Murder By Numbers

Battles:	5
Plot:	1
Music:	3
Visuals:	2
Tilt:	5

Overall: 3

Release Date: March 1st, 2000

In short: A solid psuedo-RPG that breaks new ground in the ability to creatively kill people.

One of the things I need to point out right at the beginning of this review is that Deception 3: Dark Delusion is not really an RPG; at least, not anywhere close to whatever other RPGs you might be playing at the moment. It is more akin to some kind of Action game...an Action game that revolves around the main character being completely helpless against massive amounts of well-armed people who want to kill her, relying solely on her uncanny ability to set and activate a series of deadly booby traps to survive. You know, that kind of Action game. Kidding aside, Dark Delusion--and the Deception series as a whole--breaks completely new ground in a genre that typically revolves around either a well-endowed woman or furry mascot jumping from platform to platform and shooting things. Instead of weapons, you are armed only with the ability to set and activate a series of self-created traps. You must use these traps--and yourself as bait--to kill your adversaries before they kill you.

So what do you actually do? At the beginning of each new mission, you are given the opportunity to view the layout for the castle or mansion you are going to be fighting in, check out your enemies' statistics, and create new traps. Trap creation is a lot different from the previous game, Kagero: Deception 2, if you've played that one. After each mission you receive a certain number of Dreak, which is Dark Delusion's form of "money". To create a new trap you must first select which of the three areas of traps you want (Floor, Wall, Ceiling). Then you must choose a general type--a Base Circle--, such as bear trap, push wall, or boulder. Once you have narrowed that down, you may then select individual components that will make up your trap. The first is the trap's Emblem, which adds some effect like fire/ice/electricity among many others. The next thing you can add is a trap Ring, which is related to the trap's activation; different Rings allow the trap to recharge faster, become automatic, or even lure enemies into their area of effect. The final variable is a trap's Orbs, and the number of Orbs (1-4) determines a trap's power level. After you have chosen everything, the trap is created and an amount of Dreak is subtracted (the better the trap, the more Dreak is required). With all the different variables, there are well over 2,000 total combinations of traps that you can create. You must be patient however, as you only receive Emblems and Rings as the story progresses.

Careful planning...

After trap creation, it's time to get busy killing people. You can only bring three traps of each type with you to each mission though, so choose wisely. After some initial story set-up, you are thrust into the controls of Reina, the story's protagonist. You move about the castle in a 3rd-person over-the-shoulder perspective, and it is by this view that you must confront the castle's intruders. Once you are in a room, a quick press of the "O" button brings up the menu. Here you see a grid layout of the room you are currently in. This grid is where you assign your trap locations (only one trap of each type at a time can be assigned per room). The whole idea here is that you want to kill the intruders as quickly as possible and without taking damage, yes, but you also want to maximize the amount of Dreak earned at the end of the level. You do this by setting your traps up strategically enough to create a trap chain--a combination of traps that after activating will not only damage the opponent but also eventually move him or her into range of the initial trap so you can repeat the process until their death. This might be hard to visualize without an example, so here:

Room with a staircase; a bear trap at the bottom of the stairs; a push wall in the wall behind the bear trap; a giant boulder hanging above the top of the staircase. A knight enters the room and heads for the staircase. Bear trap snaps the knight's legs and he cannot move. Boulder falls, rolls, and smashes the knight against the wall. Push wall pushes the knight back on the bear trap location. Bear trap activates, and the combo continues...

The longer the combo and the more damage done equals more Dreak earned to create even more deadly traps. You can earn even more Dreak by creating a chain that includes a room's inherit traps (which range from death fans to iron maidens to falling chandeliers of razor blades); this is typically harder to do since those traps cannot be moved, but the added Dreak is a big incentive to try. If you cannot tell already by how many times I mentioned it, Dreak is very important; the major reason is that there are no random encounters or anything to that effect so you have only one chance per mission to earn as much Dreak as possible. Not only do the deadlier traps require a lot of Dreak, but also as the game progresses you are going to start fighting enemies who are resistant to all but the most powerful (and consequently, the most expensive) traps. A combination of that fact, and the fact that it is genuinely hard to use yourself as human bait without taking a lot of damage is why I termed this game Very Hard.

All right, enough about traps. How does this game look? Well, it is easily the best looking game in the Deception series, but unfortunately that's not saying much. The graphics are pretty similar to Kagero: Deception 2 except that Dark Delusion is slightly less pixilated at close range. The textures have not improved very much nor have the enemies, as far as looks are concerned. Overall the visuals are a disappointment considering that the designers had quite some time to improve them between the second Deception and this one. Music was completely forgettable as well; besides creating a vague sense of urgency it did little else.

... pays off beautifully

Something else that was a bit more vague than usual was the plot. It should be noted that the Deception series is best know for their stellar and completely unique gameplay, not their plot. That said, I was really disappointed with Dark Delusion's storyline. One of the reasons is that at first, it seemed as though it had quite some potential. Instead of forging ahead with the material though, it fell back on stiff dialogue, a vague and illogical storyline, and a general lack of enthusiasm. With a title like Dark Delusion, one might expect it to be a dark and moody game with surprising--and deadly--twists and turns. The designers took that title instead as a license to create a plot inhabited by NPCs that wink out of existence after their fifteen seconds of screen time, and a world in which even the poor peasant farmer has a four-room house equipped with giant buzzsaws, electric chairs, and pits of molten lava. At least with Deception 2 you were dealing with blue-skinned immortal beings bent on wiping out humanity after millennia of conflict; Dark Delusion actually attempts to take itself seriously. A sad attempt really, and one that does not compliment Dark Delusion's incredibly fun gameplay at all.

Featuring multiple endings as did its predecessors, Dark Delusion does offer quite a bit of replay value to those who can ignore the abysmal plot. As stated, the gameplay is amazing and depending on how long you spend making traps, this game can take anywhere from 10-30 hours to complete. Additional play-throughs net you access to uber-traps that can certainly make getting the other endings a lot easier; that is provided you actually care about the different endings (see above). But in the end, Deception 3: Dark Delusion offers something that disappointingly few games offer these days: a completely refreshing and fun experience.

Good luck and happy hunting.