[Click here to start from the first progress log]

You know, I really came around to the third area, but this new set of rooms is just a mess. They’re all either too cramped to avoid enemy attacks or wide open enough that Enemies are easily knocked off track so that you can’t continue your trap chain. And that’s saying nothing of the way rooms are filled with weird Traps that teleport and freeze both you and enemies, further screwing with combos and reducing the amount of room you have to work with (unless you enjoy having an enemy frozen in place, erasing their momentum and leaving them stranded away from your traps).

I bought a bunch of new traps, but didn’t end up equipping any of them because they’re mostly “just in case” things for later. These include the frozen arrow wall trap (lots of enemies are strong against projectiles, so I ended up equipping the freezing snare I already had instead), the evil punch floor trap that shoots the enemy straight up into the ceiling, the skyrocket floor trap that shoots enemies a few squares, and a lightning-based ceiling trap called hell’s judgment. That’s not all, though, because I also purchased two new abilities. The first apparently protects against status effects, which could end up coming in handy given what a problem they’re becoming. The second speeds up Lae’s movement, which might be valuable against fast enemies.

This chapter is largely fluff, with the setup being that a legendary warrior named Victor Logos, known for his bloodlust, has unexpectedly shown up at the ruins looking for someone to challenge him. Blueberry mentions that it’s rumored that an illness has weakened him, but that doesn’t appear to have slowed him down much.

There’s something weird about his appearance, though, and the pre-chapter text specifically mentions his “vacant eyes.” Still, they can sense that he’s a descendant of the saints, and that means that we have to drop heavy things onto his skull.

I didn’t like the look of the first room, so I instead wandered off to explore the others. The first room I tried was too open and my traps kept missing. The second room was too cramped, making it easy to get hit. The third room was also kind of cramped in addition to having a bunch of annoying hazards and lighting effects that lower the visibility. As a result, I only barely made it through this first part without dying.

Wow, that’s really sad. I would have let this person escape, but I’m not 100% sure that she would escape (not all enemies do), and the models all look similar enough that it’s hard to tell who’s who in the heat of the moment. Maybe I’ll have better luck sparing her on a second playthrough when I have a better assortment of traps.

As has become the trend, there’s no dialogue or anything between the first two parts. I actually died during this part trying to fight in one of the tighter spaces, but ended up cutting it out of the video. Instead, the video is of my successful second attempt where I started out in the more open space, then eventually lost so much health that I ran back to the room that I had bailed on in the first part trying to find the healing circle. This area may not look like anything special, but it’s definitely the best option. There are two downsides, though. The first is that half of the room isn’t safe to wander around because there are stage hazards that can freeze you. The second is that the door is right there, so failing to kill off an enemy can allow them to flee because getting to the door takes less time than all of your trap cooldowns.

Victor finally shows up and gets into a weirdly casual conversation with the daemons. It turns out that the illness that had afflicted him ended up being fatal, and Lady Freise used a piece of the Holy Verses to bring him back to life and send him to obtain the pieces collected by Lae. Not only that, but his mention of Freise causes Blueberry to recognize the name as belonging to one of the kingdom’s ministers. I guess no one heard Telma mentioning her name before? Or maybe they just have horrible communication skills. Whatever the case, Victor is here because he wants his death to be from battle rather than sickness, and I see no reason not to oblige him and steal his piece of the Holy Verses (plot hole: why did Freise not take it?).

There’s a wonderful demonstration of why you need to keep your distance from the room traps at 3:47, as my combo is broken by an irritating ice trap. I think it’s actually triggered by a switch that I didn’t notice when setting things up. Anyway, there are a lot of hammer enemies in this part, and hammer enemies are the most annoying enemies here. That annoying stunlock attack that Alma had? Yeah, that’s a regular feature, and you can see a nobody grunt at 6:43 pull the same thing. It’s cheap.

Victor shows up at the very end, and he’s surprisingly tough. Not only does he have an ungodly amount of health, the same irritating stunlock attack, and a kick that reaches far beyond the animation would suggest, but he can also punch the air to make a shockwave that knocks you back. Basically, a long-range attack. Oh, and did I mention that he can also erase any traps in a small area? This wasn’t too bad because I started the combo with the rocket horse, so it was usually only one or two traps that I was losing to this move, but having to constantly go back in and set the traps again could make someone with a more dense setup crazy. Once you get him in a combo, though, he’s not very much trouble. He just has a lot of health.

I know I already mentioned the ice trap, but seriously. The number of different ice traps in this small part of the room is ridiculous. Did Victor Fries design this place?

After everyone is dead, the fruit salad starts to talk about Lady Freise (apparently one of the most powerful politicians in the land) and how she’s formidable given her willingness to use taboo resurrection magic and send proxies to fight on her behalf. They all agree that it’s likely that the two remaining pieces of the Holy Verses are in the possession of Lady Freise and the “sorceress” Celia Mevious.

All in all, not a horrible chapter, but I’m definitely not a fan of the new area. The absence of narrow slopes mean my deathtrap from the amusement park isn’t viable anymore, and while this increases the difficulty somewhat, it also thrusts the cheap hammer stunlocking and questionable hit detection to the forefront.

[Click here to go to Deception IV log #9]

The post Deception IV – The Nightmare Princess: Progress Log #10 appeared first on Killa Penguin.