Jin Conception

Genre: JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Jin Conception is a JRPG released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game has lofty ambitions, aiming to combine the best elements of classic entries in the genre with a social deduction mechanic straight out of games like Among Us, with players tasked with deducing which of their party members is secretly working against them.

The presentation in Jin Conception is wonderful, using pixel art visuals that make it clear that this game was not only inspired by the great 16-bit RPGs of old, but one RPG in particular – Chrono Trigger. While the visuals here are a bit more repetitive, they are nevertheless imaginative. And while this game’s synthesized soundtrack isn’t spectacular, it does a decent enough job evoking the memory of the 16-bit games that inspired Jin Conception.

If nothing else, I have to give Jin Conception credit for swinging for the fences – this game is trying to do a lot, with involved turn-based combat built around various status effects and conditions, numerous characters, and the aforementioned social deduction mechanic. Unfortunately, while this game has a lot of heart and ambition, it is severely lacking in its execution.

For most JRPGs, giving players a good feel for who the characters are and what they’re about is vital, and it is nearly as important to give them an understanding of the world these characters live in. With social deduction elements, these things become even more vital – you need to be able to understand characters’ motivations, as well as the various factions at work within the game world. Unfortunately, Jin Conception doesn’t seem at all interested in conveying this information to the player. We don’t get proper introductions to characters or the world, and what little we do get is stymied by terrible writing that’s either poorly-written, poorly-localized, or both.

At the very least one might hope that Jin Conception’s ambitious game mechanics could save this game, but unfortunately here too the game fails miserably. Right from the start, players are given a wealth of combat options and not properly explained the significance of any of them. I don’t need to have a JRPG hold my hand through basic concepts, but it would be nice if some of this game’s signature mechanics were gradually introduced in a way that would get players acquainted with them.

Perhaps it is in part because of this confusion that this game seems absurdly difficult, quite possibly one of the hardest JRPGs I have ever played. Simply within the first few opening areas, I died countless times due to attacks I seemed to have no significant way to defend against. And while I don’t mind a bit of challenge in my games, I lose my patience when I keep dying due to no obvious fault of my own. On top of this, area layouts are needlessly confusing, with areas constantly separated by doors and warps that make it difficult to track where everything is, especially when so much of what you’re seeing looks the same.

Even on a pure mechanical level, this game has issues – picking up items I noticed that half of the time the description box would close just as soon as it opened, and the button layout is awkward with no options menu to change button assignments.

As someone whose favorite game of all time is Chrono Trigger, and who has been delighted by Among Us, I was really looking forward to trying out Jin Conception. Its unique mix of these two game types was truly enticing, and its presentation seemed to promise a wonderful nostalgic experience. Unfortunately, underneath all those great ideas and delightful presentation is an absolute horrific mess of a game, one that needed a severe reworking of its writing, its gameplay mechanics, its pacing, its map design, its challenge level… while this game had phenomenal promise, and I don’t doubt that it had every intention of keeping that promise, the result of all of these failures is that this promise was broken.

tl;dr – Jin Conception is a game that aims to combine the social deduction of a game like Among Us with the gameplay and presentation of a classic JRPG like Chrono Trigger. This game is not short on ideas and charm, but it absolutely fails in execution in every possible way – the world and its characters are not properly introduced, the writing is poor, the map design is convoluted and repetitive, the combat mechanics are not properly explained, the challenge level is absurdly high right from the start. While on the surface this game shines bright, everything under that surface is a horrible pile of failures.

Grade: D+

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