Lies of P (2023)

Going back to this after Elden Ring is putting a different perspective. Many of clunky elements like the unhelpful target lock and the tricky Fatal Attack positions I though were just lesser versions of what the original had to offer. But now I realise that the lock on is not really worse than Elden Ring's and it's even easier to get fatal attacks than criticals.

Also, losing runes/ergo in bosses is handled much better in this game. In Elden Ring runes are left in the boss' arena, which is just dumb. But here your XP is just before the fog wall. Although, ironically, since Lies of P is completely linear, they could've gotten away with dropping XP inside the arena; it's not like you've got anywhere else to go!

Also, in Elden Ring it's very hard to know at a glance if an enemy had died. Heavy blows sound loud and can stagger the enemy into a prone position. I died more than once by the hands of an enemy with a sliver of health that I though I had killed. Here, enemies die with a very obvious slam that is unlike any other sound in the game. It's not accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, but at least is something.

DLC is out and I learnt that you can only enter the new content from Chapter 9, so if I even want to play it I'd need to replay a big chunk of the game.

The new update added a bunch of QOL improvements around levelling up. Now the UI shows the number of levels you can get in the upper right. Also, you can level up in any stargazer instead of just in the Hotel, so now do don't need to go through two loading screens each time.

Also super nice is that you can use your Ergo items right in the level up UI, with a nifty indication of how many levels you would get if you cash in.

This is such an improvement over any other system, including Elden Ring, where if you realise you needed more xp to get a level you had to exit the levelling up menu, open the inventory menu and manually select and use your xp items.

I hadn't realised before but that whole system really encourages hoarding. I distinctly remember not upgrading my prosthetic arm in Sekiro because using the sen puches was such a pain in the ass; go to the upgrade menu, check what I wanted to upgrade and how many sen it costed, do the math of how much I needed, exit the upgrade menu, go into the inventory, use how many sen puches I though I needed, exit the inventory, go back to the upgrade menu, notice that I miscalculated and start over.

In Elden Ring I would just forget that I had who knows how many runes because they were so hidden in the inventory and also a pain in the ass to use.

Making that much easier to spend your xp items is a no brainer. This also works in shops, so it makes it that much easier to engage with the game's systems.

Die, fucker!

Well, that was it. That ending was a load of bullshit. Is one of those cutscenes in which even though I killed the boss, he was still going to kill me. Fuck that. What a way of robbing my catarsis of the hours I spent fighting this fucker.

Also, because this game just couldn't get even dumber, there's an Avengers-style post credits sequence in which a shadowy figure throws the name "Dorothy" and then we see a girl with ruby slippers.

I still cannot make any headway into Nameless Puppet. I respeced my character and read guides but I cannot get it to work. The fucker is too aggressive, with near-stunlicking combos that take out half my health. It's also really hard to get at him because he jumps around to the other side of the arena after many attacks so I can only do minimal damage. On top of that, the first stage, which I've basically "solved" by now went from interesting if mildly annoying to right out tedious. The heavy attacks that kockbacks you to the next province even after a perfect parry are the worst and the whole battle doesn't feel any good at this point. It's just a long, boring and tedious bossrun.

Looking for guides is all about using builds completely different from mine or tools I've never used much, like throwables (which I don't have, can't buy and don't really know how to use well). So far I've been beating bosses with relative ease. yeah, some take longer than others but eventually I could beat them. But suddenly it seems that the tools and movements that served well all these hours mean shit. It honestly doesn't feel like a fair battle at all.

BTW, looking for guides also taught me that I don't want to be anywhere near this game's community -- and I presume the wider soulslike community.

There's something that's driving my crazy about this game control scheme. It's got buffered inputs, which means that if you press dodge twice in a row, the character will dodge twice, even if the second press was before the first dodge animation had ended. Same with attacks: press light and heavy attack in quick succession and the character will do both.

But for some bizarre reason it DOESN'T buffer heavy attack after dodge! Instead, if you press the button just two frames early, the you stand there doing nothing while the enemy wails you and you wonder if something's wrong with your controller.

Up until know this has been a mild annoyance because I haven't been dodging a lot. But now it's absolutely making me nuts.

Nameless Puppet is kicking my ass. Part of it is that is genuinely hard. Part of it is that is yet another 2-stage boss with a very different second stage.

I killed the first stage innumerable times. It's relatively easy because it's all about parrying, which I've been doing the whole game. It's hard, but an extension of other encounters: relatively clean attacks (except one from its lower right because my character model and the floor hides the blade) that are possible to parry.

But then the second stage is dodge-central. The attacks are incredibly fast and full por particle effects that make them very hard to read. But I haven't been honing my dodge so it's also hard to get the timing right. And, as it happens, I get too little time to practice an learn because every time I die I need to go through the first stage over and over again, which cuts down on my practice time and also turns the dial from challenging into tedious.

I feel that latter bosses really take a dip in that regard. I don't remember that being a problem with earlier bosses. They had only a few mechanics that would evolve somewhat during the fight (like adding an extra moveset, or mixing up the attacks) and once you more or less mastered them, you killed the boss and move on. I think the change was with the King of Puppets.