[Click here to start from the first progress log]

I know it might look like I’m playing a few chapters ahead before writing these progress logs given the number of times I’ve already brought something up that ends up being focused on in the next chapter, but that’s not the case; I had no idea that Zeno Shin would show up here when I mentioned him in the last progress log. The inevitability of him dragging down the game with tone issues was obvious, though, and my prediction was 100% on the money. This is another chapter where he shows up, only to get away with cartoonish flair. Let the groans commence.

The two new traps I purchased are the “swinging hammer” trap and the “launch pad” trap. The latter is basically a springboard that shoots enemies straight up (assuming it functions like in previous games), making it very situational and not worth equipping at the moment. The swinging hammer, on the other hand, is slightly misleading because it seems like the kind of thing that swings back and forth like the pendulum, when it actually only swings once. That’s good for avoiding hitting enemies in the wrong direction (and it also substantially reduces the cooldown), but it can make it kind of tricky to use. Still, I ended up equipping that one.

There’s a little dialogue between Zeno Shin and a new character named Evelyn, and it’s over the top. Evelyn is a masochist, and to her credit, the voice actress for her really committed to the bit. That doesn’t make it less cringe-inducing to sit through the desperately sexual gasps, but at least someone didn’t phone it in.

The writers, on the other hand…

Lae and the others have camped out in an old amusement park to heal from the fight with Celia, but Evelyn spots them at some point and, recognizing who they are, leads Zeno Shin there. That means that this is technically the first time Lae is being caught off-guard by the arrival of enemies, not that it matters any. Basically, all of this is another lazy excuse for a location change, and the setting further confuses me as far as the technology is concerned; previous games had a kind of vaguely steampunk vibe, and while Kagero: Deception II opened with a cutscene where a clown lures a young Millennia into a mansion, there wasn’t anything like an amusement park to be found there. That doesn’t make this setting an inherently bad thing, of course; the cramped quarters and crappy rooms make it a bad thing.

At first I thought Evelyn was another tone problem, but she actually seems like the type of character who could have been found in an earlier game. Really, it’s her prominence in the early cutscenes and the lazier way these cutscenes are designed that make that appear to be the case. Getting rid of Zeno Shin and dialing Evelyn’s dialogue back to just a couple of lines would be enough to save this chapter.

Every new location has been worse than the last, and considering how bad the starting location was, that’s not a good progression. I actually ended up dying here again because the camera doesn’t place nicely with close quarters, and while that was something you could work around in previous games, enemies now shoot liquid nitrogen and throw fire grenades. Getting hit with both or either means not being able to trigger traps until the status effect ends, and then I got frustrated and started hitting myself with my own traps. The whole thing was a comedy of errors.

You can skip that by going to 5:37, which was the start of my successful second attempt. I tried to engage enemies in the starting room at first, but eventually took so much damage that I went looking for the healing circle. It’s in the farthest room, naturally, but the bright side is that this room is workable. It still took some ugly experimentation to deal with enemies, and killing Evelyn was annoying because she has a ton of health and uses a bunch of homing spells that are hard to avoid, but her armor broke early on and she eventually helped out by walking into a buzzsaw.

Zeno Shin gets frustrated and sends in his second squad while he stands around.

Things went quite a bit smoother this time around, though there were still issues. Healers are becoming a huge annoyance because they can randomly undo all of the damage you’ve inflicted on them and/or others, and triggering large trap combos is dicey because of how long each trap activation freezes you in place. An enemy named Cheryl even managed to slip away while I was focusing on the healer, and the number of enemies who flee is another change that I despise. Enemies also tend to come with a bunch of resistances and immunities that force you to constantly mess around with your traps in a way that’s tedious and not very rewarding.

Since it’s the third wave and someone has to be the boss, Zeno randomly decides that it’s finally time to head in and do something himself. I hate this guy.

Things went much smoother this time around, as the first few enemies were quickly cut down and I even managed to get to a fleeing archer named Lisa (whose death quote paints her as a weirdly good sport about the whole “getting murdered” thing). Then Zeno Shin shows up with a healer, because of course there’s a healer, and that means doing tons of damage and then having it randomly undone! This is totally not ridiculous padding at all! The healer also refused to stand where I wanted her to, and that’s really not something that you can change while dodging Zeno’s weirdly fast attacks. Once she was gone, though, it was pretty simply to take down Zeno.

To take down his health, at least, because he doesn’t die. No; he randomly mentions that Evelyn gave him a special jewel that allows him to fly, and he uses it to escape. Does that make sense given that I killed him in an indoor area? No, but this isn’t about making sense. It’s about irritating me with a recurring villain who the game refuses to allow to die. Valkyria Revolution did this with Maxim, and it’s one of those “stupid anime” elements that strangles the life out of games by taking control of what happens away from you. It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose because some incompetent writer in Japan thinks their braindead excuse of a story is Shakespeare-tier. The relationship between non-anime series and entries that suddenly embrace anime is the same relationship Charlie Sheen has with venereal disease.

With that bit of stupidity out of the way, the scene shifts to an unknown group as a mysterious figure acts pleased by the turn of events and says something about how “harvest time is here.” This is probably the “her” that Vale was doing things for.

I tend to be more critical than most critics, but the Deception series has a special place in my heart. This is not a Deception game. This is a cringe-inducing, mass-market, focus-tested-but-quality-assurance-testing-was-too-expensive money grab.

[Click here to go to Deception IV log #6]

The post Deception IV – The Nightmare Princess: Progress Log #7 appeared first on Killa Penguin.