Experience with Deception’s decade-old predecessors help to define a response toward Deception IV. Either you’re familiar with Deception’s wholly unique brand of zany, macabre, and thoroughly Japanese strategy, or you’re a regular person. The former isn’t at all a pejorative; it’s just to signify that Deception IV unabashedly caters to the initiated. Irony comes into play with the understanding that Deception IV isn’t too different from the other three (four if we’re counting Trapt) games in the series, which leads to the question, who is this game for?
At a base level, look at how openly divorced Deception IV feels from any modern peer. It’s a game where you can’t actively attack your enemies and must rely on a series of increasingly violent and bizarre traps to help them meet their gruesome end. A trio of mischievous mediums direct influence over a scantly glad daughter of the devil, all with the understanding of consuming aggressive (but also maybe innocent!) humans inside of a lethal funhouse. Modern game design and its trials of focus group would have weeded this stuff out from mass consumption years ago, and yet Deception IV delights in slipping through the cracks. It’s different because it still operates like a classic Deception game.
Pure operation is relatively simple. Controlling the scantily clad Laegrinna, the player is charged with running around a fixed environment and dispatching any and all aggressors heading her way. Deception IV is unique because Laegrinna can’t directly attack anyone, but she can set up all kinds of traps along on the floor, ceiling, and walls of her confinements. A bear trap will clamp an enemy down and lock them in place. Lethal Lance will command blades to pop out of a wall and horribly perforate a person. Setting up Boulder allows a, well, boulder to fall out of the sky and not only crush whoever it lands on, but will also roll down a slanted surface, Temple of Doom style, and further eviscerate anyone it encounters.
Killing people in the most efficient and creative ways possible dolls out points, which can (eventually) be used to purchase either new abilities for Laegrinna or new and different traps. While it’s certainly possible to setup the same traps and watch your prey fall into them, it’s not exactly fun and doesn’t carry a huge reward. You’re intended, rather, to weave all of your traps together into combos. A reliable formula, for example, was to have someone step on a rake that conks them on the head like a cartoon, which made them move back and allow a pumpkin to fall out of the ceiling and onto their head, which made them clumsily walk forward into a floor launcher, which ejected them into a giant swinging axe. Incorporating environmental traps, single or multi-use hazards affixed inside of a level, opens Deception IV up to considerably more carnage. You’re never at a loss for ways to maim, murder, or humiliate your prey.
Deception IV is quick to introduce complications and variables. All of your traps fall into three categories; sadistic (high damage), elaborate (mostly setups for other carnage), or humiliation (goofy attacks mechanically responsible for forced movement). Furthermore, each of Laegrinna’s mediums (read: diabolical friends) offer a series of alternate objectives directly relating to the three categories of traps. Lilia, for example, may want a 1000 point humiliation combo, while Veruza asks you to destroy part of the environment and make it collapse on your victim. Completing these actions is usually worth it, provided you can muster the patience necessary to see it all through to completion.
Eventually Deception IV starts adjusting the aptitude of Laegrinna’s opposition. The hapless soldiers that stumble in on the opening chapter are replaced with characters who are invulnerable to certain styles of traps, or are wearing a suit of armor that requires a specific trap (or traps!) to break open. Some will even get wise to your trap placement, and carefully weave in and out of your formerly elaborate floor plans. Before long Laegrinna will even be taking on multiple foes simultaneously, up to and including each chapter’s finale of a boss encounter. It can be a lot to manage, especially for newcomers to the series.
It’s weirdly easy to look at Deception IV and see all of its parts come together. Movement isn’t explicitly grid-based even though trap placement correspond directly to a menu-only grid. Each trap has its own cool-down timer that essentially manages the availability of disasters, and moving Laegrinna around while switching in and out of traps on the d-pad is surprisingly intuitive. Once you understand Laegrinna as bait and get comfortable with the idea of characters approaching from all side, it’s easier to manage. One minor complaint, dealing with 3D space that isn’t governed by an implicit grid, sometimes traps just miss their intended target through no real fault of your own. Managing a Rube Goldberg machine of death and dismemberment is certainly fun, but not when it’s compromised by wonky and unpredictable enemy/trap placement.
The fault in Deception IV lies in its inevitable monotony. Unlocking new traps, the implied draw of earning points and spending currency, is rewarding, but only from an aesthetic point-of-view. Mechanically you’re still just trying to push and move your pawns around a tightly constructed series of mishaps, and there’s marginal variation between the opening suite of traps and earned unlockables later. It certainly looks weird as hell to slam a horse mask on a guy or slam their ass down on an exploding toilet, but it’s not that different from my old bag of tricks. Halfway through the main campaign, I was short on the enthusiasm that filled the opening hours.
In addition to its meaty campaign with Laegrinna, Deception IV over delivers on additional content. Supplemental missions for Laegrinna push specific challenges against the player, like scoring a set amount of specific points or finishing off an enemy with a specific trap. Free Battle mode is essentially a practice mode, plopping you in a level and allowing free reign over traps, combos, and enemies. Quest Creation mode, buried under the Cross Quests menu for whatever reason, is Deception IV’s idea of a level builder, allowing customizable objectives and enemy types inside of existing levels, and you can share them online. Any way you slice it, there’s a lot of content lurking inside Deception IV.
At this point, much of this text could have qualified as review for 2014’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita release of Deception IV: Blood Ties (which Stephen McGehee reviewed for us last year). This release actually covers Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess, which includes all of the content from Blood Ties and a smattering of new additions for Deception IV’s current generation debut.
A parallel campaign is the most impressive addition to The Nightmare Princess. Taking control of Velguirie, players will move through an escalating series of conditional battles spread across Deception IV’s existing landscapes. Similar to the base game’s extra missions, you’re charged with completing one key objective, and have the option to complete other side objectives along the way. The main objective is obviously needed for progress, but the optional content (which sometimes isn’t too optional if the rewards are required later!) typically grants an allotment of new traps and abilities.
Velguirie’s inherent abilities also put a fresh coat of paint on Deception IV’s facade. To put it bluntly, she can kick people. This sounds kind of irrelevant if you’ve never played Deception, but the ability to generate some sort of traditional, character-initiated offense is actually game-changer. Independent of the cool-downs and motion affecting traps, Velguirie can kick fools and move them toward an intended target. Her dash move is also unlocked early on, and while none of this makes Deception IV a real action game, it does add much needed variation to an increasingly stale platform.
More fleeting are The Nightmare Princess’ offering of additional content. New modern day environments, like a bright and cheery playground and a hospital, along with increasingly silly traps create a visual pallet cleanser, but remain indifferent to established platforms and mechanics. Toilet explosions and silly rocking horses aside, it’s more of a novelty than anything else. I also didn’t get much out of Deception Studio, essentially an enemy creation tool. It’s great that it’s there, and there are a considerable number of options ranging from stats to appearance, it just didn’t draw me in.
Visually, Deception IV’s trip the PlayStation 4 went pretty well. In a time when AAA games are crashing out of the gate, dropping frames everywhere, and essentially coming apart at the virtual seems, Deception IV is technically uncompromised. This is probably because it doesn’t look much better than the PlayStation 3 game, which itself didn’t look too much better than a latter day PlayStation 2 game, but I’ll take function over form every time. Aside from its some regrettable characters costumes, Deception IV looks fine no current hardware.
Most of Deception IV operates as a series of contradictions, and how you’re able to grapple with them may determine your enjoyment of the game. The Nightmare Princess shares a great deal of content Blood Ties, so is it worth it for returning players to pay $50 for what could have (probably) been less expensive DLC? Would a fresh crowd on new consoles be more likely to enjoy The Nightmare Princess’ absolute smattering of content, or does it further pigeonhole the applicable audience? Does Deception have a place in 2015?
Answer: yes, absolutely. Well, probably. Zaniness in the midst of absolute horror is a staple of Japanese entertainment, and no modern console game captures that sentiment quite as well as Deception IV. It may feel repetitive, and its stated objectives may feel unaligned with the gaming landscape of 2015, but there hasn’t been anything like it in a decade and there probably won’t be anything else like it anytime soon.
