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Conception II [3DS/PSV]

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    Conception II [3DS/PSV]

    They really like dialogues at Spike, don't they? I also wonder there I'll get to the Chunsoft part of this Spike Chunsoft title...Conception II is a sequel for the 3DS (played version) and Vita of a PSP game I skipped entirely.
    The basic idea, or better, the concept (har har har) is that you, as the main character, transfer into a new high school where they fight monsters. Of course, who needs professionals when you have highschoolers? But hey, you are not a simple highschooler, you're the chosen one, or something like that, which means you can create children that look like out of Final Fantasy III for the DS with the girl you like!

    Okay, let's take a step or two back.

    Conception II is a JRPG with elements similar to the Persona series, as it's possible to choose between dialogue choices, decide on how to spend your time between dungeons and build relationships with various characters, most prominently girls.
    During the first hour there's a lot of dialogue. A whole lot. Even the first hours in Persona III and IV weren't so full of dialogue; I'm pretty sure it's interesting, but no Japanese knowledge means skipping through it and always choosing the first dialogue option, which sounds like the "good guy" answer.
    From what I've gathered from the spoken lines (right now there have been very few dialogues that aren't spoken), this first hour introduces the world, characters, story and everything you need to know, so hopefully there won't be as much exposition as the game goes on.
    However, this means that I've been able to play through three-dungeons-three, all of them being tutorials to the battle system...total dungeoneering time: 10 minutes.
    Ugh, I really really really hope the dialogues/dungeons ratio shifts in favour of dungeons later on.

    Anyway, why would you get to know girls? To spawn children of course! And use the children in battle against monster!
    Maybe what you spawn during the game are not exactly children, but they are something like the union of two different magical powers that materialise into super-deformed humanoid beings, each belonging to a classic RPG class (healer, shooter, fighter, etc etc).
    Battles are turn based; enemies have four facings (front, rear, left and right sides), and controllable characters can move to a different facing during their turn; a facing (or tile, if you want) can hold up to two "adults" (your character and the chosen girl) and a single group of children (children always act as a group of three). If groups in adjacent attack consecutively, the attack is "chained"...right now I only know chain attacks give KPs (Kizuna Points) but I don't know what these points do...hey, after an hour I've been told that GPs (Glow Points) are used to buy new items!
    The system seems interesting, but so far there has been only one encounter against mutliple enemies at the same time, so I can't really judge it.

    The game has been clearly thought for the Vita. The interface is composed by rather tiny icons that are barely readable on a 3DS LL, and the touch screen is left unused for 90% of the time.

    The first impressions is that the game holds your hand way too much. It might be worth doing so for the "visual novel" part of the game, but the three dungeons were completely driven to the point that the first only made an attempt to explain half of the camera controls (the other half are explained in the third dungeon...WTF!) and the attack action. So far, it' has been pretty uneventful and very run-of-the-mill.

    #2
    I want to play this so bad LOL

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      #3
      I meant to update this thread long ago...anyway, dungeoneerign continues.
      It's kinda strange to say "dungeoneering continues" in a game where character interactions should tkae the front seat; instead, after the rather long introduction phase (2 hours, I guess) where you are tossed aroun from dialogue to dialgue, you can finaly enter the first multi-levelled dungeon, spend some time there and then unlock three sub-dungeons that apparently you have to finish to progress the story. I guess.

      This is where Conception II fails, big time. Dungeon layouts are uninteresting just like their graphical representation: walls and ground tiles are repeated over and over in a seemingly endless repetition of corridors connecting rooms where enemies await the player. Enemies are visible on screen, and and a group of them is represented by a monstrous head lurking around the room; the normal head is purple, but there are black ones, red ones with tentacles, or purple ones without horns; the latter are monster groups at a much lower level than your party, and are destroyed as soon as you approach them; the black and red ones I think represent harder enemies. I think because it's very hard to say if the millionth enemy of the same type you battle is stronger than the others, except for how much punishment it can take.
      Touching one of the heads will initiate battle.

      As with many JPRGs, there are a lot of would-be tactical elements in Conception II, but none seem to be of relevance. Each character has four facings (or quadrants), with one or more of those being "weak". It's not possible to roam freely on the battlefield, but only move between monster quadrants, and perform an action there. Placing and attacking without exposing too many party members to other monsters is the biggest part of the system, although it essentially boils down to attack enemies against walls first and then wait the other enemies to move near you; monsters' attack power is not particularly high, and there's no sense of impending doom in any of the battles, even when the party is low on health.
      The party is composed by up to four groups. The first is the main character and the chosen girl for the dungeon, the remaining three are composed by three "children" created outside dungeons. Each of these groups act as one, with their MP forming a pool to use special skills. Everything in the game seems to have an elemental affinity, and a lot of care has to taken in assembling the party for the next dungeon...if you actually care, as especially in the initial hours you'll be extremely limited in your options.
      The children can also form a giant robot, a Gassin, by expending Kizuna Points. The Gassin is very powerful but without powerful enemies, it looks like a waste of KPs, that are used to create better children and are gained by talking to the various girls.
      Anyway, there's little to no enemy variety: foru the first four or so floors of a dungeon, only three enemy types will show up, and one of them is a recolour. On lower floors other two enemy types are added to the fray but the're no mix of them, making dungeoneering an incredibly dull experience.

      But what about the other half of the game, where you interact with the girls? Well, I can't say much due to my inability to understand far-east words, but everything is pretty "safe". It's obvious that Persona III and IV provided inspiration for the setting (you're a second year transfer student, the game is divided in seasons, only a limited numbr of interactions between dungeons), but Conception II never reaches the complexity of these titles, limiting the school sessions to choosing three girls, creating new children, and assembling a party for the upcoming dungeon. Everything is very shallow, and I'm choosing the girls based on their transformation sequence (yeah, before every dungeon there's a transformation sequence) and how good they look in their skin-tight battle dresses. Yeah, this is my ignorance of Japanese cutting me off from (a possibly huge) part of the game, but girls don't seem to deviate too much from the many stereotypes populating anime and games.

      Getting back to graphics, I've come to notice that all characters are incredibly long legs. While this is a very common mistreated proportion in Japanese drawn entertainment, here it also has the distinction of making all girls as tall as the protagonist, even when during school segments and during transformation sequences are clearly shown to be much shorter than him.
      During dungeons, graphics are very pixellated and generally boring to watch.
      On the other hand, when interacting with the girls, different models are used, probaby there's even some AA thrown in and the 3D effect is actually nice.
      Voices are rather standard; well executed, but no VA stand out for performance. Music...oh, the music. As you might xpect, during dungeons is incredibly boring, but when battles start...it becomes obnoxious. The battle theme is a Rap/J-Pop song (J-Rap?) with actual lyrics and after hearing it for the second time, you'll mute the DS. Yes, it's that bad.

      Let's see if after these three sub-dungeons things get better.

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        #4
        Sounds disappointing. Like a poor man's Persona, really.

        Comment


          #5
          Ok, forget almost everything I've wrote till now. I've spent almost 20 hours with the game, and the first impressions were partially wrong.
          It's true that the game is incredibly boring during the first two hours, as the player is swarmed by a seemingly endless torrent of dialogue, and a lot of things are hidden within the system (for those unable to understand Japanese) or by story progression: for example the last girl joins during after the third main dungeon (15 or so hours if you skip all dialogues and go through all the optional dungeons), and I still have to unlock two options in the school grounds (of course I don't have the slightest idea on how to do that).

          The game has two distinct sections, school grounds and dungeoneering, that interlink with each other very tightly. In the school compound you will interact with girls, create children (magica beings) with them, organise the party, and accept quests. In dungeons you'll level yurself, the girls, the children, you'll collect dolls to create better children. Back to the city, children that have reached their maximum level will be "dismissed" and this will level up the school facilities.
          The system works well, but there is one major problem: dungeoneering is incredibly boring, due to the uninteresting dungeon layout and repetitive battles.
          I was very wrong about enemy variety, there are a lot of enemies, although random dungeons will apparently feature only enemies you've met so far. Problem is, no matter how many enemies there are, they are all fought in the same way: enemies do not have combined tactics and way too few enemis attempt status alterations or maneuvers that would really endanger the party.
          Various special attacks can hit from different directions, which does increase the tactical depth of battles, but even boss battles boil down to spamming the most powerful special attack a party unit has. Dying is incredibly hard and battles are boring even without understanding the base of the battle system, and once you understand how the whole system works, things become even worse.

          Everything in Conception II has an elemental affinity for attack and defense; the girls trasmit their affinities to their children, though some of those can be changed via equipment. Dungeons follow a general theme for elemental offence and defence, though there might be few enemies of the opposing element.
          The party must be built to counter a dungeon's elemental theme, and once this is done, enemies will only be able to scratch your characters while your character will mop the floor with enemies; it sounds enticing, but after three battles, you'll be actively avoid battles if not strictly necessary...and then you'll remember that levelling up will make the school become better, making battles a very bothersome necessity.

          Not everything is bad, though: there a lot of children classes, with different girls getting access to different classes or bestowing different stats and elemental affinities to them. The various special attacks, being them from children or from the girls, tap into the weakpoint/facing system battles feature, and with enough planning, you can always exploit an enemy weakeness with all four party units.
          You'll have to go through a lot of menus and a lot of going somewhere, check the elemental affinity, cancel, adjust, redo if necessary, and so on, but it can be done.
          Unfortunately (or fortunately) playing the game does not need an intimate knowledge of every aspect of the system, and you can force your way through all dungeons without exploiting any of Conception II's aspects.

          Of course, the biggest unknown are the story and character interactions. As said in previous posts, I've been choosing girls based on their voice, their effectivness in battle, and their transformation system. I'd say you can keep three or four girls close to you for the whole game (thus producing quality children), including the one that will receive most attention.
          Every girl has its own storyline, which seems independent from the main storyline, so I guess those interested and able to understand Japanese would enjoy this part...but I can't stress enough how it comes crashing down in dungeons, from the actual game to graphics and sounds.
          There's a lot of interesting things in Conception II, but they seem to be reduced to cogs in a machine rather than something you would do because it's fun.
          So, I'm kinda torn if I would want to see this game localised: I know that the dungeoneering is boring, but completely losing the story element is essentially like losing half of the game.

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