Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars

 PlayStation Vita
  • Publisher: Atlus
  • Release Date: Apr 15, 2014
  • Also On: 3DS, PC
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 105 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 56 out of 105
  2. Mixed: 32 out of 105
  3. Negative: 17 out of 105
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. Memo
    Oct 18, 2015
    6
    Conception II is a title published by Atlus and Spike Chunsoft. Generally this should be the formula for a good game. If you like dating sim dungeon crawlers then I would consider recommending this to someone who is new to the field.

    The good side to this game is that the frame rate is superb. They set this game to work well with the limitations of the hardware. The 2D sprite images    Conception II is a title published by Atlus and Spike Chunsoft. Generally this should be the formula for a good game. If you like dating sim dungeon crawlers then I would consider recommending this to someone who is new to the field.

    The good side to this game is that the frame rate is superb. They set this game to work well with the limitations of the hardware. The 2D sprite images are visually appealing. There is a lot of diversity and customization options.

    The downside is that the games potential is held down by trying hard to have sex appeal. The concept is great and the dialogue is amusing at times but it suffers from atlus inability to think dual audio is good. The dating sim portion is actually enjoyable, so much so that the dungeons are almost a chore in progressing the story. Combat is in my opinion this games weakest part. Even after hours and hours of play i still fail to see main mechanics shine and it honestly begins to show later on when you have been doing the same thing for hours. Tie that into the fact there are several girls to level individually along with their star children, any new girls introduced or the ones you have neglected tend to become useless fast.

    All in all, get this game if its on sale during a psn flash or something. Its not a bad game by any means, but not worth its full price.    … Expand
  2. StaticSpine
    Sep 29, 2014
    7
    Pros:
    - okayish visuals and design
    - nice voice acting
    - good waifu side stories
    - fun classmating mechanics
    - city improvements

    cons:
    - dull combat system
    - similar dungeons
    - the writing is average
    - banal story

    Overall, I had fun playing the game, but the labyrinths are way too repetitive. Still a solid JRPG for PS Vita.
  3. Danbri
    Apr 15, 2014
    5
    Being a huge fan of the Persona series, you'd think this game would have been right in my wheelhouse. And while I will give props to an interesting risk/reward combat system that reminds me of shades of FF Tactics with the 'facing sides', its specifically targeted and overly racy content makes it difficult to even sit through the character interaction. In a dialogue-reliant RPG like this,Being a huge fan of the Persona series, you'd think this game would have been right in my wheelhouse. And while I will give props to an interesting risk/reward combat system that reminds me of shades of FF Tactics with the 'facing sides', its specifically targeted and overly racy content makes it difficult to even sit through the character interaction. In a dialogue-reliant RPG like this, it thus quickly becomes its overwhelming 'problem'.

    While the Persona Team writers are quite good at presenting characters that, while generally presenting a pretty 'usual' anime personality, have a surprising and enjoyable amount of character depth and development, Spike Chunsoft gets halfway up to the standard and roots itself with boring, creepy, and off-putting stereotypes that serve to remind me why I don't watch most anime. There's no question why every cutscene employs exaggerated breast physics and why the only 3D models in the game outside battle are the protagonist and the women: they know their genre's general market quite well and play a full house of features around it.

    Persona oft gets labeled an RPG/dating sim mixture by its dialog system and the importance of people you know actually liking you, and Conception II treads in similar territory, but the usage makes all the difference. Almost the entire point of Con II's dialogue is courting your female classmates, which, while dumb, might be tolerable if the choices made sense. Normal, polite human conversation seems to upset every potential heroine, and someone needs to tell me how responding to "I'm [name], nice to meet you" with "I'm [myname], hello" is making them angry. And for God's sake, why is there a function called "Touch Communication" (paraphrased from the games own manual, "Listen to what the heroine says and touch or rub the heroine as requested")???
    Persona's pretty friggin' anime at times, but at least its characters and dialogue options are presented as actual human beings. Oh, and the dialogue is helping people and solving problems, NOT HITTING ON THEM FOR BABIES.
    I'll refrain from touching on 'Classmating'. It's dumb magical anime baby-making with high school ladies. Go read about it if you actually want to know.

    Ultimately I turned the game off a couple hours in from frustration. I'll likely not explore it any further.

    Now this game has an audience, for sure. If you enjoy wooing the stereotype anime ladies, and don't mind a pretty decent combat system for an intermission, go for it, it's not my place to shame you. Ultimately I guess I have to ask myself what exactly I expected from a game called Conception II. Well, from a game with Atlus USA backing? Something that actually treats me like a mature adult.    … Expand
  4. Epiternal
    Jun 4, 2014
    6
    Trying to think of a way to phrase my thoughts on this game, but am having quite a difficult time, mostly because the game was about as enthralling as watching paint dry, and my overall time playing it was spent thinking about not playing it. While I can't fault it for being a terrible game, it worked at the very least and managed to flaunt some amount of originality that wasn't blatantlyTrying to think of a way to phrase my thoughts on this game, but am having quite a difficult time, mostly because the game was about as enthralling as watching paint dry, and my overall time playing it was spent thinking about not playing it. While I can't fault it for being a terrible game, it worked at the very least and managed to flaunt some amount of originality that wasn't blatantly ripped from a Persona game, I can certainly say it was extremely dull, the characters were 1 dimensional knock offs of pretty much every female character you'll ever see in an anime; the busty girl with no self confidence, the rambunctious small girl who looks like she's about 12, etc. All that wouldn't be so bad if the side attraction of the game was trying to woo these cheap right hand replacements...which of course you obviously do, with a name like 'conception', a dead give away. It's not all bad though, after successfully seducing your card board cut outs, you can proceed to the 'classmating' section of the game, in which you initiate in an awkward totally not sex, but completely sexual mating ritual to make a 'star child', which is kind of like a Pokémon, but without all the love-ability, you take it into randomly generated dungeons, and pit them against monsters until they die, or you die of boredom. Surprisingly the dating sim and child making was the only really fun part of the game, in the same way smashing pots to earn rupees in the legend Of Zelda series would be if those games were at all rubbish. That said one cannot call the act of making children not fun in any sense of the word and still call himself a man, so there's that. That said the discussions you had with the girls int he dating sim side were heavily limited and repeated after a while, which became laughable after a while when the same girl would always act surprised when I guessed her bashing two rocks together was her attempt at making a golem when she'd done the exact same thing the day before. The voice acting is terrible, though you kind of have to expect that these days, but with no option to change to Japanese voices, I found myself muting the game most of the time, which greatly takes away from the experience. The absolute worst part of this game though is the story, it has a pretty basic concept; there are 7 dusk circles, cleverly named after the 7 sins (harharhar), your job is to go in and eradicate the duck spawners and save the world I imagine? Pretty standard stuff, but they try to expand upon it, with some half-assed story, driven by boring and uninspiring characters that made me want to throw up. So that's the game in a nutshell, a dull dungeon crawler, with 1 dimensional characters, awkward NOT sex scenes with a barely adequate dating sim, a pathetic excuse for a story and the ability to give birth to your own child slave army. A game that truly revels in its own mediocrity, if anything the score I've given it is a kindness… Expand
  5. Clessy
    May 10, 2017
    7
    A super solid dungeon crawler that might not be for everyone but for those who it do appeal to its fantastic.

    First let me start out by saying the music is simply fantastic in this game. With multiple dungeon and battle themes you wont be getting bored of the music selection at all. Its all so very catch and got that nice Jpop feel. Also all the characters have their own theme music.    A super solid dungeon crawler that might not be for everyone but for those who it do appeal to its fantastic.

    First let me start out by saying the music is simply fantastic in this game. With multiple dungeon and battle themes you wont be getting bored of the music selection at all. Its all so very catch and got that nice Jpop feel. Also all the characters have their own theme music.

    Presentation is top notch. The art style and cutscene are of the highest product quality you'd expect from a anime style game.

    The gameplay: Its grind heavy. Most of all the fun comes from creating star children. To do this you build your social links like you would do in persona. With higher social bonds you get the abilities to "classmate" which allows you to make children. The children are pretty much minoins. Think of them like your own persona pokemon. Leveling up finding new skills and getting the ultimate ones is just to much fun. Plus theres ton leveling up too.

    The only issue people are having with this game realistically is the crude humor. It is very much your typical troppy anime game. Sexual content is high and for some that might offend. If you love your silly japanese high school animes like azumanga you're gonna just love this.

    *Follow up: After around 15 hours into the game you're gonna feel a lot of drag and repitition. The greatness that the game sets up wears out fast and really brings the game down a ton. My intital love of the game gave it a 9 but its really a 6 after the begining wears off so the game average out to be an enjoyable but eventually boring experience.    … Expand
  6. mr_dad
    Aug 30, 2015
    6
    Notice me, Persona-senpai!

    Seriously guys, this game wants to be Persona. It wants to be Persona sooooo bad. It was even published by Atlus USA. Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Persona formula of merging JRPG gameplay with visual novel elements can be very addictive and engaging when done right. When done wrong it ends up like....well, not EXACTLY Conception II. I feel that    Notice me, Persona-senpai!

    Seriously guys, this game wants to be Persona. It wants to be Persona sooooo bad. It was even published by Atlus USA. Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Persona formula of merging JRPG gameplay with visual novel elements can be very addictive and engaging when done right. When done wrong it ends up like....well, not EXACTLY Conception II. I feel that this solid Persona-y formula, and the occasional likable character are able to allow this game to rise just above average.

    But it's still no Persona.

    THE GOOD
    + Dungeon Crawling/Visual Novel Forumla
    + Solid Turn-Based Combat

    THE MIXED
    +/- Fuuko and Alec are interesting characters...but they're the only ones.

    THE BAD
    - Classmating sessions can be a bit unsettling
    - Generally Unmemorable Story    … Expand
  7. tsdenizen
    Nov 2, 2017
    5
    While some could (and do) have a field day tearing apart Conception II for several of its questionable thematic elements, the real culprit here is how many interesting-on-the-surface systems the game provides the player with while demanding next to nothing of the player. The battle system is unique and should be a bunch of fun, but there's no reason to use it efficiently because theWhile some could (and do) have a field day tearing apart Conception II for several of its questionable thematic elements, the real culprit here is how many interesting-on-the-surface systems the game provides the player with while demanding next to nothing of the player. The battle system is unique and should be a bunch of fun, but there's no reason to use it efficiently because the battles are so easy. Spending time with your party members to build affection should've had a time management component, but it doesn't. There are several instances of shortcomings like this. While I certainly can't call Conception II a 'good' game, I also struggle to call it an outright bad one. While it fails at nearly everything it tries, there's enough different going on here that it makes for a unique experience. Conception II isn't good, but it is interesting, which is more than I can say for a lot of games.… Expand
  8. KNX2501
    Apr 5, 2021
    7
    Es un buen juego si le dedicas el tiempo que requiere. Es un JRPG en toda la extensión de lo que eso implica: Muchas horas con batallas que llegan a ser tediosas para subir el nivel de tus personajes y tener una buena oportunidad con los jefes de cada nivel.

    La historia es buena pero no esperes nada espectacular. Mi gran queja en todo caso es la falta de voces japonesas.

Awards & Rankings

51
#51 Best PS Vita Game of 2014
13
#13 Most Discussed PS Vita Game of 2014
15
#15 Most Shared PS Vita Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
62

Mixed or average reviews - based on 24 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 24
  3. Negative: 1 out of 24
  1. SpazioGames
    Jun 24, 2014
    65
    There's both a lot of JRPG and a lot of dating sims better than Conception II out there, especially on PSVita and 3DS, but if you want a taste of both genres in a single game, this is the way to go.
    Read full review
  2. DarkZero
    Jun 20, 2014
    70
    It’s not a great RPG – it’s too easy for starters – but I feel Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars is good enough that I can recommend this B-tier social linking, dungeon crawler to the diehard JRPG fans looking for a unique twist on the genre for their Vita.
    Read full review
  3. Worth Playing
    Jun 2, 2014
    65
    Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars is bland, tedious, and unexceptional.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »