Also the story and some of the dialogue is really vulgar. Not that I expected a game subtitled “Please Bear My Child” to not be vulgar, but I’m surprised how low they sunk. Way beyond innuendo and well into ‘rubbing your face in it’ territory. If you thought Ar Tonelico was too subtle and you really wanted them to stick it in your face – haha stick it, geddit, that’s so naughty, haha – then Conception
A One-Track Story
The writers went out of their way to make the story as tasteless as possible. For example, the backstory of the dungeon monsters, known as kegare, is that they’re created whenever people in that world have sex. Kegare (i.e. pollution, defilement) created by Aries people goes to the Aries dungeon and so on. These dungeons are losing their function for an unknown reason, so the MC was summoned to that world to help deal with them. There’s a worldwide ban on sex until MC fixes the problem (yeah, good luck enforcing that).
MC is assisted in this task by 12 priestesses. They help him by creating Star Children with him, to the accompaniment of sleazy music and suggestive silhouettes. And as you can imagine, there’s a lot of gasping and blushing and more-than-innuendo. It’s my first time, Be gentle, Wow, you were amazing. You name it, they said it. “It’s like sex, but it’s not really sex, but it’s almost like sex so it’s sexy right?” No, no it’s not. Not when they go so far out of their way to rub it in your face – haha, rub it – then it just becomes a farce.
What makes the whole thing worse is how incongruous the innuendo is. It really comes out of left field – haha, comes, haha *shoots self* – because for the most part Conception is just your standard JRPG. It’s not even a fanservice game like Shining Blade. With one exception the girls are dressed quite conservatively.
When you talk to them outside of the stupid ritual, they chat about normal things like family and work and life. Just ordinary stuff a high school girl would talk about. None of them would be out of place in your average Tokimeki Memorial game. You have the artist, the rich girl, the mad scientist, the tsundere childhood friend, the tsundere not-friend, the bokkuko, the school nurse. They basically run the gamut. They have diverse personalities and backstories, but almost everyone is cheerful and upbeat and just fun to talk to. That’s why I just go “huh?”when the game goes all h-game on me at that one particular point in time. It just doesn’t fit the game at all.
Before I drop the topic, I should mention the worst part of the whole experience. Mana, abominable mascot character:
Once the story has been established and the first round of breeding is over there’s no real room left for dirtiness, but that doesn’t mean the writers aren’t going to try anyway. That’s where Mana comes in. His sole job is to make pelvic thrusts (yes, pelvic thrusts) and lame sexual ‘jokes,’ squeezing the last drops of unfunniness out of every conceivably naughty situation, no matter how far fetched. Leave nothing to the imagination, is his motto. If the game tells you MC can mate with two girls at once, the average gamer would just file that info away for future reference, right? But no, Mana won’t let it rest. He’ll go “Woo hoo, threesome!” for five or six screens just to make sure you get the point they’re trying to make. It’s naughty, get it?
And I haven’t even mentioned how he got my check for 99,999,999G from the king stolen because he just wouldn’t shut up about the money. Mana sucks. Apart from him and apart from the over-the-top dialogue during the love ritual, I don’t have much of a problem with Conception story-wise and character-wise. If anything will make me quit before the end, it will most likely be the battles.
A Battle System that needs a bit of work
I would have written this post two days ago, but I put it off until I’d played at least 15 hours. Why? Because my initial impressions of the battle system were very negative and I was giving it a chance to improve. I’ll try to explain how the system works in not too many words. See the circle below? See the 4 four blue zones around the monster?
Every turn you pick a zone to stand in, then you attack. Most enemies have a weak point on at least one side, signaled by a pink arrow. You can hit that to do more damage, at the expense of not filling your over-chain gauge. At first I ignored the chain gauge in favor of finishing battles quickly, but it turns out you get waaaay more EXP and Kizuna Points (used for breeding and special attacks) by dragging battles out. The longer you keep an enemy alive, the better the results. Am I the only one who sees a problem with a battle system that rewards you for prolonging battles unnecessarily?
I mean, you can look at it positively and say it encourages the player to tackle stronger monsters, but from a realist’s perspective, i.e. the perspective of the one actually playing the game and not some starry-eyed designer, it’s just about chipping away away at a monster’s HP with your weakest attacks until it finally kicks the bucket. Repeat the process 2000 times and you have Conception‘s battle system in a nutshell.
Also girls will randomly phone you in the middle of battle and get mad if you don’t answer because lol girls
And it’s not just that the battles are long, but that they’re extremely repetitive. There are 14 classes and a lot of skills, but you can’t use your best attacks if you want to drag things out. You don’t want the enemy to die too quickly, so you just move from square to square using regular attacks, hoping they won’t die too soon. This is probably the first dungeon crawler I’ve played where I put the game on Perma-Auto-Battle after the first three fights. The system is that boring.
That’s not to say it’s easy, but it’s not that hard either. Potions and other helpful items drop abundantly. So do weapons and armor, and money is in plentiful supply. Dungeon enemies are usually pretty easy, and I’ve been given about 20 of a 100% Escape item so… yeah. Boss battles are about the only places where I have to take Auto-Battle off because bosses hit really hard. But even in that case you can save anywhere in dungeons. Just save right before the boss fight so you can retreat and grind if things go pear-shaped. And let’s say you do die and don’t feel like restarting. What’s your penalty? Minus 20% of your money. That’s it. That’s your penalty.
Level ups are in plentiful supply too
Concept-wise the battle system has a lot in common with games like Ar Tonelico and Shining Hearts/Blade. Harem RPGs with a similar focus on building relationships with pretty girls. In all those games the battle system is really good on paper but since the game isn’t really about fighting, the enemies are nerfed to hell and back. Challenge is close to zero and enjoyment is reduced accordingly. Of course it’s still very early days for Conception – which is why I waited 10 whole hours to post – and easy doesn’t necessarily mean bad, but it still feels like a bit of a waste when you have so many ideas and no one to use them against.
Anyway, I’m going to throw away my expectations of the battle system, fast-forward through Mana’s scenes and work on building relationships with the girls of my choice. I’ve narrowed my selection down to Femiruna the rich girl, Su the animal-lover (she’s boring, so I might replace her with tsundere Ruka) and Tarua the bokkuko. I only get to talk to three girls a week, so there’s no sense wooing more than that. If the game improves dramatically as a result of the relationships, or if the dungeons take a turn for the better I’ll be back to report it.
Whoops, I had hoped it was a good dungeon crawler. Ah well, let’s see if you still like the combat by the end of the game.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying the game, but the combat really does leave a lot to be desired. After 20 hours I’m still fighting 95% of the battles on Auto-Battle. Get into battle, hit R to double the speed, put the PSP down and stare at it for 30 seconds. Then pick it up and continue walking through the dungeon. Maybe the endgame will be tougher, but the current dungeons are a joke.
I’m actually quite eager to play the soon-to-be-released second installment of the series, despite the slightly ludicrous concept. It certainly looks beautiful if the screen captures are to be believed, and we definitely need more dungeon crawlers in the West.^^ If I like it, I may even consider purchasing this first Conception. Is the second one also on your backlog?
I don’t know too much about it now, but I miiiight get Conception II on the 3DS next year. The original has two major problems: vulgarity and a wasted battle system, and both of them can be fixed quite easily. I’ll read reviews first and decide in a couple of months.
I prefer the first game’s girls by far, but the second game did most other things better like more serious (and standard fare) plot, shitty pervert mascot replaced by token guy friend (bromance ending possible), more developed setting, more children classes, etc. Battles were pretty much the same (minus a fight or two that actually required me to use my brains and change up the usual strategy and no level scaling, which I see as an improvement) and the dungeons are just as boring, though.
The ridiculousness of the concept also long wore off by the second game. If it weren’t for riding off the success of the first game and wanting to reuse monster assets/gameplay concepts like making kids and getting closer to girls to make stronger kids, it could very well have been a normal RPG with galge elements with some changes. It doesn’t even use the same world.
Better story, better characters, better friend –> YAY!
Dungeons still suck –> BOO!
I’m sure they looked at their sales figures and customer reviews and realized that cute girls sell more games than good gameplay. It’s a loss for anyone who gets this expecting an actual dungeon crawler, but as a visual novel/dating sim it’s pretty good.
My thoughts, pretty much. Decent galge, boring dungeon crawler. I ended up auto-battling dungeons with one team set to heal and the other teams set to all-out attack to end battles early, and started wishing for an autopilot option for walking in dungeons.
The girls were definitely the main draw. It almost feels like no one actually knows how to make a dating sim/RPG hybrid that actually balances both parts well these days. Or no one wants to.
I used pretty much the same strategy, without the one team set to heal thing. I found out that if you put them on All Attack, any team with a healer or sage will auto-heal when another team is critical. And as long as MC stays alive it doesn’t matter how many kids die anyway.
The perfect galge/RPG hybrid would be a thing of beauty indeed, but I’m not sure the fan demographics are the same for both. It would be hard to strike a good balance, and such a game probably wouldn’t sell that much better than making either a galge or an RPG separately. Double the work for the same amount of profits, basically. That doesn’t excuse Spike for making such a joke of the battle system, though. I know they can do better than this.