Lies of P (2023)

The story and art direction felt a bit hit or miss for me. I really tried to enjoy Lies of P, but the PC performance didn’t help.

I love the puppet/toy aesthetic, but the whole alchemy zombification angle didn’t land for me, and near the end it started to feel like a drag.

Compared to Nightreign, or FromSoftware games like Dark Souls III or Elden Ring, it just doesn’t quite hold up.

Round 8 have made an excellent sequel to bloodborne in mechanics, tone and gameplay.

This is an unbelievably fun formula, and they execute it very well. But like the kid that copies the others' homework, the full understanding of why certain systems exist and why a certain rule is followed is not 100%.

The main issue I have had so far is that many times this game will kill you without warning. In bloodborn you hear a scream, and then the trap hits. The game teaches you to be alert and focused, and with that you won't die.

The hidden floors, hidden enemies, and deathtraps are not fair in this game, and they are little too numerous and placed in very awkard places. But only in certain chapters.

The game is otherwise very fun, and I believe will have excellent sequels if the studio dares to take hold of the franchise and actually make it their own. Unfortunarly, the souls like formula is balanced on a knifes edge, and other studios changes fundamentally misunderstand the symphony of balance and game design. So a direct mechanical sequel will still be interesting to play.

The DLC, if considered, tremendously elevates the experience, adding a period of excellent story telling, extraordinary sets, memorable boss fights and well crafted weapons.

Well, that's another run done.

I went through NG+ with the claw weapons. I'm still a bit salty that this special boss weapon is still not as good as a random dagger that you can buy for cheap from the starting vendor, but they are fun to use and look cool, so I had fun.

Now I've finished this game 3 times and the DLC once. That's quite a lot of play for a game that I feel has so many issues. Characters are bland, writing is terrible, story is nonsense, level design is fine but repetitive, and combat is overcomplicated. The game also starts dragging a bit after the halfway potint. But in the end I might just enjoy the core combat experience. Timing parries is so satisfying that I do it even when it's not really the best option, similar to why I like breaking boss' weapons.

Anyway, I'm gonna go and bump a start to my review.

Yesterday I closed Veilguard in boredom and my eyes landed on this game's icon on my desktop and I decided to open it up again and play NG+. This time, I decided to look for mods.

First: There is a mod to remove Gemini from the game and it improves the experience significantly.

Second, a sizeable proportion of mods are to replace Pinoccio with a booby character model. One version is not NSFW and I kind of love the cute version of the Winter's Hunting Outfit.

Im back at the base game. Beat Laxasia in two tries. Much easier when you know what you're doing and you've leveled up a bunch in the DLC.

I had forgotten about Manus' muddy motivations. Suddenly we learn that the dude can read minds and wants to create a world without lies, something that was never apparent at all in his actions. He also wants to become god, which seems like an orthogonal aim but more according to what he's doing.

I'm at the last boss of the DLC. So far bosses have been great, hard but fair and with good arcs. Second phases have always been enhanced versions of the first phase that increase the stakes but make sense. A marked improvement over something like King of the Puppets.

But for the last boss it seems Neowiz just couldn't help themselves and went again with this obnoxious design of a very easy first stage followed by an incredibly hard second stage with a completely different moveset that you need to learn again. Not only that, but the second phase starts with a Waterfowl Dance-style anime attack that hits like a freight train and it's hard to read.

The end result is me just having to go through first phase a million times just for a couple of seconds of second phase that I can barely learn due to this "fuck off I win" attack.

I just abhor this school of boss design.

Beat Vèronique last night. Neat boss. Loved her big fuckoff hammer with a jet engine. It took me a few tries until I realized that the best approach was to equip my big wrench and break her weapon. After that she went down in one try. I like that mechanic although it would be nice if it worked as well with all weapons.

The backstab window on her was particularly wonky, though. I would sometimes backstab her without seeing the icon and sometimes don't even if I hit her multiple times with the icon on her back.

The level design before her was also pretty rough. Again it has long and narrow hallways with enemies that you can't avoid so every runback after dying became a lengthy bore.

I got the claws, but they are pretty underwhelming. I noticed that despite having higher ATK that my previous weapon (a dagger tied to a street sign), the actual damage ouput is significantly lower. Testing with the test dummy, the fully upgraded claws did an average of ~270 per non-critical hit while the dagger did ~325 per non-critical hit.

The dagger with the street sign also has a skill to increase the critical rate and another to increase the attack power (which increases the damage output to ~377 per non-critical hit).

The dagger also staggers enemies out of their attacks much more consistently and the stabby attack doesn't collide with walls as often as the wide slashes of the claws.

Finally got into the DLC. My first impression is that instead of shutting up that annoying Gemini, they made him even more chatty and annoying. Terrible mood breaker.

The new weapons and grinders are interesting. I got a bow, which adds ranged combat to the game. I assume that the enemies in the DLC are balanced for that possibility but I wonder if that doesn't completely break the main game.

The first area is good, with lots of new enemies. I liked the mutated kangaroo and the carcass abomination that at first looks like an elephant but then it reveals a million different grafted animals.

The level design hasn't improved terribly, though. Still the same rhythm of exploration, shortcut, boss full of nonsensical invisible walls. But I guess it's functional enough.

Second area started rough. An extremely narrow and linear section filled with both highly mobile and ranged enemies. The problem being that when you inevitably die you can't just run past them or avoid them thanks to the knowledge of the level gained before. You need to engage with them every single time, which makes for an overly repetitive experience.

On a second playthrough I'm noticing how ramshackle the narrative actually is. Plot points and bad guys appear right before you fight them with barely any explanation or narrative flow. Basically there is never an overarching objective that our actions are weaved through. Go get Geppeto. Now go to some random church. Now go to the run-down district for... why did I have to go there again? I don't remember. Now go kill a Puppet King that we never mentioned before and will never be mentioned again. Oh, now without their king, all the puppets are disorganised and barely function... except that in the next area you fight very well-functioning puppets again.

It feels like a procedurally-generated plot. Or, to put it in another way, it feels like the writers were making it up as they went along.

I was thinking about this and

Overture is great- its more of the same with a number of the issues from the base game addressed, and a degree of polish and gameplay/asset diversity you wouldn't expect for a DLC in the genre. It reminds me more of shadows of the erdtree than the old hunters or ringed city (with tighter pacing but less content than SOTE).

Some of the smaller issues persist in the DLC, but the dogmatic adherence to fromsoft design seems to have lessened and as a result we got some really good areas, boss fights and narrative exposition (!!!) that feel more like an actual vision made manifest rather than a copy of other games.

It just feels good- well paced, challenging with a good story that elevates the world and base game narrative without distorting or superseding it. It'd be a disservice to Overture to suggest they copied the best parts of SOTE and dropped the bad, as it would elicit an obvious comparison to the base game shamelessly copying fromsofts catalog warts and all, but I think its true.

No pause button still, but almost every other criticism I leveled at the base game was addressed, if not satisfactorily remedied. Only a few runbacks for optional mini/bosses. No two healthbar bosses with completely unrelated movesets. Basically no 'fly away/backdash/reset to neutral' boss moves after their combos to stall out fights. The DLC weapons and amulets actually allow for different feeling builds. The super linear level design doesn't matter now that players don't need horizontal progression vectors to bypass difficulty based hardstops. They even added a amulet to give you a real dodge roll animation.

Not perfect but damn good - very optimistic to see what a potential Alice in Wonderland from the same creative team could end up looking like, especially with the capable writing and world building in Overture.

There is a neat little change in the update that shows your XP bar, how close you are to leveling up, and how many times you can level up. Makes leveling up less of a guessing game and more convenient to know

Empty XP Bar

Close to leveling up

Can level up twice

Lies of P was my biggest surprise this year. I imagined it'd be a good game, but didn't think it would actually be the best soulslike game not made by Fromsoft.

At first, I was a bit skeptical. LoP tries VERY hard to be Bloodborne. And, well, it might be the closest we'll ever get to a sequel. But what bothered me was how closely it followed on BB's footsteps. At first, at least. Eventually I pretty much ignored it and that made my experience way better.

Lies of P looks beautiful and plays even better. Although not very atmospheric game, I just love how it feels to advance through the levels. It has a strong aesthetic setting, with creepy looking enemies and places, shady characters and a beautiful soundtrack. Places do start to look very samey after a while, but it never got boring due to how well the level design was planned and executed. It's not perfect, but item and enemy placement functions great! I just wish it had better environmental storytelling, because the story is surprisingly good!

Honestly, I didn't know what to expect from a story loosely based on Pinocchio, but I was drawn to it. It improves as the game progresses, gets creepier, more epic and engaging until the very end. Even the post credit scene is quite pleasant. And while I can't say that it's a character-driven story, I really liked all the characters from the start. From the way they look, to the voice acting.

And then there's Lies of P's gameplay and mechanics. That's where I feel they nailed the most.

While not perfect, this is the closest I've ever gotten to feel like I was playing a Miyazaki game. Areas were compelling to explore, difficulty was (mostly) just right, enemy variety was (mostly) good, checkpoints were (mostly) well placed, boss fights were (mostly) quite incredible and the combat itself is almost spotless. Assembling new weapons and toying around with combinations and mechanics is where I most had fun. And without need for grind! It's all just there. Sometimes it's a little too much with grindstones, golden fruits, legion arms and etc, but you'll get it eventually.

But, as you can see, I did have my "mostlys" out there. Lies of P had quite a few misteps along the way. I don't want it to seem like it's not a great game, because it is, but they clearly don't know how to handle status ailments, some mechanics and items can be quite useless (even certain weapons or handles), writing could be improved, levels could look a bit more varied, and I think parrying could be perfected.

I think they exaggerated on a few things. You can totally see this on bosses. They're yet to figure out "gang bosses", some runs towards the arenas are tedious, almost all of them have too much health, fights can take very long and BY GOD, NOT EVERY ENEMY NEEDS A SECOND STAGE!

They do look cool and some fights were fantastic. The feeling I got after defeating the green monster and the final boss were unmatched. But did the final two bosses really need that many amount of moves to memorize? Did the arcbishop really need to take that long? Why are both fights with the rabbit brotherhood so annoying? Those things need to be worked on for the next one.

But regardless of my nitpicking with combat and mechanics, Lies of P works very well and was my biggest surprise of the year. Definitely a must if you like this style of game. I can't wait to play the DLC and I'm excited for its future.

Oh, by the way, fuck Geppetto!

Lies of P very much feels like a love letter to the last few From Software games pre-Elden Ring, mixing their ideas with a few new ones of its own, and the result for most of its playtime is one of the most enjoyable and complete-feeling Soulslikes. While there is still room for improvement, I was hooked very quickly and found it to be a tight, thematically-appealing experience. Just be ready for the difficulty to go way up right at the end...

Aesthetically, the start of the game can basically be boiled down to "Bloodborne with puppets". As it goes along, though, it does deliver surprising, interesting designs for some of its characters, creatures, and locations. When I first heard the game was based around Pinocchio, I thought it sounded pretty silly, and it kinda is, but I ended up enjoying the story and characters a lot more than expected. It has some of the vague From-isms in its storytelling, but largely is a pretty clear narrative.

I went with a heavy weapon build and found the gameplay to feel pretty nice here. Perfectly-timed blocks are a big part of the design, and that can be tricky as some bosses have ridiculous delays right out of Elden Ring and it doesn't feel quite as good as similar systems in Sekiro and Thymesia. I found that most bosses had acceptably quick runs back from checkpoints and were challenging but manageable.

While the game started out pretty easy for me, then hit a sweet spot for most of the chapters, the final chapter brought a difficulty spike that I found pretty disheartening and un-fun. The last two required bosses in particular have frustratingly fast movements that push past the limits of the game’s camera, and like in recent From games have second phases that can obliterate you in the blink of an eye and send you back for more grinding through an increasingly-tedious first phase.

Basic enemies are in a weird spot, able to put out an unexpectedly large amount of damage if not kept in check, but usually killed in a couple light attacks. Luckily, many elite enemy types are also there to add some fun challenge to the levels. The level design here is relatively linear, with little ambiguity about where to go next, and each zone pretty much connected right to the next one. That combined with ample shortcuts really keeps the forward momentum going in a way that I actually enjoyed.

In addition to 6 core stats to build your character around, there is a sort of skill tree that lets you invest in upgrades like increased heal capacity. Each point spent here allows you to select an additional perk, such as "do more damage when weapon durability is at maximum". I feel like I would have preferred that they separate these two systems and let them progress a bit more often, but there are decently interesting decisions to be made there.

Armor and other gear work how you'd expect, but the weapon system is a bit different. Each weapon can be split in half, with each half having a unique ability to use in combat. You can combine parts of different weapons together, with the top half being upgraded like a normal Souls weapon, and the bottom providing the stat scaling. Functionally this is not very different from what you get in Elden Ring, but physically mixing and matching to create an effective combo of stats and abilities is pretty neat.

I see a lot of promise in this studio's future. This is one of the best examples to date of how to make a game inspired by From Software, and offers a decent alternative to what From themselves are doing lately. I definitely recommend it to people who have ever enjoyed a traditional Soulslike, and while newcomers are better off starting with “the real deal”, if you have Game Pass you could do much worse than trying this out.

Gameplay: 8/10

Presentation: 8/10

Story: 8/10

Overall Score: 8/10

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

Definitely worth playing if you are a fan of Dark Souls-style games. It is a bit easier and a little less refined, but such a cool world with fun creative boss fights and actually a lot more content than I suspected. It took me around 40 hours to be the game and I never did any XP grinding. I also only felt like I got hung up on a few bosses so most of my hours were exploring the world and continued progression for 40 hours. Currently on NG+ run which definitely ups the damage received, but feels about the same on the amount of damage done to enemies.