Spike Chunsoft has always surprised American shores with some of the games that they distribute from overseas. Conception Plus: Maidens Of The Twelve Stars is no exception. This title is wrought with sexual innuendos and insanely bouncy boobs that unfortunately don’t exist in real life. Conception Plus just happens to be a remake of the Japan only PSP release of Conception which was released April 26 2012.
Oddly enough the sequel to Japan only release came to the States for the PS Vita and 3DS on April 15 2014, aptly named Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars. Obviously there was enough interest in the series for Spike Chunsoft to bring the remake to the States even though after playing both I felt that number 2 had better quality overall, you can read my review here.
Being a JRPG game you know that the story is going to be a trip, especially when the game was never released here in the first place. Your character has a best friend named Mahiru who asks you to come to the rooftop because she needs to tell you something important. She tells you she is pregnant, but has no idea how due to the fact that she’s never been intimate with anyone.
As you are trying to take this all in the sky opens up and both of you are sucked into it. You wake up in the Kingdom of Granvania where you are greeted by Narcisstes, who takes you to the National Star God Academy where you are to hone your Star Energy. Finally he tells you why you have been summoned, both you and your friend are God’s Gifts, sent here to purge impurities from the labyrinths and bring balance back to their world. Without you fighting the impurities their world will soon be destroyed, you basically cannot go home until you bring balance to their world, with the help of Mahiru and the Maidens of the Twelve Stars.
This is an a-typical dungeon crawler with some social interactions thrown in the mix. If you only do the dungeons you will not succeed because the Star Children you create will be too weak to defeat the deeper enemies. You must build your social status with the 12 Maidens so that you can birth super powerful children to take with you into the dungeons. You basically choose one of the 12 Maidens to Class Mate with and you’ll get four children with certain abilities that will help you in battle.
They come in sets of four and those four go with you into the dungeon. In the dungeon you will see enemies moving around the rooms, you can avoid them, fight them head on or get them from behind. Once you trigger a battle you are taken to the battle area where the fight rotation is set up and moved through. You can do a number of attacks and special moves with your main character and your children.
In the usual JRPG way this game is easy to control because it has all been done before, this is just another dungeon crawler with a new skin slapped over it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable, but you’ve basically played the game before.
A the first three or so hours tarry on you are shown all of the information yo need to be successful in the game, and a smattering of the story. It would have been nice to have had the option to cliff’s notes this section of the game because it chops it up and pulls you away, but it is there nonetheless. You learn how to navigate the basic city map.
There are a lot of important sites on that map, the Academy, the Inn, the Church, the Shop and the Labyrinths. At the Academy you woo the other Maidens, the Inn is where you save, get your party ready and the like, the Church is where you Class Mate, and the Labyrinths are the dungeons you must remove the impurities from. The map is deigned with the look of the rest of the game, an Anime kingdom that is on the verge of extinction but where everyone wears somewhat steampunk clothes and looks like the stunt double from Persona 4.
I’m not kidding when I say this game is a huge Persona clone or Persona Lite, just with a lot more sex thrown into the mix.
This game is an enjoyable game, the story will be not like anything that you’ve ever played, but the mechanics, look and feel are all recycled from other dungeon crawlers. I liked my time with this game even if some of the humor made me roll my eyes and cringe.
While I was playing though I was wondering why I didn’t just pop Persona 3 or 4 into my PS2, those are far superior games with less cringe worthy humor. I do know that you can only play those two ps2 classics SO many times before you get bored of them, so Conception Plus is the game to play if you’re tired off the Persona deluge we’ve recently gotten.
Or it could be the game you want as you wait for Persona 5: Royals, I mean it could go either way. Conception Plus is a well built look into dungeon crawlers past that will keep you busy for a long time, plus if you like it you could get the sequel on the Vita or 3DS; I actually enjoyed that one more.
This review is based on a review copy provided by the publisher
