I hadn’t heard of this series until Atlus announced they were localising it for the West. Conception II is a game where you play as God’s Gift and have to “classmate” with female disciples to give birth to Star Children who help you fight monsters. Conception II takes place in Aterra. Developed by Spike Chunsoft, who brought us the amazing Danganronpa and published by Atlus. This game is a mixture of a dating simulator and hardcore dungeon crawler. The visuals in the game are absolutely phenomenal and showcase how good the Vita screen can make a game look.
Title: Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars
Developer: Spike Chunsoft
Publisher: Atlus
Platform(s): PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS
Genre: Role-playing game
Released: April 14, 2014
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In this world, Dusk Circles have spawned representing the 7 deadly sins and only you, God’s Gift, have enough ether radiating outside to create a battlefield within these circles. The Star God has bestowed select few individuals with a star brand that represents holy power. Something like the personas in Persona (series). That’s the summary of the main story.
You start out interacting with female and male disciples in the academy you go to. If a highly ranked disciple is happy and you have enough bond power, you can go to the church and “Classmate” to give birth to star children that pop out of matryoshkas. These talented and highly ranked female disciples can join you in battle along with your star children forming your basic battle party. When you interact with people, you often get multiple choices and basically need to make sure your female disciples are happy if you plan on classmating with them in the future. As you progress in the game, you can even buy them gifts.
The classmating aspect involves you watching a silhouette of a female disciple and her hand grasping yours. This is pretty suggestive and becomes longer as you progress into the game and level up. There are also catchy J-pop songs for the classmating exercise and what follows. You pick a matryoshka before entering. If you played the demo and transferred your save over (which you should), you get 12 bonus matryoshkas that grant certain bonuses to the conception. Later in the game there are even touch communication sections where you manually use the touchscreen of your Vita to touch the female disciples. In a game called ‘Conception II’, this should not surprise you.
Unlike in games like Persona 4, Conception II has no real time limit. You can progress time by resting or going into labryinths (dungeons) and then come to the academy and interact with people again. At any given time, you can talk to up to 3 female disciples before needing to advance time further. You have access to the city of Aterra’s various buildings like the lab or training facility where you can level up your characters in a simulated labyrinth. You control the system in game from the dormitory. You can also save at almost anytime within the game which is always a positive thing in a handheld game.
Now the actual dungeon crawling involves differently styled labyrinths that are randomly generated. There are no random battles and you can see monsters in an area represented by different coloured monster shapes. There are also items scattered throughout dungeons to help you get ahead in various different containers. Purple containers can either contain a monster trap or a rare item. There are also springs that grant bonuses for that floor in the dungeon like an EXP bonus or ether bonus. You make good use of both analog sticks while navigating through floors and one of the most welcome additions to any dungeon crawler is the ability to not waste your time in low level battles. If you are at a much higher level than a monster, you will just walk through it and not waste time.
The combat system is interesting. At first you don’t really understand why you are being bombarded with enough information to rewrite The Lord Of The Rings in the form of instructions and tutorials but as you progress, it clicks. Combat is turn based and the HUD is a mix of Persona 4 Golden where you have your characters on the right with their stats below and Final Fantasy X where you have an ordered list showing you the order of characters in battle. You can attack from 4 different sides and the arrow indicating attack direction changes to red for the weak spot of the enemy. Exploiting this is important and as the number of enemies in battle increases, you will plan your strategy instead of just trying to mash buttons and get ahead. Your classmate is always by your side and with 3 groups of star children (3 children in 1 group) you have access to attack from every side in a single set of turns. During your turn, you can attack, use a skill, an item, guard or in the case of star children, join together to form a giant robot mech. This uses up bond power and should be used very sparingly (preferably in boss fights only). This more powerful mech has its own stats and I ended up using the Mecunite command when a group of star children were low on health. There is also a chain drive system that has a gauge that fills up as you attack from head on. This doesn’t seem useful in the beginning but once you keep attacking enemies from the blue arrow direction, a filled up chain gauge can swiftly turn the tables on the enemies.
The end of each labyrinth has a dusk spawner which spawns monsters into the circle who is your boss. This boss is usually a lot harder (I’m not kidding) than any enemy in the labyrinth and the game notifies you of this in advance as you progress to higher floors. The aim of these labyrinth battles is to capture the dusk spawner into a matryoshka so it can be studied in the lab. I cannot emphasize how important it is to pay attention to the tutorials and instructions as you get further into the game. These can be accessed from the main menu at anytime. Also do not make the mistake of entering a labyrinth (real one not a simulated one) with only 1 group of star children as far as possible.
Aside from the core of the dungeons, you can accept quests to destroy certain monsters that reward you with rare items or money when you submit completed quests. The city also has a shop you can visit to buy armour, weapons and items. Once your star children have reached a certain level, you can grant them independence and this helps level the city up. After you have crossed a few levels, you get access to a gift shop where you can buy stuff for your female disciples.
The characters in Conception II range from really interesting to plain annoying and even borderline offensive depending on how you approach this game. The 7 female disciples all have unique but somewhat stereotypical personalities and this adds to the dating aspect of the game. You need to keep track of how to respond to each one differently. The dialogue on the other hand tries a bit too hard to be sexual with innuendos forced in most places.
Now comes my favourite aspect of Conception II after the dungeon crawling. The visual presentation. Conception II nailed almost everything visually and not once does anything feel out of place. The OLED screen shines here and everything runs at a smooth 60fps (barring the rare dip below during some dungeons) and the visual animations while switching areas and menus is great. For a change even the character portraits are animated while they are talking. This gives the game a more lively feel. Conception II has boob physics. Yes. This will either persuade or dissuade you from giving this game your time and money. It feels a bit tacky at first but you get used to it. There is a bit of a menu lag in dungeons when you try and access the item list. I hope a future patch fixes this. When you’re close to death and there are monsters surrounding you, there should not be a delay in using potions or skills.
The soundtrack has a lot of really strong tracks like the first battle theme that I’m listening to as I write this review. The voiceovers range from decent to annoying for some characters. I often found myself muting the voices completely or the entire audio in the non dungeon sections and listening to something else while playing. I’d have loved an option to mute the voices of NPCs and only allow the main character, God’s Gift and the female disciples to talk.
If you’re into dungeon crawlers and not the kind of person who needs games to be serious at all times, Conception II will be a nice immersive experience. Play this game with an open mind and stop taking everything so seriously. It can give you about 50-60 hours of gameplay easily and if you enjoy grinding, you will even end up maxing your characters, granting children independence and raising the city level faster. There is both free and paid DLC at launch. In May, you can even fight Monokuma (upupupup) from Danganronpa via a free DLC. There’s a reason Atlus released a demo for the game but do not judge the dungeons based solely on that. I feel like it doesn’t do the real game justice. If you happen to want to buy this, the first print run has a free soundtrack disc and it comes in a special box.
