[Click here to start from the first progress log]

All right, so I cheated a little for this one and looked up the conditions for the different endings ahead of time. I don’t know what happens in them, but I figured I’d aim for the one with the most strict requirements first and then branch out from there. Apparently chapter 6 is the point where you can lock yourself out of a bunch of the different endings, as they require armor breaking the boss. Because of that, I spent a sizable portion of this chapter working out a trap combo that does a lot of different things in the hopes that it’d make it possible to armor break anyone.

First, though, I binged on a bunch of different missions, figuring that I’d finish off the one-star difficulty ones all at once. They can be interesting sometimes in the way they require using certain kinds of traps (one in particular locks a trap in a specific part of the chain and forces you to work around it, turning it into a puzzle), but I think this kind of gameplay fluff might be best left for after the campaign is finished.

Some of the missions required bringing along certain types of traps, so while I bought a few new ones here (nothing that actually got used), I mostly just re-equipped the ones I like. There are a couple useful ones that I bought while doing the missions and brought along, though, with the binding “bloody scissors” floor trap and the “reaper’s scythe” wall trap being of particular use. The latter is great for hitting an enemy and moving them to a different space so that there’s room for another trap to continue the combo, which is exactly what I’ve been missing.

The highly-armored boss (and therefore person in need of an armor break) is named Celia Mevious, which sounds like a Harry Potter character but isn’t.

After Lyla failed to return, the villagers organized their own self-defense force. Celia is a sorceress—though you could be forgiven for not recognizing that given her plate armor that defies typical “sorcerer/sorceress” norms—who spent time in the village while traveling around the kingdom and therefore feels indebted to the villagers. This compels her to go along with them to help figure out what happened to Lyla.

The very first request that Blueberry had was to defeat three enemies without taking damage. I failed at this almost immediately, running into a thief’s thrown dagger like an idiot before even managing to get out of the initial room. Then it was back to the room to trap the staircase, but this wasn’t as efficient and predictable as I hoped. Still, it was fun knocking people off of it right into the bloody scissors trap.

I’m not proud of 11:56, though, where I used a springboard to launch an ice mage away, only for the boulder to knock him behind me. I didn’t see his shadow and assumed he fell off to the side, which allowed him to freeze me with a cheap shot.

To its credit, the game really plays up Celia being special ahead of time, which makes it more obvious that this is one of the branching points where your ending starts to be defined. In this case, Lae randomly blurts out something about how “she’s approaching,” then has no memory of saying anything. Mysterious.

For the second part, I abandoned the normal gravity-based boulder setup and instead set up something along the walls that works much better and incorporates a lot of different elements. Then I went to start the trap combo, only for a flamethrower-wielding enemy to throw a grenade at me in the process, causing the burning status and allowing them to recover and get out of the way. Something that I’ve been noticing is that activating traps freezes you for longer than it used to. The difference is barely noticeable just by looking, but activating a trap and then holding a direction to escape keeps you stuck in place for long enough to frequently take a hit.

Celia finally shows up, and the game gives players a final nudge-nudge that she’s uniquely important as Blueberry, Raspberry, and Vanilla all act like they get a weird vibe from her. They end up chalking this up to the weird magic that supposedly brings all of the fragments of the Holy Verses together when collected, but whatever it is interrupts Lae while she’s giving her traditional pre-slaughter dialogue.

Something I’ve been suspecting is that armored character weaknesses are indicated by the pink icons that show up in the bottom-left when you use the “devil’s eye” ability, so I took the opportunity to test this with the first wave of enemies. Instead of running to the staircase like usual, I stayed in the starting room for a little while and hit the armored female character with a springboard and wall trap (which then launched her into a room trap—test or no, I’m still trying to kill these people). This worked to destroy her armor, though the starting guy’s weakness was electricity, and the only electricity attack I had equipped was a projectile that he was invulnerable against. Figuring that it’d be messy to continue experimenting, I set up the trap chain that I worked out in the previous section and decided to stick with it for now.

With the opening two armored units gone, Celia and an ice mage showed up. Because of course there was going to be an ice mage. Celia can dodge away from floor traps, which means getting her into my trap combo requires timing the pendulum to hit her in a certain way. This is tricky enough, but she can also hit you with a powerful attack that sends you flying. She actually knocked me down to the bottom level while I was activating traps to deal with the ice mage. Eventually the mage was dealt with, though, and that just left one piece of unfinished business; I hit her with a springboard (I have no idea why it worked this time) and started the trap combo, which managed to remove her armor well before it was finished.

The level ends the second her armor breaks, apparently, and the big reveal here is that Celia is identical to Lae. I mean, her goat horn is on the other side and her eyes are constantly closed, but everyone throws around the word “identical” anyway. Not only that, but she’s revealed to be blind (which is why she didn’t recognize that she was fighting against someone who looks just like her). The plot thickens.

Celia ignores all of the similarities that everyone has stopped fighting to point out, instead using the opportunity to track their voices and unexpectedly strike Lae. As a result of this cheap shot (and her strength in general), the group has no choice but to flee to another location. It’s a bit of a cop-out as far as location changes are concerned, but the past two locations have been terrible. Third time’s the charm?

After escaping, the fruit salad convenes without Lae to whisper cryptically among themselves. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but it seems that they know more about what’s happening than they’ve let on. The last person to keep secrets from me in a Deception game ended up having part of a building dropped on top of her head, so they’d better start talking before things get truly ugly.

That’s two not-awful, tonally solid chapters in a row! I could actually start liking Deception IV if things continue on like this. Everything is bound to take a nosedive the second Zeno Shin shows up again, though. Hopefully there’s an option to feed him into a blender before he opens his mouth, because that would fix so much.

[Click here to go to Deception IV log #5]

The post Deception IV – The Nightmare Princess: Progress Log #6 appeared first on Killa Penguin.