If you want to play through the video game version of your favorite anime series, there are plenty of games like Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero to let you live that fantasy. But a newly announced turn-based RPG is going a different route, aiming to feel like its own original anime with over-the-top mech battles and incredible animation.
The dazzling debut trailer for Nitro Gen Omega throws around a few mostly invented terms that do a pretty good job of explaining what it’s all about. Italian developer DESTINYbit describes the game as “a spaghetti anime tactical RPG,” referencing the spaghetti western genre of Italian-made movies set in the American Wild West. Later, it’s referred to as “a unique shonen sandbox experience,” in other words, a free-roaming RPG modeled after a subgenre of action anime primarily marketed to teen boys. Other easier-to-understand details that come out of the trailer are that Nitro Gen Omega features a cast of fully procedurally generated characters, includes some management sim elements as you take care of your crew, and that all of the lush animation in the reveal is actual in-game footage.
A turn-based mech RPG with anime-inspired art is probably enough to get plenty of players on board, but some of the most interesting parts of Nitro Gen Omega are the details that are harder to get across in an eye-catching trailer. Battles pit your crew against a group of enemies, with each pilot on your team controlling a different one of your machine’s systems. In combat, you place each of your actions on a timeline in response to your enemy’s moves. It has the potential to be an interesting way to fight, and things get even more interesting off the battlefield.
Throughout the game’s campaign, you pilot a mobile base, which you can move through the world visiting friendly cities and finding new opponents to fight. As you explore, you can recruit new pilots, all of whom are procedurally generated with unique appearances and abilities. That means that some pilots are naturally more gifted, or at least more useful for your particular setup, than others, which could be a blessing and a curse. If one of your pilots falls in battle, they’re done for good, meaning if you spend all your time developing one ace, you could lose them in an instant.
To develop your pilots, Nitro Gen Omega looks to be taking some cues from the Persona series. Aboard your mobile base, you can give your pilots a variety of tasks between battles, from playing games to unwind to exercising in preparation of the next fight. How you have your pilots spend their time will impact their growth, as will what meals you feed them and what kind of relationships they develop with the rest of the crew.
Nitro Gen Omega has an asynchronous online mode that makes all this pilot-building even more interesting. Along with participating in a player-versus-player dueling arena, you’ll be able to trade pilots and mech parts with other players to better customize your own squad.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m kind of a sucker for tactical mech games. I’ve poured countless hours into the likes of Battletech, Phantom Brigade, and Into the Breach. So while I’m squarely in the target audience for Nitro Gen Omega, I’ve also played enough best-in-class games that I’m not really won over by imitators that don’t do anything more than follow a formula. Nitro Gen Omega certainly looks appealing, but what’s really got me excited is the prospect of its squad-building mechanics, which similar games often skimp on to put more of their focus on combat. With a vague 2025 release window, Nitro Gen Omega could still be a long way off, but its reveal should put it on the radar of any mech fanatic looking to take another spin in a giant robot.
