Over the last few months, we’ve brought you tons of information about the soon to be released Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars. With a demo being released for the game a few weeks ahead of the release of the game on April 15, I thought I would give my impressions of my time with this relatively short demo.
You will start the game interacting with the main character’s best friend Chlotz and Chlotz’ sister Chloe, who just happens to be one of the seven heroines that play a major role in the game. They introduce you to what they call the “magical world” of Aterra. You will then take part in the Disciple Crash Course to get you acquainted with the game itself. Very quickly, you get an overview of the setting of the game and how there are labyrinths known as dusk circles all around the world that are full of monsters, who have been a major threat for the last twenty years. However, thanks to the Star God, the disciples were given powers to combat these creatures.
This is where the game gets a little bit odd and creepy. The disciples and heroines that were given powers will create Star Children together that are born for nothing else than to fight these monsters. You must bond with the seven heroines found in the game so that you can “Classmate” with them to create the strongest Star Children. Yes, that is almost exactly what it sounds like. The game uses the term as almost a euphemism for sex, though it isn’t exactly the conventional way we know it. The video sequences when you do “classmate” with a heroines even show the heroine in a shadowed nude state, almost like seen in shows like Sailor Moon, to further push that idea.
While this “classmating” situation didn’t really bother me at all, as it’s just obviously a fanservice thing and I’ve seen much worse, I can already predict that many people will make a big fuss about this when the game actually releases. It almost makes me wonder if they should have just gone with a different name so that the “mating” part of it wasn’t so obvious, even if that is what they were going for. But I guess with a name like Conception and the fact that the game was made for Japan originally after all, where things are very different than in the US.
Now, moving away from that, let’s discuss the gameplay itself. You will go through a few limited locations to speak with a few of the heroines and get to choose one to classmate with to create a Star Child. Then you will get to tackle one of the previously discussed labyrinths full of monsters. One of the best parts of this game is the fact that the labyrinths are randomly generated, so your experience will be constantly changing.
As said, you get stronger Star Children through the aforementioned processes and build teams of three that you can use, at least in the demo. I’m not sure how it will work in the full game, but in the demo it provides you with three almost full teams and just put the one Star Child that I made on the third team, who happened to be much weaker than the rest of the Star Children already provided.
The gameplay itself at first seems like your typical turn-based RPG with your party essentially having four characters. You have the protagonist and chosen heroine at any one time as one attacking character together. Then you also have the three groups of Star Children that attack separately. The game actually only lets you take on one enemy at a time for some reason, but has four locations in which you can attack it. When squaring off against an enemy, you will see a circle around him that is split into four quarters, with each providing different attack spots. By moving around and hitting from different areas, you can possibly do more damage, such as attacking the enemy from behind or head-on.
There are also special skills that can be used, depending on what type of Star Children you have, including the ability to merge into one giant fighter that can deal more damage for a little bit. The protagonist and the chosen heroine also have special skills that will easily be your strongest attacks in the demo at least. These are vital to use in battle as you fight through the few floors of the first labyrinth.
Overall, the demo for Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars is very promising. It is quite short if you aren’t fighting every single monster, as I beat it in probably 30 minutes. Someone speedrunning could possibly beat it in 10-15 I could imagine. The gameplay is a lot of fun and I think has a lot of potential with the mixing and matching of different Star Children as you get stronger bonds with the heroines in the game. If you plan on getting the game when it releases on April 15, I highly recommend you trying this out, as you will get some rewards in the full game for completing this very short demo.
