With such a bizarre core concept like making babies in order to explore dungeons and battle monsters, Atlus and Spike Chunsoft’s Conception might have been the last game anyone expected to see turn into a series. But on April 15, North America will see the release of Conception II on the Nintendo 3DS, almost exactly two years after the first title in the series, which was released exclusively in Japan.

In the first Conception players followed the main protagonist, Itsuki, from his regular life to the world of Granvania, where he learns he must build relationships with the twelve Star Maidens and create Star Children to battle “impurities.” It melded both the visual novel and dungeon-crawler genres into one title and presented an interesting and slightly different style of RPG.

Although it’s a sequel, Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars is a completely separate game from its predecessor. Players outside of Japan who missed the first one can pick this up with no need to spend an afternoon on Wikipedia learning about the first. Instead of a continuing story, the Conception series so far relies on reappearing game mechanics and a very comparable core plot to string it together, similar to other well-known RPG franchises like Final Fantasy.

Conception II starts with our protagonist in the world of Aterra, plagued for the last twenty years by monsters spawning from Pandora’s Labyrinth. The main character is one of many young Disciples chosen by the Star God who trains at the academy in Aterra. On his first day at this school, he’s suddenly told he is a Disciple with God’s Gift, an overflowing amount of this Star God’s power, and it is his responsibility to bond with seven special female Disciples to create powerful Star Children to combat monsters. Sound familiar? But even after reducing the amount of prospective girlfriends from twelve to 7, the developers are still upping the ante and doubling the amount of main story content and dungeon exploration in the sequel.

All right kiddies, when a mommy and a daddy have enough bond points, they go to the church in town; there’s some chit chat and very erotic handholding and that’s how a Star Child (and the game’s mature rating) is born! Then we fight labyrinth monsters as one big, happy family. No, seriously. Aside from you and whichever companion you choose to bring along, these Star Children are your dungeon raid party. Star Children are grouped into trios that you take with you into battle. It’s important to pay attention to which of these little guys you choose to group because some trios may get special skills if matched up correctly.

The combat system appears virtually unchanged from the previous game, featuring a turn-based battle system where parties are built upon the relationships you create with each female, the Star Children those bonds produce, and where physical placement of party members in battle is key to eliminating enemies efficiently. Other RPGs, and Atlus games too, usually have characters exploiting an enemy’s weakness through element-based skills or different attack types, but Conception chooses to implement a circular placement system to create a new type of battle strategy. For each attacker, including you, your companion and your customized trios of Star Children, players must pick one of four directions to proceed with their attack from. As you might expect, attacking from behind the enemy does the most damage, but players can use a frontal attack to their advantage by filling the Chain Gauge. It’s riskier since those party members will take the brunt of the enemy’s attack, but once the Chain Gauge is full, the enemy becomes temporarily immobilized.

Class-mating is the other main feature of Conception II and also factors heavily in to a player’s battle strategy. Of course, there is the obvious fact that without building bond points with the female characters, the player has no Star Children to fight with, but bond points also affect how well your companion does in battle with you. The better the bond, the better you fight together and the easier it is to decimate enemies with your undying love. Each girl's personality is unique and players must not only be attentive in their time with her, but careful in what they say. Being careless and saying something stupid to your baby mamas can put you in the dog house, just like in real life, so don’t be an idiot.

Careful decision-making is a staple in both sides to this game as dumb choices can sting and hurt your chances are progressing through the game smoothly. The Conception series has a pretty quintessential Japanese vibe and with the release of Conception II, it will be interesting to finally see if it can translate well into other markets around the world. A demo of this game is also currently available in the Nintendo eShop to walk players through game’s basics and let them test the waters before the game’s official release.