The Divine Deception

The game story is very unpredictable and i love how the main characters are all very intelligent. as someone who has read many vn, i found this a very unique experience.

Just finished the game and although I can't deny that I enjoyed it, the buildup and ending felt somewhat anti-climactic. I would still however recommend this VN for fans of the Zero Escape series, YTTD, Danganronpa, or, really, any VN with elements of mystery embedded within. I would give DD a 6/10. Without spoiling anything, I would say that I felt the game was slightly rushed and clearly made on a budget. That is not to detract from the concepts underlying the writing, but I can definitely see areas of improvement for specific areas of the VN. Specifically, I feel there are certain areas that can be improved on. First, clarity. [spoiler]I must first state that I greatly appreciate how bold Themis was in exploring difficult concepts that were pleasantly intellectually stimulating. However, I do believe that these concepts can be better illustrated/explained. For example, I strongly believe that Laverna's murder investigations should have their accompanying illustrations. They need not be high quality, but some artwork would make the scene much clearer. The instructions for the hacking examples could also use some work.[/spoiler] Second, quality control. [spoiler]I laud Themis again for being bold in running 7 "concurrent" storylines while juggling between avoiding express spoilers while allowing the storylines to interact with one another. Regrettably, certain storylines were clearly given less thought. If I had to rank the 7 personas, and I think many will agree with me, Vels' storyline was by far the least interesting. In my view, it appears to have been written in afterthought and I found myself bored by the storyline as a whole. The action scenes and fighting took up a bulk of the writing and, ultimately, I felt like Vels could well have been omitted as a persona completely. [/spoiler] Nonetheless, I still greatly appreciated the read and would still recommend it.

Compared to the writer's previous work (The Zodiac Trial), I was blown away by this suspenseful, political thriller set in the corruption-filled city of Panthea. Despite its small budget and team, The Divine Deception excels in many areas. Its writing is evocative, clever, and witty. Its characters are realized, believable, and loveable despite their flaws, and make up a cast that is greater than the sum of its parts; the main characters especially—there was something to love about each and every one of them, they were unique and charming in their own ways, and I never felt like I had to slog through scenes with lesser protagonists to get back to ones I enjoyed. The Divine Deception similarly excels in its setting: it is incredibly fleshed out and feels like somewhere people actually live, like there are actually people living their lives outside of the scope of the story. Every aspect of The Divine Deception feels incredibly well-planned. The four institutions that make up the core of the city and play a major role in how it's run—the government, the police, the Duat crime family, and the Olympo megacorporation—interact in a way the makes sense and indicates a significant amount of forethought and planning on the part of the author. The mysteries, backroom deals, double crosses, and more that are revealed as the story progresses were also exceptionally presented. There is a significant amount of foreshadowing,—some of which I picked up on and some of which I missed—enough that it's quite easy to predict the most significant reveal well before it is explicitly stated, but it's not done in a way where I felt cheated out of experiencing that reveal along with the characters. Rather, the story created a tension that made me anxious to see how it would play out when it finally happened. And, even some of the foreshadowing that I missed felt incredibly obviously in hindsight, and the story of plenty of smaller reveals that weren't as obvious and surprised me at their uncovering. This visual novel was not flawless, however. While I mentioned that I find it hard to pick a favorite protagonist from the bunch, there were some protagonists whose stories, rather than their character traits, were not as interesting as the others'. Particularly, the characters who had a lot of action scenes were betrayed a bit by the small amount of CGs—significant sequences of fights, chases, etc. told on a black background or static image. While CGs depicting this action would have significantly increased my enjoyment of these scenes, even just some extra time taken to plan motion for the character sprites—which, as far as I know, is easily done in Ren'Py—would have made the action scenes in The Divine Deception much more enjoyable. Overall though, despite its small production scale, The Divine Deception is able to tell a story of surprising scope, with complicated-but-solvable mysteries, suspenseful political plotlines, and an incredibly believable world. 8/10

So worth noting right off the bat, I was a late-stage playtester who got to play through a version of the game about a month or so before launch. That's why I was able to blast through this final version in three hours with the power of skipping and remembering solutions. My playtime for the pre-release build I finished was around 30 to 40 hours, so I was still able to fully enjoy this game like any other player. Now you may be asking why I bought this game if I already was able to finish it? Simple, it's damn good and I want to reward it for being so. Without revealing any spoilers or anything, I can say this is an incredibly ambitious and worthwhile game. With seven different storylines you're jumping through, it never feels like the story slows down. And while you may think seven storylines in the same world can get confusing really quickly, it actually is very good at staying cohesive. The mysteries across this game are also fascinating, always encouraging you to go farther and farther. The characters are also solid and memorable, a vital element of any visual novel I feel. And of course, the game holds no punches, which I love. This is one of those games that will just stick with you, for lack a better word, due to the thought provoking sociopolitical themes, engaging mysteries, and superb revelations and twists. Moving on from the story, where this game also impresses me is in how it incorporates different gameplay mechanics into a visual novel. So even if you're the type of person who may normally struggle to get through a visual novel, the minigames are there often enough to help motivate you through. All of the minigames are enjoyable to get through, though I gotta give special props to the hacking minigames for just being a lot of fun. The presence of minigames and the overall bigger scope of the narrative make this a surefire step up from Zodiac Trial. If you enjoyed that game at all, you'll enjoy this one. Speaking of Zodiac Trial, I will say the art and music direction are very similar to that game though I think there's quite a few improvements worth noting. Namely, the art being more expressive, more refined, and the addition of new tracks, especially that bop that is the hacking minigame theme. In terms of visuals, though, the thing that has easily improved the most is the overall UI, having a clear distinct style while still being very functional. So to conclude, this game has an amazing story that'll make you think about it extensively during and after your play-through, interesting and unique minigames that will be sure to spice up the story, and visuals that more than succeed in depicting this lively world. All of this for less than $20USD. If you're at all interested in mysteries, please give this a play. You will not regret it at all. Solid work, and I hope we get to see more in the future.

Divine Deception is pretty ambitious. You have seven intersecting narratives with characters crossing over between routes. It's fun to see the connections and piece together the timeline of when each scene is happening, though not required to understand the story. The game has some unique framing compared to other VNs I've played. One part of this is the framing of the narrator who gives commentary between scenes and also allows you to bet on what you think will happen in the story. This is a great idea and the game interacts with your choices in this narrative in a way I really enjoyed. There are also mini-games that come up mid story that give you opportunities to earn additional chips to gamble with. These are all quite bad. Part of it is the difficulty, part of it is that they hurt the story's pacing, but the biggest part is they're all super janky implementations in a visual novel engine. I bounced off of The Divine Deception on my first attempt, and I think a big factor of me enjoying it more on my second time was flat out skipping half of the mini-games. But aside from that, the actual story part of the VN is good enough to make it worth it.

EDIT: finished it, story only got better and better near the end. Absolutely a must-buy if you like intrigue stories with clever mind games. Ignore my play time, I had the game running in the background at some points so it's artificially inflated. Probably one of the best VNs I've ever played and I'm not even done with the story yet. I bought this one together with the Zodiac Trials on sale and some of the reviews here mentioned to play this one first so I did. It's not a death game by any means but it's a story full of suspense! I love the multiple perspectives you can follow and discovering how info from one branch carries over to the next is really enjoyable to me. Panthea is a very solid setting with a well-fleshed out power struggle and compelling characters. The writing is strong and funny, though there are some characters who I think are a bit overdone personally. Still, that doesn't stop me from reading for hours on end. The game's pretty long, you can definitely read for 30+ hours if you're faster than me. The minigames also spice up the gameplay quite nicely even though you aren't required to play them and can opt to skip them instead if that's not for you. You'll get your money out of this one. All in all, definitely a recommendation from me if you like stories with a lot of intrige told in a non-linear fashion.

TL; DR: It's a great purchase, highly recommended for anybody, without any qualifiers like "if you enjoy such and such...". This game is a very novel mystery thriller, really up there in story quality. It's captivating, the way the story is told is fun, the characters all feel natural and "real" in the setting... It's all well put-together and deliberate in the best of ways, where the author's intent is felt strongly with each scene, yet nothing ever feels forced or out of place. There's a few rough edges here and there (the minigames, mostly) which don't spoil the experience whatsoever. Get it, play it, and you are guaranteed to have a good time and remember it fondly after.

This is genuinely one of my favorite games of all time. I'd highly recommend playing it if you're a fan of mysteries and narrative-driven stories, ESPECIALLY if you really like to overanalyze things while you're playing them. I personally played the game with a friend and this game has a lot of fuel to go off on tangents discussing things that were brought up, either by the main characters or due to the questions the narrator asks you. The highlight of this game to me is the characters. I utterly adore all of them, even the bad people in the story have a lot to them and are well written. A personal favorite of mine is Aija, I won't delve into it too much but I absolutely adore the writing behind her. Really, I can't point out a single character that I would say I dislike how they're written, even if some shine particularly bright. I will say my only gripe with the game is most of the minigames are a bit dull, but since their main purpose is to gain chips and add a bit of player interaction (and they're skippable if you don't want to do them) I really don't have much of a problem with them. The hacking minigame is extremely fun, however, and I would honestly do puzzles like that in my free time. I might replay the game in a while once I forget the solutions just to try them on hard mode. There's a lot more I could say about this game, pretty much all of it positive, but I'll just sum it up: the writing is extremely good and the game gives you a lot to think about. The characters are wonderful and left me wanting even more of them despite the game already having a pretty hefty playtime. The gambling mechanic rewarding you for guessing story beats correctly was also very fun and gave an excuse to theorize pretty heavily on what was going on. All I can really say is, I really hope more people play this game, it's absolutely worth it.