Conception: Please Have My Babies coming to the West

[MaroonSkein]

Sadly, they're going to change what must be the greatest video game name ever.

Conception is a turn-based dungeon crawler with randomly generated floors and dating sim elements. The party consists of 13 characters: the protagonist and 12 children he made with the game's love interests.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=472104

SPIKE CHUNSOFT LAUNCHES 'CONCEPTION: Please Have My Babies'*, DUNGEON CRAWL RPG FOR PSP®

*The title is a literal translation of Japanese title and the English title is TBD.

Today, Spike Chunsoft announced the launch of CONCEPTION: Please Have My Babies (English title TBD), a brand new dungeon crawl RPG in which the player playing as a high school student who was taken to a parallel universe called Granvania. The game is released for PSP ® on April 26, 2012 for a suggested retail price of ¥5,980 (w/o tax) in Japan. North American and/or European releases of the game are TBD.

Granvania was facing a crisis invaded by KEGARE (demonic creatures) arise from disorder of the stars. The player will be treated as MAREBITO meaning a messiah in Granvania. The adventure to save the world and to get back to the usual world begins.

KEGARE can only be beaten by MAREBITO and STAR CHILDREN, the children between MAREBITO and zodiac maidens. Maidens cannot fight with KEGARE but can bear STAR CHILDREN. As the player forms a stronger bond with maidens, a more powerful STAR CHILD will be born. Deepen your love with maidens and have strong babies.

A god of KEGARE lives in the deepest floor of star labyrinth. Each time the player visits the labyrinth, its level layout and rewards are randomized. Be aware of deadly creatures and traps and go through the dungeon to reach the deepest floor. The combat is turn-based and the player can form a party with up to 12 STAR CHILDREN. Unite your power with children and defeat the god of KEGARE.

Gameplay details:

http://andriasang.com/con05g/conception_battle_system/

The battle system is known as the Positioning Battle system. In this turn-based system, you move your characters between four areas surrounding the enemies, and make use of attacks and skills.

Positioning is key to success, as you'll need to move to target enemy weak points, and move to get out of range of enemy special attacks. When you first enter battle, you'll want to check up on enemy information which can reveal enemy skills, and weak points.

As you connect attacks, enemies will build up an Over Chain gauge. If this gauge reaches a certain level, the enemy will enter a "chain" state and will move slower and be open to combos. Make use of this chain system, and you'll receive greater skills and rewards post battle.

http://andriasang.com/con0bw/conception_baby/

In Spike's dungeon crawler Conception: Please Give Birth to My Children, you'll need to make a battle party consisting of star children, special kids who alone can defeat the invading Kegare.

You'll have to make these star children with thirteen maidens. Making babies requires KP, or Kizuna Points. Even if you don't speak Japanese, you've probably played enough RPGs to know that "Kizuna" means "Bonds" -- and not in the bondage sense.

As you develop your relationship with the maidens, their affection for you will rise, reflected in higher KP. You can raise your KP during conversation events, and while exploring dungeons. A baby birthed when your KP is higher will be stronger during battle.

You might have noticed that Conception has a relatively tame C rating. There's no actual baby making in the traditional sense in this game. To make your babies, you and one of the maidens put their "spirit" into a Matryoshka doll container.

There are different types of Matryoshka dolls, and the choice of doll determines your child's properties. A Matryoshka AT (red) will give your child greater attack strength. A Matryoshka Wind (green) will give your child wind elemental properties. The blue one shown below is the default doll.

You'll collect new Matryoshka dolls from fallen Kegare and hidden around dungeons.

Once you've bred a star child, you'll be able to see its "Miko Data," with parameters for things like attack, defense, luck and... I see a "moe" in the screenshots, but I'm not sure if it's that moe. These parameters rise based off your KP value.

It also seems that the timing of birth matters. If the star child is born in the same in-game month as its sign, it will be stronger.

Just like real parents, you'll want to chose your child's job at birth. Jobs include typical RPG stuff like fighter, monk, magician, archer, thief (!!!), cleric and merchant. There are also upper class jobs like hunter, magic knight, paladin and berserker.

Your children's jobs, and their parameters, are a central part of the game's strategy. As previously detailed, you group your children into three teams of four and command each team as a single unit. The total attack strength and capabilities of teach team is the sum of each child.

The last link includes the concept art of the thirteen waifus and the classes.

I dunno about you, guys, but I'm sensing a GotY here. If my laptop can emulate this well, expect an LP.

 

[Duckard]

Sounds like great LP material from the title alone. Honestly, though, it really seems like some mix of JRPG and dating sim (kind of like the Persona?).

Just like real parents, you'll want to chose your child's job at birth.

 

[Rivmusique]

Reading that section on gameplay though, makes it look like it could be an actual decent turn based combat game. Wouldn't bother to play it though because trying to maximize KP to create a powerful "child" (fuck this shit) seems like a fucking creepy chore, dating sims are weird and that art style makes me a little mad just looking at it. Also I highly doubt the games difficulty would be such that you need to take full advantage of the positioning or class combinations (if they even differ much) to succeed, as the main pull is (unfortunately for humanity) the waifus.

 

[20 Eyes]

Somewhere in Canada, Bioware is taking notes.

 

[MaroonSkein]

Sounds like great LP material from the title alone. Honestly, though, it really seems like some mix of JRPG and dating sim (kind of like the Persona?).

Persona 3 is clearly a major influence.

The party even surrounds the enemies just like in Persona 3 and 4, and the protagonist looks similar to Minato. The positioning stuff can differentiate Conception a lot, however. If enemies turn around a lot, and if their various body parts have different attacks and elemental affinities, it'll be a pretty unique game.

I wonder how unit composition works. We know that the stats of the unit are the sum of each child's stats, but what about skills? Can a unit use any skill that at least one child in it can use? If so, putting as many classes with the same main stat as possible in a single unit is clearly the way to go. Things will be more interesting if certain powerful skills require you to have a specific number of children belonging to the same class in a single unit, as you'll have to choose between flexibility and power.

And what can the main character do in combat? Do you freely choose his skills on level ups, do his skills depend on which waifus he favors, or is there a strict progression decided by the developers? Hold me tightly, Codex, I can't wait to find out.

 

[Luzur]

three of the wives looks seriously underaged...

One of these is your cousin (or possibly childhood friend). I'm not going to tell you which one though!

TENSION AND SUSPENSE!

2 months from now they will release a DLC adding your mom, aunt and sister into the wife pool.

 

[MaroonSkein]

2 months from now they will release a DLC adding your mom, aunt and sister into the wife pool.

That would kill the Zodiac theme the 13 waifus have going (a pair of twins corresponds to the Gemini constellation, if you're wondering where the extra girl came from). Japanese developers of fanservice-laden harem games value their creative integrity too much to stoop this low.

 

[RK47]

Where's the redhead?

 

[Sukeban Cho]

At times it feels Japan is just trying concepts at random in a twisted interpretation of the rule of cool, and that the truly creative and unique things they happen to produce every now and then are nothing but the result of the proverbial monkeys and typewritters.

And it would be nice they were to stop throwing dating simulator into everything they come across. It's starting to get ridiculous.



Anyway, opening movie...



... so you can go check which girl corresponds to your sign and do an image search to find how the japanese would imagine you while fapping furiously.

Ugh.

Other than that it looks indeed to be inspired by P3. And by inspired I mean they palette swapped the main character, took the hip interface design, and then decided to run the gimmick to the ground.

 

[RK47]

Hey, whaddaya know, it's not made for you! Maybe if they reverse the gender thing and turn it into which guy you want to mate with....all corresponding to the horoscope, it might be more palatable, yeah?

 

[Sukeban Cho]

Hey, whaddaya know, it's not made for you! Maybe if they reverse the gender thing and turn it into which guy you want to mate with....all corresponding to the horoscope, it might be more palatable, yeah?

Never heard of the Starry Sky franchise, have we?



Even better in that the games are seasonal, so every title only gives you three of the guys.

It's still stupid.

 

[RK47]

I can see why relationship games for the sake of relationships can get VERY stupid. But I think a dose of engagement between people (doesn't have to lead to romance) can improve a game. Better than none, right? Of course, if it's done bad like most western game devs do, it'll be better off not having any. But if nobody do this anymore, there won't be a chance of something good being made. So I still support the concept behind it.

This is why it's called RPG game right, because the core of the game remains: managing a party (from what I can see), balancing stats and specialities between the protagonist 12 heirs. The relationship system and conceiving part is just 'recruiting' done in another form.

Not saying I approve shit like LovePlus, but utterly dismissing it as 'stupid' is kinda harsh.

 

[Sukeban Cho]

There's a difference between being against relationship elements in games, which I am not, and being against shallow gimmicks made to sell games to forever alone girls and boys.

It can be argued the relationship elements in the later persona games, for example, make sense in the context of the franchise, independently of one's personal opinion on the quality of the games themselves.

In this game, however, the relationship element is based around the same nonsensical logic moe franchises use as an excuse to throw moe archetypes right and left in a push to exploit a given, and shameful, demographic. To the way it is designed there's little point beyond that.

But to each his own, I guess.

 

[MaroonSkein]

It can be argued the relationship elements in the later persona games, for example, make sense in the context of the franchise, independently of one's personal opinion on the quality of the games themselves.

In this game, however, the relationship element is based around the same nonsensical logic moe franchises use as an excuse to throw moe archetypes right and left in a push to exploit a given, and shameful, demographic. To the way it is designed there's little point beyond that.

Having sex with a nerdy bespectacled treasurer to learn how to project a Biblical king out of your mind = makes sense.

Creating a soldier by animating a matryoshka with the power of love = shameful exploitation of moe archetypes.

Okay.

 

[Sukeban Cho]

Don't try to get smartass with me all of a sudden.

The persona games have been based around the ideas behind psychological archetypes and invocation magic since the very begining. Regardless of what you think about it the relationship between consciousness, the subconscious, symbolical systems, and mythical archetypes has been explored in some depth. The Social Link characters were designed to be little more than reflections of a certain permutation of the cards they are related with, and tarot itself is a symbolical system related to both invocation magic and archetypal situations and characters in some measure. The logic is that becoming familiar and intimate with individuals who are reflections of those forces you seek to control, understanding their though processes and natures, allows you to better control the archetypes that embody those very same forces and use them to your benefit.

Is it pretentious as fuck for a dungeon crawler? Yup. Is it nonsensical and arbitrary? Nope. And they have been using those ideas since long before they included relationship elements, so the addition of those can be justified as a natural follow up to the original elements.

Try again.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That would kill the Zodiac theme the 13 waifus have going (a pair of twins corresponds to the Gemini constellation, if you're wondering where the extra girl came from). Japanese developers of fanservice-laden harem games value their creative integrity too much to stoop this low.

Wait. so you'll have one child with those two, or...wait, that wouldn't even...so...

 

[MaroonSkein]

Don't try to get smartass with me all of a sudden.

The persona games have been based around the ideas behind psychological archetypes and invocation magic since the very begining. Regardless of what you think about it the relationship between consciousness, the subconscious, symbolical systems, and mythical archetypes has been explored in some depth. The Social Link characters were designed to be little more than reflections of a certain permutation of the cards they are related with, and tarot itself is a symbolical system related to both invocation magic and archetypal situations and characters in some measure. The logic is that becoming familiar and intimate with individuals who are reflections of those forces you seek to control, understanding their though processes and natures, allows you to better control the archetypes that embody those very same forces in your benefit.

Yes, and female Social Links are moe archetypes (2 nerdy girls, 1 sporty girl, 1 girly girl, 1 robot girl, 1 lonely rich girl), and you get close to them by having sex with them. Or, in case of the robot girl, by touching her deepest hardware part and leaving a trail of your DNA on it. Which Jungian archetype does that represent again?

It's okay to hate Conception. It's not okay to claim that Persona 3 was somehow free of things you hate Conception for. Relationships in both games are blatantly meant to make basement dwellers feel like studs. Either you care about this, get offended by this and ignore both games, or you don't give a crap and play both games for the combat (as long as you find the combat appealing). Anything else is hypocrisy.

Wait. so you'll have one child with those two, or...wait, that wouldn't even...so...

Yes, this matter interests me greatly as well.

 

[RK47]

Wow. It's hot all the sudden. *Goes back to New Tokyo*

 

[Sukeban Cho]

Which Jungian archetype does that represent again?

I hope you didn't screw Kenji to get his social link up.

It's not okay to claim that Persona 3 was somehow free of things you hate Conception for.

Can you quote where did I say Persona 3 was free of those things I hate Conception for? First, I never mentioned a particular Persona but whatever. Second, I said that those elements in Persona are justified and follow a certain logic, which is different to saying they don't exist at all. Third, it can't be said that the only point of the Social Links is to include moe characters as the Social Links are pretty varied in nature and style, are directly related to the topic at hand, and throw in a couple of guys to hide it better.

And my point was that in Persona it made sense, not that it wasn't present. Reading comprehension fail, right there.

Anything else is hypocrisy.

I criticize Conception for being nothing but moe left and right. I say Persona was different because it was not just about the moe. I have given examples of why they are different. The reasons you have given of why they are the same are false. I am the hypocrite.

Tell me more, Oppa.



Edit:

Also, show me where's Persona's moe is anywhere near this...

... and this...

... please.

It's like they are holding a "please fap to me, mister basement dweller" handwritten sign for the camera.

 

[MaroonSkein]

First, I never mentioned a particular Persona but whatever.

You mentioned "later Persona games". Unless 5 was released when I was sleeping, that's 3 and 4. I singled out 3 because Persona 4 romances can be ignored with no negative consequences, so the amount of moe you have to put up with is entirely up to you.

Second, I said that those elements in Persona are justified and follow a certain logic, which is different to saying they don't exist at all.

And I called it out for being a terrible excuse. Persona 3 romances are as shallow a gimmick as Conception romances. The girls throw themselves at your character after he says 10 vaguely encouraging lines to them, and there's nothing you can do about it. Want more power? Unzip those pants.

Third, it can't be said that the only point of the Social Links is to include moe characters as the Social Links are pretty varied in nature and style, are directly related to the topic at hand, and throw in a couple of guys to hide it better.

You were outraged at the relationships in Conception. Because all Conception relationships are romantic, and you can't romance guys in P3, male Social Links are completely irrelevant in this discussion (for the record, I like many of them too). Priestess, Empress, Lovers, Justice, Strength and Aeon Social Links are all about different kinds of moe.

And my point was that in Persona it made sense, not that it wasn't present.

And my point was that it didn't. Sex was forced and had nothing to do with Jungian psychology or archetypes, and with Aigis Atlus even went out of the way to make up a bizarre robot sex surrogate purely for the sake of pleasing robot girl fetishists.

I have given examples of why they are different.

You totally didn't. You posted some really general stuff about the Tarot cards and psychology.

The examples you have given of why they are the same are false.

You totally didn't explain why.

I am the hypocrite.

Absolutely.

Also, show me where's Persona's moe is anywhere near this...

The moe is definitely stronger in Conception's art style, no arguing there.

 

[Sukeban Cho]

And I called it out for being a terrible excuse. Persona 3 romances are as shallow a gimmick as Conception romances.

Your reading comprehension fu is weak today.

Where did I say the relationships were deep? Oh, wait, nowhere.

I called Persona's social links a gimmick myself.

Neither was my point.

You were outraged at the relationships in Conception.

I wasn't outraged. I just found the entire idea stupid and kind of pathetic.

It is you who is kind of butthurt about me doing so. I guess I did strike a nerve or something.

Because all Conception relationships are romantic, and you can't romance guys in P3, male Social Links are completely irrelevant in this discussion (for the record, I like many of them too). Priestess, Empress, Lovers, Justice, Strength and Aeon Social Links are all about different kinds of moe.

I never said Conception's problem was that the relationships were romantic, and thus whether or not a given social link is romantic makes no difference on it being of interest to the discussion. The fact that not all of them were excuses for moe is, as well as the fact that they were consistent with the idea the setting is built around instead of the setting being just an excuse for them to exist.

My argument was that Conception's relationship are stupid and pathetic because they serve no purpose other than to dispense moe to the forever alone masses. That not all social links in P3, P3P, and P4 are excuses for moe is the very reason I mentioned the later Persona games as examples of relationships being used as something other than that or besides that.

Finally, there's a difference between stock characters and moe characters.

You totally didn't. You posted some really general stuff about the Tarot cards and psychology.

Reading comprehension fail. The point is that in Persona's case the relationships are natural extensions of the concepts and mechanics that make the setting, while in Conception the setting is just an excuse to the moe. I don't have to give you a case by case example of it, I only have to explain in which way do Persona's social links interact with a setting that goes beyond the social links themselves. That I did.

You totally didn't explain why.

You did just explain it yourself. Not all of Persona's social links are romances, and not all of Persona's social link characters are moe. That's all I had to prove, given you decided to use my declaration of such to come at me.

Absolutely.

It's amusing and kind of cute you are all hostile and trying to pick a fight with me over a completely meh comment when you can't even understand the basic language and logic of the things you are trying to pick a fight with me over.

I'm kind of disappointed you of all people is reacting in such a completely retarded way to a completely innocent comment, but have it your way.



TL;DR: Learn to read, for fuck's sake. Also, butthurt detected.

 

[MaroonSkein]

You're right, I did misinterpret your point. My apologies.

 

[Spectacle]

These games are certainly not made for basement dwellers!











Japanese houses usually don't have basements

 

[Tel Prydain]

o_O

 

[Phelot]

Holy shit this is great stuff