A young Prince, the elder son of the King, comes home from his journey to the
comfort and safty of his castle.  Everyone is just so happy to see you, and yes,
it is nice to be home and see you all too.  You make your way to the throne room
to greet your father the King. The guards greet you, the court Magician says
hi too.  You step up to dad, he asks you how Fiana is, your  wife to be.
Suddenly, the King has a heart attack and falls.  To make matters worse, your
sword is suddenly implanted in his back! Oh no ... the King is dead!
But no one notices the heart attack, its hard to believe when everyone sees 
your blade sticking from his lifeless body.  And in walks your younger brother,
Yurias.  Yurias looks over the situtation, and before you can say "I didn't do
it!" ... you are led away for the murder of the King.
Standing on the gallows, falsely accused and about to be executed, you pray for
help ... anyones help ... and you are heard ...
Thats the set up for Deception, and it is done with some nice FMV's and 
dialog boxes.  Rescued from your execution by none other then Satan (well,
actually his lovely assistant Astarte), you are brought to the Castle of 
the Damned to serve, and eventually to release, your new Master.
Deception has two modes, the 3D mode which you are in most of the time, and
the strategy mode which is at the beginning of each mission or can be entered
by going to a Power Room.  Strategy mode allows you to build/change/remove 
traps and/or build/remove rooms and hallways from the castle.
Deception is part RPG and part strategy game.  You do get experience points 
which raise your levels and pumps up your stats.  But you don't have a sword
as you do in most RPG's ... instead you capture and kill your enemies with
various traps you hide around the castle.  The game is played out in 
"missions" ... you have goals to attain in each one, and when you complete 
yours goals, you move into the next chapter.  
Mission #1, for example, is to learn what the hell is going on and to become 
the new Master of the castle.  When you arrive, that title belongs to 
Ardebaran, you are going to have to figure out how to get ride of him.  There
is a moderate learning curve to the game, but you will catch on soon enough to
what you need to do.
The next mission is to stop invaders who come to the castle. Each invader has
a name and something of a personality.  You get to overhear their converstaions
at the front door before they enter.  The invaders reasons for coming to your
home are all varied ... but keep one thing in mind ... they all want to kill 
you!  (ahhhh....sorry Rosa, but life is tough)
At the start of your missions, you get the strategy screen.  In this screen
you set your traps around the castle or you can build new rooms and halls
onto the structure.  The basic configuration of the castle can not be changed,
and on the whole it is a rather small place, but there is lots of empty space
to add more rooms and halls.  Rooms are of 2 types, normal and special.  I do
not yet have the ability to build special rooms, but one you can build is a 
bedroom ... a place to rest and recover HP's.  The castle has two floors and
each floor in the basic configuration has a Power Room.  You can go to these
at anytime during a mission and create new traps or replace existing ones.
Traps come in three flavors, CAPTURE, KILL & CONFUSE.  Capture traps (copper
cage/cranes/bear traps) allow you to ensnare an invader.  While they are tied 
up, you can drain their lifeforce.  Kill traps (pit/steel spikes) drain HP's
from an invader.  Confusion traps(dazzle foe/bucket) do as advertised. Once
traps are placed, you enter 3D mode and move around the castle in 1st person.
The invaders are all polygon characters and rather nicely done, they even have
faces!  You try to lure the invaders into your traps and capture them.  Each
trap has is own graphic and I like the crane which drops from the ceiling 
and captures the invader in its vice gripe.  You use combinations of traps
to weaken the invaders so you can capture them.  Yes, you can kill invaders,
but if you do that then they can not be used for Monster Construction.  I do
not as of yet have the abiltiy to make monsters ... so I can't tell you 
anything about that.  
The game graphics are very neat and clean, prehaps not on par with other 
titles, but so what.  The gameplay is GREAT, I am having a grand time with
the visiting invaders and I have a massive collection of body parts! I can 
not wait for Monster Creation.  Also, you learn new traps as you go along,
and supposedly you can upgrade existing traps, build them better and faster
and stronger.  All traps have stats as do all invaders, so when you are in
strategy mode it is a good idea to know the invaders stats so you can build
the proper trap to capture them with.
The game music is fitting, and the sound FX's are all pleasing.  The game 
is supposed to have 6 different endings, so it sounds like replay value is
high.  Saves take 9 slots on a card, so make sure you have room.  
I would have to say that I like this game, a lot.  I have no clue as to how 
many missions there are, and I am a little worried it might get repetitive,
but so far that is not the case.  There is a lot to do and I don't know how
to do half of it yet.  If you like RPG's ... then this is a must as I have 
only ever seen one game like this (Sir-Tech's Wiz3, you play the evil guy
trying to escape the tomb the good guys have left you to rot in).  And if
you have ethical problems with killing people who come to your castle to
get the money to pay for their daughters operation ... well, remember this,
they all want to kill you ... its nothing personal.
- Bob Petterson