Review

Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars

Let me just start by saying that Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars is definitely not for everyone. To be totally honest, it’s a weird game. But it is fun; you just have to give it a fair chance. After putting about 48hrs in, I feel that Conception II offers one of the silliest experiences found in modern JRPG’s!

This fact is just enough to make the constant grind of crawling dungeons worthwhile, but just barely. Warning – there is a LOT of dungeon crawling. And although the humor is there and in your face, the characters are empty and lacking of any real reason for the player to care about them. Before going into exactly why this is, let me explain the premise. In Conception II, the world is plagued by demonic monsters formed in what’s called, Dark Circles. These circles have started popping up all over the place, spawning monsters and such. The only ones able to fight them are teens that have the mark of the Star God. Your character happens to be a young teen that recently discovered he had this mark.

As the story goes, he is enrolled into a high school specifically created to train those with the mark. He isn’t an ordinary mark bearer though; with a high amount of ether in your body allowing you to enter the labyrinths found in Dark Circles. Based from the Seven Deadly Sins, these labyrinths are the dungeons you will be spending all of your battle time in. You are also “God’s Gift” with a 100% getting any girl to rear a Star Child (more on this later), which has never been encountered before.

Though interesting on paper, the story is extremely deflated; there’s enough there to keep you playing but nothing worthy of note. Well, unless you enjoy the infantile teenage love triangles which result in “classmating”. Classmating is the game’s way of introducing different classes to mix and match in squads. The better the mood the heroine is that you choose to classmate with, the higher stats and stronger the resulting Star Child will be. You can then put into a squad to help your character battle monsters.

A little word on classmating…this game is very Japanese, for lack of a better descriptor. All the playable characters involved are 16-18 years old.  Your main character is encouraged to classmate (i.e. have pseudo pornographic relations) with any of the heroines/select male characters in the game. What it boils down to is a missed opportunity to flesh out your potential partners’ personalities. Instead the game promotes superficial relationships with stereotypical female character types found in popular anime. The idea may not appeal to everyone, even though the neon laden CGI scenes don’t show anything (all they do is hold hands and transfer energy into vessels).

After the tutorial section, if you really don’t want to classmate you don’t have to. Grinding through dungeons will keep your main character at a high enough level to continue on, but you will be missing out on some of the Conception II’s more interesting mechanics. Going through the dungeons will be a huge part of your experience either way. There are plenty of levels in each dungeon to drudge through, which turns mundane after a while. That said, this is also where the game shines. The turn-based battle system is one of the more unique ones I’ve experienced. Every enemy that you encounter allows you four sides to attack, each side either allowing you to dish out a strong attack or a weak attack. Your strong attack will damage your opponent significantly and give you some defensive edge as well. So why would you want to go for a weaker attack? Weaker attacks build your chain meter quicker, which in turn weakens your opponent either in damage or speed. This also opens up special attacks, which vary with the characters chosen.

If you can get through the incessant dungeon crawling, the uncomfortable teen eroticism, and a decidedly creepy pedophile that is constantly jealous of you, the rest of the story is pretty okay. It had its moments where I smiled and laughed just at the sheer ridiculousness of the situations that the characters are put into, but that doesn’t save Conception II from being a game suited just for JRPG superfans. You know, the group that ALTUS ported the game over for. Ultimately though, the narrow scope of the game is its downfall for most Western players.