Gematsu recently had a brief chat with Yoshinori Terasawa, producer of the remastered baby-making RPG Conception PLUS: Maidens of the Twelve Stars, who shared a few details the original game’s (ahem) conception, references for character traits, the remastered version’s additions, and whether or not he sees a future for the series.
Get the interview below.
—Conception PLUS is a remastered version of the original Conception, which was released for PSP in 2012 in Japan. How did the idea for the original game come about?
Yoshinori Terasawa: “With so many games out there now, it’s hard to find an original concept these days. That’s why I thought it would be interesting to combine two genres into one, and decided to mix the elements of romance visual novels and dungeon-crawling RPG into one. As for the idea of creating children with many women, it may have just come from my own latent desires. (Laughs.)”
—Conception PLUS has 12 different Star Maidens that you can “Classmate” with to create Star Children of various jobs that fight alongside you. How did you go about creating each Star Maiden’s personalities and traits? Were there certain tropes you wanted to make sure were represented?
Terasawa: “It was difficult coming up with the traits for each Star Maiden. Considering there are 12 of them, it was hard to avoid overlap. When coming up with their personalities, I did use my own interpretation of each zodiac sign and other popular anime characters as references.”
—In battle, your party consists of up to 12 Star Children plus the protagonist for a total of 13 characters. The direction from which you attack also plays an important role. How did you decide upon this battle system, and what are some of its special mechanics worth mentioning?
Terasawa: “Since many characters can participate in battle in this game, we wanted to implement a something that was different than the standard turn-based battle system. Of the many different ideas we came up with, we went with the current system that had a strategic depth to it. I think it ended up looking quite nice and flashy too.”
—Have there been any under-the-hood changes—changes, adjustments, or updates that may otherwise go unnoticed—that you would like to highlight?
Terasawa: “With the PSP version, we received a lot of feedback from many players stating enemies took too long to beat. In Conception PLUS, we adjusted the balance to improve the game play experience for more people to enjoy.”
—Do you see a future for the Conception series? If so, what sort of plot points or system elements would you like to tackle or include that you weren’t able to in Conception PLUS or Conception II?
Terasawa: “I would love to make another sequel. I think there’s a lot that could be improved on the dungeon / RPG side, so I’d like to streamline that more if I could. As for the scenario, Conception PLUS and Conception II were both about being transported to another world, so I’d like to dabble in a different story setting.”
Since you have worked on the Danganronpa series as a producer, I have to ask, is there a future for the series? Danganronpa V3, to me at least, seemed to indicate a break.
Terasawa: “Personally, I think it would be nice to make a sequel. It’s true that it wouldn’t be for quite some time, but perhaps eventually.”
—Thank you for your time, Teraasawa-san!
Conception Plus: Maidens of the Twelve Stars is due out for PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam on November 5 in North America and November 8 in Europe.
Watch the launch trailer for Conception Plus: Maidens of the Twelve Stars below.