Deception, Tecmo’s Forgotten Survival RPG Series

The Deception series is an odd collection of games from Tecmo. In some ways, they are an entry in the survival horror genre, but they can considered into the Tactical RPG genre. It’s a little confusing as the games are hard to classify.

There are five games and one expansion pact in this series. For some reason, the fourth game, Trapt, dropped the Deception name. This strange series had some unique ideas but didn’t seem to break out of being a niche game.

The story for the individual games can be nonsensical. Much of this has to do with the localization and bad translations. Deception III got the worst of it. Many of the dying words from the enemies are bizarre. The other games seem to have faired better.

The Games

There is more information on some of the games than others. It has been fun to see some of the lies about Deception III’s plot get repeated by websites that never check the manual. The controls for these games are basically the same.

Most of the series uses tank controls, like the Resident Evil games. The traps are all easy to use, but the timing on some of them sometimes feels off, specifically with Deception III. Here is a brief explanation of the games.

Deception

This is an odd game. It is the closest the series comes to being an RPG, has a first-person perspective, has fewer traps for you to use, and is the only game with a male protagonist. It is one of two games that I don’t like in the series.

The first game has more of a focus on Satan and demons. The game case even warns players that the game contains satanic imagery. While other games mention demons and possession, they aren’t as satanic in the North American versions. The first game feels closer to the satanic panic in the 1980s.

I’m not saying that hysteria inspired the developers; that is where my mind went while playing. Deception takes place in a fictional medieval kingdom where you are blamed for killing your father, who was the king. Then, you end up in the Castle of the Damned.

You spend the game killing people who enter the castle and eventually fight your brother and an evil wizard. Then you travel back in time, get a special trap, and decide what you want to do. You can release Satan and destroy the world, or you can seal him away.

There are six possible endings, most of which are bad for the player. The events of this game don’t impact the other games. This will become a running theme for the Deception series, as most games ignore what happened in the previous entries until the fourth game tries to tie them all together.

I had a hard time getting into this game. First-person perspective games usually give me issues, and this one felt rough. I like the story, but everything else felt like an idea that wasn’t fully thought out.

Kagero: Deception II

This is my favorite game in the series. This is the first game in the series I played, and I have a lot of memories of renting and beating the game. It is a big shift from the first game, setting up how the rest of the series would go.

The series switched to a female protagonist. It is set in an odd world with a strange immortal race called the Time Noids (TMD), who control everything. I wanted to talk about a peculiar moment in the game.

You fight TMD a few times in the game. One of the fights makes sense as you have to fight the King, his advisor, and Yocal. This fight makes sense to me as it is the final battle. There is one battle where you fight a few TMD who seem not to know who Millenia is.

One would think the King, his advisor, or Yocal might have told the soldiers who Millenia was and what her mission is, but I guess they were busy with something. It is an odd fight where you have to kill them to survive. This leads to the game’s ending, where everyone turns on you.

Depending on how you played the game, you’ll get one of several endings. One of them suggests Kagero takes place before Deception. It is an attempt to connect the games but leaves more questions than answers.

Seeing how none of this story is carries over, I don’t believe that ending is canon, especially since the TMD disappeared after this game. Millenia and the other humans didn’t kill all of them, and they will not die from illness, hunger, or exposure. They’re kind of like vampires, except they don’t drink blood.

Kagero set the tone for the rest of the series. You would have a female protagonist with a tragic backstory. Your character can’t physically attack anyone and has to rely on traps to defeat enemies. You could also use the traps in each level, which makes me feel like I’m building a Rub Goldberg torture device.

I’m going on about this too much. Tecmo tried to connect this game with the first, but who knows which ending is true? It doesn’t matter, and we move on to a different setting with Deception III: Dark Delusions.

Deception III: Dark Delusions

Contrary to what the internet seems to think, specifically Wikipedia and Fandom, the game takes place on the island of Alendar. Renia and her family are kidnapped and brought before the king, where Renia’s mother and sister are killed.

There is little to no evidence that Renia and her family were brought to Alendar to be slaves. It is mentioned in the manual that Alendar was doing this, but that wouldn’t explain why Renia’s mother and sister were killed. I’m not sure why people wrote that, to begin with.

There is a rebellion going on in Alendar. Like the conflict in Kagero, you don’t see it because it isn’t that important. What is important are the guard stones and the broach that Renia is wearing.

A few factions are trying to gain control of the stones, and like other video games, no one has bothered to collect them until your character shows up. I love it when video games do things like this. I find it very funny whenever it happens.

Characters get killed off all the time in this game. Going back to play was wild, and seeing how many characters died made it hard to care about them because I figured they would get killed in a chapter or two.

I wouldn’t say I like this game. It is easy until the game starts throwing bullshit enemies at you that teleport around. It is very frustrating. Enemies like this existed in Kagero, but they feel unfair in Deception III.

Trapt

You can forget everything in the third game because it no longer matters. Trapt picks up in the Kingdom of Fronenberg, and you play as Allura, the kingdom’s Princess. Like the first game, the king dies, and you get blamed.

This is the only entry on the PS2, so we get better graphics and a bigger game. Millinea and Reina appear as unlockable characters, and Millinea is a boss. That’s nice, but it adds to the confusion from the overarching story.

How much time has passed between the games? Are the TMD still around? What was the point of the third game? Don’t worry about it. We’re in Fronenberg now, and none of those questions matter.

We have another character with a tragic backstory who is being used to summon a demon or unintentionally help an evil person. In this case, it is a demon called Malphas. You also end up getting betrayed a few times during the game.

What I remember most about this game is setting traps and trying to create the most elaborate ways to kill the enemies. This is a good game in the series. Seeing this game in a store and being the only person excited about it was cool. It is strange that Tecmo dropped the Deception name for this entry.

Deception IV: Blood Ties and Dark Princess

Much like an episodic piece of fan fiction, Deception IV tries to backfill all of the previous plots so they make sense. I don’t think anything would effectively do that, and it would’ve been better for the series to be an anthology of unconnected stories. Plenty of video game series do this; weirdly, many companies are reluctant to do this.

In Blood Ties, you play as the Devil’s daughter. The heroines from Deception II, III, and Trapt are in the game, and some explanation is given for how they tie into everything. The main character from the first game isn’t here, probably because a guy would mess up the whole princess thing.

One cool thing brought into this game was the ability to kick your enemies. This simple thing made for some fun moments and lets you set up more interesting combos. Aside from that, you’re doing the same thing as the previous games.

It was okay. I don’t remember much about either of these. I should dust off my PS4 and try the game again, but I’m not all that motivated to do so, especially when I can go back and play the games I have fond memories of.

Deception IV is only on the PS3, PS Vita, and PS4, making it difficult for people to play the games today or in the future. This series isn’t some misunderstood gem that needs re-evaluation, but it would be nice to be able to play it today. I know there are emulators, but that isn’t always a solution to this problem.

The Tangled Mess of an Overarching Story

The fourth game tried to clean up the story by ignoring the first game and focusing on Kagero, Deception III, and Trapt. The first game is a strange entry in the series, and it is probably a good thing that Tecmo abandoned much of what was in it.

I want to assume that the character from the first game followed the ending where he wandered off alone to try to atone for his sins, but the ending where his girlfriend kills him and then herself is most likely cannon. This series can be a bit of a downer.

In Kagero, Millenia is kidnapped and raised by the TMD, who never appear again and aren’t mentioned in the other games. This starts a pattern of each heroine having a tragic story. Millenia has nothing to say about her situation besides a few dialogue choices.

Thankfully, the other games in the series give the heroines more depth. They have better backstories and more dialog and express regret about what they’re forced to do. Millenia is a killing machine.

Renia and Alluna have more in common than the other protagonists. Some item in the game gives these two their powers. Reina gets it from a stone, and Alluna from a demon giving them to her.

Millenia is trained to use them, a weak demon gives the protagonist from the first game powers, and the main character is a demon in the fourth game. I say the demon from the first game is weak because of how limited the protagonist from the first game is. He can’t use many traps and is limited in what he can do.

Each character is given a tragic backstory. The games all take place in a castle or a series of castles. The locations are different, and characters from the previous games are crowbarred into the story.

I have no idea what the canon endings for each game are. The plot for some of the games is nonsensical. I blame bad localization for most of the game’s dialogue issues. At times, it is so bad that it is hilarious.

Final Thoughts

We all have those games that we like more than other people. In a time when people take opinion as a fact or a personal insult, everyone has a game or a series that they defend. For me, one of those series is Deception.

This series has plenty of flaws, but I like it because of those flaws. The games exist in a dark world where the nobility constantly stab each other in the back. Sometimes, there is a demon they want to unleash on the world, and other times, it is a strange group of blue-skinned immortals who control everything.

I’m never going to let that go. I find the inclusion of the TMD and their disappearance to be one of the more bizarre things in the series. They just gave up, and everyone forgot about them! It’s a wild idea to think that all of them were killed.

Playing these games now made me realize the many holes in the story. The attempts to link the games together are odd, and I think it did more harm than good. Of course, the developers couldn’t foresee some grumpy adult with too much time on his hands going out of his way to write about the series.

Why would anyone do that? It seems like a huge waste of time, and surely there are better games I could be writing about. That might be true, but I like discussing things I like or find interesting.

That is why I keep coming back to these games. They felt so obscure when I was a kid. I was the only one who cared about them. Trapt came out when I was in the Navy, and I introduced some friends to it. I doubt that they remember it, but I do.

I wish these games weren’t stuck on either becoming or are obsolete consoles. They don’t appear outside of PlayStation consoles, which is annoying. If you want to play these games, you need to have a PS1, 2, 3, or 4. Maybe Koei Tecmo will release them in a collection, but I won’t hold my breath.  

This series of games is one of my favorites. That might be odd for some people, but I don’t care. Everyone likes what they like, and no one needs to apologize for enjoying a video game.

You can follow me on social media on X @PixelsandMagic and YouTube at Paul Werkema.

You can also check out my reviews of Scarlet Hollow or Varney Lake.