Conception PLUS: Maidens of the Twelve Stars Critic Reviews

With Conception Plus you get a really wonderful, albeit uncompromising and traditional roguelike dungeon crawler, with all that that entails. That's not where the game's strength lies, though. Conception makes clever use of anime tropes and fan service to drive home social satire that's particularly pertinent to Japan at the moment, and only going to become moreso over time. It's by turns fun and silly, but it's also much smarter than you may have assumed from the box and concept.

Although censored from beginning to end, Concepción Plus: Maidens or the twelve stars arrives in the west with a single objective: to call the attention of those players who have not been able to enjoy the original PSP title. Although it is not a wonder, the video game offers many hours of fun and this can be very well received by lovers of the Dungeon Crawler genre. If you are looking for something new, fresh and interesting, you should give it a try, as games of this style are rarely seen on PS4.

Conception is a unique game that makes me appreciate the wild ideas that JRPGs can come up with. Definitely targeted to a niche audience who enjoys the idea of courting twelve beautiful maidens with the prospect of saving the world. Conception is not a revolutionary JRPG, nor is it a stimulating dating SIM. It is a strange concept but for the purpose of the game, it works. While the storyline could use a little more excitement to keep players hooked, it is definitely worth trying if you have an interest in harem RPGs.

There are better dungeon crawlers out there, but this one has personality, and that’s hard to find. If you liked the sequel, this is a good time to enjoy the origins of the series.

It’s not that Conception Plus: Maidens of the Twelve Stars is a terrible game. In small bits, it can be fun to progress through the story and make the numbers get bigger. The problem is that, once the weirdness wears off, it’s an achingly average to below average JRPG. So much feels padded for the sake of prolonging the run time, the environments of the dungeons never feel interesting, and the challenge is to the player’s patience, not their brain. Spike Chunsoft have a concept here, but it’s one that needs a little more time gestating. Considering how great Spike Chunsoft is as a developer and publisher, we should hope for better than Conception Plus: Maidens of the Twelve Stars.

Ultimately, Conception Plus feels like its skating by on the curiousness of its premise rather than using it to build a strong experience. The Star Children are easily the most interesting thing about the game, but it gets bogged down with gameplay that doesn’t provide any reason to stick around longer than necessary. The characters are given nothing useful to do in a predictable and irreverent main plot, and though the dating sim aspects are more interesting, it’s still hard to call them any better than ok. Conception Plus works best as something to do while having something else going on at the same time, but it’s simply not strong enough to warrant full attention for long stretches of time.

As a whole, I’m confused with what Conception was going for. It’s not necessarily a bad game, but I’m hard-pressed to find anything it does exceptionally well outside of the localization. It was an enjoyable time once I turned my brain off, but the gameplay doesn't remain engaging and the constant use of sexual innuendo is goofy at best and exhausting otherwise. It’s a solid remaster of a PSP game, but it never felt like anything more than a cleaned-up PSP game -- maybe that description alone is enough.