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Tecmo’s newest adventure game hits the PS2. Though a new series on the PS2, Trapt has origins in Deception, a series that saw three games on the PlayStation. The game attempts to combine puzzle-oriented gameplay with survival horror and succeeds on many levels.
The story of Trapt revolves on Princess Allura, who has to flee her castle because she is accused of killing her father. We later learn that she is possessed by a demon named Fiend who gives the ability to set traps that kill people and take their souls. The story is actually quite difficult to understand and only partly because of the poorly translated subtitles. You’ll encounter way too many characters, many of whom are underdeveloped. That said, the story isn’t terribly offensive and allows you to get into the bulk of the gaming.
Princess Allura can’t do much but set traps and run. To take on enemies, you’ll be able to set 9 traps which cover the basic categories of ceiling traps (vases that fall, for example), floor traps (like bombs) and wall traps (like spikes that come out of the walls). You’ll have to set these traps well. Thankfully, you’re given a grid of the room and the location of the monsters. When an enemy goes near a trap you planned, you can set it off and take down the enemy. Take down enough and you’ll be able to complete the level.
The system isn’t terribly complex though it is made more interesting by the availability of traps already in the rooms and the combinations of traps to hit an enemy multiple times. Also, you’ll have to keep in mind that some enemies are immune to certain kinds of traps. Furthermore, you can also injure yourself with these traps, so you need to be careful. The enemies in the game aren’t particularly intelligent, though this is somewhat by design. Though it seems like the gameplay is simple, it is still satisfying to see a set of spikes go through an enemy only to have a vase fall on top of their head.
The game’s visuals are decent though nothing great. The different characters are reasonably detailed with a number of different outfits for the characters in the game. The enemies look equally good. All of the characters animate well, though they move pretty slowly. The environments are pretty boring, usually made up of the same castle-like area. Or rather, it’s not that they look bad, but there is very little to no eye candy in the environments. Inexplicably, the framerate falls in the game. It doesn’t push a particularly detailed world or many enemies so it is a bit weird that the game does this. It is unfortunate, though, since it slows the game down to the point of it being unplayable, sometimes affecting the carefully laid out traps that you had.
The game’s audio does pretty well. The sound effects are decent, about what you would expect but nothing more. The background music is threatening and fits with the game’s style very well. The voice acting is done in Japanese, which sounds good though I really wouldn’t know.
Trapt is a pretty enjoyable game with a lot of planning that pans out and makes for a fulfilling experience. It would have scored higher if the game didn’t suffer from an inexplicably poor framerate. It almost ruins the entire game. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Nov 30, 2005
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