Let's Play: Kagero: Deception II

The first game in this series, “Tecmo’s Deception: Invitation to Darkness” was released for the Playstation in 1996. The primary gameplay involved setting traps to capture or kill the foolish intruders who entered the “Castle of the Damned”. Kagero: Deception II polished up the trap-based premise, but scraps the RPG elements and Satanic theme for a more complex plot involving the immortal (and poorly-named) “Timenoids”.



Our story begins as the circus arrives at this unnamed town. All the children of the village are entertained, but one child seems particularly entranced.



You wouldn’t think a creepy clown juggling 3 balls would be that exciting, would you? Well, when everything goes dark, and the balls start glowing and floating, that’s a bit too exciting for my liking, personally. But I’m a big wuss.



I’ll admit, purple glowing energy orbs are pretty cool, and I know I’d be at least a little curious to see where they were floating off to… But, at what age does an individual develop a self-preservation instinct?



I think I wouldn’t be so annoyed by the term “Timenoid” if it weren’t unnecessarily abbreviated as “TMD” almost all the time.



King Eclypse: Is there a problem?

Yocal: PANTS is still young. She needs further education.

Yocal: She doesn’t see the value of immortality or of our mission.

King Eclypse: I don’t consider these issues to be problems.

Yocal: If she is not well-educated she will remain a mere human.

King Eclypse: If not now, when? And how can we be sure of her loyalty?

Yocal: It is difficult…

King Eclypse: We won’t know until we put her to use, will we?

Yocal: ….. Yes sir. I will ready her at once, your majesty.

Not visible in the above screenshots is a literal “spike square” behind and to the right of Yocal. At regular intervals, 4 foot tall spikes stab out of the floor, but the resident Timenoids seem to pay no heed.



We’re finally done with all the backstory the game is going to throw at us for now, and we are brought to the “Intermission” menu.

First things first, let’s check out our trap arsenal.



The Trap menu leads to a sub-menu that is unworthy of a screenshot. The first choice, “Trap Select” lets us change what traps we have available for the next mission. “Trap Data” shows the map of prerequisites for every trap* in the game. “Trap Make” lets us spend the currency of the game, “Ark,” on new traps. There’s quite a bit of information here between these 3 screenshots, but we can’t do anything just yet without any Ark.

* other than those awarded for specific endings.



The map the game gives us is pretty small and cluttered - not terribly useful. We can get to this map screen once we’re in the game, so I won’t dwell on it now.



The Enemy Data screen gives us a preview of who will be coming to visit in each chapter. Some enemies are immune to certain trap-types, but Daar here is just a simple villager.

Now we have a choice. We can fairly easy kill Daar (the Mega Rock alone does more damage than his hp), or we can let him run away. Not all enemies will attempt to flee, but it shouldn’t be hard to scare this guy off. I open the discussion to you, Talking Tyrants! What shall be Daar’s fate?

Next… “Chapter 1: An Innocent Girl”

This is cool. I always wanted to know about this game ever since I heard about Trapt.

I played the first game a ton when I was a kid. Designing the mansion was nearly as fun as the traps themselves. It's a shame it took nine (!?!) memory card blocks to save.

I know I've played this one at some point, but I don't remember much of anything about it. Does PANTS have tank controls?

Also, kill that chump. You'd be doing the world a service killing anyone dumb enough to just wander into a place named "Castle of the Damned."

From the back of the box:

• DUAL SHOCK ANALOG CONTROLLER COMPATIBLE! (Vibration Mode only)

It was a little painful getting reacquainted with pre-analog 3d controls: Left/Right turn, L1, R1 strafe.

Actually, "Castle of the Damned" refers to the mansion of the first game. Right now, PANTS is at a castle that, as I recall, is only ever referred to as "the Castle by the Woods" or something similar.

I'm pretty sure that with options between "kill" or "scare off", you are going to be driven to murder every time if you ask for input around here. ;p

Oh, my bad. I just glanced at the little blurb about the game.

But, yeah. Kill the chump anyway. I mean, what kind of a name is Daar anyway? That's a dumb name.

That guy's head is so tiny.

I ask only for the twincest baby ending.

Timenoids.

casting my vote for kill!

Death to the interloper!

Daar obviously doesn't respect the Timenoids. If he did, he wouldn't have come this far.

Teach him of his folly.

"Hey I think it'll be a good idea to go into this creepy, abandoned castle in the middle of the woods all by myself!"

Clearly he has no self-preservation instincts and natural selection must do its thang.

I remember playing a demo of this back when it came out. I never could find the actual game though.

He just got married, you assholes. He's "in bliss"!

Let him live!

Before each mission, there is a scene that usually gives more detail on why the invaders have come. Yocal tries to explain why humans need to be killed and reveals that she summoned poor Daar to his impending death.



Yocal: We instilled order. They soon grew greedy and revolted.

Yocal: Humans murdered many Timenoids. I can’t say any more.

Yocal: It won’t be easy to kill these humans. But, PANTS.

Yocal: You can do it.

Yocal: I’m confident that you will succeed on your mission.

PANTS: *nods*

PANTS never speaks in any pre or post battle scenes, at most she will silently nod or shake her head no.



We’ll skip the rest of the game’s brief tutorial, and I’ll cover the basics in just a moment.



Yocal: PANTS, please take care in battle.



Finally we get to start playing!



The very first thing we need to do at the beginning of every mission is look at the map for the enemy locations. Interestingly, Yocal does not show up on the map, even though she is standing right in front of PANTS. Since the game rewards us for dealing damage with traps, and Daar will just wait where he is until we go to meet him….



The trap set screen shows a 3d image of the room and everything in it (except Yocal; the red figure is PANTS). Traps generally show the area they can affect, but ceiling traps such as Mega Rock will roll downhill and not give the player any indication of how far it will roll or how fast. These altar steps are a pretty slight incline, but we’re not looking for speed here. The Small Bomb doesn’t have much of a blast radius, but since Yocal isn’t centered on a square, it will do well where it is. We can have 1 of each type of trap (ceiling, wall, floor) in any given room, but they can’t be set on top of existing room devices, and floor and ceiling traps can’t share the same square. e.g. No putting a Mega Rock directly above a Bear Trap.



After setting the traps, we need to wait for them to charge before they can be used. As you can see, the Mega Rock charges much slower than the other traps.



Once the traps are set, PANTS makes sure she is not standing in the path of the Mega Rock (just in case), and we unleash the combo, starting with the Arrow Slit.



The Small Bomb then flings Yocal directly under the square where the Mega Rock is due to land…



“Initial Trap” refers to a 100 Ark bonus for the first time a trap is successfully used. The Arrow Slit and Small Bomb also had those bonuses, but the traps were set off in rapid succession and the game didn’t keep up with informing us.

As Yocal is struggling to her feet, the Arrow Slit has recharged itself, and is ready for another hit. I could have moved the Small Bomb to her new location, but by now her hp is so low that one more hit finishes her off. Once a victim has died, you can’t continue the combo against them. When Yocal “dies” in this chapter, she just disappears. If you attack her without “killing” her, she scolds you and disappears anyway.

The other reason not to use Small Bomb again is because using the same trap more than once in a combo causes it to be worth much less Ark. Because the 2nd Arrow hit was a “Long Range Hit” we still get a worthwhile amount. Also notice that arrows will home in (slightly) on enemies. If you see the earlier screenshot, you know the Arrow Slit trajectory does not line up with where the Mega Rock falls.

Now let’s go deal with Daar.



That’s… not a yes or no question. I interpret his question to actually be, “The Timenoids called me, but you are here to lead me to them?”



We might as well use the other 3 traps we didn’t use against Yocal so we can get the Initial Trap bonus for all 6 starting traps. Slow Gas isn’t a very good trap since Ark is based on damage done – Slow Gas deals no damage so is only worth Ark for the Initial Trap bonus and the combo hit.



Since Daar is so slow and harmless, I have the luxury of waiting until he is standing in the exact center of where the Bear Trap will hit, giving the “Bull’s Eye” bonus.



While Daar is flailing helplessly, I wait for the Slow Gas to enter his lungs, then immediately activate the Press Wall to shove him into the nearby pillar.



The pillar inflicts massive damage and topples over when hit by a trap like Press Wall. Room Device traps also give a very large Ark bonus for using them in a combo.



And we are left only with Daar’s dying words and his corpse lying in a pool of blood.



Off to a good start, I’d say.



Slash: Ask another. I don’t do menial tasks. It’s not my style.

Lilia: Please! ...my husband hasn’t returned yet… I’ll pay anything!

Slash: He hasn’t returned from the castle?!

Lilia: Let me explain…



Here’s a preview of the next intruder. What shall be his fate, I wonder?

The more important decision – now that we’ve got some Ark, PANTS needs new traps to play with! I may end up regretting this, but I’m going to let you guys decide what traps I should make next.

For comparison, here are the traps we started the game with:
We have 3727 Ark to work with, so we can afford at least 2 new ones. What should we get?

Next… “Chapter 2: Castle of Doom”

Magnet and Land Mine, if you would please.

Did you just kill the tutorial guy?

If so, that's awesome.

Oh geez I just realized I played a basic version of this type of game recently. The Scroll Cave in Shiren totally works on a similar principle. You could even chain traps together. I quite enjoyed that, so maybe I should check out this obscure genre. Geez I don't think anything like this has been released recently besides Trapt. This is waaay untapped potential.

Yes. Yes I did. No, not really. Next time (Chapter 25) is for real though.

She's the only NPC in the game who doesn't show up on the map, so it isn't obvious that it would even be possible to attack her. Her 100 hp is enough that I didn't even think it was possible to "kill" her for a long while. Attacking Yocal is one of 2 tricks to get extra Ark at the beginning of the game, the other way is sadly incompatible with this Let's Play.

Could you spoil that for me? It's been years since I tried (futilely) to play through this.

Magnet and Vase.

Vase (for comedic purposes) and Fire Arrow (it'll be useful once we get something that can put oil on people).

If that lower right number is the current pool, we've got enough for magnet, vase, and any one other. Sorry Zith, Vase is so cheap you're getting it regardless. I demand to see it on Slash's head!!

Presumably this will become a little clearer as time goes on, but I'm trying to figure out what the challenge is here. Obviously you want to kill people in awesome ways, and presumably some of them will be smarter than our buddy Daar, but right now this looks remarkably un-fun, so I feel like I must be missing something pretty vital.

The game takes a couple chapters to start getting challenging. In the 2nd chapter (ETA: later tonight) we encounter the first enemy with a weapon, in chapter 3 we get 2 enemies at once, in chapter 4 we get the first enemy with a ranged attack, etc. Later enemies also tend to have immunity to (or the ability to dodge) certain trap-types, and other special abilities (invisibility, teleport) that make them more dangerous.

I wouldn't call Deception II a particularly hard game, but there are certainly some chapters coming up that will probably take me a few tries to succeed.

Name her "Astarte" and you start with 2800 free Ark.

Per request, the new traps created are Magnet, Vase, Land Mine, & Fire Arrow. Unfortunately, 2 of these new traps won’t get used this chapter, but I’ll keep them in mind for the future. Since PANTS can only equip 3 traps for each location, Fire Arrow is replacing Arrow Slit.



Slash: No.

Slash: If there’s a fight, you’ll just get in my way.

Lilia: …..

Slash: Don’t worry. I’ll do the job for a small sum.



So that’s what his name means! I thought it referred to his sword... well, maybe it still does, I suppose.



Apparently, PANTS is not a very good liar. (For the record, Slash doesn’t appreciate honesty, either)



This mission starts us in the same room as the enemy. Slash is much faster than Daar and will attack if we let him get close enough. Fortunately, there’s a door behind us allowing a tactical retreat, and a chance to see what else this castle has in store.



By popular request, we have a Vase over the doorway ready to fall on Slash’s head. Magnet and Fire Arrow don’t really combo well with what I have planned, so they will be saved for the next chapter. (The large crate that the Press Wall will smash into contains explosive powder.)



As soon as I see his sword poking out, I know he’s ready to have his head covered with my vase. Probably a much bigger helmet than he’s used to.



He moves a lot slower now, and doesn’t seem to know what to do next, so he clumsily tries to get closer to PANTS, hoping to get lucky I guess.

Once he is on the near side of the Land Mine, we set it off. Since Slash is off-center, he is blasted 2 squares towards us, right where the Press Wall is. Land Mine can be activated in advance, but then Slash would likely have been blown backwards as soon as he stepped on the mined square.



The Press Wall does negligible damage, but the Powder Box explodes on impact, dealing significant damage and flinging Slash away. Fortunately, PANTS is standing just outside the blast radius; it is very easy to get caught in your own traps if you’re not careful.



Figuring out where traps will toss victims is one of the keys to getting big combos. The powder box explosion throws Slash 3 squares away, and since the earlier Land Mine blast had put him off center, he ends up lying right next to the door. Small Bomb charges quickly enough (3 seconds) to finish him off and add a 5th hit to the combo.



Eventually we’ll get more interesting dying words. Early foes seem more incredulous than anything else.

Lilia: In the west woods.

How many more people is Lilia going to send after us, sheesh? You’d think we killed her one true love or something… oh wait.



Not as much Ark as last time due to only having a single target to beat up on, but still enough to buy another trap or two.



As friends of Slash, they probably won’t be in the mood for talking. I’m going to have to kill them, too, methinks.

We may not have a choice of what to do about the next wave of invaders, but new traps have been unlocked by the last round of purchasing.

We have 2830 available, so Spring Floor is the only one out of out price range at the moment.

Next… “Chapter 3: Pursuit of Friends”

I will try to have the next update for late Tuesday night, but I don’t yet know how much time I’ll have to work on it.

You are a combo beast.

Put my vote in for Power Magnet.

And now he has to deal with Gastone because of it.

I'll cast my vote for the Oil Vase. If dropping pottery on a guy's head is fun, dropping pottery on him and then setting him on fire must be better, right?