Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess Review

How Did We Get Here?

When I was a kid, I used to watch my brother play Deception III: Dark Delusion on the original PlayStation. The game scared me for some reason. Maybe it was the blood and violence, or, maybe, it was the feeling of helplessness of being armed with only traps, while being pursued by enemies with murder in their eyes. Throughout the years, I forgot about the game… or so I thought.

Recently, something triggered a deeply buried memory. Maybe it was Markiplier playing a game called Dark Deception. Maybe something got triggered while looking at my PlayStation games for my game inventory. It does not matter what triggered it; what matters is I thought about Deception III. I began looking into the series. I found out a fourth game, Deception IV: Blood Ties released for the PlayStation 3 in 2014. It was ported to the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4 in 2015 under a new name, Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess. I purchased the game and DLC off of the PlayStation store. I am a big boy now, and maybe this game won’t scare me as much.

I do not have a ton of experience with the Deception and Trapt (a spiritual sequel for the PlayStation 2) series. It turns out the games are unique. They are all about chaining together your traps to kill your enemies in over-the-top and stylish ways. They are a weird combination of The Incredible Machine meets Saw. Deception IV cranks everything up to eleven.

The Story and Modes

Nightmare Princess includes two story based modes: Quest Mode and Story Mode. Both have a different storyline; they could have been named better. Story Mode is the original Blood Ties story, while Quest Mode is a brand new story for the port. For both stories, the plot is told through conversations. The stories follow different characters and play a bit differently, but happen concurrently.

I started with Quest Mode, because it is the first option presented on the main menu screen. The story follows Velguirie, one of the “daughters” of The Devil, AKA The Great One, AKA Lord of Darkness, AKA other generic names for the king of evil. She awakes in the Dark Side of Heaven, which is the rift between dreams and realty. She needs to capture the dreams of humans and turn them into nightmares to wake The Devil. It’s very anime, but I dug it.

The quests in Quest Mode are setup in a tree, with branching paths. Paths unlock as I completed quests. Each branch usually had a small story revolving around a specific person or group. Each quest had a main objective, usually “kill all enemies,” while offering three optional objectives. Optional objectives ranged from “Damage an enemy with a specific trap” to “Perform at least a 10 hit combo.” Completing optional objectives rewarded me with traps, enemies and enemy weapons for Free Mode, abilities, new characters, and character skins. Each quest took place in one room, and I had a time limit to complete my objectives. Most of the quests are under five minutes, but there are a 100 of them and I replayed them several times to complete objectives. There are a few quests where I got to play as other characters from past games in the series, which is cool.

Story Mode follows Laegrinna, who is also a “daughter” of The Devil. Her story takes place in reality. She’s a lot more mysterious than Velguirie, but she is also trying to wake The Devil. She needs to gather 12 fragments from the Holy Verses, which are carried by people she needs to kill. She has some help from three daemons, who represent the three types of traps. Caelea is all about Elaborate death. Veruza likes that Sadistic torment. Lilia just wants to Humiliate people while they meet their demise. The daemons offer optional objectives throughout the chapters.

Story Mode is more linear than Quest Mode. The story is broken up into chapters, and each chapter has a few mission breaks that act as save points and allowed me to pick new traps. Each chapter had an ultimate objective of luring out the enemy with the fragment, and either killing or capturing them. However, before they would face me I had to kill their minions. I was able to explore an entire map, and travel room to room. I had no time limit, and could complete my ultimate goal however I wished. Enemies would spawn two or three at a time, and I would be tasked with dealing a couple of waves of enemies before being rewarded with a save point, as well as the opportunity to swap out abilities and traps. This made for longer sessions.

Both protagonists are unarmed, but they do have abilities. Velguirie’s are kick-based. She can kick enemies back a couple of spaces, or launch them in the air. Laegrinna has rolls and dodges for abilities. There are abilities that can be unlocked that they share. Some abilities slow down time, or made me move faster. The game does not have a standard difficulty system, but some abilities make the game easier. There is an ability that will auto-dodge an attack from an enemy, however, the amount of Arc (points) I gained was halved. There is also an ability that make it so the traps are fully charged and ready to use once they are placed. This made the game a lot easier (and fun), but I gained no Arc if this ability was enabled.

Traps

Finally, we arrive at the central focus of the game. Over the course of both campaigns, I unlocked dozens of traps. However, I was only able to bring in 12 traps into quests in Quest Mode and 9 traps into missions in Story Mode. The game allowed me to view enemy stats, so I was able to cater my selection to their vulnerabilities and my objectives.

I touched on it, but traps come in several flavors for scoring purposes and style. Elaborate traps move enemies around, and were great for expanding my combo. Springboards, wall push, and giant swinging hammers are some examples. Sadistic traps deal damage and, well, they are sadistic. Some of my favorites include the lanced wall, giant sickle, and a guillotine. Humiliation traps are embarrassing for foes. A toilet seat launched them into the air. A changing room removed their armor. A rake hit their head and enraged them. The traps also came in three types: ceiling, floor, or wall trap. This just affected placement, and where they emerge.

Some of my favorite traps were stage traps. Each level has a set of stage traps. I was able to trap an enemy in front of a sword-wielding statue, and trigger the sword to chop them. I could launch enemies onto a marry-go-round. I could push them down a spiral slide. There are a lot of different traps, and I have only scratched the surface.

The Enemies

Each enemy has a bio, which is cool. They range from “A high school student who excels at a sport because they were picked on” to “Leader of a kill squad.” I am glad that the writers had some fun with the bios. It adds a little bit of charm, and motivation for killing them.

The enemies do not just stand around waiting for my traps. Instead, I had to lure them. Usually they make a B-line for me, but some enemies are more suspicious than others. Enemies could also have invulnerabilities to types of traps, like ceiling traps, and I would have to perform an armor break to make them vulnerable. Hitting the enemy with a specific combo caused their armor to shatter. The combo needed is displayed on the enemy information screen (lower left corner if you are wondering). Enemies also have resistances. They would be unaffected by a type of trap, unless they are being staggered by another trap. There was a lot of strategy when planning out traps.

Finally, My Review

We come to my thoughts on the game. The traps felt great to use. The sounds and animations create a satisfying punch when a trap is triggered on an enemy. The camera moves to zoom in on the action. From fountains of blood to the traps themselves, everything is over the top. It makes puzzling out trap combos against enemies rewarding.

During Quest Mode I played with the ability that made it so my traps were always charged. It is a lot of fun setting traps, and putting an enemy through the combo. The ability allowed me to remove traps from my combo, and place new ones to extend it. It is the best way to play the game, even if I did not receive Arc. Arc counts towards your rating in Quest Mode, so this was not a big deal to me. However, in Story Mode Arc contributes to your currency to buy traps, so I did not use this ability during that campaign.

Actually, I never completed Story Mode. The missions were too long, and it sucked having to restart when I failed. However, it has a really good tutorial. My recommendation for new players: play the first three chapters of Story Mode, and then just jump into Quest Mode. The quests in Quest Mode are shorter, so trial-and-error is more fun. Also, you will have a little more context for the overarching story.

I never grew frustrated with Quest Mode, but I did run into brick walls on a few quests. Sometimes, it was because I did not know I could do something. Reading the manual or looking up something online usually cleared it up. I learned, too late, playing the first three chapters of Story Mode would have also taught me what I needed to know. Even when I did have a handle on the game mechanics, I still hit quests with objectives that seemed ridiculous. For those moments, I hopped on YouTube and watched videos of a person who beat the quest with an S rating. Usually, I could not get it because I did not have a specific trap unlocked which would help. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the branching questline format, although a minor one.

I always looked forward to playing a couple of quests each day. Sometimes I would play for hours, or just for a few minutes. Do I recommend Deception IV? The game is very long and has a lot to do, but you can easily fall into a rhythm. Its production value is a solid “B” game, which makes the $50 seem steep. Unfortunately, the PlayStation store is the only way to play this game; used physical copies are even higher than $50. With that said, I have never played a game like Deception IV. It is such a unique experience. If everything in this post sounds good to you, or maybe the screenshots intrigue you, then I say take the dive and buy the game. The DLC, which is just additional traps, are completely optional. The traps in the game are better.

Commentary

This was a weird review. In normal reviews, I try not to just describe the game mechanics, as that is not a review. However, Deception IV is a unique game. Other games, like Monster Hunter and Horizon have traps, but their systems are not designed like Deception’s. I felt the need to give you more context before jumping into my thoughts. Hopefully it helped.

I tried to condense this review. I could have gone on for days about the traps, the writing, and abilities. I just want people to check out this game. Even if the game isn’t for you, at least you know about it now.

Thank you for reading this thing. Enjoy some additional screenshots.