Kagero: Deception II

"A guide to using deadly traps for fun and profit"

Kagero: Deception II from Tecmo is one of the Sony Playstation's best overlooked gems. In a world of tired Tomb Raider clones, Kagero managed to bring true innovation and originality to the 3rd-person action/adventure genre. Though not a graphically superior game, the unique and smooth gameplay makes Kagero shine.

Where Kagero innovates is in your means of fighting your enemies. Unlike virtually every action/adventure game out there, you (or the player-controlled character, anyway) have absolutely no direct offensive moves. Instead of fighting with weapons or physical skills, you create, place and set off deadly traps to dispatch your foes. From rolling boulders to bear traps to poisonous gas, there are over 40 traps to make and use. Different traps can be placed on the floor, walls, and ceiling in the many rooms in the game environment, and each requires special considerations to use. You create new traps as the game progresses by spending Ark, a currency that is acquired through the use of traps, by killing enemies, and by not being hurt yourself.

Now, it's one thing to shoot an enemy from an arrow fired from across the room, but it's a whole other thing to drop a vase on their head, blinding them, then having them stumble onto a section of the floor that tosses them to the side like a rag doll into an iron maiden that then swings shut on them and impales them (for those who aren't familiar with medieval torture, an iron maiden is a man-sized casket with spikes lining the interior). The game encourages you to use your traps in combinations, using both your own traps and other permanent ones in place in the various rooms of the castles you fight in. In this way, you get several hits in on an enemy without them having any chance to recover and come after you. Herein lies the most fun and creative aspect of the gameplay. The possible combinations are innumerable, and it's great fun to try out new strategies throughout the game.

As fun as all this is, it doesn't sound yet like there's much challenge in the game, but this impression is incorrect. As mentioned, you have no physical abilities at your disposal, not even the ability to raise an arm to block a sword strike. As a result, you must run away from your opponents and avoid their varied melee and long-range attacks. Ideally, as they chase you they will run right into the traps that you set up, but these traps take time to charge up, and you must activate them manually with button presses on the controller, and to be accurate you generally need to be facing your opponent. So, you need to be prepared sufficiently in advance both to give your traps time to charge up and to get into a position where you can witness your opponent move into a trap space, then let him have it.

To further complicate matters, though, enemies can often dodge traps, especially ones that they can see coming after they've been activated, and different enemy types are immune to various types of traps. So you may think you have a perfect combo set up that starts with launching an enemy across the room with a section of the wall that leaps out at them, but then find that they are able to resist the wall and push it back into place, then come after you again. You will also face 2 enemies at a time for most of the game, and if they're coming at you from different directions you may find it difficult to get away unscathed. Certain enemy types move in strange ways, too. Some, like ninjas and assassins, can sneakily warp into a room and hide in a corner somewhere, leaping out at you when you least expect it. Others are able to leap great distances to slash you, giving you no chance to retaliate or escape if unprepared. All in all, there are a couple of dozen different enemy types that you must learn how to handle.

So that's the challenge of the game, and therein lies the diabolical fun. But why are you doing all of this? The game takes place in a medieval-type setting, where an immortal race called the Timenoids rule over the humans, some of which actively oppose their oppressive regime. As a weapon against insurgents, your lead character, Millenia, was kidnapped as a little girl and raised by the Timenoids. She has been trained in the use of traps only, to ensure that she would not become too powerful and threaten the Timenoids. As the game progresses, you will face many human opponents and some non-humans as well. Will you remain a Timenoid slave and kill at their whim, or will you find another destiny for yourself? The story unfolds through cut-scenes at the beginning and end of every mission, using the in-game character models. The tone of the storyline is fairly dark and oppressive, appropriate to the style of the game.

Visually, Kagero suffers from problems common to many Playstation games. Heavily polygon-based, there are lots of jaggies, pop-ins, the ability to see through walls from the right angle... you name it. There is nothing bad enough to distract from the fine gameplay, however. The character models are unique, attractive, and highly varied for the over 100 characters in the game, and character movement in the game looks realistic (I'm primarily talking about how the characters walk/run here). However, during cut-scenes and dialogue close-ups, characters do this weird bobbing-in-place thing, bouncing up and down slowly. I suppose it's better than them standing stock still, but it still looks weird. Trap animations, however, are fantastic, as they should be since these are the highlight of the game. The lighting effects, though maybe not impressive now, were pretty good for the time. On the other hand, I feel that the environment design is rather boring, offering large, featureless, blocky rooms at times, all done on a grey-heavy palette. Gloomy is one thing, as it fits the mood of the game, but sparse and empty is another thing.

In terms of audio, the game gets another thumbs up. There are several in-game tracks that provide a haunting, melodic, well-orchestrated background to the action. There are even special songs for the most emotional sequences. The sound effects are equally well designed, especially the sounds of trap hits (imagine a person being sliced open by a giant swinging scythe), which are quite satisfying, especially as they are accompanied by the screams of horror of the victims. As the game progresses, you may get tired of the sound of your character's footfalls as you run and run and run down halls and across floors. At least the sound changes depending on the type of surface you're running on, breaking the monotony slightly.

And now for replay value. You'll be happy to know that the actions that you take in the game affect the outcome, leading to one of 4 possible endings. This provides added incentive to play through the game again, this time developing some different traps and trying out new combinations. On completing the game, you also get new traps added to your list for use in the re-play game. Which new traps you get depend on which endings you have cleared. There is additionally a special final trap for the player who has gotten all 4 endings. Your first game will probably last 8-10 hours, but replay games, once you know what you're doing, you can go from start to end in about 5 hours, making it easy to play through in a long afternoon.

So that's Kagero. As an action game, it improved greatly on its predecessor, Tecmo's Deception, which also employed the use of traps but didn't have the same smooth gameplay. The next sequel, Deception III: Dark Delusion kept the same style of gameplay and merely tweaked the trap creation system, and improved the graphics slightly. The fact that they kept the core game intact is a testament to just how much fun Kagero is to play. If you don't need the hottest graphics around, and don't mind a bit of evil fun, I recommend picking up Kagero at any opportunity. You'll be glad you got to experience this gem of a game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/05