Trapt



So you're minding your own business, mourning your for-some-reason-dead mother with your absurdly-dressed handmaid and your father the king when he gets murdered. You're blamed because your stepmom hates you, and you and your maid run off to a castle that your family owns which just so happens to be inhabited by the Fiend, a poorly-explained demon of some kind. The Fiend gives you the power to set traps and murder everyone that comes into your castle. Congratulations, you're playing Trapt.

Made by Tecmo for the PS 2 in 2005, the oddly named Trapt is the fourth game in the Deception series, and its Japanese title is Kagero II: Dark Illusion, due to some confusion in the series about what the actual title is. The game's premise is mostly the same as the previous entries: you're in a mansion, kill everyone too dumb to stay away. Damaging enemies nets you Warl, which is used to create new traps and open new areas. Damaging enemies also gets you Ark, which does nothing but provide you with another funny word to say while the game loads.

The production quality is...lacking, to say the least. Acting tends to fall flat, you'll be hearing the same generic slavering Japanese bad guy voice a lot, and the subtitles range from passable to blatantly incorrect. Slowdown is not uncommon, despite there not being too much going on at any given point. Still, the main appeal of the game is butchering people with clever traps, and that's as satisfying as ever.

Not to be confused with the band of the same name that sang the song - "Headstrong"

This game provides examples of:

 * An Adventurer Is You: Or rather, the invaders are adventurers. Each game in the series has a different set of classes the invaders can be comprised of, each of whom have different attacks and react to traps in their own ways. In this game, a lot of the invaders came to get the bounty on your head.
 * And Your Reward Is Clothes: Allura can unlock costumes that let her dress as Millennia and Reina.
 * The Backwards R: The cover art spells the fourth game's title as TЯAPT. Written as it is, the "R" looks sort of like a backwards P, creating an almost-symmetry.
 * Big Damn Heroes: Inverted; these guys (generally) are your enemies.
 * Charge Meter: Traps in the sequels must recharge between uses, but can otherwise by used indefinitely.
 * Combos: Introduced to the series in Kagero to fantastic effect. Chain together more traps and receive more points.
 * Damage Discrimination: Averted; you can get caught in your own traps or by environmental objects if you're not paying attention.
 * Deader Than Dead: You fight a surprising number of ghosts in the castle. They can die from spikes, fire, and angry clock towers like anyone else.
 * Death Trap: The entire point of the series.
 * Divorced Installment: Not only is this one of the games that would have previously been released as part of the Deception series in the US, but it was the first actual sequel by Japanese reckoning, being released as Kagero 2.
 * Downer Ending: With four different endings, you would think that at least one of them would be happy.
 * Dull Surprise: Mayte. Though it's more "I ate a lemon before my botox treatment."
 * Electric Torture: Water conducts it very well! Even better, you can unlock a torture room with electric chairs you can slam people into.
 * Enemy Scan: Each game lets you check out the statistics of invaders before you enter into combat with them.
 * Everythings Better With Princesses: Our hero, Princess Namechange.
 * Fashionable Asymmetry: A very bad offender: every female character has one of these, and they all look awful.
 * Hide Your Children: Unlike the previous games, there are no kids in Trapt.
 * Loads and Loads of Loading: Not as bad as some of the previous games, but still annoying.
 * Malevolent Architecture: Pre-set traps are strewn all about the various locales. Someone even went through the trouble of booby-trapping Olaf's grave.
 * Multiple Endings: And a few nonstandard ones as well.
 * New Game Plus
 * Non Linear Sequel: In Japan, it was released as a sequel to Kagero, but it's closer to being a loose remake of Deception: Invitation to Darkness.
 * Oddly Named Sequel: Trapt is the worst offender, but if it wasn't for the numbering in the first three, few people would know they were related at first glance. Of course, its original name Kagero 2 makes about as much sense, making it the sequel to Kagero: Deception II. Deception III is apparently something else.
 * Played for Laughs: Some of the traps cause comedic effects, such as a vase falling on someone's head, or a rotating floor that throws off their balance.
 * Rasputinian Death: Perhaps the third point of the series: Funny combos to maximize
 * Repeat Cut: Brief instant replays of the moment a trap connects with an invader; they can be switched on or off.
 * Rocks Fall Everyone Dies: A common destructive trap.
 * Sealed Evil in A Can: The point of the castle you start playing in. Number of people surprised by this revelation? Low.
 * Suicidal Overconfidence: Seriously, peasant? A club? You have reason to believe I'm the Devil Incarnate and you brought a club to my lair? Granted, a heavily damaged opponent will sometimes try to escape. There is nothing as disappointing as watching one of them leave.
 * Leads to Badass Normal by the end because hey, even if their attacks are utterly ineffective and quite frankly pitiful you have to give at least some credit to the peasant woman who joined the penultimate battle squad composed otherwise of zombie-demon-knights and archmages.
 * Survival Horror: Just not for you...
 * Unwitting Pawn:
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: The other entire point of the series.