This is one of the more memorable and unique games I've tried out this year. You have to defend a castle from trespassers but are unable to attack them directly, instead setting up deathtraps for the poor saps to walk into. Your victims have all manner of shapes ,sizes, traits and abilities, which keeps the gameplay fresh and prevents a one-size-fits-all approach to your style: enemy ninjas can teleport directly into a room which will surprise players who enjoy setting up traps by the door, and the bear trap (a staple for setting up combo strings) has no effect on knights.
The traps are pretty creative and interact with each other very well - you can push your enemies into fireplaces or lure them into water which you can then electrify. My personal favorite trick is to activate a wall magnet to immobilize enemy knights, then drop a gigantic iron rock next to them - the wall magnet attracts the rock as well, crushing the knight. It's a cool bit of physics that I was surprised to find in a relatively older game!
Unfortunately the game majorly stumbles in how it presents its story. The premise is that you are a human girl who has been assigned by the timenoids (an immortal race) to guard a castle and eliminate human trespassers, and the game seems to be making an effort to shove its morally-grey nature in your face. Many of your poor victims, when mortally wounded, will utter something about the loved ones they are leaving behind, and at one point you even have the chance to kill a terminally ill kid! You do get the choice to spare some of these trespassers in a sort of rudimentary 'morality' system which leads to one of four different endings.
What makes this premise less than effective is that the game gives you basically zero information about why the heck a human girl is killing other humans in the first place! The first time I played through the game I didn't understand a thing and blamed it on the shoddy translation, but I soon discovered that the real issue was that only some of the four branching story paths explained the larger story and setting. I suppose they wanted to give the game more replay value, but it had the unintended effect of removing all context for the player's actions and robbing all the morality choices of their narrative heft.
Annoyances with its storytelling and translation aside, this is a really cool game that deserves more attention. I would definitely recommend it for its unique gameplay and great atmosphere.
The traps are pretty creative and interact with each other very well - you can push your enemies into fireplaces or lure them into water which you can then electrify. My personal favorite trick is to activate a wall magnet to immobilize enemy knights, then drop a gigantic iron rock next to them - the wall magnet attracts the rock as well, crushing the knight. It's a cool bit of physics that I was surprised to find in a relatively older game!
Unfortunately the game majorly stumbles in how it presents its story. The premise is that you are a human girl who has been assigned by the timenoids (an immortal race) to guard a castle and eliminate human trespassers, and the game seems to be making an effort to shove its morally-grey nature in your face. Many of your poor victims, when mortally wounded, will utter something about the loved ones they are leaving behind, and at one point you even have the chance to kill a terminally ill kid! You do get the choice to spare some of these trespassers in a sort of rudimentary 'morality' system which leads to one of four different endings.
What makes this premise less than effective is that the game gives you basically zero information about why the heck a human girl is killing other humans in the first place! The first time I played through the game I didn't understand a thing and blamed it on the shoddy translation, but I soon discovered that the real issue was that only some of the four branching story paths explained the larger story and setting. I suppose they wanted to give the game more replay value, but it had the unintended effect of removing all context for the player's actions and robbing all the morality choices of their narrative heft.
Annoyances with its storytelling and translation aside, this is a really cool game that deserves more attention. I would definitely recommend it for its unique gameplay and great atmosphere.
2 Comments
Yeah I've seen some gameplay videos of the later games and they seem to lean heavily into silliness, what with stepping on rakes and getting shot out of circus cannons. I might try them out eventually, but I really like the atmosphere that Deception 2 has!
poyfuh
2 years ago