Level One - Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars

Oh Japan, your ability to throw out rather strange games is unmatched by any other country. What have you bought us now? Conception II, and if the name isn't cringey enough, try playing the game. The game isn't bad, in fact I adore it, but not without a bit of... ehhhh.....

Conception II is the rather strange child of Atlus, the company loved for the Etrian Odyssey games and of course, the Persona franchise. And as with most Atlus games, it really shows that the game was made by one and the same.

Like the above, Conception II is a Dungeon Trawling JRPG, with a high-school Dating-Sim like section between your adventures. The dungeons look like they've been ripped right out of a persona game, same kind of style, same kind of mechanics, looks and controls, the works. The combat feels a little lacking compared to the persona games, possibly because it feels more complex in this and feels oddly random at times; I've gone from consistently one-shotting a particular type of enemy with a basic attack to only doing half the health of the exact same species of enemy in the next room over, which can throw a little bit of a spanner in the works. Unlike in the Persona games, enemy weaknesses are determined by directions you attack from rather than elemental properties which, although they exist in the game, seem to have much less significance than its other persona.

Remember when you had trouble figuring out an enemy's weakness in Persona? Well forget about it because this game tells you all the best places to attack right from the start!

I find it really difficult to compare the two games in terms of their dungeons and combat, they're similar yet so different at the same time, but I have to hand it to Atlus for one simple mechanic that makes life in Conception II a whole lot nicer. The God's Poke ability is a passive skill the protagonist has while walking the dungeon floor, and it automatically kills any enemies the game knows to be significantly weaker than you whilst still granting all the exp from the battle, a feature the game couldn't do without because of just how much grinding you need to do to keep your team fighting fit, but more on that a bit later.

You may still be wondering what I was on about when I mentioned the game being more cringe-inducing than the title; well, where Persona is an adventure that looks at the deeper meanings behind repressed emotions and friendship, Conception II is another generic story of saving the world with friends... that promotes teenage sex and polygamy. I mean, with a name like that how could you ever have thought otherwise. there's nothing inherently wrong with this but the whole concept just feels kind of weird, but why wouldn't it? Story-wise you play as God's Gift (read: yourself) in a world where monsters are threatening the world and 16-18 year old boys and girls blessed by the Star God work to combat them, however this is very difficult because nobody has enough Ether (basically the element of light that would beat dark, blah blah blah) to counteract the huge amount of dark energy inside the labyrinths; however, you as God's Gift, happen to have an insanely high amount of 'Ether' (not sperm) which will allow you to fight and hopefully seal of the dungeons. in order to help you on this quest you need teammates, and good ol' Ether helps here too, see you can gain allies to fight with by passing this Ether on to others, specifically, by making children. Yup, through a sacred ritual called, wait for it, 'Classmating' *cringe* you can make your own little star children to fight alongside you. Cute right? Sure, but the soundtrack to the ritual sections is... *cringe, cringe*

Classmating in a nutshell! Note that she doesn't actually mention what you need to think of, or what you need to touch...

Nothing quite like watching an implicit sex scene where everyone's been covered in bright pink florescent paint while listening to the questionable background music, which you get to hear more of as your relationship with the character deepens. As far as I've seen the song has progressed to:
"Oooohhhhhhh ~ Touch my heaaaarttt ~ Yeeeaaaahhhh ~ Just wanna make love to youuu...." Yep, after that last one the whole ordeal has started to feel a little less innocent than the game tries to make it out to be. But that's not even the last of it, after all that you get to choose your new child's class (Archer, Theif, etc, etc) to a sickeningly cheery chorus of "Congratulations - on your new arrival" *cringe, cringe, cringe*
I literally have no explanation as to what kind of feeling I have when hearing this, but it's weird and I can't say I like it, I sorta feel like the game is sarcastically calling me a huge dick for basically knocking up all the best girls in the school and even one of the teachers, but of course, what I do outside of the gaming world is not something I plan to talk about here.

Sex, drugs and overactive Ether aside though, there's something really special about the characters, all of which (except one, in my personal opinion) are really fun and lovable despite falling into about every award winning category for 'Overused Japanese Character Cliches', including fan favourites like 'Thinks she's completely plain but is actually something special', 'Really cute and ditzy younger girl', and who could forget the insanely popular 'Genius kid who became a teacher at 18'. You'd be forgiven for thinking these cliches would take away from the game though, honestly aside from that one character that falls a bit flat (ironically, the cast constantly draw attention to her having the biggest rack of the lot (thank you Japan...)) and is sickeningly shy even for me to handle, I truly do love the characters, their event scenes are amusing and gripping in various ways and these are honestly the reason I keep coming back to the play them game as much as possible: to see the next events until I can't see any more events! To advance the story so I can see more events! I'll be honest, I find the dungeon sections tedious in comparison

CAN YOU NOT!?

Conception II is a game which, despite all it's... unusual traits, there's a lot of charm sealed within this game. I understand this game really isn't for everyone, in fact I think this is even more niche than most other JRPGs out there so I wouldn't go so far as to recommend it despite my love for the game, so unless you've been really interested by what you've read here or you're a fan of the only JRPGs I could call weirder than this (the Ar Tonellico franchise), it's worth a try, but don't drop too much money on it unless you know you'll like it.

TL;DR: It's Persona with added sex metaphors, and I love it. Deal with it.

Level One: Lost Kingdoms

Format: Nintendo Gamecube
Year of Release: 2002
Hours played so far: 6
Cards Collected: ???

If you were to travel back in time and find me 12 years ago, you would still find me as video game and TCG enthusiast, so naturally when I flicked open a copy of Cube Solutions and saw a guide for Lost Kingdoms... I thought nothing of it, because I had absolutely no idea what the hell it was. Fast forward 5 years, and you'll catch me reading these same Cube solution magazines again. Why? because I think that video game strategy guides are the best kinds of reading material out there. I even bought the Sonic '06 (Piece of Shit Be Upon It) guide book because it was actually a guide and not the result of a teenage girl's strange OCxSonic fanfiction.

But to be fair all that detail is pretty negligible, what matters is that when I realized what the game was. I needed it. But I never ever saw it anywhere... until I was at a convention the other day. One copy, and the price - £12. Exactly the amount I had on me. I will never ever forget, that on that very day, I met my destiny.

Anyway enough of that, Lost Kingdoms is an Action RPG in which you play a young princess whose mission is to drive back a kind of black fog that is enveloping the world and summoning monsters that destroy everything and kill people, you know, typical black fog stuff. The monsters can only be defeated by someone with the power of the cards bestowed upon them by a Runestone (looks like all the kings have one #gatherthecolouredstonescliche) annndddd.... that's about as deep as the story goes to be honest, as far as I've seen at least.

This is the Capture Circle mechanic in action.... I still don't know how to use it

Gameplay-wise Lost Kingdoms is loosely similar to Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, you have a deck of cards (monsters) which you use for the mission; in battle you can summon these creatures with the A, B, X or Y button when the card is available, and you can cycle through cards if you don't want to use any of them by discarding to draw a new one. The cards come in different types, similar to KH, Weapon monsters allow you to attack quickly at melee range, Summon monsters are pretty self explanatory,and Magic Monsters summon for a period of temporary invulnerability while a powerful ability smites your enemies. There's also a pretty standard elemental affinity cycle, and its importance is actually bigger than I expected to the point where the game basically says "That's a card you'll never get back, idiot"

THE CARDS! THEY BURN!

Lost Kingdoms brings a feature the differentiates it dramatically from KH: CoM though and this mechanic is what makes the game so frustrating and difficult, yet so very fulfilling.When a card in your deck is used up, it doesn't come back. Seriously, the only time you'll see that card again is when it goes back into your deck after the mission. Used your big-ass 5* rarity monster on some shitty enemies at the start of the mission? Enjoy not having it for the boss fight. This may seem relatively fine at first but it adds a huge strategy element to the game, knowing the power of your cards relative to the enemy as well as which types you've got left, not to mention your health which will drain if you use a card that costs too many gems, the list goes on and on, perhaps we can assume the protagonist of the game is a princess and not a prince because of all the multitasking? Wasting cards becomes a huge price to pay in battle; especially given the huge length of some of the missions and that the random encounters that don't have a 'grace' period so if you're really unlucky you can be out and straight back in to an even worse fight! Oh and did I mention that running out of cards is game over? Technically it's not, but the princess doesn't have the ability to attack without the cards, it's like she's not a real princess at all. That big boss you've been struggling on? 1HP? But no cards left? Well you can't kill it because apparently your princess didn't learn how to bitch slap like all the true princesses out there.

I won't lie this is one of the hardest games I've played in a while, the first run of a mission is extremely difficult as you have to run around figuring out where to go so you use more cards up in random battles and it can be very easy to run out unless you're really lucky, this is balanced out by the fact that cards you find in chests can be temporarily added to your deck for the remainder of this mission, sure this balances it out a bit, but it still keeps the 2nd and onwards run of a mission just as hard, because sure you'll know where to go but the chests don't respawn so there'll be no cards for you to add back in, so you have to make those 30 cards you take with you count, and that can be difficult, especially with how easy it is to miss with your weapon monsters and how retarded AI is for the summoned ones.

The multiplier's actually pretty good as well, at least now you don't have to give the AI the satisfaction of causing that pissed look on your face

All in all though I do really enjoy this game so far, though whether you complete a mission does seem to be down as much to trial and error as it is actual skill Lost Kingdoms seems to be a unique and fun experience worth playing if you can get your hands on it, and providing you can deal with the frustration that comes from failing a mission over and over again, I promise you'll enjoy it. if you're a fan of Kingdom Hearts: CoM and are desperate for a more challenging experience even though it's not a KH game, I assure you you'll love this.

TL;DR: Super frustrating and super difficult, Lost Kingdoms is the abusive father of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Deal with it.