There's a great sense of cheapness about the whole thing that seems to come from a lack of internal cohesion: there's something heterogeneous about the animations, the different art assets, the awkwardly translated item descriptions and the Crunchyroll dub voice-acting. Everything feels cobbled together, and this feeling's heightened by the way it appropriates so many aspects of Bloodborne without much consideration for the overall effect that game achieves with them.

There's something sympathetic about any piece of media whose goal is to be just as good as another, driven by a kind of scrappy acquisitiveness that insists it needs neither talent nor originality to succeed. However they de-Italianized Pinocchio which is unforgivable.

I think your mileage with this will heavily depend on how much you can forgive it for being so derivative, but I think in this case it’s worth forgiving. Personally, I have no problem with stealing souls systems like bonfires, estus, stamina management, parries, rallies etc. but there are points where I think Lies of P crosses a line: talking to sick people through windows, a not-fire-keeper calling you “clever one”, slowly pushing open heavy double-doors, the same damn item pickup and menu sounds, I think these kinds of choices are needlessly derivative and will only serve to remind people of other, better, games. A more thrifty approach could have taken the meat of souls without also taking the chaff. Even things like attacking, running and dodging animations are uncannily similar to fromsoft titles, which is a bit of a double-edged sword: On the one hand, this is one of the precious few souls copycats that actually feels great to play, because it takes the finely-tuned animation cadence of fromsoft so wholesale (the other souls copycat that feels good, Nioh, relies on the years of action game experience that Team Ninja has, so it’s maybe preferable for an inexperienced dev to simply steal in this case). The negative side of this is that everything which feels “off” or out of place will stick out all the more severely. Level design is pretty obviously inferior to fromsoft’s games, as linear as it is with a bunch of superfluous shortcuts, lacking the overlapping and layered tracks that define the best souls levels (ds3 undead settlement is a perfect example) and lacking any real side areas. But elsewhere I have to say that as the game went on, I found remarkably little to complain about: Environmental design and the art direction is alarmingly good for a debut game, enemy variety is surprisingly great - one of the critical things that separates good souls from mid souls, I was really taken aback by how the game has unique minibosses that are only used once or twice whereas basically every other souls copycat is defined by excessive reuse. The quality of the animations is universally top-notch, everything flows great and so many weapons have enjoyable movesets and bosses have subtle variations in their combos to signify what they’ll do next.

All creativity is about stealing to some extent, though this is admittedly on the more extreme end of that spectrum. Still, I think a fixation on its similarities - both superficial and meaningful - can cover up the actually original things that are here: Glossing over the neat durability and weapon-fusion mechanics, I love the parry/blocking system in this game and think it's an ingenious fusion of Sekiro and Bloodborne that actually improves both. The boon of Sekiro’s posture and parry mechanics was that it allowed bosses to have flashy, dynamic, extended blockstrings without feeling like you were just waiting for the boss to be done (i.e Elden Ring), because parrying those blockstrings did damage to the enemy. The flaw of Sekiro’s mechanics, for some people at least, was that parry was the only meaningful way to engage with a lot of situations, which Lies of P solves by requiring posture breaks to be activated by a charged heavy, forcing you into finding an opening and not just reacting with parries. Bloodborne, on the other hand, was all about hit-trading, thanks to its rally mechanic, and the boon of this was that getting hit was equally an opportunity just as much as it was a punishment, the flaw, however, was that in some cases it could promote mindlessly aggressive play, where you just hit-trade a boss to death without even trying to avoid their attacks (Bloodborne mostly got around this with clever enemy designs, but some bosses still have the problem). Lies of P fuses these two by locking the rally mechanic behind blocking, while retaining the parrying mechanics of Sekiro. The result is an interesting risk-reward pipeline: Risk a parry to get their posture down, if you miss and get a regular block, now you’re encouraged to go on the offensive to get that health back, getting hit is unequivocally bad and dodging remains very relevant as a repositioning tool. It’s interesting and, for me, very satisfying to engage with, though I wouldn’t say it’s perfect: It’s a little too insistent on parrying with the armour and tracking that bosses/elite enemies sometimes have, the fact that it doesn’t show you the posture bar so that you can’t factor in how close an enemy is to staggering into your decision-making also seems like an odd choice, and the “perilous attacks” beating both block and dodge can get a little ridiculous, but for the most part I really like the systems here.

The deciding factor for me is that the bosses in Lies of P are genuinely fantastic, all with loads of varied, amazingly animated attacks and interesting gimmicks, there are some lacklustre ones, especially the two lategame rematch bosses, but the run of bosses from Andreas with his side-switching gimmick, the Black Rabbits aka "O&S but with 3 different Ornsteins", King of Puppets, Victor and the Green Monster with the clever reuse of the Watchman is just banger after banger, they're all so creatively designed, and if I could commit some blasphemy real quick, I think this boss lineup is better than any other soulslike game, fromsoft included.

It comes with the caveat that this is a very difficult game. I love that, personally, the level of difficulty means that encounters demand you respect them and learn their moves rather than stumbling through, but it won’t be for everyone, and I think if you go in with the mindset that it’s just a copy, you’re not going to want to give it that respect. It’s a little sad that the general reception seems to be so lukewarm, and it’s hard to pinpoint whether this lies in the difficulty, the feeling that it’s a “knockoff”, a vindictive idea that any good soulslike is a threat to fromsoft, or just general fatigue with soulslikes. Regardless, a lot of the takes about how the game is unfair or feels “off” just don’t ring true to me at all; I think this is the real deal, it’s a damn good game, and I honestly find myself feeling that it’s going to be my GOTY, but hey, I loved Bloodborne and Sekiro, so it was probably a given that I would love a fusion of the two as well.

Lies of P is the next big game in the darksoulsbloodbornesekirodevilmaycry3and5 genre that’ll be sure to make you point at your screen and yell “Hey, wait a minute!”. Let’s play a fun game; every time you see a new thing in this game, try to figure out which thing it was originally from one of the following: Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, or any Devil May Cry, your choice of which one really. Sometimes you can choose multiple answers! Just pick one fast, if we take too long they might find out about open world games.

Lies of P is a game that broke me to my very core, a game I tried so hard to like and was constantly knocked into the pavement had my neck pile driven into the curb and then rolled into the street to be mulched by the first oncoming school bus. A game that I couldn’t stop myself from constantly thinking out loud “how is this not fucking over yet”, it somehow, despite the fancy coat of paint smeared on top of it and the pretty decent game feel, sets itself HIGH on the list of worst souls games. An overly derivative genre receives its most comically derivative entry, Lies of P is truly a game with not even an ounce of creative drive. No ideas, no charm, just a brooding, hackish nature. I’m a bit of a hack myself, I’m all for media gobbling up cool shit from other media, I’ve been one to stand and clap when I see something I recognize, but this is not one of those times. It took almost no time for me to not be able to take a single thing this game says or does seriously, when it’s 2 biggest points of interest are so comically bad for different reasons.

Point 1: Souls game (not actually a point of interest for a real human being)
I’m not exaggerating when I say that everything in this game is lifted from another game. At first it’s not that egregious but not even at the half way mark it starts to become TOO obvious what’s going on. An area that is just sens fortress, we love that place right? An area that IS NOT just anor londo, but really wants you to know how much it likes walking through the rafters of anor londo. Every single boss in this game, every single one, has at least one thing very obviously taken from a souls boss. Sometimes it sneaks up on you too, sometimes you’ll just be fighting a bad boss and then they hit you with the slave knight Gael combo. Nameless King? Never heard of him. Fire Giant? This is how you know this game is bad. Even aside from all the shamefully stolen content, looking at it for what it is, it’s still not good. Doesn’t even take getting half way through the game to hit the “literally every boss has 2 health bars” threshold, which is never done well, but could be, not that it matters because they definitely didn’t figure that out with this game. Aside from the fact that a lot of these areas are clearly just ideas badly repurposed from other games a lot of the game takes place in one place, you mostly just go to different parts of it. So while I’d say the game does look good, you get sick of even just looking at it. The one area that really shakes the foundation of this game on a level design front is the final area. These games don’t have final areas for a reason. You have failed. They made a final area for this game that is somehow 3x longer than any other part of the game, shockingly had some of the worst bosses in the game and in most games honestly, and just overall fucking sucked. Every single shitty and lame aspect of this game blended into the worst puree you’ll never use in anything but they just dumped into their hands and slapped it onto the board. Game goes down a whole point because of it and for generally just wasting my time. These people LOVE traps. Bear traps, arrow traps, shock traps, I played a fun game with myself that got me fucking LAUGHING at a certain point, the game is called ‘will this bridge collapse under me too?’ This game is addicted to wasting your time like that, suffice to say that when I got to the area that was mostly bridges and none of them collapsed I was pretty impressed, of course they resumed immediately after but we take the wins we can get around here. Introducing new trap like obstacles in the final area was already pretty absurd, a piston that knocks you off a staircase, doesn’t even do damage? Exists purely to annoy you or waste your time. It’s such a small thing to bitch about but when you lump it in with all the other things I said it’s just strange the degree to which they love doing this shit. This is also the absolute peak of a souls game just shoving guys around corners and on the ceiling to fall down on top of you in droves. You people canNOT be criticizing dark souls 2 for that specific problem and then be turning around to eat this shit up.

Point 2: Pinocchio? Geppetto’s puppet? The boy that looked like that other guy? Definitely not.
The dark twist on Pinocchio here could have been pretty cool, but it’s obviously not. I guess I’m gonna spoil what little there is to spoil throughout this paragraph? Pinocchio being the baseline for this story is really just that, it’s the baseline. They take all of the most basic story beats from Pinocchio and depressingly scatter them throughout an otherwise very mundane story. Pinocchio you’re not actually relevant to any of the happenings of this world, your dad is just a fucking weirdo, and your name is Carlos, not Pinocchio, dumbass! They did a great job of making Geppetto go from being a weirdo seething dad with the most stilted and awkward dialogue possible into being the dumbest motherfucker in this fucking world. And everyone around us seems to be just as dumb? Geppetto was the one that caused the puppet frenzy that killed us all? Oh, well okay I guess. Guess we’ll have to ask him about it later, lol! Geppetto being the real villain of the story is a twist exhausting both for just not being built up to well or executed well at all, but also for making the game go even longer than it needed to! The game realistically should have ended long before their shitty oc villain that they built up as a villain that wasn’t even actually the real villain because we need to make this game even longer total playtime upward trend steady revenue flow day one denuvo patch dlc and sequel announcement. This guy was also just a weird divorced atheist which I would have gotten a laugh out of if I wasn’t already so exhausted with it. Not even getting into the weird out of nowhere character transformation that Pinocchio goes through randomly and without explanation is just so fucking funny, where literally all that changes is his hair looks worse now. His sex appeal; gone. The moment my interest completely tapered. Top it all off with a post credit scene that is all but completely ridiculous and undeserved but still made me laugh somehow and you get fucking nothing! Shit! Send it back please! It’s not even worth talking about any of the other Pinocchio aspects because they all amount to nothing, and to be clear, you can base your story off preexisting stories and STILL write an original story, it’s not like I’m seething I didn’t get a 1:1 adaptation of Pinocchio as a shitty dark souls game, they just did it really badly. It genuinely feels like these people fucking LOVED the fact that his nose got longer when he lied and just couldn’t shut the fuck up about it. Really felt more like a Disney’s Pinocchio atmosphere most of the time than it did Collodi’s Pinocchio.

I like collecting games, I’ve never wanted to get rid of a game. Even bad ones. This is a full priced game, I want to get rid of this game. I was gonna buy either this or Ghost of Tsushima, I wish I bought Ghost of Tsushima. I should not have played this while I’m off my medication. I told no lies in this game but everyone still kept calling me a liar. I am not a liar. Why did they give Pinocchio’s gay boyfriend breast implants. They never referred to anyone as Pinocchio, so I still don’t even know who P is! A game so devoid of creativity, with no good ideas, let alone original ones, that I genuinely wonder WHY? What was running through their freaked up brains when they were even just planning this? 3 hotboxed rats that ran through an unfinished maze for a snack could have made it through the maze and still had the stamina to come up with something better than this. I sat and thought for a looooong time about what I would even say is worth praising about this and there are a couple things I guess, but I don’t even think they’re interesting enough to give the time to talk about them. This genre needs to be extradited to the bottom of the ocean, tie an anchor to its waist and never look back.

I've been dreading giving this game a (real) review ever since I finished the main story and looked up the other endings. My thoughts on it are so conflicting but I'll attempt to give an honest review to highlight both it's victories and it's numerous cardinal sins.
I don't like doing this but I'm going to use a pros and cons list to help stay organized because I feel like I could get rambly on this one.

Pros ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- This game definitely gets down the "feel" of a from soft souls game if only on the surface level in the game play loop and how the combat feels (sometimes)

- The soundtrack, design, animation, and most of the voice acting is great

- A society being overthrown by puppets who in the end were powered by dead people souls somehow is an interesting premise (if not a little too much like iRobot)

- There were some pretty awesome bosses and I liked the way they reused some areas and made enemies "evolve" over time by making infected versions of earlier enemies, different weapon variations, etc

- Deflecting can feel fun at times and the puppet string prosthetic is fun to use

Cons -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- First off the game being about Pinocchio is a huge detractor. It makes it insanely hard to take this game seriously. So much stuff feels forced into the game just because it was in the original Pinocchio story despite the fact that they're changing things so much that it hardly represents Pinocchio in any way at this point. Did the localization not realize that P sounds like another word in English? Who named the freaking "rise of P" ending? The WHAT organ? It's nearly a miracle we never had to collect "P liquid" or that they didn't refer to the Pinocchio nose on the picture frame as the "P stick".

- This game is crammed full of pointless items, systems, and an overabundance of confusing mechanics. More options doesn't = good if a large portion of the options suck.
- These characters are all boring and one note. I feel like the game expected me to get close to all these hotel people but all they do is give me stuff or sell me stuff or talk about their one character trait over and over again. Yeah I'm Korean and that dog guy saved me! Yeah I'm a rich billionaire who's parents were murdered by a puppet! They never grow or change and you never spend any meaningful time with them. The fox and cat were the closest to having progression but they ruin it by just being dicks to you at every chance they get.

- This game copies way too much from souls games just to say they copied something without thinking of whether it's good or fun. This game is on par with and/or worse than dark souls in the cheap ambushes department. Seriously this game is freaking obsessed with cheap stupid ambushes. Literally anytime I saw an item or chest I walked in backwards just because 80% of the time some stupid mob is waiting for you. This was never fun in dark souls or bloodborne, it was just kind of cheeky but I forgive it in those games because usually it's just now and then.

- Half of these weapons do not mesh well with the combat system and the way you're often forced to play the game to succeed. I could go into more detail about certain enemy attacks and move sets that bugged me and felt like they were clashing with the style of gameplay but I'll just stop here.

- I absolutely hate that you can't cancel out of attacks to do a deflect. This is my personal opinion and I learned to overcome my desire to want to do attack cancel deflects but it still felt bad. After having played Sekiro and Sifu going back to a game with deflects like this felt like having to write a letter to someone after years of having email.

- This camera is the real boss of the game. The fact that the camera doesn't auto adjust angle or almost ever auto adjust at all is extremely damning and frustrating. So many times I got stuck in corners while trying to dodge an attack or stuck in freaking enemy geometry and couldn't see where I was going. Also faster enemies like some late bosses or the second phase of the archbishop were an absolute nightmare with the camera flailing everywhere and just feeling terrible.

- The overall quality of the English localization is just not very good at all. I would forgive this if this was a smaller Indie studio but everything else about the game feels AAA so why is the English this bad? There aren't that many misspelled words though there are some but mostly the bad grammar and strangely worded sentences are what frustrates me. As someone who worked a Japanese to English translation job in the past I'm seeing lots of cases were I think direct or even machine translation might have been used with very little or maybe even zero native English speaker proofreading.

- Lastly (I promise) is that this story is just so weird. The way lies are integrated as a game play mechanic is so half baked. Sometimes the things you have to lie about are your opinions (Am I beautiful? Do you think she loved me? Was I a good dad? etc) so at first I thought "oh maybe the lies are the 'good person' answers" but no there are straight up other times where you have to lie to get the warm fuzzy points by lying to someone which leads them to somewhere dangerous. So many other parts of the story are just so forced either to make the game more like dark souls or to include something from Pinocchio. Seldom is anything added to the game at all if it's not to fulfill one of these delusions.

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Yet the game was actually kind of fun. This is all on just some bosses being cool and my affinity for the souls game play loop. To summarize my thoughts, the game feels like a symphony with a ton of different melodies going on but the melodies seldom go together very well and when they do it feels entirely on accident. It feels like someone did an AI generated from soft game and yeah if you squint a little it looks like a from soft game but if you take any time to look at the details you'll see weird artifacts and mangled hands and strange geometry in the background. Ultimately worth a shot if you like games similar to dark souls or bloodborne, but vastly flawed. It feels to me like so many people give this game a pass for all of these flaws just because of the Victorian/belle epoque/whatever vibe it gives off and this bugs me like crazy.

Lies of P was a very interesting experience. While I don't think it stands up to the games it's inspired by, it definitely makes enough unique design choices for it to stand on its own merits. I want to preface that I don't find being derivative a bad thing, art is always inspired by something. It'd be like every game with a jump is derivative of Mario, which is such a huge disservice to so many games, this game is no exception. Yes, it wears its influences on its sleeve. No, this does not make it a bad game inherently.

With that out of the way, let's begin with the story, and oh God it's a mess. The initial premise of Lies of P is incredibly fascinating about a puppet uprising and one special puppet who has the capacity to lie which from the get-go makes it more human than the other mindless puppets at first glance. Unfortunately, while this lying narrative leads to many interesting choices, a lot of it to me doesn't make sense. If a puppet who has the choice to lie in the first place is present, that automatically creates nuance and development for this puppet to continue growing through the act of making a choice rather than if you decide to lie or not. There is one particular moral dilemma that occurs later in the game that no matter what you choose, should already be incredibly impactful and evolving for our main character, but since there is no lying aspect to it, our main character does not grow from it at all, which is disappointing, and rather baffling to say the least.

Going into actual narrative, you are a puppet created by the great puppet-maker Gepetto, and are tasked with hunting down and killing the rampaging puppets all throughout the city of Krat. A simple premise to be sure, but there's plenty of twists and turns and lore you can read to enrich the story and your experience which is welcome. Without going into spoilers, the game's first half is phenomenally well done, with strong cohesive settings and an ultimate end goal that is fulfilled halfway into the game. Right before then, and the later half of the game takes a violent shift that tries so tirelessly to tread an uninspired concept while attempting to explain things established since the game's beginning that fumble and ultimately have ridiculous implications that ruin a lot of the game's story and how the world works. Had the game stuck to its guns and delved deeper into other puppets like our Main Character who were exceptions to established conventions and other such intricacies, it could've been much better.

The gameplay of Lies of P in stark contrast is really quite remarkable. You have everything you'd expect from a game of this nature. A plethora of weapons, a healing vial, fantastic animations, interconnected level design, tough enemies, and even tougher boss fights. Rather than focus on that though, I want to focus on what Lies of P does to improve the formula. I want to start with my personal favorite, which is the "pulse cell" recharge. The Pulse Cell is your healing, akin to blood vials or an Estus flask, but with an incredible caveat. When you run out of healing charges for your pulse cell, you can recharge it by playing aggressively and playing well. This is an amazing comeback mechanic that can spark determination and hope in players to keep fighting rather than just giving up because they ran out of heals. I myself do this in the aforementioned games when running out of heals, but I never once had that feeling in Lies of P since I was rewarded for continuing to play and win many tough battles thanks to this mechanic. The other thing I want to touch on is the weapon system. In Lies of P, you can dismantle your weapon down to its handle and blade, mixing and matching different options to see what works. If you find a weapon you really enjoy, you can attach it to a hilt that will scale better to the build you're running with a few exceptions. This essentially prevents many weapons from being locked behind certain build requirements, which makes finding each weapon worthwhile and justified to experiment with. I myself never used this mechanic, but I think it's an interesting choice that promotes using more weapons you normally wouldn't, like its inspirations.

Onto the actual combat itself. There are essentially three important mechanics to combat: dodging, guarding, and perfect guarding. Dodging is standard with invincibility frames to dash through attacks, guarding lets you nullify some damage and recover lost health similar to Bloodborne's rally, promoting aggressive play. And finally perfect guarding, which is pressing block as soon as an attack is about to hit you like Sekiro. And much like Sekiro, perfect guarding will build up a stagger meter on enemies and bosses with their health bar glowing white to signify your opportunity, which is fulfilled by using a heavy attack to get the stagger. First, let's address the issues, perfect guarding is heavily encouraged in this game, especially with frenzy attacks which are essentially moves you cannot dodge or guard normally, you have to perfect guard, or get out of the way. With this said, perfect guarding is very difficult, since the window to land one is much stricter than a game like Sekiro, which means it's an all or nothing gamble, especially against frenzy attacks. You can get away with spamming roll or running away from frenzy attacks, but it hurts the momentum and pacing of fights a lot to do that, but in late-game, frenzy attacks become a little too insane to reliably be able to perfect guard them. The next issue is the lack of a bar or any other visual indication of how close the boss is to being weak to a heavy attack stagger via the white glow around their health bar. In Sekiro, you always saw an enemy's stance bar, which showed your progress on getting the fatal blow which allowed you to play around that knowledge as needed. In Lies of P there is no such indication, the bar will just glow white and you have to react to it. Granted, the requirement to fulfill the reward is just using a heavy attack, but that isn't tied to your perfect guard like Sekiro. This leads to many players getting desperate to land that heavy attack so they can rake in tons of damage, or get a huge window to heal or to repair their weapon, more on that later. Whether they land the heavy attack or not depends on their weapon, you have to land the last hit of the heavy attack to get the stagger, but some weapons have incredibly slow and/or long heavy attacks, you may never get an opportunity to land it, especially during a boss battle. Couple this with the fact there is no poise at all in this game, which means your attack will be interrupted if you get hit essentially, is a huge detriment to the player depending on what weapon they decided to use. Thankfully the blade and handle system can fix this issue, so you can pick a weapon with a fast heavy attack, but every weapon should be able to do this regardless. The positives of this system is you take no damage when perfect guarding, only stamina, you build up their stagger much faster, and it's very satisfying and rewarding to perfect guard a combo. It can also break weapons of enemies, which decreases their damage and range, which is an excellent and unique reward Lies of P offers for those who master perfect guarding.

While perfect guarding has its issues, guarding and dodging are much easier to talk about. Dodging in this game felt fine, but the timing is also pretty strict since the dodge isn't very long, and guarding is always the best thing to do if you think you can't dodge or perfect guard since that health is restorable by being aggressive, but if you get hit without guarding, you lose the opportunity to gain that health back which is very punishing, but incentivizing guarding in this way makes it more important to use. When I was playing Lies of P, I came in with the intention of playing very defensively, always guarding and going for perfect guards first handful of bosses. I then realized some attacks bosses do that you simply can't reliably guard, which makes dodging the optimal option. Every boss is different in what the design demands from the player, guarding or dodging. In the best case, there were bosses that beautifully managed to make guarding, dodging, and perfect guarding all feel important and meaningful to overcome them, which were the biggest highlights for me. In the worst instances, I spammed the roll and got away with it because some bosses have absurdly long combo's that will kill you if you can't perfectly guard most of the hits, so I opted to just avoid them and swing at them from behind. This is when I noticed the second half of the game, I kept doing this strategy, because the demand some of these bosses presents seemed too inconceivable for me with the tight timings and extremely heavy chip damage from just normal guarding, dodging became the most rewarding option every single fight around the last quarter of the game, with one exception. Lies of P I think got a little too ambitious with the later fights that make them absolutely miserable to attempt with the perfect guarding mindset this game constantly reinforces you to learn. Everything before then however is actually balanced pretty well between all three options, and I definitely believe every boss before the last quarter can be "one-tricked" with success as well, like just dodging, guarding etc.

Last thing I will touch on for combat is the grinder. In Lies of P, you have to repair your weapon on your own with a grinder. There is no "blacksmith" to repair it for you every now and again, weapon durability is an essential mechanic in Lies of P. As you fight enemies or bosses, your weapon durability will continue to decrease overtime. When the bar starts flashing red, it's time to sharpen it, or else it'll do no damage and bounce off enemies like a wall. In normal gameplay, it's fine, kill the enemies, sharpen your weapon, keep moving, it's in boss battles when this issue starts cropping up. Bosses are relentless in this game, they don't provide too many huge openings, especially not enough time to sharpen your weapon since it takes longer than healing or rolling away obviously. So if your weapon is in critical condition in the middle of a fight, you might just die and it feels really unfair to be killed in that scenario. Thankfully, in multi-phase fights, the boss is repositioned far away from you at the beginning of a new phase so you have time to use your grinder or buff before they start wailing on you. If you forget to sharpen your weapon during this period, that's on you. Though later in the game you won't need to worry so much about sharpening compared to the start of the game. But in the beginning, when your weapon is in critical condition in the middle of a boss and you have to disengage to sharpen, it once again kills the momentum and flow of the boss, and there's no guarantee you'll get it off before the boss charges at you and punishes you for a mechanic you have no real way of mitigating or improving until later.

Area design is good for the most part. The overreliance on narrow walkways got a bit harrowing, but otherwise everything felt pretty sound. Great interconnected level design with shortcuts and secrets to reward your curiosity, generally interesting settings, good graphics as well with the occasional pop-in texture. Let me be clear: this is not an entirely interconnected world like Dark Souls, it's much more akin to Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne, of which I do not mind at all. Lies of P is pretty generous with shortcuts, and enemy placements never felt too unfair, though there were a lot of ambushes, so many that it became very predictable but I'd still fall for them, which led to some frustration to be sure.

Lies of P's soundtrack can be amazing, or downright dull as well. Most bosses opt for the typical booming orchestra with the chanting choir, which isn't a bad choice, but nothing really sticks out, it's forgettable. There was two boss themes in the entire game that stuck with me, that's it. The records you collect however, are incredible! They have beautiful instrumentation and hard-hitting lyrics that really reflect a lot on the game in a hopeful or melancholic sense. These records serve more purposes than just sounding good, and considering their meaning and sound, it really does make a lot of sense about the impact they have on certain things.

Despite all of my criticisms, I really enjoyed this game and the experience it offered. Lots of frustration and questionable design at times, but the quality is high, and the potential presented by NeoWiz is both inspiring and incredibly exciting! I'll be very much looking forward to their next game and hoping to see their improvements overtime. I do recommend you play this game, just be warned of the extremely challenging nature this game has. Thank you all for reading my review, I'd love to hear feedback or comments, of which I will gladly respond and discuss!

Finally peace, at last...
I was looking forward to playing the full version of this game after playing the demo. But I was worried at the same time because I didn't really like the focus on parrying and the fact the enemies don't really get staggered.

Lies of P is a fairytale-inspired souls-like game which was not developed by From Software. There are many games that tried to capture the magic and feeling playing a From Software title but not many succeeded.
Sadly I have to say that I think that NEOWIZ & Round8 Studio didn't really succeed either. There are some cool weapon designs and the assembling mechanic is really great. It gives you the option to "customize the weapon the way you want it. With one exception, which excludes special weapons like those that can be purchased with the rare Egos. But if I have to decided I think I like the more badass design from Elden Ring's weapons more than a Wrench glued on top of a Police Baton from Lies of P.
The Victorian gothic city as a setting is pretty great and it reminded me a lot of Bloodborne which I just recently finished for the first time. But Bloodborne's setting is still superior. I liked that they included some easter eggs like the old Lady at the window. One small thing which I really appreciated was the symbol which shows up and tells you where you can complete a quest. The characters are all interesting but nothing too special and the lips are asynchron but that can be forgiven because this wasn't developed by the largest developer studio. Also, you can pet the cat once you become more human.

That's pretty much everything that I liked about this game, the boss enemies sometimes doesn't fit into the chapter. The whole chapter teaches you how to use status effects because the enemies of this chapter are weak to eat just so the big boss enemy is immune to it. The boss fights are also pretty unbalanced, some are bulletsponges and some are almost one hit kills. As mentioned above I just the Wrench combined with a Police baton and the fable arts attack does a ton of damage, up to 4-5 k damage.
But most of the time the fable arts attacks are pretty much useless because you have to farm them to fill up the attack bar. So I didn't use the fable arts against the fodder enemies or mini boss enemies but also didn't use them in the boss fights because either the fable arts bar was empty or I knew that I would die anyway after using the special attack in the boss fight. I think it would have been a lot better if the fable arts bar would be refilled completely after dying so you can actually use them in the boss fights. I know there is an upgrade but this only refills one bar and it's pretty much useless. As I said in the beginning, some enemies don't get staggered or knocked back when you hit them but they stagger you. Which ruined the gameplay a lot for me, sometimes an enemy staggers you so much that you can't really do anything. The arbitrarily attack chains were also a huge problem because sometimes the combos from the boss enemies are three hits long, sometimes 4 or even more. This way it was really hard to learn the pattern of the boss because I never knew how long his attack combo will last or when he hits me due to delaying his attacks. So I tried to block his combos but I was stunned after blocking 1 or 2 attacks so this wasn't an option so I tried to dodge but dodging 4-5 attacks resulted in a depleted stamina bar, leaving me unable to move and I still had to tank a hit or two.
When I successful dodged an attack I was often too far away from the boss too land a hit because the time window between the attacks is often too small. Or I have to use a healing potion after trying to parry and failing again due to these problems. The bigger the monster is, the more damage sponge it is becomes and it feels like it doesn't matter how much I upgrade my weapon, the healthbars still gets barely smaller. The AI from the specter is also really really stupid as hell, he runs in front of the boss and tanks every attack and is dead before the fight has really started. When I downed an enemy I often couldn't hit them when they were lying on the ground which could tip the scales. Pinocchio on the other hand falls to the ground so quickly and then the enemies will continue to be attack while you're lying on the ground so I often took a hit because your are stuck in animations for way too long. I also wasn't a fan of the fact that red attacks can only be parried and dodging was not viable, so I always ran away once I saw the "red light".
Many boss enemies rely on you to parry their attacks to break their block and there was no other option to fight them besides that. The disruption status effects which kills you immediately was also annoying like many boss fights like the second fight against the black rabbit brotherhood.

That concludes my little rant and yes I chose the "bad" ending so I didn't have to fight the last boss. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this game as much as I wanted because you barely have any freedom to fight the enemies. If you were expecting something like Elden Ring, where you have dozens of ways to defeat the boss, then you should probably wait for a sale or skip this game and maybe try the new Lords of the Fallen which hopefully will be better.

Soulslike games ranked

Games finished in 2023 ranked

Edit 3/29/24: Reduced to 7. Too formulaic, especially in level design. Souls stuff continues to sour on me.
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Probably the funniest game this year. A ridiculous dark fantasy Pinocchio setting is played completely straight and infused so deeply with all the modern Fromsoft trappings that it almost comes across to my bitter heart as parody. Everything from general game structure, to the level up lady in the hub zone you warp to, down to even individual animation cadences, is lifted wholesale.

If that's the setup, then the punchline is that Lies of P is better mechanically than everything it's ripping off. For a more exhaustive overview, check out this writeup, but let me throw some out myself:

* You can restore lost HP by attacking, like in Bloodborne, but only the chip damage from blocking
* The mana used for weapon arts from DS3/ER is gained by hitting enemies
* If you are out of Estus flasks, you can gain another by hitting enemies
* Enemies can be "posture-broken" through perfect guards and damage, but to actually trigger the downed status you must land a charged heavy attack
* Parrying and dedicated ranged weapons have been completely removed (these systems have always been broken and/or cheesy in Souls)
* Red attacks cannot be iframed or blocked, and must be perfect guarded or outpositioned

The general flow of the game is: perfect guard on predictable attacks that are easily timed, block or dodge when you are unsure, and try to outposition and attack when possible to restore guard chip and land charged heavies. Red attacks are a somewhat natural extension to this dynamic, in that they encourage you to anticipate them and get out of the way, which is really what you should be doing for a lot of attacks. There's no need to play this like a parry simulator, and the fun of the game is in trying not to!

The best examples of this are the large bosses, who generally offer a lot of options for getting in hits during strings. My favorite is the Green Monster, whose AI can be somewhat predicted based on spacing and whose attacks have a lot of different arcs and blind spots to consider, almost like a weird Souls-ified Valstrax from Monster Hunter.

That being said, this is still a Sekiro-brained game at its core; you've gotta be buying what they're selling, even if this is a far better implementation than its inspiration. Occasionally the devs will fully succumb to the evil whisperings of the Sekiro demon on their shoulder, and use heavy tracking and obtuse timings to force brute memorization. A few red attacks in particular (Black Rabbit eldest, Laxasia) earned disapproving glares from me for this.

I was going to comment on weapon systems, level design, etc. but honestly you should just read that writeup from before.

Let me make a general point about the Souls series. The selling point for me is their holistic quality: they do a bunch of things passably and a few things well, but combine them into a greater cohesive whole. Dark Souls 1 is an insanely flawed game, more than most would admit, but the way the world design, level design, resource management, and themes wrap into each other makes me willing to overlook a lot of issues. Later Fromsoft Souls-type games are frustrating to me because they place an emphasis on combat that the mechanics aren't strong enough to support, while either failing to improve the persistent shortcomings of other elements or outright regressing in them.

Lies of P is nice because it improves the combat enough to justify a Dark Souls 3/Sekiro balance to me, while everything else is at least good enough. Bosses in Souls type games are pale shadows of Monster Hunter fights, and player toolkits and expressivity are pale shadows of Nioh 2; I would even say those games are "better," because I value their excellence in those single areas enough to overlook their flaws. But Lies of P is a solid, respectable, enjoyable overall package that actually iterates on its inspirations. It's fun!

One of my favorite gaming experiences and my favorite Soulslike. A combination of Bloodborne and Sekiro was bound to win me over. It’s so amazing how so many people were extremely excited, but weary because of soulslike games past as well as this being from a new studio and they blew everyone’s expectations out of the water.

The world design, lore, soundtrack, combat, and characters are all immaculate and so well made. It was entirely unexpected this would actually improve upon Fromsoft’s combat and game design. From the weapon system with its combinations of weapon heads and handles, rally system but having to block for it to work, markers on the map/level layout for side quests, and more there were so many nice additions. Krat is so well designed and atmospheric that I love just looking and walking around. It’s one of my favorite gaming locations. The soundtrack is beautiful and I love being able to play vinyl in the hotel.

I loved a ton of the bosses, namely Laxasia, King of Puppets, Andreus, and the final boss. Most all of the bosses had amazing designs, lore, and movesets and had a high difficulty.

I love how this has a more in your face story similar to Sekiro. I can’t wait for the dlc/next game teased in the endings and to replay the game and try and platinum it. Highly recommend this to anyone!

We're at a point where people are finishing their full playthroughs for Lies of P and leaving proper reviews instead of just giving it 1 star calling it trash because they can't get past the first few bosses.

Lies of P is so close to being a perfect game yet so far, there are many flaws with this game that have stopped this from being a 5/5 for me so I'm just gonna get them out of the way

-Rolling and jumping isn't the best
-90% of enemies are complete damage sponges
-Unrewarding guard breaks
-Weight system is heavily flawed
-Half of the bosses have awful move sets and don't feel like they belong at all (other half are amazing)
-Voice acting could be better

I'm not really gonna develop on these flaws, if you've played the game for long enough you will understand exactly what I'm talking about.
The combat does feel a tad bit stiff sometimes but lets be real... we are playing as a puppet.

Luckily the positive outweigh the flaws by miles, there's too many to list but here's a few of my personal favourite features from the game.

-Amazing story that will honestly suck you in and make the journey interesting enough to disregard the flaws
-Atmosphere that is better than most souls games imo. Often found myself stopping to just observe my surroundings
-Customisation of weapons, clothing, body modifications, etc. This is perfect, the team honestly nailed this part of the game.
-Side characters, some better than others but you end up caring about them more than you had expected.
-Boss design, again some better than others but the good ones are gooooood.

A few extra comments:
One thing I cant overlook is how you're really pushed to make use of consumables and throwables in this game rather than just have it stack up in your inventory, I really did enjoy this and often went to visit merchants to stock up before bosses.
The parry window is very small which can be good depending on who you ask, personally I didn't mind it as it felt really rewarding guarding them super fast hits.

So yeah, Lies of P is amazing. If you've been put off by some fromsoft dick rider do ignore them and give it a shot, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Played on Xbox gamepass.
37 hours total, explored everything.

Lies of P foi um dos jogos mais aguardados por mim esse ano, o termo ''soulslike'' ou só ''parecido com Dark Souls'' já é algo que fisga minha atenção imediatamente. Com o Pinóquio sendo domínio público agora, a ideia de uma Dark Fantasy baseado na história do mesmo já é algo que chama muita atenção. Lies não foi o jogo perfeito que achei que seria, ou que estava achando durante boa parte da jogatina, mas chegou muito perto.

A qualidade da lore desse jogo é algo simplesmente incrível, o tanto de detalhe, camadas, filosofia e reflexões que o jogo passa é absurda, e de uma forma menos ambígua e mais jogada na sua cara. O jogo tem cutscenes mostrando quem você é, onde tem que ir, quem é tal pessoa, te deixando sempre a par dos acontecimentos, e claro que acompanhado de toneladas de lore em dialógos com personagens, itens, e no mapa pra todos que gostam de se aprofundar, é world-building top-notch. A história em si também é muito boa, cheia de reviravoltas e aconticimentos marcantes, os caras sabem que lore é essencial num jogo desse tipo, e simplesmente arrasaram. E que joguinho lindo de morrer hein? Meu Deus do céu, era screenshot a cada cinco segundos no controle do Series, a cidade de Krat é simplesmente lindíssima, a cada lugar novo era um ''uau'' diferente, cada paisagem, cada cénario, cada sala extremamente bem detalhada... nossa. Embora o jogo tenha perdido um pouco da inspiração nos últimos dois capitúlos com locais repetitivos, em especial o último mapa, ele ainda consegue ser um dos jogos mais lindos que já joguei em seus maiores momentos.

O gameplay em si é bom, ele é basicamente um mix de Dark Souls na defesa, Bloodborne na regeneração de vida (mas você só regenera vida quando defende normalmente e depois ataca, não quando simplesmente apanha), e Sekiro no parry, mas na real? Aprenda o Parry, ou simplesmente se prepare pra morrer MUITO, digo, morrer vai ser normal, mas a esquiva aqui infelizmente não é tão eficaz, pois os inimigos possuem uma barra invísivel de stagger pra aplicar um golpe letal, o tempo que você passa desviando dos ataques, acaba perdendo stamina pra atacar e defender e eventualmente atacar e dar parry que enchem a barra de stagger deles, e pior, eles possuem golpes letais que só podem ser defendidos com o bloqueio perfeito, que possuem uma janela minúscula pra apertar o botão. Como se não bastasse isso, o jogo meio que prioriza builds focadas em velocidade pois agora entra o grande vilão do jogo, literalmente: os bosses. A sua grande maioria é incrível, design, apresentação, espetáculo visual, moveset, arenas, trilha sonora, mas infelizmente, praticamente todos da metade pra frente possuem segunda fase com uma segunda barra de vida enorme, era um saco ter que passar por uma fase até ter chance de aprender o moveset da segunda toda santa hora, é um mais díficil que o outro, alguns beiram o injusto. A trinca final de chefes é algo de alterar a personalidade se você usar build tank e não focar no parry, eu costumo variar entre Greatsword e espadas comuns, então se você não tiver upgrades de recuperação na defesa e parry, esquece, esquiva é quase inútil pra alguns chefes. Pra se ter noção, eu estava com cerca de 40 de vitalidade, tomava 3 tapas dos chefes e vapo, fiz respec, coloquei 20 de vitalidade e foquei em diminuição de dano físico, aumentando capacidade e motricidade (força), junto a um foco total em parry e ignorando a esquiva, automáticamente as coisas facilitaram. Talvez eu tenha me adaptado errado? Mas o jogo realmente parece priorizar só um estilo de jogo. Um adendo importante: usem os arremesáveis sem dó nem piedade, eles são incríveis nesse jogo, os que usam elementos atirados nos chefes com suas respectivas fraquezas tiram um dano ferrado.

Do terço final pra frente Lies of P vira uma verdadeira pedreira, beirando o injusto as vezes, e em minha sigela opinião um jogo mais díficil que os Soulsborne (Não sei do Sekiro pois ainda não joguei), ele é imperdoável e a janela pras erros é mínima, mas talvez seja algo que mude nos eventuais replays, tenho certeza que vou acabar gostado de Lies of P mais e mais, no fim ainda é um jogo incrível, entregando tudo em todos os setores, cada atalho genial liberado pra um novo bonfire, o alívio, a tristeza, em seus melhores momentos Lies alcança o nível de suas inspirações, entregando o melhor soulslike fora da From, e com o estúdio entregando um jogo dessa grandeza, mal posso esperar o que eles vão fazer numa eventual sequência, que não sei se será em formato de DLC, mas que com certeza virá.

PS: O jogo rodou o fino no monstrinho, só com algumas eventuais flickadas em cutscenes, mas em gameplay foi otimizadinho.

Lies of P copies from Bloodborne and Sekiro like a child does from his friend's homework, it has all the answers but it doesn't understand the assignment.

Developer Round8's main takeaway from Dark Souls is that you die a lot, and everyone seems to really like that about it. After all, it's telling you to Prepare to Die right in the title, so clearly that's what people show up for. Well, Lies of P would like you to die too, only it's not so invested in making anything about that loop fun. Round8 has not read deep enough to figure out what makes Dark Souls so engaging and has produced a frustratingly clumsy imitation for it, one that is at times mean-spirited and cheap because that's what Round8 assumes Souls to be.

Lies of P's combat system places a significant emphasis on perfect-parries, which are initiated by hitting the block button a few frames before the enemy's attack lands. Against normal field enemies who throw out one or two attacks at a time, this feels pretty good. Bosses, however, love to initiate absurd 15-hit combos full of staggered animations and straight up fake-outs intended to trip you up and punish you, and that's where I start to fall off with how Lies of P operates. The speed at which your parry is initiated and the level of precision involved makes this system unreliable against flurry attacks, and a severely neutered dodge roll gives you little to fall back on. The game also takes a very Dark Souls 3 "poise for me but not for thee" stance, so I hope you don't mind watching Timothee Chalamet slowly get his wooden ass back up until you save enough Quartz to upgrade his P-Organ so he can dodge while prone.

Perfect-parries, fable arts (see: Dark Souls 3's weapon arts), and charge attacks are all necessary for quickly building stagger damage, because of course this game has a stagger mechanic. It also makes no attempt to convey when you should be pressing the attack or playing defensively, because it obfuscates its stagger meter for absolutely no good reason. Almost all bosses have a second health bar, too, because they all want to be the giant monkey from Sekiro so badly. At this point, I think Sekiro's impact on game design has been a net negative.

Round8's rote copying doesn't end there, however. The door knights from Dark Souls 2, giants from Dark Souls 3, sawtooth blade from Bloodborne, and animation for attempting to use an out-of-stock consumable from Dark Souls are all here. A veritable greatest hits. Round8's wholesale theft isn't limited to Fromsoft, however. Skip this next paragraph if you don't want to spoil some late game character beats and reveals:

Lorenzini Venigni, a friendly NPC who upgrades your Legion Arm (think Sekiro's shinobi prosthetic), is an orphan turned playboy millionaire whose parents were murdered after watching a fantasy-adventure film with their son, leaving him in the care of his faithful butler. The identity of his parent's killer? The King of Riddles, of course. Italian Riddler saying "riddle me this" is as funny as it is brazen, but the biggest laugh Lies of P's borderline-litigious character writing got from me was the post-credits reveal of Giangio being a double agent, which is presented in an extremely Metal Gear-esque way, complete with a "Mr. President..." level name-drop that sets up a potential series of public domain Souls-likes.

Doing something new with something old seems to be the overarching theme of 2023, and Lies of P plays hopscotch on that thin line between inspiration and mimicry. Thankfully, Round8's attempts to recontextualize Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio do often result in success, and a strong emphasis on narrative helps pull together borrowed and original ideas to tell a cohesive story that builds upon its primary source material in interesting ways. I was way more invested in the lore of Krat and its inhabitants - yes, even Italian Batman - than I thought I'd be, and some solid art direction and excellent music left me flirting with the idea of a second run.

I also had a great time with the crafting system. You can strap a gigantic blunt wrench head to a pole and use it like a spear, which is exactly the level of stupid I want out of something like this. Hilts determine scaling and attack animations, while blades affect speed and raw damage. Being able to configure a greatsword that's usable on a dexterity build made me feel more inclined to try out weapons without ever feeling like I built my character wrong or locked myself out of something. It's also nice that throwable items remain viable throughout the game, meaning I always had them in my kit whereas I typically phase them out pretty early in most Souls games.

I'm sure this game will attract some annoying people that are very good at video games who will insist Lies of P is beyond reproach, where every flaw is in fact borne from a lack of skill, asserted in a way that reads more as veiled self-aggrandizement than serious criticism. Par for the course with Souls games and the "get good" crowd they attract. I firmly believe that Lies of P is a deeply flawed and derivative game in dire need of re-balancing and new ideas, regardless of how long it took for me to realize I needed to continually dodge left to beat the King of Puppets.

Anyway, I should've stolen Larry Davis' review and changed one or two things about it. Really give you all the true Lies of P experience.

In Video Games, the line between a knock off and an innovative continuation is often razor fine. The amount of great games labeled with the words Doom Clone or God of War rip off over the years are more than enough evidence for that. The very nature of the medium being interactive makes them benefit from clear structures and system after all. Structures and systems that can be easily applied across multiple titles, so it's no surprise you would borrow heavily from existing elements. Even with all that, there is an understandable negative reaction to seeing whole UI designs and set pieces shamelessly ripped off. And I have always struggled the question if I should just condemn that or look past it as embarrassing inspiration. Lies of P was the ultimate test for me, as someone who has spent hundreds of hours with FromSoftware's flagship series and knows a lot of its ins and outs by heart. I was rolling my eyes at similarity just for the sake of it, only for the game to turn around and smack me across the face with the answer: Yes, you can not only heavily ripoff your idols, you can use that as a springboard to transcend them.

As the first big budget title of Korean developer Neowiz, Lies of P takes from the literary work of Italian author Carlo Collodi's famous Pinocchio story. Although this is less of a 1:1 adaptation, and more a jumping off point to take the moral lessons of that story in order to explore deeper themes like ethics and transhumanism. And the further I descended into the city of Krat, the deeper the rabbit hole got, as I noticed the literary references and themes pile up to construct a cohesive world with immaculate world building. From I what I could find, this seems to be writer and director Choi Ji-Wons first big budget gig and I can only applaud his skill at weaving an absolutely inspired setting out of what is a patch work job of his big inspirations. There are clear references to the works of Oscar Wilde and the sci-fi stories of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. Even classic anime like Full Metal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell find their way into the city of Krat. Of course, there are also countless parallels to FromSoftwares own catalog with themes of mortality, how some are willing to seemingly doom the entire world for their ability to cheat fate and if there can even be some kind of some kind of moral or ethical justification for those very decisions. It's masterfully crafted, and I'm far from done sifting through its dense lore, a feeling I honestly haven't experienced since first diving into the original Dark Souls trilogy.

Just as important as the lore in a game, is its soundtrack wich turned out to be a mixed bag. And I can clearly separate the music in two very distinct categories. There is of course the non-diegetic soundtrack, which consists of your typical biblical choirs that play during big boss fights. Their epic, their bombastic and honestly something I'm really tired of. I couldn't pick them out of line up even if you held a gun to my head. I miss the days when boss themes in this genre had interesting compositions, like the theme of Lord Gwyn or Seath the scaleless from Dark Souls 1. What is exceptional however is the diegetic music played throughout the game. There are vinyl records to collect that can be listened to in the hub while you do your typical busywork like level up or weapon upgrades. They can also be heard throughout various places in Krat. Fitting with the city's theme of being heavily inspired by french culture, they consist of classical melodies with french lyrics, actually sung by Korean Artists. Which gives them an additional lair of other worldliness while you traverse the ruined streets of Krat. It's a style that I would love to see composer Yeakun Yoo develop further if he hopefully sticks with composing another Video Game.

On the gameplay front, Lies of P is also the closest one can get to ever matching FromSoftware's Souls formula. It's a true grab bag of all the modern FromSoftware mechanics. From the basic 1 vs 1 combat against bigger foes, to the aggressive tug of war that was introduced in Bloodborn that encourages you to get health back by fighting aggressively. Mechanical Lies of P is more than excellent. It's finally a soul-like that puts heavy weight behind your build decisions. To the point where the game makes it incredibly easy to respec your character. You're incentivised to experiment with all the options given, while also immediately teaching you the benefits of learning how to get enemies to stagger and parry their attacks. From increasing the chance of giving enemies fatal hits, to being able to negate damage entirely and even breaking their weapons. Of course, your weapons can break as well, with you having to repair them mid-battle leading to tens moments. This creates a wonderul tug of war where you're on equal footing with most enemies. I enjoyed those moments immensely where you decide to stick with parrying a flurry of attacks, get them to stagger for a fatal blow and using his recovering time to repair your weapon before jumping back into the battle. The dodge roll does exist, and can even be upgraded further, but unlike its inspirations it tends to be entirely situational. There is a prosthetic arm as well, ripped straight from Sekiro, that opens additional combat options. Among other things, you get a hook shoot to pull enemies towards you, a flamethrower and an arm canon. This result in a variety list of combat options while still being able to design everything around a few core mechanics. And those mechanics are used in some of the best boss fights in my opinion, with them even outdoing a FromSoftware staple. Twice. A 4 vs 1 fight that doesn't suck and gives you the option to even the odds in multiple ways. If I had to pick, those fights might be my overall favorites in the game, both in how they are build up from the very beginning of the game and then when the game finally pulls the trigger. It's the pinnacle of what I think Lies of P can achieve when it moves beyond its slavish devotion to Miyazaki's work. With spectacular results.

The other side of that devotion is all the parts where the game's falters, often in the exact same ways as Fromsoft. I found most of its last third to be a bland slog. Locations that conceptually should be fantastic, but fall flat in execution. In a game based around the concept of living puppets and philosophical questions about what makes one human or what a conscience even is, a graveyard of discarded puppets should be amazing. But it turned out to be one of several uninspired locations that had me just run through them blindly, not regretting that decision for a second. And one of several poison swamps Lies of P throws you into aswell, bringing the game's stellar quality down for me. Myazaki really put the brainworm in developers heads with his poison swamp obsession for all eternity. Please, stop it, get some help.

And as overall polished as combat is, even Neowiz could not iron out all of the typical souls like issues. I'm willing to cut them some slag as it's their first big title, but in the last third these issues just piled up in a way I could not ignore anymore. The camera getting stuck in smaller areas, enemies that spam you with status effects and predictable ambushes that stopped being surprising 10 years ago. If it was just a single area, that be fine, but it's a consistend drop off in quality right until the very end of the game. It really is a case where the setting and gameplay systems carried me through to the “final boss”. I'm saying final boss in quotes because I didn't actually get to fight the true final boss. For some reason, Neowiz decided to grab one of the worst decisions Fromsoftware themselves made in Blooborn and copy it. Hiding the real final boss behind an arbitrary decision with no warning, that you can't go back on. Setting aside the fact that NG+ seems to add some more lore elements and gear, from what little I played at least, I think locking a main path story boss behind another full play through has never set right with me. I just think its bad design. And I really was going to lower the score based on that alone.... Then the post credit scene happened. Needless to say, I'm beyond excited for Neowizes next game. It's a stinger hinted throughout all the game, and then they just confirm it with “yep, we are doing THAT” during the post credit scene. I'm here, my wallet is ready.

The student becomes the master overnight.

Lies of P is a game that came completely out of nowhere, left no impression on me beyond "why would someone make a dark, moody game about Pinocchio", and then managed to completely eclipse every expectation I had. I got back on Game Pass for Starfield and PAYDAY 3, and decided to give this a crack solely as a might-as-well-try-it; not only is this the better of those, it's one of the finest games I've ever played. I mean this honestly and heretically: it is better than all three mainline entries of the Dark Souls series.

Yes, Lies of P is derivative. No, this does not detract from its quality. The obsession with "newness", both as an inherent virtue and as something all creators ought to strive for, is an ideal forced to take root almost exclusively at the behest of European bourgeois Romantics all looking to (ironically enough) copy what Rousseau was telling them to do in the 1700s. Art as a whole has spent centuries upon centuries cribbing from other pieces to put itself together, and it's a fairly recent development that doing shit that someone else did but in your own way is seen as a failure of the artist. I, personally, do not care about this in the slightest. If you do, I would ask only that you examine why you believe this to be so; do you have a legitimate grievance against derivative works for any reason other than because others have told you that they're some synonym for "bad"?

Round8 Studio has come almost completely out of nowhere to deliver something that's immensely fun to play, narratively engaging, and utterly gorgeous in just about every area you can find yourself in. Any developer that can come out swinging this hard and connect with just about every blow deserves to be celebrated. There's a lot to talk about, and certainly a lot of it is in regards to the way that people are talking about it. I'll get my core thesis out of the way, first:

If you like Dark Souls, you'll probably like this game.

If you've made liking Dark Souls into a defining personality trait of yours, you're going to fucking hate this game.

Lies of P rides a fine line of being distinct, but not different. The overlap between FromSoft's PS3-and-onward output is broad, borrowing bits and pieces and rearranging them around; something similar to Sekiro parries, something similar to a Bloodborne dodge, something similar to the Dark Souls 3 enemy ambushes. But Lies of P is distinct enough in its execution of these elements that long-time Souls players will unilaterally be chin-checked when they try bringing over their muscle memory from these other titles.

Perfect guards are a guard, not a parry, and tapping the block button Sekiro-style will make you eat a hit. The dodge offers fast, generous invincibility, but it's never as safe as the one in Bloodborne is; enemies using their big red attacks will cut through your i-frames by design, encouraging you to either parry or move well out of the way. Enemies will usually come in ones and be very obvious, but many will hide just out of sight in the hopes of clipping players who haven't yet been trained to look around before charging past a blind corner. The game is uncompromising in demanding the player to meet it on its terms, rather than copying wholesale from the games that obviously inspired it and allowing the skills you learned there to completely carry over.

If you try playing this exactly like every other FromSoft Souls game you've played up to this point, you will lose, and hard. If you can not (or will not) adapt, you will probably get filtered out by the Archbishop and start publicly wondering why anyone likes this game.

There's a very strange — and frankly, it feels borderline dishonest — set of complaints I've seen where people are just outright wrong about the way the game functions, and they then use their incorrect assumptions as a base from which to knock on the game. I've seen complaints that large weapons aren't viable because you don't get poise/super armor on heavy attacks; this is blatantly untrue, and charge attacks with heavy weapons will regularly blow straight through an enemy hit. People say the dodge is unreliable, but it really isn't; if you're getting caught, you're either messing up a (fairly generous) timing or you're getting hit by red fury attacks, which the game clearly tells you cannot be rolled through. People say it's an aesthetic rip-off of Bloodborne, and this really only applies to a couple of the eldritch enemies; Parisian streets, circus theming, and fantastical automatons lend to a pretty distinct visual identity from any of the other heavy-hitters in the genre.

People say the voice acting is bad, but most of the cast is made up of established, talented stage and screen actors returning from other games like Elden Ring and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, where their performances were lauded; they sound borderline identical to what they've done since just last year, so what makes it acceptable there, and laughable here? People say the translation is bad, but I only noticed a single grammar mistake and typo in my entire playthrough, and they were both buried in the flavor text of a gesture; the rest of the writing offered some evocative lines that managed to bounce between introspective, beautiful, and the coolest fucking thing I've ever read in my life. Where are these complaints coming from? Did we play the same game? It makes no sense. I'm losing my mind trying to figure out how anyone even came to most of these conclusions. It really feels like the most vocal naysayers only played enough of Lies of P to come up with a few surface observations and then made up the rest wholesale.

None of this is to imply that the game is without fault, because it isn't. Boss runs are still present in all of their vestigial glory, consistently adding a mandatory and boring twenty seconds before you can retry a failed boss attempt. Elite enemies — especially in the late game — are often such massive damage sponges that it's a complete waste of time and resources to actually bother fighting the ones that respawn. The breakpoint at which an enemy gets staggered is a hidden value, so you're always just hoping that the next perfect guard will be enough to trip it; we've already got visible enemy health bars here, so I can't see why we don't get enemy stamina bars, too. (Stranger of Paradise continues to be the most mechanically-complete game in this sub-genre.)

For these faults, though, there are at least as many quality-of-life changes that I'm astounded haven't been adopted elsewhere already. Emptying your pulse cells (your refillable healing item) allows you the opportunity to get one back for free if you can dish out enough damage. Theoretically, as long as you can keep up both your offense and defense, you have access to unlimited healing. It's such a natural extension of the Rally system, where you can heal chip damage by hitting foes; Bloodborne's implementation of blood vials looks completely misguided next to this. If you have enough Ergo to level up, the number in the top right corner of the screen will turn blue, no longer requiring you to manually check if you've got enough at a save point. When a side quest updates, the warp screen will let you know that something has happened, and where to start looking for the NPC that it happened to.

It's a challenging game, but it really isn't that hard. I do agree with the general consensus that it would be nice if the perfect guards could be granted a few extra frames of leniency. I managed to start hitting them fairly consistently around halfway through the game, but it's going to be a large hurdle that'll shoo off a lot of players who don't like such tight timings. Tuning it just a little bit would help to make it feel a bit more fair without completely compromising on the difficulty. Everything else, I feel, is pretty strongly balanced in the player's favor; I got through just about every boss in the game without summoning specters and without spending consumables, but they were all there for me if I really needed them. I'd like to go back and play through it again, knowing what I know now, and really lean into the item usage. It's not like you won't wind up with a surplus, considering how easy everything is to farm.

I understand that Bloodborne is something of a sacred cow, especially on this website — it's currently two of the top five highest-ranked games — so anything that seems like it's trying to encroach on its territory is going to be met with hostility before all else. I understand. It's a special game for a lot of people. That said, I'd suggest going into Lies of P with an open mind and a willingness to engage with the game on its own terms; you might manage to find it as impressive of a work as I do.

Quartz is stored in the P-Organ.

Lies of P never manages to escape the shadow of its inspirations. I’ve played nearly a dozen Souls-likes and none have had this gargantuan of an obsession with Souls aesthetically and mechanically. Anyone who has seen gameplay will go “haha, Bloodborne,” but it’s actually a blend of a majority of FromSoftware’s modern catalog.

I could sit here drawing hundreds of lines on a whiteboard connecting how much of this game wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but I don’t particularly care to focus on that flaw: This is my favorite non-FromSoftware Souls thus far, and while Neowiz’s overreliance on familiar genre tropes saps memorability from the journey, I’m teeming with excitement for this developer’s future and this was a truly wonderful (albeit painful) 35-hour journey.

Lies of P makes a strong case for itself with the tightest mechanical foundation in any Souls-like, only matched by Team Ninja's Nioh—and even then, I enjoy playing Lies of P far more. It is the first FromSoftware-inspired title to realize the potential of the most exhilarating moments in that iconic franchise.

I was also in shock experiencing the game’s high difficulty. Souls-likes are often easier, which I attribute to the lack of fluidity in most of those titles. It’s hard to justify a deeply challenging experience when your game feels like shit to control, yet Lies of P pulls no fucking punches. This is one of the hardest games I’ve played.

Several bosses, level design quirks, and enemies match the oppressive difficulty of Bloodborne: The Old Hunters and Dark Souls 3's DLC. Hitting credits was accompanied by a massive sigh of relief. I'm still in awe by how intensely this game had sharpened me; I had to ascend to Godhood during the finale to come out of the other side.

The consecutive perfect parries I was pulling off considering the game’s exceptionally tight parry window can only be explained by the birth of a sixth sense. I experienced short bursts of what it felt like to become superhuman, and I was shaking during the final moments of many boss fights. It has been a long time since my heart has pounded that hard.

Several bosses took me 10+ tries, with six or seven in particular taking more than an hour each. The longest I spent on a single boss was around two hours and thirty minutes, although this was because that fight in particular forced me to get good at the game.

It’s not just frustrating difficulty for the sake of it, either (excluding one awful boss). Lies of P justifies its intensity with fantastic fights and over-the-top visuals that will certainly stick with me. If you love the unhinged move-sets and animations from Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, or Elden Ring, you will feel right at home here. A few in particular are likely making it on a list of some of my favorites ever.

Lies of P also benefits from excellent mechanical additions. I initially thought weapon durability would be a novelty, but having to manage it within a fight is intense, especially when some bosses are marathons and others attack so fast that there aren’t many opportunities to sharpen it.

Being able to break opponents' weapons by doing enough consistent perfect parries (or attacking them while they’re blocking) is an incredible feeling, especially because it can greatly reduce their reach and lessen the damage they deal. Being rewarded with a fundamentally easier fight because you took the time to learn parry timings is awesome.

Parrying to regain health is similarly brilliant, alongside the absolute clutch addition that allows you to restore healing items if you’re out by hitting enemies enough. I have pushed through a good few bosses by being consistent in my defense and offense to restore Pulse Cells. Bosses even restore health passively through a faded red bar, which always puts the pressure on the player to be aggressive.

There’s also a posture system similar to Sekiro, where parrying and dealing damage will gradually whittle away at an enemy or boss. When you break their posture, you can deal a fatal strike; it won’t kill them nor remove a full HP bar like Sekiro does, but it deals a great amount of damage and resets their passive healing bar.

I also love that the weapon system allows you to separate the hilts and blades to combine them into whatever monstrosities you please. I’ve seen some really funny stuff out there, and through my own experimenting, there’s tons of potentially goofy combos. I wish it was easier to spec into other weapon types, but that’s just a normal Souls issue.

The expected leveling system is present, but the most vital progression mechanic are P-Organs. Each of the benefits they provide are vital towards making your battles against bosses go from “what the hell” to “okay, this is possible.” Do not underestimate how important those buffs can be. Two in particular are somewhat overkill because they are necessary to make the dodge not feel like ass; Neowiz probably should have just made that part of the base dodge.

And while the game has a lot of love for Soulsborne aesthetically, many moments do far more with it than just brushing the surface level. Running through abandoned train stations, underground malls, and industrial factories battling carnival-esque puppets, toys brought to life, or gigantic mechanical monstrosities absolutely ruled. Quite a few designs are incredible, and I found that the more Lies of P strayed from what I’m used to in Soulsborne, the more engaged I was. Really makes me hope the next Neowiz title relies less on those tropes, as this game’s most original ideas are phenomenal.

In particular, Lies of P has a mechanic where you rest in a hotel and listen to music. Throughout the game you find vinyl records acquired by either completing quests or killing certain enemies. Return to Hotel Krat, pop that bad boy in, and enjoy. It's a refreshingly unique concept for a game that is so clearly in love with FromSoftware. Actively inviting the player to just sit there and enjoy some good tunes seems simple, but it’s the best.

I’m a bit mixed on the soundtrack. The songs you play on the vinyl are wonderful, but the boss music is too Bloodborne with its epic orchestra and intense choir. Lies of P’s aesthetic differences call for a different sound. The world has a somewhat modern, European-town setting and it’s mostly focused on a steampunk, clockwork feel. One song that appears within the world stands out to me, as it's related to an in-world character's performance, and it's absolutely beautiful. Stuff more in that line would have really worked. Yes, I would happily listen to a lady serenading me in French during a boss fight.

The ending is sincerely beautiful. The way this narrative plays with the most notable aspects of the traditional Pinocchio story and weaves it into the narrative is brilliant. Questioning the humanity of puppets and the nature of the "I want to be a real boy" concept is the core of this story. It has some parts of the "less is more" cryptic storytelling in Soulsborne, but the main narrative beats are clear and compelling. I won't go much further into story spoilers, but I have a lot great things to say about it.

Lies of P is a grand time. It might lack originality, but it makes up for this in execution. It’s the closest a Souls-like has come to capturing FromSoftware’s magic and I could see myself bumping this up to a 4/5 with more reflection. I cannot wait to see what Neowiz makes next.

Sou um pouco suspeito em falar sobre jogos SoulsBorne pelo fato de ser um dos meus gêneros favoritos de jogos, mas Lies of P merece muitos elogios por ter feito algo tão espetacular e bem feito. Os desenvolverdes realmente fizeram boas escolhas na criação desse jogo, ele não foge muito da fórmula souls que já é bastante conhecida, mas ele consegue ser único tanto em seu combate tanto em sua história.

Lies of P na minha opinião é o melhor jogo SoulsBorne não feito pela FromSoftware. Seu combate é bem satisfatório quando você domina o Parry, diferentemente de Sekiro onde você poddia ficar apertando várias vezes o botão de parry, aqui você tem que acerta no momento certo, pois a janela para o próximo parry não é tão curta quanto é no Sekiro, a luta no todo não é tão rápida no Sekiro, mas é bastante satisfatória também.

A trilha sonora é muita boa, acho que as músicas de lutas contra os Bosses deveriam ter tido uma atenção maior, mas em compensação as musicas do Discos e as que tocam nas casas dos moradores de Krat são um espetáculo: Feel, Quixotic e Fascination são minhas favoritas.

A estética de Lies of P também é algo muito belo, se passa na França no século 19, combina demais com todo o jogo, as áreas são muito bem feitas, o Level Designer chama bastante atenção, as escolhas feitas pelos desenvolvedores foram boas, acho muito legal quanto os jogos tem uma ligação entre áreas muito bem projetadas e que tenha um logica por trás. O único ponto negativo são os atalhos até as Stargazer que eu achei um pouco óbvias demais, muito simples demais, acho que deveriam ter mais ideais do que apenas portas que só abrem do outro lado e elevadores.

Os Bosses são fodas, gostei de praticamente todos, todos tem bastante personalidade, a estética deles é boa e os combates são satisfatórios, só acho que eles erraram a mão na questão da segunda fase, depois de certo ponto do jogo todos eles tem uma segunda fase, e não é que eu não goste, mas acho que perde muito o brilho da luta por ser tão logico que vai ter mais uma fase e que ali não é o fim do inimigo, acho que deveriam ter dado uma alternada nesses bosses, mas é isto. Outro ponto que me pegou um pouco foi as lutas conta os humanos, achei sem graça e bem parecidas, todas.

A historia de Lies of P é incrível, e acho que é um dos pontos mais altos da obra, muito bem feita, não posso falar nada sobre ela porque senão seria um puta spolier, mas achei bem feita, nada é o que parece ser...

Enfim, gostei demais de Lies of P e estou esperando muito seu DLC e a continuação

Here’s a boss fight video I have recorded for this review. It doesn’t necessarily support my thoughts, but in case you want to watch it, here you go: https://youtu.be/ALLPMFvZ0Mo?si=0BJtAlatypNdsbwH

Also, spoiler warning. I’m gonna namedrop every important boss and local so consider reading this after you are done with the game.

What I expected from the demo playthrough was that this game was just gonna be a typical Souls game with a deflection mechanic. What I got in the end with the 30+ hours of journey is that this game is…. still a typical souls game, but with the combination of the best aspects of the modern post-DeS/pre-ER FROM games. Of course, there are some downfalls driven from that scope, but I won’t sugarcoat that my experience with this game was almost close to my first playthrough of Bloodborne. If this game came out in 2015, it would have been my identity to praise this game till death. Of course, this won’t be my game of life, because at this point in my gaming journey, I’m more interested in games that aren’t really souls-like, but there was a spark of joy to have for a long-time fan of the formula.

Lies of P’s thematical structure is similar to BB at first glance. There’s a dying city, there’s also a problem with outbreak of monstrosities, celestial beings behind the veil, yadayda… you know the drill. But once you dive into the game, you can see that the game is trying to convey a different thing while maintaining the value of the traditional Souls game.

In the older Myazaki’s Souls games. There’s a sense that the world in that game is an elaborated place instead of just being a pretty background. When we go back to Demon’s Souls, you might remember that you have to open the giant gate in the castle area, pick up the key and use it to open the doors in the asylum area and activate the mining elevator in the mine area, all for the one purpose: opening the shortcut or the next passage. Even though they are just a little detail, you wouldn’t disagree that this little detail in interactions make each level feel distinguished and elaborated. While this environmental detail is what FROM still excels at, you can’t deny that modern FROM games aren’t really good at delivering that premise as they look more dungeon-y than a thematically accurate place. This aspect got worse after Dark Souls 3 and we all know that Elden Ring introduced soulless manufactured mini-dungeons, which kinda ruined the game as a whole even with the inclusion of Legacy Dungeons.

Compared to this, Lies of P is full of elaborated environmental details and interactions that convey the game feel. For example, one thing you will realize soon is that this game took place around the pseudo-Belle-Époque era. To elaborate it, the game actually introduces levels themed around such as a gigantic factory manufacturing dolls, a gigantic market arcade, and a world expo with grandiose exhibitions. And those levels are, instead of being too dungeon-y, structured like an actual place for that purpose. You have to lower the pipe hanging on the crane to make a shortcut in the factory. You can ride the tram that was shown at the beginning to open a way to the expo. The arcade area is full of little shops that function as ambushes, lootable places, and backdoor shortcuts. In this aspect, Lies of P holds the torch as the best non-FROM souls-like that gave a shit about environments. If I have to nitpick, there are some obstacles that made me question “Why can’t I just jump over this”, but honestly the stronger part is so strong that I kinda forgot about it.

We are still talking about the world-building so I can add more about the thing I liked about Lies of P’s way of distinguishing itself from other FROM Souls games.
Firstly, I think the members of Hotel Krat are much more likable and sympathetic than any FROM’s hub dwellers. In FROM Souls games, after the 4 similar entries, you kinda see the boring patterns of the NPC placements. A calm and cryptic maiden figure that levels you up, A cynical-ass depressed soldier, A bulky blacksmith, and some boring merchants here and there. And you know some of them will go off and die in a ditch at some point. Bloodborne did kinda experimental things with survivors in the chapel, but they didn’t do stuff like that after BB which is pretty weird. While Lies of P still has that cryptic maiden figure, the other NPCs are full of distinguishable characteristics. A nerd girl who is very enthusiastic about gears, A CEO of the puppet industry who has a depressing backstory even with the hilarious facade, a swindler treasure hunter who tries so hard to be known as a real one, and a hotel counter robot that secretly loves the hotel owner. You may say these characters are almost like caricatures, but I personally think some amount of campiness can work as a good contrast in the consistently depressing scenario. Also, the motivations of those characters are well-established compared to FROM game NPCs which require two parts of Vaatividya videos to understand the full context.

Secondly, I think the collectables in this game are pretty neat. Unlike Souls games, there are varied types of collectables to get the lores and trivia behind the world. Message notes, guide tour books, newspapers, advertisement posters, and all that. While there are some Resident Evil documents moments that made me think “There’s no way that people would write this thing before dying lmao”, the varied way of describing the worldbuilding establishes that this world is a place where people actually lived, not a glorified dungeon after dungeon. There were some cute moments too, like the notes from Black Rabbit brotherhood. The message cylinders are probably my favorite addition to this formula since it is thematically accurate and I just like doing the treasure hunt while looking at the visual clues. This game’s strong suit is the environment department, so it works wonderfully when I just can guess the location right away with a blurred picture in the clue. There are also vinyl records to collect which can be played in the hotel lobby. Here’s a thing you should know: this is not the same as the Nier Automata’s jukebox where you can play the in-game themes again. This plays an actual original song just for this sole function! And all the vinyl record music is wonderfully composed fitting to the narrative of certain characters or the general mood so it actually had an intrinsic value for me even if it doesn’t benefit the gameplay department at all. It’s not a lie that I was happier to find records more so than the weapons.

Speaking of weapons, I think Lies of P has probably the best weapon customization in all the souls-likes I’ve played. (I’m only talking about the weapons here. If we are talking about player toolsets as a whole, there are many games that did better than this.) One of the biggest gripes I had with Souls games, in general, is that experimenting with other weapons requires an entire stat rollback or a complete re-upgrade for that new weapon just to make it useful. And even then you are limited to given weapons moves which are pretty basic most of the time. In a way, all the Souls games “build progression” can be boiled down to [Get the base weapon] - [Stick to that weapon till you find a better weapon with the same stat requirements] - [Change it to that new weapon and fully upgrade it] - [Stick to it till the end]. Even with the stat rollback functions, people rarely want to change the gears ignoring the floods of “other options” in their inventory, because trying out other weapons optimally is such busy work to do in the initial playthrough. In an ideal world, we should be able to get the Armored Core treatment where you can pull out every weapon from a cargo, but that won’t happen in the Souls game structure because they need to drip-feed the reward to fill the exploration aspect, like the hidden weapons or upgrade materials.

Lies of P took the middle ground by making the weapon parts combinable. Blades are completely separate from your stat requirement and you can upgrade these parts with moonstones. Handles on the other hand require your stat requirement, but it doesn’t determine the overall power of the weapon and it changes the moveset instead. By combining these two, you can experiment with the builds freely, as your stat requirement or the lack of upgrade materials doesn’t halt you from trying out the weapon customization. For example, you want to try out the drill-like lance which fits your stat requirement. but you may think it is obnoxious to upgrade it from the +1. Then you can just go to the Stargazer, switch the blade to the fully upgraded one, and there you have it! It may have a different speed or attack range, but you still can use the drill lance. By the end of the game, I used 5 or 6 weapons throughout the game without reallocating the stats even once. People say Souls games thrive on build variety, and Lies of P shows how to upgrade the formula to meet that expectations.

If we dig deeper into the combat side, we can find even more interesting changes to the formula. While it is basic, the fable arts and charge attacks are neat additions to the combat system. In a way, this is not a new thing as these things have become standardized since Bloodborne, but these combat options have much more clear purpose in this combat loop - the groggy attack. Unlike the traditional souls games where your basic maneuver leads you to the small victories (enemy stagger) and then big victories(enemy death) in a linear fashion, Lies of P makes you “earn” the small victory by requiring you to do a high skill action: dealing damage with fable arts or charge attacks while the enemy healthbar is glowing white. This mechanic provides two interesting things in your gameplay. Since your fable arts consume the meter and charge attack requires a long start-up time, you have to be more knowledgeable about enemy patterns or your positioning to actually punish, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions as the white bar won’t stay longer. Because some enemies just don’t give you a lot of breathing ground, you have to think about hit trading or ignoring the white bar for now and waiting for the next one.
This interesting dynamics also can be seen from the guard mechanic. Lies of P’s twist on the BB’s regain system is that players can regenerate the lost health by hitting the enemies, but only after you guard the damage. The raw damage will just go straight to the health bar and you won’t get anything after that. However, once you manage to nail down the perfect parry with the guard button, it gives a groggy damage to the enemies and you can also regenerate the lost health a bit, just like when you hit the enemies. But the perfect parry’s frame window is much shorter than Sekiro or Wo Long, so there’s definitely a high-skill ceiling aspect to master this.
This little dynamism makes the game much more than strict whip punishes even if the game is framed as a reactive side on the whole action game spectrum. Also, with this combat framework, the enemies are just fantastically designed. Fitting to the narrative, most of the enemies are malfunctioning dolls or erratic zombies. So most attacks have non-conventional timing with all the twitching joints and irregular steps. Because of this aspect, you can’t just comfortably parry or I-frame dodge every attack from the get-go. You have to consider the enemy attack distance, tracking angle, and your position in the environment to make yourself safe. This is something that lacked in Sekiro where you could comfortably deflect everything (Well, except for some main bosses, mind you!) while being stationary to the point that it feels like a rhythmical Punchout.

The bosses are great examples that elaborate the importance of positioning. The second main boss Scrapped Watchman has insane amount of patterns for an early game boss. It starts out as a simple parry/i-frame dodge test, but then the boss quickly introduces lightning effects on the ground which makes you adjust your movements more thoughtfully. Probably my favorite bosses would be Archbishop and The Swamp Monster. Visually they both look grotesque and cool, there’s a fun aspect of finding a good spot to deflect the attack while maintaining the distance, and also there were some satisfying moments where you have to pull off the groggy attack while the gigantic monstrosity is sweeping around the arena erratically.

Bosses are the highlights of this game, but where the game exceptionally excels at is how they handle the normal enemies. I heard that the director’s favorite Souls game is Dark Souls 2 from some rumors around here, but it surely shows his taste in some areas with an extreme amount of ambushes, traps, enemy compositions, and just a sheer amount of enemy numbers after the mid-game levels. I reviewed in Thymesia that souls-like games really need to grow balls to introduce multiple hazards at once, but they did it with this game. Also, there are just TONS of different mini-bosses. Each of them has borderline-boss-tier move lists hidden in their sleeves, and there is a bunch of new type of elites in one area. And these enemies appear only two or three times in the whole game? This uniqueness makes the area much more memorable than it should be. There’s a swamp level near the end of the game where all the abandoned dolls are gathered and crushed, and there was a unique scary-looking scrapped monkey mini-boss which scared the shit out of me. It has a fun moveset, but also it really elevated the mood of that freakish environment. Considering that most games just try to reuse the elite enemies over and over once it was introduced, I kinda liked the approach here, where it uses the unique enemy sparingly to make the area more special.

However, there are some dirty tricks the game abuses to the point that it kinda soured my enjoyment a bit -which is also the reason why I couldn’t give this game the perfect score-. Even though the game respects your positioning, there are some baffling enemy patterns that are just designed to “hit” you. If you have read all of my other reviews, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the god damn automatic movement assist from the enemy's side. If you ever felt like this game is a bit “floaty”, it’s because of this. Some of the patterns just ignore the context of that animation and slide them to the front so that the attack swing collides with the player. The Eldest of Black Rabbit Brotherhood shows a clear example -even though conceptually, the fight is good-. There’s a vertical strike attack combo which gives you massive damage if you get hit. Looking at the animation, it looks like he is swinging the blade in the same position as the legs are locked in one place, so you think it is safe to distance from him a bit and then prepare your next move by charging up the heavy attack, healing, or grinding your weapons… something like that. But then he slides way further than you anticipated so you get smacked by the chunk of iron, and then stun-locked to death. This dirty trick can be worse if it is combined with red attacks which require you to do a perfect parry or do a manual positioning to negate the damage. If you have completed the game, there’s no denying that Laxasia’s first phase is the perfect example of the great test of spacing, finding the punish window, and parrying. But then the second phase shows up and it forces you to parry the red attack from the sky above and the attack distance is absurdly large and fast that you are forced to remember the exact TIME to parry that attack. Considering that most red attacks so far had some window to play safe, this one felt absurdly forced. At this point, the automatic gap closer became a normal thing in action games built with Unreal Engine (I’m looking at you, En Garde, Sifu, Thymesia, and all that janky shit I played) but I wish this game didn’t abuse this trick at all, because when it didn’t rely on it, it worked wonderfully.

There are more nitpicks to add to this critique, like why are there so many gigantic two-phase bosses, why the puppet king’s first phase is much more interesting than the second phase but then the devs decided to nerf the first phase, why aren’t there many boss weapon upgrade materials in the mid-late game, and why the game didn’t have the interconnectivity of Dark Souls 1 even though there are many oppourtunities with the structures of levels, but even excluding that, there are more reasons to love this game, and it is very cultural one. It might be a cringe reason, but it’s because it’s a Korean game.

You see, I didn’t expect a lot from my home country’s industry. The whole industry here has earned titles like “the gotcha factory of the East”, and “the place where MMORPGs are born and die” and there’s no way I can deny that. It’s a cynical landscape where people’s enjoyment about videogames is heavily concentrated in irl transactions, number crunching and gamblings in disguise. This aspect extends to the indie scene except for some glowing exceptions like Unsouled. But then there’s this game, released by the company built from the web card game in the old days. I was expecting a soul-less clone, a husk of a game with money-grabbing scheme but this actually turned out to be a good game. It also understood the merits of the original Souls games, but it also paved its own ways to twist the source material(Pinocchio) in their unique taste and addressed many issues the original Souls games had. It’s a beautiful holistic combination.
And looking around the forum or communities, even with some mild criticism here and there, it’s quite a scenery to see this game getting big praise from everywhere. Even though I didn’t participate in the development at all, it made me feel happy in some sense. Maybe that subjective thought is the reason why it clouds my “fair and reasonable” eyes to read this game, but what I can’t lie about is that I really really adored this game in the end.

"Only humans practice deception so intensely for reasons that are so... unnecessary."

In my previous review I made a rather kneejerk response to merely seeing Lies of P on the store page, I see the word "Soulslike" as an adjective and I instinctively want to frumple up and cringe like I just had a warhead candy. But hey, it's on GamePass, and Iron Pineapple gave a glowing review for it but with a caviat that though not as bluntly put, is very succinctly written by u/psychebomb in their review about two paragraphs down, which I quote, "If you like Dark Souls, you'll probably like this game. If you've made liking Dark Souls into a defining personality trait of yours, you're going to fucking hate this game."; truer words have never been spoken on this site.

So, I decided to play it, it's practically free to me anyways and I'm just off the credits of the equal parts tranquil and exciting journey of The Last Guardian (review soon maybe) so I'm craving something a little more intense. Intense might be an understatement, right away I can tell I'm less equipped than most Souls games at the beginning, enemies are surprisingly tanky; what gives? Oh, it has the thing like Bloodborne where the enemy goes into a special state after receiving enough damage, then with the finishing blow of a charged heavy attack (or sometimes Fable Arts™, this game's "weapon arts" essentially) they get put into a position to deliver a Fatal Blow™. ...Alright I won't pretend the terminology in this game is a little goofy, but it's not difficult to understand either.
Anyways, the combat is already a lot more close and personal than Souls typically allows, likely due to the near complete rejection of ranged builds (there's only a limited use "gun", consumable throwables, and one weapon with a ranged Fable Art only); to offset this, the game has a parrying system similar to Sekiro where you block on reaction to Perfect Guard™, "but why would I need to do that when I can just circle strafe and block" says the DS1 fan, or "why bother playing the game when I can roll?" says the DS3 fan; the real spice here is this happy marriage of all of the similar mechanics wrapping around to something we saw in Sekrio: Unblockable, unrollable attacks; that can only be avoided by outright outspacing them or Perfect Guarding™ (or in special instances mostly only available to you in the late game). Immediately my Souls poisoned brain clenched, "NO ROLLING?", but the little bit of Sekiro I played clicked in instead, TWANG, I did it! TWANG, TWANG, TWANG, .... grabbed, SLAM SLAM SLAM CRUNCH!!! Oh, and not everything can be blocked either... lol... So I had to get these parts of my brain to agree on something: This isn't Block Souls 1 / 2, or Roll Souls 3, or Rhythmiro, or BloodBoR1ne, but will ask me to juggle all of these things in nearly equal amounts. That is to say, it all amounts to me using all of the knowledge I've accumulated from DeS, DS1, DS2, DS3, ER and Sekiro. To point to any one of these things as the thing it's aping is just plainly incorrect, because playing it like any of those (besides debatably Sekiro) will leave you in for a bad time.

That was a lot of words to basically say "some attacks ignore i-frames" but I cannot stress enough how much they use this to force you to be proficient in a variety of different combat situations. It's not just the bosses too, most enemies in general have an attack like this. You need to decide to space around it or go for the perfect guard. Now how about those enemies and bosses yeah? Overall pretty fantastic, I think the game has a notorious difficulty spike by the 3rd boss, because it immediately asks you to be able to perfect guard and identify when they're going to grab you (it's a subtle cue but you can definitely see it, I ate it like 10 times before finally never being hit by it on reaction). There's one explicit gimmick boss and of course it's probably the worst one in the game, though not nearly as bad as From's worst output (I'd list them but I want to keep those games spoiler free for those who haven't played them yet)
The enemy placement is often difficult in a variety of ways, either in group management, lack of space, or just a strong hitting "elite enemy" as I call em relative to the area you're in; they also love to hide them around corners and behind walls, crates etc. akin to all of the cheekiest moments from Souls and ER, which I absolutely love as it kept me on my toes, and despite that I fell for some obvious traps when I became impatient. The "lack of space" bit was very relevant at a lot of points where I'd switch weapons to a spear or something with a vertical arc to fight in hallways, reminding me of DeS in this regard (good), which leads me to the general level design: Significantly better than DS3, but that's a low bar; probably better than DS2 on average and a hair below DS1 (please stop pretending the game ends at Sen's Fortress, DS1 fans). The constant wrapping around to previous Stargazers (this game's checkpoints) and verticality is very impressive and shows the levels are a lot more deliberately thought out than the likes of DS3 just peppering its straight line with constant bonfires. The one thing the game is significantly weaker on is overall environmental diversity, well, at least compared to DS2 and Elden Ring; it's about on par with Demon's Souls, DS3 and a bit below DS1.

Gone is the habit of the classic Souls "you basically have 3 weapons because if you change you need to completely respec and grind materials", now you can usually buy the ones you need outright without seeking out some random mcguffin in someone's poop shack on the other side of the map to do so; and the weapons are in two parts: you only upgrade the blade, so if you have a good blade already but want to try a different moveset, you can just swap the blade to a new handle. The only downside with this is a lot of weapons are only proficient in either slash or pierce, a good number are fine at both though and if you want to spend the least resources I'd upgrade those. I ended up using probably 8-10 different weapons through my playthrough before settling on this heavy, oversized cleaver looking thing on a "dancer's blade" handle lol. I remember people saying "heavy builds are unviable in this" but I think the opposite, I think they're favored if anything at least for a casual playthrough; lightweight, fast weapons require a lot of Fable Art usage and timing to close the gap which while an extremely active and rewarding playstyle is incredibly demanding in a game that already demands a lot from the player execution-wise.
One thing that can be a little confusing, and again taking the wrong notes from Souls here, is that some upgrades and such can be kind of unclear about how good they are. All you gotta know is that in the skill tree, Dodge Link is a must.

Aesthetically I think the game has a really nice look for the most part, though I'm not as hot on the swamp and castle. People like to go "it's just BloodBorne" but it really isn't, there's been discussion about how both are rarely the architecture described (bcus people genuinely can't identify architecture 99% of the time and just repeat verbatim an architectural word they heard in front of an image they now associate with it with no further study) The weapons in particular are awesome and the ability to have a costume separate from defense items makes it a lot easier to create a look while optimizing stats and not looking like a clown. Tangentially related but the game runs like a dream for me on my 3700x and RTX 3080 at 4k "Best" settings (using DLSS Quality I maintain in the range of like 90-120FPS), all while stuttering less than DS3 ever did on the same system. Also, kind of unreal playing a game like this above 60FPS... It feels so good.
The music is serviceable, some boss themes are better, I just wish the game leaned into the clockpunk styling more and had a more industrial, mechanical, percussion-heavy soundtrack; seeing clockpunk boss with roaring choir orchestral music is serviceable but would've benefited atmospherically from this.

The character writing in this is okay, it's definitely weak at the beginning but a lot of them expand towards the back half as you get to know each other better. I think the story conceptually is pretty neat too, I've been a fan of the whole "what makes a human person?" philosophical conundrum for as long as I could read, and I think the way Lies of P handles it does a serviceable job in this regard, but I won't be reminiscing on it the same way I would DS2 (y'all sleep on that game's narrative too much). This isn't exactly glowing praise, but make no mistake that in this subgenre Lies of P has one of my favorite NPCs and a couple honorable mentions on top of that. One of them kept me engrossed in conversation for almost 10 minutes straight, which I can't say any other has really done. (personal favs are Stockpile Thomas, Ed, Andre, Seigmeyer, Saulden, Vendrick, Seigward, Hewg, Alexander, Rya, Blaidd, Ranni)
I'd decided on a score of 8 a third through or so, but it kind of only got better especially as the rather flexible weapon system kept things interesting for me.

I was quick to judge, and was happily wrong. Lies of P is the big surprise of 2023 imo that easily punches alongside FromSoft's greats, weaker in some areas but stronger in others. I'd place this firmly just above DS2 in my list of "Them wacky soulsemup things", all while having a team that gets completely dwarfed in comparison. Your enjoyment will highly depend on whether or not you're the kind of person who goes "Pac Land did it first" whenever people talk about 2D platformers.

In a word: Riddles.

It's a From Software Action RPG (or FSARPG). Not "kind of like Dark Souls", it just is. The controls, the combat, the actions you can do in combat, the inventory system, the leveling system, the way you upgrade weapons, the stamina gauge, the back attacks, the unintuitive jumping; it literally feels like a FSARPG that came from an alternative universe.

Am I complaining? Not at all. Does it do the FSARPG formula well? Pretty much with only a few snags. Is it hard? Not the hardest, but this is coming from someone whose played and beaten all of these games so I'm fairly biased. Does it do anything new? Yes, a lot of things actually.

This game took the most from Bloodborne, but sprinkled in Sekiro's guard and parry system. The aesthetics and environment are a lot like a less bloody, less claustrophobic Yharnam from Bloodborne; though no less in a state of "Shit's Bad!" No less an interesting setting with it being inspired by "The Beautiful Era" of France, doubly so with the use of humanoid, mutated puppets as the primary antagonistic force. Offers something that isn't too common in video games while allowing for some elaborate designs that makes progressing through the game more engaging. Also gives the same subtle humor from other the FSARPGs where they'd include some real goofball enemies. The wheel skeletons from Dark Souls 1, the naked giant man that rolls all over the place in Bloodborne, and who could forget the screaming dive bombing ninjas in Sekiro who scream "WHOOAAA!!" Lies of P has puppets who are maids, baby puppet enemies that cry, giant clown robots, puppets that stab with chimney sweepers, police puppets wielding stop signs, and certain late-game enemies that have some seriously styling mustaches.
I'm going to assume you know the general flow of FSARPGs and how the gameplay works, since I'll only go over what's different. Blocking is far more vital to your survival. You take chip damage, but you can recover that damage by attacking back at the enemy similar to the rally mechanic from Bloodborne. If you get hit before that, then that recoverable health is gone. If you don't want to take any damage at all then you'll need to master parrying. Simply block before getting hit to negate any damage and deal stun damage to the enemy. Build up enough stun from successful parries and charge attacks, then they'll fall over for a fatal strike. They'll be on their knees for a while so you'll also have a opportunity to heal, apply a buff, sharpen your weapon and so forth. This knocked down status applies to every boss and enemy, and it especially becomes a godsend in later fights where bosses hurt like Hell with long combo strings that, sometimes, feel they take too long. I get that it's more opportunities to parry and stagger them, but there have been times where I'm like "Can I have my turn now?" You can dodge through attacks, but that won't work with the red attacks. These ignore I-frames and are unblockable, plus they can only be countered by perfect parrying them (or physically moving out of way, but that's much harder when you can't utilize i-frames). It's always nerve-wracking when you see these attacks coming, as more often then not it's "Do-or-Die" when you see the red glow.
Weapons come in handles and blades, apart from boss weapons which are just a single weapon. These handles and blades can be assembled and disassembled to your liking. This allows you to utilize a weapon's moveset that you like but is otherwise lacking in damage with its current handle, or perhaps the blade has a fable art that synergizes well with your playstyle. Fable arts are this game's weapon arts, only that both the blade and the handle come with their own art. Some are big attacks, others help with blocking and defense, couple are buffs; but either way it's another factor to consider when building your Pinocchio (I wrote that, but I don't think they ever call the protagonist that). Ultimately whether you engage with weapon building is up to you, as your more then capable of playing this game with the weapons as they are when you first obtain them.
Not unlike Sekiro's prosthetics, you also have a cool mechanical arm that can do a variety of things. You got grappling hook, an exploding shield, landmines, a gun, flamethrower, or the default iron fist for quick left hook in the face. A lot of them aren't too exciting till they get upgraded, then they can deal some serious damage. Till then it can be easy to neglect them, but perhaps it's because I wasn't accustomed to using them at first.
A big thing to note is how linear this game is. While the world believable and makes positional sense, it is a straight line to the end. There are a lot of optional quests and smaller areas for loot and treasure, just don't expect to find anything too extravagant. I don't mind too much, I don't like missing bosses in FSARPGs, but if you get majorly stuck on a boss then tackling a different area or boss isn't an option. Most major bosses do have summonable NPCs if you are really struggling. I did used them a few times and they do take a lot of the stress off, plus the item used to summon them are everywhere. Makes me wonder if it was even necessary to put in that toll.

I don't have too much say on the story. I'm glad it's a lot more clearer of a plot then other souls-likes, even has characters that stick around for a while as you get to learn a lot about them. This means a lot to FSARPG fans, trust me. There's still a lot of lore notes and background details, but it's only there to get additional info on events rather then being the entire story. Also this is Pinocchio but the game really wants you lie at all times. I get the message, lies are part of what makes us human and this is a twisted version of the fairy tale. Writing this out, the theme of lying actually goes deeper then I thought as I think back at the ending, but of course that's spoiler territory.

So, do you like FSARPGs (I'm sure this will catch on in a few years)? Then give this game a shot. Maybe it doesn't do enough new and some aspects of it can cross the line of "Oh this is literally the same as Dark Souls", but as a action-RPG fan these kind of games are some of my favorites to play. They have just the right amount of push and pull with fantastic player expression that keeps me coming back over and over again.

I would also like to mention that the guide I was following put the clearly bad ending as the "Real" ending and now I am doing New Game plus to get the actually nice ending and it's been a few days but I'm still malding at this and... (EDIT: I got the good ending now. Still a good game)

More like Lies of Plagiarism.

This is actually the worst Soulslike game I've ever played. Its existence is an airtight argument for the abolishment of the Soulslike genre.

This game shamelessly copies the aesthetic of Bloodborne. It cherry-picks mechanics from From Software's contemporary releases, haphazardly combining them without attempting to ensure they actually gel.
It's been quite some time since I've played a game with mechanics that actively work against each other the way they do in this. Health regains after taking damage works in Bloodborne because you get rewarded for pressing your attack and maintaining aggression. It adds a sense of accelerated pace to the Souls formula.

It doesn't work when you tie the same mechanics to a block. This is compounded by the fact that blocks knock the player backward.

The parry is among the worst I've ever seen in a game. It's not a frame one parry, and the window is a super tight eight frames--that also locks you into a long animation--so it feels like it has a half-second input delay. This means you have to parry before the attacks hit. It's not difficult, but it just feels unsatisfying. Moreover, the parry barely builds stagger meter, but failing to execute it results in half of your health (or more) being taken, so it's mostly taking a considerable risk for little reward.

The dodge, like many of the character's latent abilities, is underpowered because someone decided that carving out abilities that players should just have and throwing them into a skill tree was a good idea. It's a pathetic way to try and force some layer of progression. Still, it is an active detriment to the experience.

Couple these issues with the fact that bosses have far too much health and very few windows for attack, and these encounters mostly boil down to tests of patience.
It's not even particularly challenging. It just feels fucking awful play. If you're gonna emulate something you closely, you better not miss, and Lies of P fucking whiffs in an almost impressive fashion.

It's clear that the developers did not actually understand the games they were ripping off. Instead, they took unharmonious mechanics, tried to slap them together, and made slight adjustments so it didn't look like they straight-up copied From's homework.

But like the kid in school that tried to cheat off of you, they fucking failed.

I would describe Lies Of P as “serendipity”, a “happy accident” - and by that I mean Lies Of P and its success as a Soulslike are almost certainly an accident.

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I have been annoyed at Lies Of P’s choice of source material for a long time. I think theres 2 reasons for this when I reflect on why:

1. On the face of it, I find any media trying to intellectualize Pinocchio as a bit pretentious and maybe even facile. “What It Means To Be Human” is a theme that has been run into the ground in 40 different directions, especially in gaming where most designers are fixated on choice.

2. In the background, the Soulslike genre has been struggling greatly in trying to measure up to Fromsofts Souls output, and it felt incredibly frustrating that Lies Of P might have been sabotaging its chances at being compelling by focusing on something gimmicky.

Fortunately, Lies Of P has managed to be a very engaging Soulslike, but I also feel like Lies Of P definitely did as much as they could to jeopardize that outcome. In fact, it sometimes feels like Lies Of P is a bit of a clustered mess that manages to work together by sheer luck.

Some questions to ponder: why are puppets fighting like samurai, with intense sword counterplay? What does lying have to do with difficult combat? Why pair deflection-centric combat (aggressive-leaning) with a need to constantly sharpen your weapon (passive-leaning)? Other things are also just very unrelated: so many of the NPCs have 5 minute long disposable feeling “questlines”. Theres like 20 different sub-systems (you likely will not use). Ultimately the antagonistic force is something not even related to Carlo Collidis story and it often (often) made me wonder why they didnt just write something completely original. Why the hell does Gold Coin Fruit work the way it does??? Even when it comes to lying, the game often uses “lie” as a surrogate for the good guy or bad buy answer, why is lying so inconsequential and thoughtless when the game is called Lies Of P?

For the record, these arent things you can levy against Fromsoft. Everything in Sekiro supports the speed of the gameplay. The aggression in Bloodborne is supported by the fact youre a “Hunter”. What the hell do you “stalk” in Lies Of P??

Soulslikes tend to commit a grave mistake: they overcomplicate themselves. I can only guess why they do this, maybe they feel like they need to “innovate” on the formula but the issue tends to be that they dont even understand the formula at default. From where Im standing, Lies Of P didnt really avoid this - it throws just as much stuff at the wall to see what sticks, stuff that doesnt necessarily pair well or harmonize with each other either.

So then how does Lies Of P manage to be so good?

Im gonna be honest: I think its almost exclusively because of the boss design (and maybe by extension, the miniboss design). I think by doing that part right, all the dumb stuff on top of it doesnt matter quite as much. Neowiz deserves all the credit there, without attention paid to that singular aspect, Lies Of P would end up discarded on the pile of middling Soulslikes just like its contemporaries. They got the important thing right and it does alot of work for them. I love boss fights, I probably derive alot (maybe even most) of my enjoyment of Lies Of P from them. Theyre very good, and they elevate all the parts of the game surrounding them.

However Im not content with this, cuz this kind of feels like rewarding bad habits. The bloat and lack of focus arent good things. The Pinocchio thing wasnt a benefit, the liability to the work never seems to be truly offset. I think if Neowiz understood what they were doing when they got The Good Thing right, that that understanding would extend to other aspects of the game - which suggests to me that they didnt understand it very well. It seems likely to me that Lies Of P might be good by mistake, that what they got right might not have been entirely on purpose.

That would be an ill omen. How can I expect anything of Neowiz’s future output when I cant even be certain theyre looking in the right places? It certainly reinforces all the wrong lessons to other devs observing Lies Of P’s success. And this would be immensely frustrating to me, cuz its been so hard to finally get the ball rolling on non-Fromsoft contributions to the genre.

It would be a shame if the first engrossing Soulslike in a long time was just serendipity. Just a happy accident.

For starters, I should say that traditional Soulslike games have never really appealed to me. It's mainly the gameplay, which I find awkward, sluggish, and boring. However, for some reason, I bought Lies of P hoping that it would break this anti-Soulsike curse I have. Unfortunately it did not. I don't think there's anything "wrong" with this game, it may even be a really good soulslike. It's just one of those things; I wish I could like it so I could be a part of it with everyone else, but I just can't.

I think the design of it is wonderful and it captured my imagination with it's aesthetic and world design. In fact, the look of the game is what sold me on it to begin with. The character designs and the setting were impressively well realized. The art direction was on point, consistent, and enchanting. These are the biggest positive things I can say about this game. I think it's impressive that a small indie studio was able to craft something so big.

I pride myself on my ability to be able to enjoy any good game regardless of budget, genre, or time of release. But the one genre I just can't seem to get into is the Soulslike. The only one I've legitimately enjoyed was Kena: Bridge of Spirits and I'm not sure if that's even considered a Soulsike by fans of the genre. Ahh well. Next time I'll resist the urge to buy the pretty Soulslike so I don't dilute the review pool with my distaste of the genre.

Overall I definitely see why this game is beloved by fans of the genre, but even a great design and good atmosphere isn't enough to break me from my dislike of Soulslikes. This is the unfortunate life I live.

I wanted to love this game but unfortunately there are too many annoying things throughout the game that ultimately drags down the experience. While the environment and atmosphere is great, most of the levels are very frustrating to get through and it's just not fun. Not to mention there isn't a lot of variety in the mobs so it's piss easy to wipe them with the exception of some elites. These freaks can sometimes be harder than a boss encounter and for what reason? Since I mentioned the bosses, let's talk about them briefly. I think majority of them are great but there are some random difficulty spikes that didn't really make sense. It didn't feel like these encounters were there to help you get better at the game and its mechanics like they do in FromSoftware games, it does not have THE CLICK. There's not that many gimmicky bosses which was nice and the difficulty was just about right. Will say that there are a bit too many delayed attacks and that brings me to the next point.

I love the addition of parrying but it was something that I couldn't quite master because of the amount of frames however it felt satisfying those odd times you do manage to parry a full combo. The parry window WOULD be fine if it weren't for all these delayed attacks and the constant animation locks. Overall I think it's good and maybe it's something I'd master on NG+.

The Skill Tree is pretty bogus though let me tell ya.. like why on earth are some of these dodges locked behind it? I didn't even pick them up because I want to PARRY attacks not dodge them but it just feels so counterintuitive. I also think it would've helped if there were video previews in the game showing you exactly what some of these things do. I don't wanna put my skill points into something that I don't even know what it looks like and potentially have no use for.

The story is pretty cool, followed up with a solid soundtrack and a good cast of characters. I also liked the quests, they're pretty easy to follow since the game tells you where things are on the Stargazers.

Lies of P is a good Soulslike game that unfortunately falls short of being on that FromSoftware tier. However I think it's a game that people should try and play. It's challenging and enjoyable with a lot of bullshit moments but that in itself adds to the experience.

It's time to lie, today is the day.

Yeah I gotta drop this shit I'm getting filtered too hard. I honestly hate parry gameplay because I don't wanna learn that shit! I want a damn greatshield and I want to 100% block everything. I still think the game is good (for the most part), it feels pretty damn good and I wish I never had to fight a elite enemy or boss ever! Elites and Bosses just have super fucking annoying moves always.

I'm just gonna start with some compliments cause this game does a lot of cool things! The weapon system is pretty fun. I didn't like the moveset of the starting greatsword too much (too much thrusting), but I found a police club with a moveset I liked (have a chargable overhead), but attack range was too small. I put the long greatsword blade on the handle and boom, it ruled. I do wish you could swap scaling on handles without needing unique materials (just use souls like elden ring), cause that means I don't get to experiment really. I liked the vibes and enviroments, wish i got to see more!

The smelter boss I think is actually just loaded with the most annoying moves imaginable. Both him and the electric boss set ground traps and like, I dont want that shit! Elite enemies are too spongy, might as well be bosses with less moves. The ganksquads in this game way more annoying than any other game i've experienced, and they don't have the buffer of me thinking Miyazaki is being a mischievous jokester. Stagger system needs a indicator/bar or something.

Side Note: I think games should start adding an option to increase the your parry window. I felt like I kept fucking up parries by like frames, so I think I would get the same enjoyment as anyone if I was allowed to make the window a little bigger for accessibility.

Side Note 2: While playing I thought about what if a parry based game just put up a Guitar Hero fret board when an animation started, and when the note reached the circle, thats when the attack would hit you (whether you are near the attack or not). I would probably fuck with parrying there because dev's love obfuscating attack animations to troll timing.

ADDENDUM: I also am getting sick of the item scarcity? item management? Whatever it is that keeps me from using consumable items. I think everything should just be recharged at bonfires. Get like a couple throwable items that get recharged. Things that remove debuffs get recharged. Also the souls system they took from Hollow Knight thats tied to the weapon arts is fucking annoying because that also doesn't recharge at bonfires, you have to grind them back up slowly. It makes me not want to use them during boss fights because what if I die, then i have to fucking GRIND them. Dark Souls 3 Cinder mod/Sekiro easy mod just like opened my eye to how much fun a souls-like could be if it was way more lax on the item/mana limitations; you have a fun movekit, i wanna use it!