Conception II: Deceptive appearances

Gee, it seems that I’ve been playing nothing but fan-service-laden games lately, doesn’t it? Whether this is purely coincidental or revelatory of a deep-seated trend in modern gaming—or both—would be an interesting issue to tackle, but I’m not going to do so here. Instead, I’m planning to examine the no less interesting issue of the fan-service’s purpose and importance in Conception II—along with other juicy subject matters such as the gameplay, obviously. After having played a handful of fan-servicy games in short succession, I’m starting to realize that there is, say, fan-service and fan-service. But more on that soon.

For now, let’s focus on the usual bit of data. Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars, developed by Spike Chunsoft and released in 2013(jp) and 2014(na/eu) for the Vita, is the sequel to Conception: Ore no Kodomo o Undekure!, a Japanese-only PSP game. The two games are built on the exact same formula, namely an alternation of dungeon-crawling segments and dating sim segments, peppered with a solid dose of fan-service for good measure. They also use the exact same gameplay mechanics—so much so that Conception II could be seen as a copy-paste of the original Conception with updated graphics and a new cast of characters rather than a true sequel. Reviewers were mostly unimpressed by this second effort, if the scores of 62 on Metacritic and 64.46 on Gamerankings are to be believed. Reviews were average for the most part, describing the game as solid yet not especially dazzling, and not really standing apart from the RPG mass despite its risqué undertones and romance sim side. And that is not so surprising, given the way both fan-service and romance sim mechanics were implemented in Conception II and their real purpose in the game’s context. 

Alluring glaze is just that—a glaze

Indeed, although the primary purpose of fan-service in games is always to lure the potential player’s eye and make them open their purse while salivating in anticipation, nothing forbids said fan-service to serve secondary purposes as well. As a matter of fact, fan-service does so in nearly all the games it occupies, and these secondary purposes are usually related to the overall concept of the hosting game. In Code of Princess and Senran Kagura Burst, the fan-service was a self-derisive addition that gave a parodic overtone to both games; in Criminal Girls, it was woven into the gameplay and molded into a brand-new take on leveling-up mechanics. So, what is exactly the fan-service’s secondary purpose in Conception II?

Well, the answer is simple: the fan-service in Conception II acts as a glossy, appetizing glaze conveniently applied all over what turns out to be very classic RPG gameplay mechanics. It is the honey that is bound to attract flies, i.e. potential players, to the fold: why go with the vinegar of arid old-school presentation when you can lure a greater audience with the sticky sweetness of risqué looks?

Take the game’s most prominent and eponymous fan-servicy feature: the infamous Classmating, which is none other than the conception of the Star Children who will accompany you in dungeons. It shows your lady of choice wreathing and undulating, naked and bathed in light, before joining hands with your character at the end of the act. We could argue that these sequences are hardly titillating, with their garish colours and mediocre CGIs that make the girls look like plastic dolls, but that’s not the point. The point is that we do not know the exact nature of this ritual. Is it plain old-fashioned physical intercourse? Is it a spiritual connection? Is it a mix of both? The Classmating sequences are not exactly self-explanatory, and neither is the narrative, which bandies vague terms such as the females’ “Star Energy” and the males’ “Ether Count”—and yes, you’re totally supposed to detect innuendos here, but that doesn’t change the fact that we do not precisely know what Classmating is. But this uncertainty is entirely normal, because that whole Classmating business is nothing more than a sexy coating whose sole purpose is to revamp what is actually a mere character creation interface. Well tried, game, but who do you think you’re fooling with this transparent trick?

The same goes for every fan-servicy element present in the game. The fact that the ladies and your main character don a tighter, skimpier outfit—especially the ladies, as you’d expect—when you enter the Labyrinths, treating you to a Sailor Senshi-like tranformation? Just a plain attempt at titillation, useless as far as gameplay is concerned and serving no other purpose than to make you lose a couple of precious seconds. The excessive jiggle physics? No comment. The fact that you have seven ladies conceiving and fighting at your side instead of just one? Pure harem-RPG fare, pandering to otakus who want to bite off more than they can safely chew. It’s all glitter and shine, designed to make you forgot that you are actually playing a classic, old-fashioned dungeon crawler—to no avail, as far as I am concerned.

That’s not to say that Conception II’s brand of fan-service is horrendous. Superficial it may be, but it does have a couple of redeeming qualities. For one, it’s not too obtrusive: the risqué parts of the Classmating sequences can be skipped, as well as the pre-Labyrinth transformations, and most of the jiggling will pass you by as you read the dialogues. For another, it tries to expand its horizons by including elements that can cater to a different audience: the game is rife with homoerotic undertones, from the ambiguous relationship between your main character and Alec to the brand-new possibility of “Classmanting”, i.e. uniting with another male through the multiplayer option in order to create even stronger Star Children, without forgetting the “bromance” ending you’ll be treated to if you don’t woo the ladies hard enough. Last but not least, Conception II’s fan-service is light-hearted and humorous. It’s not hilarious enough to make the game a genuine parody of romance sims as some claim, but it’s certainly amusing enough to make one grin rather than roll their eyes. The occasional silly sexual jokes are quite mild and have a bantering edge that reminded me of my teenage years, in a good way; I even smiled fondly when witnessing that sequence in which the characters wonder if drinking from the same straw is akin to indirect kissing. Ah, sweet youth.

Skin-deep romance is uninvolving

And since I’m mentioning kissing, let’s move on to the next juicy matter in line: the romance, folks! L’amour! It is the logical continuation of the fan-service, but unlike said fan-service, it has been integrated into the gameplay. Somehow. Let’s face it, this integration is far from being conclusive, and the romance business appears more often than not uncomfortably disconnected from the main chunk of the gameplay instead of being tightly woven into it. Not every game series can be Persona, indeed, and here are the main failures of Conception II’s romance sim side:

—L’amour is boring. Now, your mileage may vary on that one, especially if you have a high school fetish; but truth be told, Conception II’s romance is more likely to induce yawns than flutters in the stomach. The girls are both cliché and cruelly devoid of personality, and that lack is not helped by the fact that they all don the same school uniform—bar one. The bland and expressionless CGIs used in the romancing segments do not help either, neither does the fact that there are no fixed events like in most romance sims—and let’s not talk about the entirely generic school setting. And talking about school, the game seems intent on pushing the teenager envelope as far as it can by offering an incredibly tame take on romance, all coy blushes, quid pro quos and hesitations. That’s kind of cute, but it’s hardly thrilling. In fact, it can be seriously disappointing: I spent the whole game wooing Fuuko only, saying the nicest things to her and showering her with gifts, only to be rewarded by monologues such as: “Don’t get all worked out, he doesn’t mean it, there’s no way he loves a girl as plain as me.” Well, excuse me, but I’m trying my hardest to convey my love here, and I would have liked to see my efforts rewarded in a more fulfilling and conclusive way. 

—L’amour is incoherent. This is an even worse flaw than the one above, because it disrupts the natural flow of the romance and prevents you from immersing yourself completely in it. To put it simply, there are two types of romantic scenes: the Key Scenes, which are milestones showing the (meagre) progress of your relationship, and the Filler Scenes, which are here to fill in the blanks between Key Scenes. The Filler Scenes show some generic babbling that is entirely noncommittal as far as romance is concerned, and that’s where the problem lies: such scenes break the immersion by not taking into account the romantic developments between you and the involved girl up until that point. Worse, they can sometimes blatantly contradict said romantic developments. During my run, I witnessed a Key Scene in which Fuuko declared her love for me, after which I was served a Filler Scene in which we chit-chatted and she tried to convince herself that we were just classmates and that there was nothing between us—scene that I had already witnessed several times since the beginning of the game. I don’t know about you, but I find rather hard to be swept away by such a disjointed love story. The game also occasionally forces on you scripted scenes in which one of the girls mourns the fact that you’ve not been roaming the dungeons with her lately and begs you to take her along next time you go crawling. I played the whole game with Fuuko only, and yet I got not one, but two such scenes with her. And I am supposed to believe that there is a strong bond between us and that we are actually in love? Well, excuse me, but I find a teeny-weeny bit hard to do so.   

—L’amour is utilitarian. Wooing the girls is the most efficient way to gain some so-called Bond Points, which then can be spent to perform the Classmating ritual or to perform special attacks. While this may seem like a neat way to tie the romance to the gameplay, it actually cheapens said romance by turning it into a mere trick to cash in currency. Added to the tedium and incoherency of l’amour, it can lead to a situation in which you find yourself triggering and fast-forwarding romantic scenes solely to get the Bond Points you need, which is anything but fulfilling. Romancing in RPGs is always better as an extra option independent from the main gameplay, a yummy side dish that acts as a lovely breather from all the crawling and butchering and that you can savour when you’re in the mood for it, not when you need some currency. 

All in all, I was most unimpressed by Conception II’s take on l’amour. Of course, I understand the logic behind some of the design decisions regarding romancing: relationships must stay mostly noncommittal because of the school setting, romance scenes have to be partly disconnected from one another in order to allow the wooing of several girls at once without any jealousy involved, as well as disconnected from the dungeon crawling in order to be triggered at any point in the game; this all makes perfect sense, but it doesn’t make for a pleasurable gameplay experience. The romance ultimately feels like an unnecessary addition that cannot hold a candle to the core of Conception II’s gameplay—which is none other than pure, unadulterated dungeon crawling.

Dungeon crawling is strong with this one

Indeed, forget the glossy fan-service and l’amour; behind these shiny looks, Conception II is a dungeon crawler through and through. That’s exactly what I expected from the start, so I was delighted—all the more so as the crawling experience offered by the game is a highly solid and enjoyable one. Conception II may not be the best conceived and most addictive dungeon crawler ever, but it certainly holds its ground thanks to an enticing combination of old-school substance and modern form.  

Indeed, the substance of Conception II’s brand of dungeon crawling is as classical as it gets. This is old-fashioned roaming at its best, with a completely assumed aridity that should delight any dungeon crawler aficionado who thinks that less is more. The design is clear-cut and no-frills—to a fault, may say some—and identical for every dungeon: square rooms bristling with monsters connected by corridors devoid of any, one ward that lets you escape the dungeon and another that lets you move on to the next floor, all generously sprinkled with tons of safes to loot and occasional traps. And nothing else: no secret passageways, no hidden bosses, no Monster Rooms—although all rooms could be considered as such, in a way. The aridity of the whole thing is further reinforced by the fact that the dungeons are randomly generated: this is a pure and astringent crawling experience that serves you a brand-new challenge with every single floor and never lets you rely on the comforting knowledge of the dungeons’ layouts to ease your way through. Pleasure is derived not from beating the dungeons per se, since they are ever-changing structures, but rather from the slightly compulsive urge to scour every single floor and leave no stone unturned, no safe unopened and, for the most hardcore of us, no foe alive. The crawling becomes significantly less fulfilling when one tries to make a beeline for the exit, because Conception II’s dungeon design is made to accommodate both thorough exploration and assiduous fighting. It is bare-bones, it is repetitive, and it is deliberately and unapologetically so—classic dungeon crawling for the most dedicated aficionados of the genre.

The form of Conception II’s brand of dungeon crawling, on the other hand, is unashamedly modern. Spike Chunsoft knew better than to stick to the clunky aspects of old-fashioned dungeon crawling, and they tried their hardest to give their game a good dose of sleek modern gaming chic—to great success. It starts with the game’s gorgeous aesthetics: aridly designed dungeons do not have to be incompatible with eye-candy, after all, and we are thus treated to a unique brand of stylization that could best be described as “Baroque abstract”. It involves geometrical patterns and ingenious combinations of vivid colours—one combination per dungeon, from the most harmonious to the most garish—as well as celestial or aquatic backgrounds that can be glimpsed at when you position the camera properly. Talking about this, the camera can be rotated around the characters at well as tilted in three different positions; not only does this flexibility allow you to discover dungeons from a new angle—literally—but it is also incredibly useful to spot monsters and safes. Said safes are pleasantly numerous, yet not overwhelmingly so; the balance in that regard is perfect, and this cleverly dosed amount of safes provide a great incentive to explore dungeons to the fullest. Conception II also boasts a good dose of user-friendliness when it comes to escaping and entering the dungeons. Every floor has an escape ward, conveniently localized in the very room where you start the roaming. This is already neat enough, but there is better: the game lets you re-enter dungeons from any floor that has been previously cleared, meaning that you can basically start over from where you left off. Add to this the fact that you are automatically healed every time you exit dungeons and you have the catering cherry on top of the convenience cake. As a result, every progress becomes meaningful and every cleared floor is cleared for good, creating a deeply fulfilling dungeon crawling experience that also happens to be perfectly tailored to the brand of portable gaming offered by the Vita. There are tons of other useful features designed to make things easier, but enumerating them all would be tedious; suffice it to say that Conception II is a game that takes user-friendliness to heart.

Conception II is thus thoroughly dissected and laid bare under your eyes, and you know what to expect now: a pure dungeon crawler with skin-deep risqué looks and unconvincing romancing mechanics. From what I’ve understood, the first instalment fared a tad better as a dating sim: it had twelve ladies instead of seven as well as seasonal events, which are completely absent from Conception II. Could Spike Chunsoft have decided to let l’amour take a step back in Conception II favour of pure, unadulterated dungeon crawling? Since I didn’t play the first game, I cannot say for sure; but if you know, you’re more than welcome to fill me in. What I can say for sure, however, is that I truly loved Conception II. I didn’t care that much for the romance in the first place and was mostly looking for a good, meaty dungeon crawler; that is exactly what I got, so I’m delighted. More than that, I’m starting to dig the Vita’s brand of dungeon crawling, and I’m more than ready to lap up all the Vita dungeon crawlers that come my way—which is quite neat, given that there are tons of them, most being already part of my precious collection. My Vita prospects look bright indeed, as well as my dungeon crawling ones! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!