After some fine-tuning in Early Access, the tactical role-playing anime NITRO GEN OMEGA is now officially out for its 1.0 release. If you haven’t heard of this sandbox mech game yet, then join me as we jump in to take a look.
This game is all about running a crew of pilots and taking back what is left of the world from a rogue AI.
The humans lost the war against AI. Now most of them hide in their tall towers waiting for the end to come. Only a small group of humans still fights back against the machines.
They pilot their own mechs and work as mercenaries, taking out machines and protecting the towers. People call them fools for still trying to fight. Can your crew do what no one else has been able to do? Can your fools finally stop the machines?
NITRO GEN OMEGA starts out with you selecting your first four pilots, the difficulty, and your team name. Now, the pilots can either be randomly generated characters or ones that you created yourself. You can even have a friend who owns the game create some characters and send the files over to you to load into your game.
The character creator is quite extensive and goes into a lot of detail into things like hair, clothing, personality, and even blood type. You are able to create as many custom characters as you want for your game.
Since only four start on your crew to begin with, the rest can show up later in the game and be recruited at different cities. It’s a great way to make characters for all your friends and then recruit them to your crew as you play the game.
Once you are in the game, you will start off right away trying to prove yourself to the first city by taking out some machines that are nearby. Then you can start exploring the map as you see fit. The continent is quite large, and there are several different cities for you to visit.
Each of the cities has the essentials like a gas station to refuel your airship, a fixer to do jobs for marbles (yes, marbles are the currency), and a general store to buy food and upgrades for your mech.
Most of the cities also have a Fools Inn, where you can recruit additional characters to your crew. These characters vary in skills and abilities depending on where you pick them up. There are also unique shops in some of the cities, such as a video games store or a greenhouse that you might want to check out.
There are currently three different mechs to pilot in NITRO GEN OMEGA. Two of which have to be unlocked. When you visit the general store in each city, you will find many different parts to upgrade your mech with.
These parts range in cost and rarity and can really change the way you fight in combat. They also change the look of your mech, which is always a nice feature. Different parts can also affect which pilot has which actions.
So one part might have your gunner firing your missiles, while another might have your engineer firing them instead. This can really help change the mech to fit your playstyle.
The majority of the jobs for the fixers, and the main storyline, focus on battling AI machines. There are other tasks you might have to do, such as delivering supplies. The combat does have a few differing flavors, like protecting a transport or surviving a set number of rounds.
Although you will pretty much always win by just destroying all of the opposing machines you are in combat with.
Combat is kind of a mix between turn-based and real-time combat. The developers call it cinematic turn-based combat.
Simply put, you and the enemy machines take turns placing actions on the timeline. Once you have selected an action for all of your pilots, then you hit go and watch as the combat plays out in a series of beautifully crafted anime cutscenes.
It is almost like you are directing your very own anime show. If you and at least one enemy are still standing, then you will go into the next round of action selection before watching the anime play out for the next round. This continues until you have defeated all the opposing mechs or they have defeated you.
Combat is, of course, a bit more complex than that. Each of your pilots gets one action on the timeline. Their actions vary depending on their role in the mech.
For example, your pilot is going to focus on moving your mech around the four regions of the battlefield to make it harder to get hit from incoming attacks. However, they also control the mech’s melee actions. This includes punching and blocking. That means you have to decide if it is better to relocate that round or try to knock out an enemy in your zone.
This is a balance that you have to find with all four of your pilots each round. It would be great to have your gunner shooting at an enemy machine every round, but at some point, they also have to take an action to reload.
If your pilots are good enough friends, they can pass their action to another pilot to go again, but that can only happen once per combat, so use it wisely.
Combat ramps up quickly and can get quite challenging depending on what region of the continent you are in. Being defeated in combat is not the end of your game, though there are consequences for your defeat.
Most of your pilots will be severely injured, and some might not make it back to the airship alive. Hopefully, you have enough money to hire a replacement if you don’t already have one on your team.
After a tough fight, it is always important for your crew to repair your mech and take some downtime.
Each character has a status bar for morale and fatigue. Doing different activities like lifting weights or cooking a meal can really help your crew recover before the next battle. You only get a limited number of activities between battles, so make sure you are focusing on the characters that really need the attention.
Other activities can help boost additional character stats. Such as yoga to boost friendship. There are even activities like reading or playing video games that can boost a character’s piloting skills.
Some of the options have to be unlocked as you play, so keep an eye out for odd items as you explore different cities.
There is a little bit of resource management while you are exploring the continent. There is, of course, your money, which is in the form of marbles. Not only are you using marbles to buy things, but you also have to pay your crew’s wages from time to time.
You also need to keep track of your supplies. This is essentially your food and fuel that you use while flying around. Make sure you don’t run out. Lastly, is your scrap. Scrap is used to repair your mech after combat. It can also be used for things like building modules to upgrade your mech. They are not hard resources to manage, but you will want to make sure you don’t run too low on any of them.
So, with all that being said, is NITRO GEN OMEGA any fun? Absolutely! The anime style of everything was what really attracted me to the game in the first place.
It is like creating my own anime TV show. The cinematic turn-based combat really seals the deal for that. The combat was always so enjoyable. There are a wide variety of enemies and their actions are not always easy to predict. Every combat felt intense and I always looked forward to seeing each turn play out in real time cinematics.
Outside of combat, I thought the game was just as enjoyable. There are a lot of different activities to do on the airship during downtime, with even more to unlock as you go.
The cities were all interesting, with some having unique shops to discover. It was a lot of fun creating my own characters and then finding them at the different cities to hire throughout the game. I also found the main story to be fun and entertaining.
I think any turn-based combat fan is going to enjoy NITRO GEN OMEGA. It is pretty unique with its cinematic anime style spin on combat. It is definitely worth checking out for anyone looking for a new game to play. Head on over to their Steam page if you want to pick up the game for yourself.
A review key was provided by the developer at DESTINYbit.
