YMMV / Deception

• Audience-Alienating Premise: You play a dyed-in-the-wool Villain Protagonist in service to evil who tortures and kills numerous victims, while the games take great pains to show you that they're actual human beings with lives of their own.
• Catharsis Factor: Humiliation style traps in 4. To get bonus Ark you need to meet Requirements. Said requirements need cooperation of AI controlled victims. A joke here or there can greatly relieve the Player's stress.
• Cult Classic: Despite the Audience-Alienating Premise problem mentioned above, the games have proven successful enough to warrant sequels.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Early reviews for Blood Ties bemoan the fact that Tecmo has not done anything to evolve the franchise's gameplay, instead opting to just allow the same format but with more content.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The first game's save files eat up 9 blocks. That's 3/5ths of an entire memory card.
  • Also in the first game, the door separating the foyer and the east hallway never gets unlocked during play, limiting your navigation options around the castle for no good reason.
• Special Effect Failure: The "Help Cry" mask in Invitation to Darkness had its texture applied incorrectly. See here◊.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Adding rooms to the castle in the first game doesn't really serve any benefit. The specialty rooms end up being redundant since you can just run back to the power crystal to enable every strategic option at once, which is made easier by, you guessed it, keeping your castle at the smallest size.

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