Hey, watch your step! I can’t save you from that bear trap, or that axe either. That aside, welcome back to the world of Deception IV: Nightmare Princess, a sequel to Deception IV: Blood Ties from KOEI TECMO. Fans of the last game will be pleased to see Laegrinna return in her story, but during this second go around, fans will become acquainted with Velguirie, the second daughter of the devil and Laegrinna’s sister. Now, let me take you on a tour of our trap museum.

Deception IV: Nightmare Princess looks very pretty, I must admit. The game does an excellent job with ambiance in the environments, especially in the castle areas. The courtyards look beautiful, with a nice sunlight shining down so you can see the cages and chariot traps you can use to dispose of your enemies. I really enjoyed the details added to the environment themselves though, such as the banners and carpets placed in castles. I spent a good bit of time just running around checking out the different decorations in an area. The character models in game look pretty good as well. The attention to detail on costumes really stood out to me, especially for the enemies coming to play with you. The designs may not have varied amongst the enemy types, but they still had a certain flair to them. While we’re on the topic of graphics, the story of Deception IV: Nightmare Princess is told through character portraits speaking lines of dialogue instead of using rendered character models. It’s a pretty standard way of telling a story, and you can read through the lines pretty quickly and press the (X) button to move on. It's all your preference.

Deception IV: Nightmare Princess had a pretty interesting soundtrack. Music for stages and quests seemed to be all over the place, going from ominous and foreboding to a fast tempo orchestra. It was very chaotic, and I loved every second of it. The tracks did a very good job of conveying what type of setting or atmosphere the player should be feeling, whether you’re in a high tension boss fight or just hunting down your next prey. The sound effects should be praised as well. From the clanging of pipe organs and the crashing of a pillar to the roasting of a fire and a sword being struck down, you’re going to know what’s going on and what you’ve unleashed upon some poor soul. The sounds of objects were realistic, but the screams of your victims were as well. I’ve got a strong stomach, but when I saw someone get sliced by the swinging axe and knocked into a brazen bull, I had to look away. I’m not really one for listening to someone scream and watching them burn alive. Also, players should take note that while Deception IV: Nightmare Princess features voice acting, it’s all done in Japanese. I never found a way to change it to English, so unless you can understand Japanese, you’re better off just reading subtitles.

I admit that the gameplay of Deception IV: Nightmare Princess caught me off guard. I was expecting a more traditional RPG game where I could level up my characters and have action-based or turn-based combat. Instead, I was given a slew of traps to do my opponents in. The Deception series isn’t your ordinary line of RPG games, and Deception IV: Nightmare Princess stays true to this ideal. Players are put in control of Velguirie in her quest to reawaken the Devil and restore his power. Over her journey, Velguirie must also restore her own power because she napped for a bit too long. This is done by giving humans nightmares, where Velguirie basically goes into the Dark Side Heaven and messes with people. A nightmare for the humans is like a dream for Velguirie.

The Story Mode is split into two paths and players can choose whichever story they’d like to experience from the Main Menu. Enjoy giving nightmares to the average Joe? Start up the Velguirie’s story and be the Nightmare Princess. Want to know the thrill of luring your unsuspecting victims to their death to claim an ancient artifact? Laegrinna’s back and still reigns as the Dark Side Princess. The two stories are experienced rather differently, with Laegrinna featuring a more traditional storytelling method split into chapters, while Velguirie opts for a quest and objective-oriented story path. Basically, Velguirie’s path will feature a Quest tree where players take on different quests and complete the objective assigned to them. Objectives vary between quests and some will be very simple, where you only have to kill the enemies coming after you. Some are a bit more complex, like the ones where you have to pull off a certain combo string. These quests also feature bonus objectives for players to complete and you will be rewarded for completing them. Rewards are usually new traps, but can also be editing items or new skills to equip to Velguirie. Laegrinna’s story is told in chapters and players are really only required to defeat the enemies attacking them. You can play through both at the same time and your progress on both stories will be saved independently, so you can start from where you’ve left off in either story. Whether you want to be a princess of nightmares or darkness, it’s up to you.

Once you’ve picked your path, you’ll get into the core of Deception IV: Nightmare Princess. Despite which path you follow, you’ll learn to get well acquainted with the trap system. Traps are the way Laegrinna and Velguirie defend themselves from the armed people trying to hurt them. There’s a large variety of traps players can use, ranging from bear traps and swinging axes to pumpkin heads and rakes. Players can change traps by going to the Change Diabolica Menu before starting a mission. All of the traps are divided into three different classes and the classes are Humiliating, Elaborate and Sadistic. Each class of trap has specific traits per trap, such as the Sadistic class featuring high damaging and gruesome traps and the Humiliating class featuring traps you’d be embarrassed to be caught in. The traps are then further classified based on where they can be placed. Trap placements are Ceiling, Floor and Wall. You cannot place a trap on top of another, but you can place traps with wide hit ranges to hit where another trap is. Initially, you can only place three traps, but as you progress through the game, you’ll be able to place more traps at once. Efficient trap placement is your best friend.

So, now you’ve got your tools of the trade. Velguirie’s got a quota to fulfill and she’ll have to use these traps to do it. When you go into a mission, Velguirie will spawn in one spot and you’ll be greeted with a little quote from your victims. During this time, you can press the (Triangle) button to use the Devil Eye and check their backstory as well as their stats. Don’t worry, you can check from the Pause Menu as well by going to the Enemy Info tab after pausing the game. Here’s where you need to be creative. The enemies will continually run after you trying to kill you. Your health meter will appear in the bottom left and it decreases every time you get hit. It’s pretty easy to avoid the enemy attacks since they make it obvious when they’re going to hit you and they slow down once they get within a certain range of you. The fun part is taking them out. To set traps, you merely press the (Circle) button and select a slot. From here, you can choose which trap you’d like to place and where. You can place traps basically anywhere except for certain locations and the trap will merely skip over the area. Now it’s up to you to lure enemies to your traps and press the (X) button to activate them. You can check your placed traps by either pressing the (Circle) button or looking to the bottom right. The bar at the bottom right also allows you to cycle through your traps with the (R2) and (L2) buttons so you can activate traps out of sequence. For every hit your enemies take, their health meter will drop. You can find the enemy health meter in the top left, and take note of how many enemies appear. Hitting multiple enemies with your web of traps will increase your Ark score for the end of the mission. This basically measures how well you did or how stylish you were with your traps. Once an enemy’s health meter has depleted, they will die. If you get them low and don’t finish them off, the enemy may run away. Another thing of note is the timer at the bottom center of the screen. The mission will end if your timer runs out and you’ll have to try again, but this only applies to Velguirie’s missions.

There’s a lot of talented people in the world and those people will be able to use the Deception Studio to its maximum potential. The Deception Studio is your chance to let your creativity really flow because it allows you to make your stages to challenge or even design new enemies. The enemy designer has six pages with five entries each to make your own unique enemies. Using Olivier the Infantry Soldier as a base, players can go in and customize the enemy to their heart’s content. You can change their appearance and make the enemy a really squishy and timid male soldier or create some sort of female super soldier. Their body type, face, wardrobe, headgear, hair, voice and personality, occupation and their weapons are yours to control. You don’t have access to all of the different edit parts from the get-go and you can unlock new parts to use by playing Valguirie’s Quest Mode and completing special objectives in her quests. You can also change the character’s stats and give them a lot of health or change their resistances and what they are invulnerable to as well. Just make sure you give them a weakness so they’re not completely unstoppable. You can then take your new characters for a test run in the Quest Maker. You can choose any stage you’d like and set the conditions for victory as well. All you have to do then is set your characters and give the quest a go. After you’re finished, you can upload your quests for other players to try out. Before you can upload the quest, you have to be able to do it yourself. As much as we’d all like to upload impossible quests for other players to do, it’s no fun if the creator can’t tame the creation. If you live to create, this mode is definitely for you.

For better or worse, Deception IV: Nightmare Princess doesn’t feature a difficulty system. I’d say it’s for better, though. Some of you may argue against that. The difficulty definitely scales thanks to level design and the objectives for Velguirie’s quests. In addition, the Deception Studio allows players to create their own absurd levels and quests for a greater challenge. I’d say that most of the difficulty in this game comes merely from the players. Not thanks to the Deception Studio, but a player’s own intellect. Despite how clever you may be or how much strategy you put into designing your trap combos, there’s a chance something may go wrong and the whole scheme could backfire. You could easily outplay yourself on a simple level by trying to overcomplicate things. Sure, it’ll probably look hella cool if or when you pull it off, but is it worth getting to that point at all when you spend an hour trying to do it? Well, maybe but not always.

Every enemy has some sort of discerning feature in every game you play and Deception IV: Nightmare Princess is no exception. Enemy types range from regular foot soldiers to more nimble thief characters to armored soldiers. Some enemy types such as the thief and the armored soldiers have special resistances and invulnerabilities to some of your traps. For example, the thief can dodge your bear traps and the armored soldier can simply pass right over them or deflect your arrow traps. In order to take them down, you’ll have to use special tactics or trap combos to make them vulnerable to your other traps. Armored enemies can have their armor shattered by exploiting their weaknesses and then hitting them with another trap. For example, using a springboard trap and following up with a boulder could smash their armor, then all you have to do is finish them off. Make sure you pay attention to the Devil Eye.

I mentioned the trap combos a moment ago, and you should know that these are your best friend as well. Basically, a trap combo is using two or more traps to deal more damage consecutively and get a higher score. This is where players need to be creative. You can set up trap combos with just about anything, and mixing together different classes or using the same class of trap will also raise your score. Certain traps will also stun or enrage your enemies and cause them to stumble around or charge after you. Use this to your advantage to lure them into other traps or hazards and cause additional damage. Your traps aren’t the only things you can use to combo with. The different stages also have random items littered around that can be used as traps and these are known as stage traps. Creative name, right? Anyway, stage traps have different conditions for activation such as sensor traps or pushing an enemy into them. These also count towards your combo, but you usually have to set up other traps in order to get your enemy to be hit by the stage traps. The enemies may be stupid, but they do try to avoid stage traps and they generally won’t walk right into them while they’re of a clear mind. You can check the stage traps and their activation condition by pressing the (Circle) button and going down to the Stage Traps Menu which is located under your trap slots. Familiarize yourself with them and use them to your advantage.

Traps are your best tool against your opponents, but they’re not all you’ve got. Velguirie, in particular, has different abilities available to her. Her abilities are described as being kick techniques. These abilities range from the kick and dash, which you unlock at the beginning of the story, to the auto defense and stomping abilities. By completing certain objectives of quests, players can also unlock new abilities to use. You can equip abilities before you start a quest by going to the Change Diabolica Menu on the quest detail screen. You can have two abilities equipped at a time, so it’s not a bad idea to take two that you know will be useful to you in that specific quest. Abilities are equipped to the (Triangle) and (Square) buttons and can be used by pressing those respective buttons. The abilities do have a cool-down time, but it is usually pretty short and can be checked on the equipment screen. You can also read a short description of the ability on the same screen. Make good use of your abilities as they not only help you dodge incoming threats, but can also be used to continue or start combos. Master them and you’ll be able to achieve some pretty crazy scores at the end of a mission.

Deception IV: Nightmare Princess may not be your typical RPG, but it’s a fun way to change up a traditional formula. While most RPGs require you to use a degree of strategy, Nightmare Princess will take your strategy making to a new level and force you to use an amount of cleverness you may not have used in quite some time. It’s not a game for everyone, but those that get involved in the game will have a blast coming up with new combo sequences and different methods to take down their opponents. It’s a game that really appeals to that mischievous inner child that’s always wanted to get out and play.