Omega 6: The Triangle Stars Review – Review
Omega 6 The Triangle Stars is the first game from legendary artist Takaya Imamura following his departure from Nintendo at the start of 2021. Imamura is of course best known for designing the characters and worlds of iconic games like Star Fox, F-Zero, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. As such I was thrilled to explore his new, original universe.
Omega 6 The Triangle Stars is an adaptation of Imamura’s manga, Omega 6. The game takes the form of a 16-bit style adventure game. Think Shadowgate or Famicom Detective club. Along the top of the screen is a series of available actions based on the location you currently occupy. This will include walking to a different area, talking to characters who may be present, or inspecting various points in the environment. Additional options will be available depending on the exact context of the environment such as shopping, fighting, or attending to a bonsai tree aboard your spaceship.
The general gameplay flow consists of exploring planets, meeting various characters, and using the clues they give you to determine where to go and what to do next. This may be as simple as a character suggesting you visit a certain location, which will unlock that location for travel, or they may want you to retrieve a specific item. Now and then I’d get caught in an area unsure of what to do in order to move on. This virtually always meant that I had failed to talk to someone about a specific topic yet but could cause some brief annoyance as I revisited conversations looking for what I had missed.
You play as a pair of androids, Thunder and Kyla, who have been tasked with providing a new home for humanity. Which means getting enough money to pay off their mortgage on a new planet. There is a fantastic sense of humor throughout Omega 6. Every character you meet is silly and weird; from the crew of Omega 6 itself, to the random aliens you’ll meet across the game’s three planets. The storytelling, world, and characters shine as the absolute centerpiece of the adventure. What’s impressive is that every character you meet really is unique. Despite over a hundred encounters you’re never conversing with a generic NPC, but fun and developed personalities. I particularly like the antagonist duo you’ll meet early on, Digun and Ramda.
The one area where Omega 6 gets tripped up, is in its unnecessary combat system. Now and then you’ll be challenged to a fight and engage in turn based combat. The combat is based on rock paper scissors rules. Both you and your enemy have a selection of cards with rock, paper, or scissors on them. Each character then has a specific card type that is their specialty, and you’ll be able to see how many cards your opponent has that are able to be defeated by your specialty. For example, if your specialty is rock you’ll see how many of their cards are scissors. From there it is about guessing not only what cards your opponent has but what they’ll use next. At the end of the day there is just enough randomness to the system that I’d wind up becoming frustrated when a fight went against me purely based on bad luck.
You can significantly improve your chances in combat by making use of the bonsai tree aboard your ship. By finding different nutrients you can cause your tree to grow special fruit. These fruit can then be used in combat to do everything from restoring your health to making your next hit extra powerful. Occasionally you’ll even need to grow specific fruit to complete quests. Fruit grows slowly over time however, so planning out what you want to have handy is essential. It’s an interesting mechanic but the combat just isn’t good enough to make it truly satisfying.
Outside of combat, Omega 6 The Triangle Stars is an exceedingly charming and funny adventure game. The excellent writing is accompanied by Imamura’s iconic art design and a fantastic soundtrack. While progression can stutter somewhat along the way if you can’t quite figure out exactly what it is the game wants you to do, the vast majority of your adventure is fun and endearing. While combat lets down the experience somewhat it can generally be powered through with efficient use of your bonsai tree. The rest of Omega 6 The Triangle Stars is a wonderfully stylized adventure that is certainly worth taking.
