Deception started way back in 1996. The first three releases were all for the original PlayStation, but finally we can enjoy the world of trap-setting daemons again in Deception IV: Blood Ties on the PS3 and PSVita.

The graphics have improved significantly, as you might expect going to newer hardware. You get to see all of the bloody bodies in full detail. When you zoom in on the characters, you can see the close details of their faces, expressions, clothing, and pretty much everything. Granted, a lot of the enemies are generic, but the harder ones have much more definite personalities and appearances. Your daemons are quite well detailed. They look like anime characters, complete with vibrant colors and interesting clothing.

While your characters do speak out loud, it is in Japanese with on-screen text. Since I watch my anime in Japanese anyway, that doesn’t really bother me. The daemons are quite talkative. They are continually telling you what they want to see done and each wants their own agenda, but they all love destruction.

At the beginning of Deception IV: Blood Ties, you will learn that years ago, twelve saints sealed away the devil with twelve verses that were broken into pieces. 3000 years later, the devil is looking for those pieces so he has sent three beautiful daemons to the human realm with his "daughter" Laegrinna to find them. Laegrinna can’t actually fight at all. She doesn’t even carry a weapon. Instead, Caelea (Elaborate Trap Daemon), Veruza (Sadistic Trap Daemon), and Lilia (Humiliating Trap Daemon) lend her their powers to set up traps to combat the descendants of those saints and recover the pieces of the verses. Don’t feel too bad for these humans, though. They’ve fallen a long way from the saints their ancestors were.

The game is played in chapters. Before you start each chapter, you need to set up your traps and figure out what you are going to take into battle. You have a limited number of traps that you can take with you into each battle, so make sure to equip your favorite traps in the Change Diabolica screen before you start each battle. Make sure to select traps that work well together. It is definitely a balancing act to try and figure out what you can use well and which traps play nice with each other. You can also select your abilities under Change Diabolica. Since you only have two abilities to avoid the enemies with, choose wisely.

Each trap is of a different type and has a different class to it. You can tell the class by the color. Red is Sadistic, Blue is Elaborate, and Yellow is Humiliating. There are lots of different types. Enemies may be weak or strong against various types, so make sure to keep that in mind. Traps can be set on three different terrains: Walls, Floor, and Ceiling. Some traps immobilize enemies, while others cause them to move a specific way. You need to have traps that will all work together and send the enemies where you want them to go. The good thing is that at any time, you can pause the game and reset your traps. You can only have a few set at once, but you can move them around whenever they aren’t in the middle of trapping. This can make things a bit tedious when you’re having trouble getting things to spring like you want, but once you get it right, there is something extremely satisfying about making someone step on a rake, which makes them stumble into a bear trap, which then causes them to be stuck where a boulder will roll over them, just as one example.

When I first started playing Deception IV: Blood Ties, I was a bit frustrated to find out that my character can’t attack. The only thing she can do is dodge. It is quite helpful to turn on the auto-dodge actually. This will make it easier on you when you lose track of an enemy. It’s not hard to keep up with them when there’s only one to deal with, but life isn’t always going to be that easy. Some enemies are going to stand in one spot and shoot at you, but many others are going to be coming at you from different directions. The more you deal with at once, the harder it is going to be. You really need to work hard. While it was frustrating at first, it didn’t take long to realize the merits of using strategy instead of brute force. Granted, it is not the easiest thing to do for those of us who usually hack n’ slash.

The strategy in Deception IV: Blood Ties isn’t like the strategy in any game I’ve ever played before. It is slow and exacting. It takes many, many tries to get things right. You have to get used to the way that traps send people and figure out exactly where the enemies will end up so that you can hit them again. The traps are not auto-triggered. You have to press the button to trigger them when they need to be. The timing is something that makes things even more difficult than it would have been if they would trigger when someone steps on them. If that weren’t all enough, you have to make sure to get yourself out of the way as well because you will be hurt by your own traps. At the end of each chapter, you will get to see your "Death File," which keeps track of how you killed each enemy. You’ll also get all your stats and find out how well you did. It’ll show you how much of which trap types you used in that level. This can help you figure out what you might need to change to make your gameplay better.

Deception IV: Blood Ties does a great job of walking you through how to play. If you already know how to play, you can choose to skip the daemon’s advice and do things however you want to. Otherwise, listen to the women because they know what they’re doing. They will teach you the proper way to set up cascading traps so that you can do the most damage possible very quickly. You will unlock more traps as you progress through the game, giving you new and interesting ways to kill. You can also purchase traps using the Warl that you earned during chapters. You can also use Warl to purchase more abilities and costumes. When you buy traps, you are unbinding them. I like the little things, like the unbinding animations.

You can only save in between chapters, which is a bit annoying. If you’re playing on the PSVita, this isn’t quite so annoying as you can just pause it until you can get back to it, but if you’re in the middle of a chapter on the PS3, you’re going to have to finish it or pause it until you can get back to your TV. I guess if you’re quick at setting and executing traps, this doesn’t take too long, but it took me a decent amount of time to finish most chapters. I do love the fact that you can upload your game to the servers from either the PS3 or the PSVita and download it from either. This makes it so that you can play at home and then take it with you, as long as you’ve got your PSVita.

While Deception IV: Blood Ties isn’t a game that I would normally have picked up, I am very glad I got it. Learning to do strategy instead of continually attacking was a fun challenge for my brain and I loved the satisfaction of a perfectly laid trap. If you like strategy games or are just looking for something a bit different, check out Deception IV: Blood Ties!