Parent's Guide: Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars is a turn-based dungeon crawler in which players explore randomly generated levels, battling monsters, collecting treasure and raising their "Star Children" characters. Back at the game's hub city, it switches over to a more dating sim-esque style, in which you need to grow closer to the game's seven ladies in the hope of creating stronger a Star Children brood through the thinly-veiled sexual ritual of 'classmating'.

Battles with monsters involve you and your team taking it in turns to attack, with the position you take up around each enemy key to how well you do. Each enemy has one or more weak points (or, more specifically, weak sides), which deal extra damage when you attack from them - and some enemies, who take multiple turns to charge up strong attacks, will deal damage only to certain spaces, meaning you need to think carefully about where you position your troops.

While the dungeon-crawling and battle aspects are pretty straightforward, Conception is a very text heavy game. Main scenes tend to be fully voiced, but more often than not the voice over is merely an occasional snippet such as a 'Yeah!', while the text is much more in depth. Bordering on visual novel levels of text, a strong reading ability and willingness to sit through walls of writing are a must. The game's humour relies fairly heavily on innuendos and sexual overtones too, and younger players may find many of these moments go over their heads.

Despite being light on bloody violence, with enemies who simply fade away when defeated, Conception II is unlikely to be a game for youngsters based on it's rather heavy sexual overtones. At the core of the game is the 'classmating' ritual, in which the protagonist and one of seven provocatively proportioned ladies get together to "pour a male's Ether into a female's Star Womb" to create Star Children, who can then help save the world from destruction. Doing so involves a short cutscene which pans down naked-yet-nipple-less neon female bodies stretched out suggestively, followed by a close-up of entwined fingers before fading to black - no dodgy sounds are heard, but the surrounding conversations are chock full of panting, blushing, awkward silences and innuendo.

The aim of the game is to befriend these ladies so you can create more powerful children - by getting to know them, you'll be privy to many 'interesting' scenes and dialogues, whether it's the girls comparing chest sizes or the protagonist being told "as punishment you will not be allowed to taste our juices" following a trip to a vending machine. One scene involves taking 'swimsuit' photos of the one heroine, who 'accidentally' forgot to bring her bathing costume - but she seems perfectly happy to make do with just a flimsy silky sheet covering her nether regions and her hands across her chest. Impossibly large chests jiggle, cameras zoom in on tightly-clad backsides and double entendres are rampant - probably not a game for impressionable children, to say the least.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS