Recurring Fantasy Recurring RPG Review Proudly Presents
#6 Conception II - Children of the Seven Stars
Now, I could drone on and on about all the details on this game, but I'm going to try and keep fairly compact about this game. We'll stick to my normal format, but I will also try to get to the point. Of course, I'll still include my usual opening bit...
Throughout my lifetime, I've changed my opinions on many things. For this particular course, I'm going to just say I'm referring to anime in general. I used to really enjoy it (around seven-ish years ago), but I haven't had as much interest as of late. However, upon one of my usual visits to GameStop, I was informed of this interesting but hilariously named title "Conception II".
I went ahead and reserved the game on a whim because outside of the humor derived from what little I knew... I was interested in the actual game and gameplay. (More towards obvious elements than I care to admit.) The game came out mid-2013 in Japan, but America didn't get it until April of 2014. This isn't really a surprise considering the kind of game and the content contained within... But enough about these exterior details, let's hope right into the game.
The art and look of the game is... nothing special I'm afraid. It's very nice and appealing to look at, but I'm not going to go out and worship the art or remember it fondly in the rear view mirror of my mind. Here's three examples of what you see throughout the game.
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| Exploring a dungeon. |
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| Average speaking cutscene. |
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| Fighting enemies in battle! |
This isn't just me hating on the anime style. I enjoy the anime style, but it's not really anything special. It doesn't have a look or style that's particularly unique to the game. It's pretty enough to look at, but it makes me think of games like Persona, Tales of series, OR basically any other JRPG on the market. I enjoy the varying character designs, but even they look pretty generic in general.
The game has an assortment of music as well... You'll hear all of the ten tracks over and over again while you play through. It's the basic assortment of tracks here, and they all tend more towards a mixture Pop (for not tense situations) and Rock (tense situations). It's good enough music and pretty catchy at times, but it's also a pretty small assortment. If you don't get attached, you probably won't enjoy your time here.
So to wrap that up nicely, it looks good and sounds good, but nothing ever really jumped out and grabbed me. This area of the game review is going to probably either make you nod in agreement or curse me to hell. I'm not trying to say it's bad (because it isn't), but it is also far from being anything I'd call truly amazing. You're going to love it for being what it is, or dislike it and agree with me because I'm not just shouting at how amazing it is. Enough about that. Let's get on to...
THE STORY! For the JRPG, this is pretty much the core reason of why I play them. I mean.. I like the gameplay, but I tend to get more wrapped up in the story bits and wish to continue for more story. Characters can be a great driving force too of course. Now, I haven't fully finished the game, so I can't give a true "loved/hated the story", but I can grade it for what I've seen and experienced. The story gets a bit complex (even for as little distance as I got), so I'm going to try and shorten it as much as possible.
You begin the game with the main character, Wake. The world is a strange place. There are dark zones of the world called Dusk Circles where monsters are produced. They escape these zones and attack people. Some teenagers gain a mark upon reaching a certain age, but it disappears by the time they reach adulthood. Thus the teenagers are the only ones capable of truly fighting the monsters. On top of all this, your character is able to produce an energy that allows people to fight within the Dusk Circles. (Thus he is labelled a God's Gift and pretty much instant celebrity.)
Upon being called "God's Gift", you are sent into the Dusk Circles to destroy whatever is producing the monsters. There's more story inbetween it all, but in all honesty, this game is less about the overarching story and more about the characters involved. It has its share of "DUN DUN DUUUUUNNN" moments, but it's more about building a relationship with the various ladies in the game. So... in the end, it's more of a dating sim with dungeon exploration and turn-based battles.
The characters should be the larger focus here, but I'd like to say that none of them are very deep or interesting if you ask me. True, I haven't finished the game, but they all fight fairly typical archetypes for this style of game. There's the smart ones, the airheads, big boobs, little boobs, tiny angry girl, weird girl, pure girl... If you name it, the game probably features it. And the relationships with these various girls has multiple affects on the game. Whoever you bond the most with is supposed to affect whichever ending you go for, but it also affects... "Classmating."
"Classmating" is where your character joins his energy with the energy of high ranked female students in order to create Star Children to fight off the monsters. It sounds dirty, the cutscenes make them appear dirty, but it's not what you think at all. Classmating is to create your army of Star Children in order to fight monsters. However, there's a lot of elements to them. I'll go over them more further down.
It's a crazy scenario and interesting enough, but it's also clearly built to make it a High School-style anime scenario. Everything is done via teenagers with their teenager ways and problems. Your guy is all popular with the ladies, and you talk to them and build relationships. It reminds me of Persona, but it's not nearly as interesting or deep as any of the games in that series.
So my honest opinion? The story matches up with my opinion on the graphics and sound of the game. It's good and all, but there's nothing there that makes me feel special or want to really get into the game. There are those who enjoy and probably just ADORE this game, but I can't say that I am one of them. True, I could continue through the game and find that special something that makes me go "Wow, I just needed the full experience here!", but I don't see that happening anytime soon. It's time to push on through to the last quality that could exist here... GAMEPLAY!
Gameplay is the king of games. If there isn't some form of playing being done, you're probably watching an interactive film. (Nothing against those... I'd just rather have an actual game.) Conception II does come with actual gameplay though! As I described above, the game is a mixture of...
- 1 Part Dungeon Crawler
- Randomized dungeons
- Enemies on the map
- 1 Part RPG
- Party Building through Classmating
- Lots of turn-based battles
- Levels for gaining stats
- Equipment and such
- 1 Part Dating Sim
- Selection of ladies
- Events with ladies
- Relationships with ladies
- I guess we know the kind of audience these games are for...
- Hint: It's probably men.
That gives you the basic details up above. I'm sad to make it that simplified, but that covers the majority there. Now to put that into actual words and review it...
Sadly, I bring up the case that this greatly reminds me of the Persona series (or the games I have played in it at least). You have two parts of the game. You are either 1. walking through normal society and building relationships which lead to 2. exploring dungeons and fighting monsters to save the world. While the game does perform both parts well enough, I still feel like there's a better game for each element both together and separately.
The exploring of the regular world has been pretty chopped down. You aren't actually walking around and simply have a menu in front of you. You visit random locations, talk up the ladies, buy stuff, accept missions, buy other things, set up your party, and a bit more. Of course, your relationship with said ladies builds into the Classmating feature which... Well let's just simplify it.
Better Relationship -> More Powerful Star Children -> Easier Times Through the Dungeons
That's the most basic form. I will say that the Star Children production is easily the funniest part of the game. Trying to build more and better Star Children while also unlocking all the different classes. Most of the classes are available from the start, and the Star Child simply has to have a compatible array of stats to build into whatever class you want. More classes become available later through the usage of special items. I'm all about building characters in games like this. Unfortunately... You can't get attached.
Each Star Child has a maximum level, and of course they're good up until a point but then... You need higher level children and release the children out into the wilds of the town! (Fairly serious here.) This levels up your city and allows for new products and new places to be built. It's almost funny if you think about it. You build up an army of children, raise them into their max potential, and then abandon them when you need new ones with better potential. However, it also means you have to constantly re-level a new group of children to keep going. This gets tedious after a while and really drags the game back.
The town side of the game has your equipment and team building right next to the story and character relation building. The character events are generally fun and entertaining though and easily the best part of the town half. Then you venture off into the dungeon half...
In the dungeons, you explore a randomized dungeon full of see-able monsters. You can avoid them, but as most dungeon games go, avoiding them just leads to future problems of not having enough levels or decent equipment. I do enjoy being able to avoid battles when I can though. So I'll give that an ups. The randomized dungeon part though... I'm really not a huge fan of it. I realize it's to keep the dungeons fresh and new, but it also means exploring every path and possibly running into a dead end after a huuuge walk down the wrong way. It's exploring and experience building but also time wasting.
Then you have the battles. Your team is composed of the Parent Team (Wake and one female companion) plus three Star Children teams (three Star Children per set). The interesting idea done here is combining each team's stat into one pile of stats. Meaning that their HP and MP add up to be the entire team's HP/MP rather than having a huge pile of bars and meters. It works out in the game's favor quite a bit. And remember the classes bit with the Star Children? Well, this is where you get interesting results!
Depending on their levels, elements, and move sets, Star Children have a possibility of combing them to create new, more powerful moves! It's pretty cool and can lead to some awesome magic attacks! Of course... Unless you know what combines with what, you will be trying a lot of trial and error to find a great combo. There's a cool element to it, but what with the disposable aspect of your Star Children... Those builds can be quite short lived. Let's talk about the actual battles.
You encounter enemies anywhere from one to four enemies (as far as I could tell). You are arranged on a 3x3 grid with each square occupied by an enemy. Your teams circle an enemy and can move around the grid, but can only occupy a square with an enemy. You move around the enemy in attempts to avoid its attacks and hit its weak side. Every enemy has at least one weak side of their body to attack. There's a lot of strategy to employ in the battles what with moving around and the various elements available. It doesn't skimp on these details at all, and once again, they work in favor of the game.
So the downside to battles? Pretty much the same downside to any JRPG turn-based battle system. They can be fun and interesting at first, but after a few hundred battles, you just go through the motions. Blast the enemies, run into another one, blast him, another one, blast. Etc. There are cool strategies to enact, but they aren't very necessary early on. I imagine the battles grow greater in intensity later, but with proper planning, they probably lean towards the same formula. I can't really give the game a negative with the battles though since a lot of RPGs gain this feeling from me.
All in all, the gameplay is probably the strongest portion of the game for me. It's your average RPG style, but it does it well. You explore dungeons, fight monsters, earn money and levels. It does those right. Sure it gets a tad repetitive after a while, but what game doesn't? The town/social portion of the game is enjoyable enough, but taking away the ability to truly explore kills a lot of it for me. It speeds up this process, but you lose a sense of adventure and exploration outside of the dungeons. Let's wrap this review up.
In retrospect, I complain about many aspects that make this game what it is. Is that wrong? A bit yes. I mean... I went into this game knowing partially what it was, but I guess I wanted more out of it than what it delivered. The graphics and sound in the game aren't anything to scoff at, but they could have done better and more. The story and characters truly follow in the same way I'm afraid. They are what they are, but just because you can do stereotypical characters doesn't mean you should nor does it make it right. Everybody fits such a cookie cutter shape that it's hard to enjoy them beyond the scope of the game itself. Granted, I didn't follow the game through to the end, so it's possible that everything grew beyond what I saw. At the same time... I doubt it.
Thankfully for the game, the gameplay does stand out. Comparative to the other two aspects, this one does stand out a bit more. It's fairly consistent and interesting enough mechanics going on. Relationship building leads to dungeon success. There's a huge variety of teams you can make, and the different kinds of classes all have their strengths and weaknesses. For someone who likes to create their own teams and classes (like me), this is a big bonus. It's partnered up with the random dungeon exploration and see-able monsters for a nice touch. Lots of grinding to be had! But in the end...
My Final Score - 4 out of 10
I realize this puts the game at a pretty low end, but it should be obvious. This game is clearly built for a specific kind of person. I could forgive that element if there weren't games out there that are built in a similar fashion but better games overall. I could suggest any of the Persona series (particularly 3 or 4) over this title. Both suggestions are more readily available as well whereas Conception II is limited to the 3DS and PS Vita. If one of the elements had been built up a bit better (aesthetics or story/characters), I could have bumped the score up more. However, I stand by what I say. A decent game, but you can find better ones available.
I hope you've taken this opinion to heart and those of you who like the game... Don't hate me.
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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