I’m kind of glad the Deception series is niche and not a AAA series. The series is about resurrecting devils half the time, as well as murdering trespassers in horrible ways. Otherwise, the series would have attracted unwanted media attention, and possibly have been censored. So I’m extra grateful the Tecmo-Koei has decided to take a chance with another localization with this latest entry, Deception IV: Blood ties.

Deception IV has a weird name, as it’s technically the fifth game in the series, following Trapt for the PS2. Why Tecmo-Koei decided to re-brand the US title, I’ll never know, but this game is still the same sadistic trap-based execution game fans have come to know. In this title the story is about a group of three female demons seeking to find 12 holy seals in order to resurrect their sealed demon lord. And you play as their leader, the daughter of the demon lord, and a fragment of his soul, Laegrinna. Kind of like some female Damien. As you move from base to base searching for the seals, you will be constantly invaded by humans whom you’ve lured to either offer as blood sacrifices or to gain their seals. You will defeat them by making use of traps. Traps can be either purchased, or you can even use the environmental traps to assist you. Placing traps in various orders and activating them to make combos is the key to defeating them to earn experience and money. Traps come in three types, and each gives their respective experience. There is also a general rank of experience and the money you gain is a percentage of your overall experience, called Ark. The individual ark is used to unlock traps of their respective types, and money is used to purchase them.

Even though the game does have a story, the big draw is to test your ability to efficiently kill or even capture your enemies, while earning the most Ark. If you need to grind outside of the main game, the game will unlock Mission and Cross-Quest modes as the story progresses. Missions are pretty self-explanatory, where the goal is to fulfill the conditions under a time limit, or before killing your victims. Cross-Quest is similar, but the difference being that you will play missions that other players have created. There is even a way to record your gameplay to upload onto a server, that players can then watch on Youtube. The video quality isn’t the greatest, but it looks decent compared to other games with similar features. The game is just a blast to play and mess around with all the traps and find the best combinations. There’s a pretty dark amusement to seeing the ridiculous and terrible things you do to the victims. The game also makes feeling sorry for any of them almost a non-issue, as many of them are as evil as you are or at least completely crazy or delusional. There is a nun with a gun who has an insatiable appetite to kill what her deluded and unhinged mind deems evil. You can even break their armor hitting all of their weak points in a combo. After it’s broken they will be amusingly running around in their underwear or ragged garbs. Their attack power and defense drops dramatically after this, and often when they die, they will sometimes say the most ridiculous things. The game looks and plays great on either platform.

There are some issues with the game though: The game lacks any English audio track, being completely in Japanese audio. A shame, as it could have added to the weirdness of the game. The walking speed of Laegrinna is a bit slow, even with the ability to equip passive skills that somewhat alleviate this, albeit temporarily. There’s also the issue being stunned locked when it comes to the invaders attacks. There might be situations where you will get knocked down by attacks, but the recovery time is so slow that you will get hit possibly several times before finally escaping. There’s also no way to save in-between enemy waves, despite the game treating them like mini-chapters. Add to that the inability to switch your trap loadouts in-between waves, or even during waves. This makes deciding which traps and skills to bring into a chapter, which can make players potentially waste hours trying to clear chapters. Kind of a gigantic oversight to not think it couldn’t be an issue. Also, while you can view an enemy’s resistances and invulnerabilities, you have no data on their weaknesses. This leads to a great deal of trail and error that shouldn’t be necessary. Outside of these issues though, the game is a solid experience; and players looking for something a bit different and macabre likely won’t be disappointed.

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