usually the problem here) with amps or equipment.
  • If you’re fighting a boss or quest mob, Surprise Attacks may not be possible. In this case, you’ll need to manipulate the turn order using Takt’s Pursuit and defending. Try to line up all five girls without triggering Order Break, so take care you don’t do too much damage to the enemies in the process.
  • Assuming you got the turn order lined up (preferably with a Surprise Attack) immediately trigger Harmonics and cast two Cosmic Fans. Do not cast Cosmic Fan through the Chain Skill menu, however; cast each individual component one at a time on the same target, which should be somewhere in the middle of the enemy party. The reason for this is that Cosmic Fan’s Chain Skill menu option does not input the commands in the right order to maximise your Link bonus. The order you should choose is: (Girl 1) Cremation, (Girl 2) Legato, (Girl 3) Aubade Crush, (Girl 4) Absolution, (Girl 4 again) Cremation, (Girl 5) Legato, (Girl 1), Aubade Crush, (Girl 2) Absolution. After this, Defend with everyone. This will have several important effects: it will lower the enemy’s stats enough to let you get critical hits more easily, it will boost everyone’s action count to at least 6 or 7, possibly the maximum of 8, it shouldn’t do enough damage to trigger Order Break, and the Vitality debuffs it applies will hopefully allow you to get another immediate turn with all five girls lined up.
  • If you do get this second turn — which most of the time you should, assuming you don’t trigger Order Break — trigger a Level 2 Live Concert Mode (which should have Special Fanfare attached to it if you have it) and then immediately trigger Harmonics again.
  • Now follow this sequence, which assumes everyone is equipped with a hammer. Make sure all the E Skills target the same enemy in the middle of the formation in order to trigger Cosmic Fan:
    Kyouka: Cremation
    Otoha: Legato
    Kanadeko: Aubade Crush
    Aria: Absolution, Cremation
    Nene: Legato
    Kyouka: Aubade Crush
    Otoha: Absolution, Cremation
    Kanadeko: Legato
    Aria: Aubade Crush
    Nene: Absolution, Cremation
    Kyouka: Legato
    Otoha: Aubade Crush
    Kanadeko: Absolution, Cremation
    Aria: Legato
    Nene: Aubade Crush
    Kyouka: Absolution
    Nene: Flame Typhoon, Raging Vortex, Earth Assault (for extra Link bonuses and to increase the hit count)
    All other girls in succession: Earth Assault (to bump up the hit count)
    If you’re at Voltage level 2 or higher: Aria: Solitary Rhapsody (otherwise ignore this step)
    All other girls in succession except Otoha: Ultimate Crush, Howling Earth, if enough action points left use Break Prototype on the strongest enemy to maximise hit count.
    Otoha: Ultimate Crush, Howling Earth, if enough action points drop in a Break Prototype on the strongest enemy, then finish with Shrine of Hope on an enemy that has Guard Break (which will probably be all of them after that mauling, but prioritise moth- or plant-type trash enemies, since these have the weakest Magnetic Fields) and which also allows the area of effect to hit everything. (Shrine of Hope gets significantly more powerful the higher the hit count is, hence the overblown combo leading up to it.)
  • Everything will probably be dead after that. If you left a boss-level enemy standing but killed all the trash, you’ll probably suffer an Order Break, so defend through it as much as possible and cleanse any debuffs or stat reductions as soon as you can afterwards. From here try to keep the boss debuffed with a combination of Cosmic Fan in Harmonics when possible, and Aria’s Solitary Rhapsody and appropriate E Skill. It’s also a good idea to Paralyze and Seal the boss using water and earth skills respectively, and any skills that have SP Break are useful too; if you can actually make the boss run out of SP, it will only use basic attacks on you, which can still hit hard without stat debuffs, but which won’t inflict ailments on your party.

The last bit in particular, although complicated and requiring some preparation, will make the difference between fights that drag on for half an hour and fights that are over in two turns. If you’re stupid enough to go for the Platinum trophy like I did, you’ll need to master it for efficient Approval Rating farming in the post-game!

Well, now I’ve written 2,000 words that have probably baffled most regular readers of this blog — sorry! — I hope, if you stumbled across this blog while Googling things about Omega Quintet, that my tips have proven at least a little helpful, and I hope you continue to enjoy this great game!