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.

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.

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.