My play-through of Jin Conception has met an early end. Before I even talk about the gameplay or story, I'm going to explain to you why I stopped playing before writing this review. I'm about halfway through from my best guess based on the steam discussion pages, and I have experienced the following bugs: Multiple times the game shut down after a specific boss fight, my main character disappearing from the screen after a fight until I get to the next screen by wandering around hoping I'm going the right way, and a few game crashes. On one hand, it is still probably possible to finish the game, but the question is whether or not the game is good enough to warrant all the bugs that seem to be regularly halting my progress. I think the fact I didn't finish the game kind of gives that away.
The story of the game revolves around the murder of a girl, sort of. The game starts with a character not remembering what he did the previous night, and then you just kind of meander until you figure out what it is you are supposed to do. That being going to the fairy village and agreeing to help a winged girl find the Book of Truth in a temple. No idea why Levi decides to help her beyond the plot needs to go forward. The Book of Truth is to determine whether or not Keith killed someone, and all the chapters of the game, which switch main characters, seem to be focused on this mystery.
Here's the thing though, there is almost no real interaction between characters or even much motivation known at the beginning. Things just kind of feel like they happen for no real reason, and the plot moves forward in some very bizarre ways. See the following screenshot.
“Looking for this guy? No clue, but in unrelated news vampires are doing sketchy shit!'And yeah, that's what you need to do next to advance the story. That is how the whole story kind of ended up feeling by that point, just do stuff the game says for the sake of advancing the story rather than feel like a genuine progression of events.
The combat at first seems fine. Fairy typical JRPG combat with duel techs and a focus on being able to inflict and exploit status effects on the enemies. It falls apart for the same reason the story does. A fight a few people seemed to have an issue within the Steam forum was the Three Hunters. The fight can take you down in a couple of turns if you don't figure out how to deal with them quickly. Here is the problem, a second character joins you for the fight. This character can summon a guardian to help fight, you have three options to pick from. Each Guardian has a couple of abilities it can use when its turn comes up. The fact that it's random doesn't matter here, the problem is you have no idea what each of these guardians does until you use it. You know have to learn how an entirely different character operates during a battle you only have a couple of turns to sort out your actions.
To further frustrate things, I don't know what most of the status effects in the game do. There is no way I could find in the game to determine it, and there are a lot of different effects. The only reason I knew what Magnetic Pulse even did is that I saw a listing of all the effects posted somewhere outside of the game (I can't find it on the Steam Page, so I think it was the Discord set up for it, I don't remember), so you even have to go outside fo the game to understand basic mechanics. That isn't even getting into the 'voting' system, and this is what the developer said on the page about it:
“Since I see people frustrated with the difficulty of the game I want to give a hint for the vote friend or foe.
Hint: Do NOT touch Vote Friend or Foe if you don't want to get frustrated. Wait until the clues for Vote Friend or Foe show up in the game and then later on one can always go back and reload the save slots and mess around with Vote Friend or Foe.
It is possible one can figure out how Vote Friend or Foe works without getting frustrated. Proceed at your own risk. I believe some people will be able to figure out how Vote Friend or Foe works early on by messing with it. “
I understand that a core selling point of this game was building up some kind of mystery, but that mystery shouldn't include having to figure out what the mechanics of your game even exist for. There is far too much you need to do outside of playing the game to start to grasp what the game even is, either that or a ridiculous amount of Trial and Error, the Three Hunters fight being the epitome of that I have seen in this game.
At this point, everything else I could bring up is just a nitpick. The inconsistency of invisible walls, the screen tear, minor graphical oddities, there are a lot of really minor problems like this that just feel like they are piling on to the already unfulfilling core of the game. Fixing all of them wouldn't do much at all to make the experience more enjoyable.
The ideas here aren't bad. Pairing up a Duel Tech System with a focus on inflicting and exploiting status effects is a pretty interesting idea. The idea that you are trying to sort out what everyone's plans are across multiple characters' perspectives is a good idea. And the game does have a solid visual design on top of all of this. But combine the overall bugginess of the game (A few people on the community page are having crashing issues with the game as well), the bland characters, and the overall lack of explanation for anything story or mechanics related, it's just a game that feels borderline unfinished and yet still released. I give a hard pass on Jin Conception, but I hope if the developer keeps going after this the games get better. They have some great ideas in their head, just needs to find a way to better execute them.
I found something similar on google play, the game is about a man who has no memory of what happened and has to collect different clues throughout an island, even has the same graphics.
Could you find out what it is? As far as I'm aware this game isn't on the phone, but I'm not entirely sure. If it's also derivative.... I may have to take away some of the praise I did give the game.
I wasn't saying that this specific game was on android.
It is that the translator ruins my grammar LOL
What I was saying, is that for android there is a game that has many similarities, if I find it again I'll post the link to unload it for you to see it.
Here is the link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bewgames.lostintime&hl=es_419&gl=US
the game seemed very good until I read all the bugs that you comment.... No doubt it bothers a lot that happens because sometimes I guess you even lost the progress and had to start over, are simple very stupid mistakes but that for us players make us spend some bad times, no doubt the game is fine for what you say, and looks very fun but ... have things to improve
Even were the bugs to improve I don't think the game would be salvaged. The ideas behind it are fantastic, but the execution failed across the board. I think if the dev takes the feedback he's been getting on the Steam page and learns from it, he has the potential to make some great games down the line, and I hope the negative reaction to this one doesn't make him quit.
Your content has been voted as a part of Encouragement program. Keep up the good work!
Use Ecency daily to boost your growth on platform!
Support Ecency
Vote for Proposal
Delegate HP and earn more