Topic: Tecmo's Deception Series

[Ratty]

After sloughing through Final Fantasy Origin's remake of FF1 I decided I needed a change of pace, but still in a PS1 groove. So I pulled out Kagero: Deception 2 from its long held place on my shelf and I've gotta say, I'm really impressed.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLi6L--BDsY
Like all of the games in the Deception series you're basically a villain from a particularly gimmicky 80s slasher movie. The gimmick being that you can only attack indirectly, with traps. This adds a strategic element as you plan where to put them, and an almost survival horror feel as you run from enemies while your traps recharge.

I've never been able to get into the first game in the series, Tecmo's Deception: Invitation to Darkness because of the clunky first person perspective and ambitious but flawed RPG and sim elements. Kagero takes out said cumbersome RPG elements and gives you a nice 3rd person perspective and 3 fairly large (for the PS1) lairs with their own built in traps for you to play with in addition to the ones you unlock with points. (The more elaborate, painful and drawn-out the enemy's death, the more points you get.) If you use New Game+, which lets you keep the traps you've acquired, playthrough and get all 4 endings you unlock the secret/strongest trap in the game. Which is one of the creatures from Tecmo's Monster Rancher franchise.

Also unlike most games where you can play the bad guy it's not cutesy, you're rewarded for being downright e-v-i-l with a capital E here. Victims aren't just dumb knights but can often be innocents (sometimes kids) who's only real crime is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though the latter are usually optional victims, you'll still want to do them in for the points to buy more traps. All of which makes the fact that you're a helpless-and-innocent looking young girl amusing I think.

Anyone else have any experience with this series? It seems like something that any lover of spooky Castles and devious traps would enjoy. I do plan on trying the first game again, in spite of its flaws it is very atmospheric but one save file takes 8 blocks, that's almost an entire PS1 memory card! Might go through the 3rd and 4th games first.There are 5 games in the series, 3 on the PS1, one on the PS2 (dropping the Deception and Kagero name to be called Trapt outside Japan) and one on the PS3.

Here's the trailer for the PS2 entry which bizarrely omitted blood/gore for the most part.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIBxwLL4IrQ

[X]

I remember this game. My bro played it to the point where he was setting up trap combinations. It was brutal.

[Aridale]

my best friend used to love this game back in highschool. I always thought it was a good idea just poorly done

[Ratty]

my best friend used to love this game back in highschool. I always thought it was a good idea just poorly done

I've beat the game and it's actually pretty well done once you get the hang of it, but limited by the technology. It's fairly easy to cheese the AI. For example once I got the buzzsaw blades, which have an extreme knockback effect, I was able to just camp in a room and play whack-a-mole with most enemies, shooting them back out the door as soon as they came in the room, usually with a bear trap and gas combo for extra points. And I just did this repeatedly for 90% of the enemies in the second half of the game. Some enemies were immune to saws and beartraps, so I just killed them with a gas trap (flame breath) which is very powerful but gives no points.

It was enjoyable but not going to play through it again anytime soon since I was apparently misinformed about retaining all your gear in NewGame+, and I'm not interested in grinding up for traps I'll hardly ever use once I got the ice trap + evil breath + buzzsaw blades again. Might watch the other 3 endings on youtube though, since the story was pretty good for something where the main baddies are called "Timenoids". Going to play some different things before jumping into 3 and 4 of the series.