Review Mazinkaiser 3/5 · Jul 6, 2026
Deception III: Ol' Reliable Trap Combo
Deception III has a more ambitious and dark plot than its predecessors along with a wider variety of traps and attacks, but with a fairly straightforward strategy combined with repetitive stages (and the fact that the plot is pretty dry) makes it a pretty but just OK sequel.
Reina's family is attacked and killed by bandits and a corrupt king, …
Deception III has a more ambitious and dark plot than its predecessors along with a wider variety of traps and attacks, but with a fairly straightforward strategy combined with repetitive stages (and the fact that the plot is pretty dry) makes it a pretty but just OK sequel.
Reina's family is attacked and killed by bandits and a corrupt king, forcing her to fight back against being sold into slavery with the power of magical traps for revenge. This soon weaves a tale of political intrigue and finding magical stones to change the past BUT the only important thing is that Reina can seed a room with traps to combo enemies to death. With a ceiling, floor, and wall trap setup Reina can do either a 3-hit combo or utilize environmental dangers to increase that combo potential.
The game has a fairly broad amount of options, including a test training mode, a well-thought out tutorial mode, an expert challenge mode, and a great amount of customization for trap power, trap element, and special enhancement rings. However, there's a lot of resource (read: Dreak) required to try out a whole bunch of traps, and it's easy to fall into the pattern of the same set of traps once you get your preference down. I ended up just utilizing vacuums, thunder, and impact traps into my fray and largely ignored the majority of elements, save for a very annoying type of enemy who floats above ground and requires a strange trap combination to pin down.
There are four endings across 24 chapters with plenty of long and dry cutscenes in between, with unlockables that give a decent amount of replay (try finding the Hell Emblem!) but I was fairly satisfied after one playthrough. Most of the levels do come down to a variety of goons that enter a room after awhile, with the strategy of what room to use not too important. Setup traps, pull in, rinse, repeat. The trickier enemies (projectiles, status effects, floating people) were more of an annoyance than a worthy challenge.
The visual style is particularly pretty, with dark medieval castles, arcane magic, and fairly realistic PSX character movement. I was very much reminded of Vagrant Story, though this feels darker/more dreary by design with plenty of torture-esque elements. The music takes mixes of gothic and symphonic beats with that videogame-y electronic style to make things match the dreary and spooky tone.
Overall Deception III is just alright, not particularly blowing my mind despite having an impressive amount of options and style. The narrative is somewhat dull and the trap strategy repetitive, but there's a sadistic glee in pulling off a well-maintained trap combo and seeing that upgraded to completion over the game that's worth at least one playthrough.