[Click here to start from the first progress log]

Something that will become obvious by the end of this chapter is that an important element is missing. Gone is the omnipresent sense of malice that the series used to drench itself in; even Deception III and Trapt (in which you technically played as non-evil characters forced into an extraordinary situation) had characters who were selfish or evil using the playable character as a pawn. Deception IV’s sense of malice, on the other hand, is instead playful and shallow, more a trendy anime interpretation of darkness than one in which malice can be felt around every corner.

After experimenting a bit, I can confirm that previously cleared chapters can be replayed. That should make grinding out some extra Ark and Warl a bit easier.

The video above starts with me buying new traps, but that’s not all—there are also secondary abilities that can be purchased and set to the now-unoccupied triangle and square buttons, and while I ran out of Warl to buy any new ones, there are a few that you can use right from the get-go. I set a defensive roll move to square and an extra trap to triangle, which should make things feel a little more comfortable.

Of course, I forgot to actually equip the new traps that I bought. Whoops.

It’s been a few days since we killed Dow, and this guy named Zeno Shin who was mentored by him decides to grab some soldiers and figure out what happened. I have no idea if this guy is an important soldier or what, though, because he claims to be motivated by goodness while his supposed mentor was a mercenary who Lae’s fruit salad called out for occasionally slaughtering innocents. Whatever he is, it doesn’t take long for his group to reach the mansion and start sending people in.

The very first guy we get is a woman-hater, which is one of those weird personality traits that have endured since at least Trapt (though possibly longer; it’s been years since I’ve played the PS1 games). There’s also an archer who camps out in an inconvenient spot, but it’s nothing that can’t be worked around. After all of my traps are set, though, Blueberry, Raspberry, and Vanilla chime in to ask Lae to do certain things for bonuses. I hate this. The fun of Deception games is playing the way you want to, and having three people slowing down gameplay with popups and getting disappointed when you ignore their requests is just irritating. Who’s in charge here?

The tone problems start to become apparent when the game lampshades the absurdity of sending characters in single-file. Yes, this series staple can be viewed as being kind of ridiculous, but it’s also easy to imagine that small groups are scouting different parts of the mansion from the outside, most not intending to get into combat before coming across a lone character who doesn’t seem like too much to handle. I suppose my problem with this is that they’re supposed to be searching for someone who might be dead, and making fourth wall-breaking jokes to lighten the mood is antithetical to their mission and the tone of a Deception game.

I made the second wave of attackers much more difficult than they needed to be, and the reason boils down to this character’s bio: “Luna is willing to do anything for money.” I thought that this might be a hint that capturing her in a cage (which I now know requires getting a character’s health down to the point where it’s red) causes her to join my campaign of evil, but actually getting her in a cage is a pain.

Not only does she dodge floor traps unless hit in the middle of a combo, but she tries to escape the mansion when her health goes down to the point where she can be captured. That means the only way to get her in a cage is to bring her health down and make sure that the trap combo that does so ends with something that knocks her into the cage. If you get hit by your own trap because of the tight quarters (which is easy, especially when you’re so used to previous games’ controls), she’ll have enough time to recover and regain the ability to dodge floor traps again.

After three or four retries (which I cut out of the video), frustration set in and I just killed her and everyone else. That was much easier—and cathartic—to do.

Zeno Shin finally gets it through his head that his current approach isn’t working, so he personally leads the rest of his troops into almost certain death.

Okay, so each section returns you to the menu (which got cut out of the previous video because of all of the retries), and I finally decided to go through and equip the new traps while getting rid of the stupid ones like the rake and falling pumpkin. Deciding not to bother trying to capture anyone else, I started experimenting with the push wall and boulder combination, which is a favorite of mine. At least, it was a favorite of mine; the push wall in this game is a slow-moving abomination. Timing it to hit a dropped boulder before it disappears is inconsistent unless you slow down the boulder’s disappearance by making sure it lands on someone, and that ruins half of the fun. I’m going to be mad if there isn’t a faster push wall that can be unlocked.

Rather than dying like a good boy once his health is gone, Zeno starts up some dialogue to ask if Dow is dead. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter which option you select because Lae’s fruit salad will chime in to say the same things anyway, so all that changes is whether Lae personally takes credit for his death.

This right here is why I didn’t end the video above when the dialogue started. This is insulting; Zeno Shin literally goes “look over there,” causing all four characters to look away while he escapes. It’s a Scooby Doo tactic, and while the joke earlier clashed with the dark tone, this scene totally destroys any hope Deception IV had of creating that sense of malice I mentioned at the start. The tone in this game is a hollow simulacrum of a Deception game’s tone, and that’s what I was worried about.

I mean, this would have barely worked in one of Trapt’s side stories, and even that game had the restraint to avoid relying on such stupidity in the actual story.

Blueberry brings up the fact that there was apparently a magical barrier blocking the door, meaning Zeno broke a potent magical barrier on his way out. Blueberry takes this to mean that he’s a descendant of one of the sages and therefore an owner of one of the pieces of the Holy Verses. Hopefully that means that he dies soon.

After the chapter is cleared, another slot is opened up to use in trap chains. That means having four traps chained on the X button, plus the one manually triggered with the triangle button for a grand total of five. That’ll be fun to play around with.

Not capturing Luna was really bothering me, so I went back and finally captured her. It took a bunch of attempts, but simplifying things with a pendulum (which is called something different in this game) and spring floor helped a lot. I didn’t notice any changes because of her capture, though, so the entire thing appears to have been a giant waste of time. Shrug. At least captures give you a big ark bonus.

I also tried to capture Zeno Shin in the hopes of avoiding that stupid Scooby Doo moment, but apparently bosses can’t be captured. Scooby Doo it is. Sigh.

[Click here to go to Deception IV log #1]

The post Deception IV – The Nightmare Princess: Progress Log #2 appeared first on Killa Penguin.