The Divine Deception

Extremely well written and overflowing with personality, highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good mystery with well executed twists and reveals!

This game is just a gem. I have been putting off playing it for unknown reasons and I'm so invested right now it's all I'm thinking about. Incredible narrative and characters that keeps you hooked UPDATE : Finished the game. It was simply incredible.

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.

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.

very nice

this game is a genuinely wonderful visual novel! it was entertaining, mysterious, and kept me on the edge of my seat even after the game ended. some parts were rough, yes, the sentence forming minigame felt unforgiving at times, and most of the minigames felt rather clunky, but compared to the previous game by them (the zodiac trial), this is a massive step up! this is a definite recommend. the artstyle is fun, every character is fun to read and see interact with the world, and the overarching plot was a blast.

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.

An incredible mystery thriller that has frankly dominated my life for an entire week as I raced to uncover the mystery--unputdownable, in terrible colloquial book review terminology that is very apt here. The story is complex, the characters are richly drawn and ended up surprising me (some many times, even), the plot twist hints are carefully laid out in a satisfying way that made perfect sense rather than detracting from the plot by blindsiding the player. I really hope the creator makes more games in this universe, and especially more with the MC--Themis knocked it out of the park with the Zodiac Trial and this one.

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.

I can't recommend this game enough honestly. the mystery is so compelling, and the twist had me thinking about it for a long time after. The pieces are all there to pick up, nothing seems like it comes completely out of nowhere. And the characters are super well written. My only minor nitpick is that the minigames could use some polish. Although they are all skippable if you dont find them fun. I enjoyed the hacking minigame most out of them all but i would have really appreciated if there was a way to mark "live" tiles. I ended up having to draw most of them on paper to keep my thoughts straight. Again, super super minor nitpick. I can't wait to see what comes next from themis!