Finally, a worthy competitor!
This game is not subtle at all about its inspirations, the way they manage to combine the combat systems of both sekiro and bloodborne is brilliant; certain moves are better avoided by dodging and others by parrying. This makes learning boss movesets and how to respond to them more complex and reduces the repetition of rolling through every attack of dark souls games. I do think the stamina recovery speed should be significantly faster though, it felt way too slow, even with the amulet that improves it.
- Bosses are the strongest part of Lies of P, some of them I would consider to be top tier souls-like encounters. Each boss' design is immaculate, I kept being pleasantly surprised at how gorgeous the encounters looked and how well their attacks are telegraphed. The satisfaction you get when you learn their moveset and can perfectly parry a full combo to stagger them is THE reason to play this game. It's the closest thing to a Sekiro sequel that exists at the moment (I didn't like Wo Long very much).
- Areas are visually striking and enemy variety is impressive, but I found the level design to be mediocre. The game is very very linear, there are no side areas, no branching paths and you never get a choice on where to go next. However I think it was a calculated tradeoff by the devs to instead focus more on complex enemy movesets. The exploration isn't very good, but even smaller foes have such awesome movesets, that they could pass off as bosses if they had more health.
- Story is forgetable, which didn't bother me because of how easily it can be ignored. It also isn't something I look for in these games.
- Difficulty is brutal, I think some of the bosses second phases are too hard. I say this as someone who can now casually beat sekiro in one sitting and enjoyed beating DS3 without leveling up. I think some attacks just come out way too fast to react on time consistently, and left me frustrated. I also ran through the game in NG+ and have rarely ever played anything that hard, not sure I would recommend honestly. Maybe with the summons it's fine but I'm too stubborn to use those.
In the end, I loved my time with Lies of P, but souls-like is my favorite genre so I'm a little biased. This game makes me hopeful for the future of the genre, because I now know that From isn't untouchable. Can't wait for Black myth: Wukong and other competitors to innovate even more on my favorite genre.
This game is not subtle at all about its inspirations, the way they manage to combine the combat systems of both sekiro and bloodborne is brilliant; certain moves are better avoided by dodging and others by parrying. This makes learning boss movesets and how to respond to them more complex and reduces the repetition of rolling through every attack of dark souls games. I do think the stamina recovery speed should be significantly faster though, it felt way too slow, even with the amulet that improves it.
- Bosses are the strongest part of Lies of P, some of them I would consider to be top tier souls-like encounters. Each boss' design is immaculate, I kept being pleasantly surprised at how gorgeous the encounters looked and how well their attacks are telegraphed. The satisfaction you get when you learn their moveset and can perfectly parry a full combo to stagger them is THE reason to play this game. It's the closest thing to a Sekiro sequel that exists at the moment (I didn't like Wo Long very much).
- Areas are visually striking and enemy variety is impressive, but I found the level design to be mediocre. The game is very very linear, there are no side areas, no branching paths and you never get a choice on where to go next. However I think it was a calculated tradeoff by the devs to instead focus more on complex enemy movesets. The exploration isn't very good, but even smaller foes have such awesome movesets, that they could pass off as bosses if they had more health.
- Story is forgetable, which didn't bother me because of how easily it can be ignored. It also isn't something I look for in these games.
- Difficulty is brutal, I think some of the bosses second phases are too hard. I say this as someone who can now casually beat sekiro in one sitting and enjoyed beating DS3 without leveling up. I think some attacks just come out way too fast to react on time consistently, and left me frustrated. I also ran through the game in NG+ and have rarely ever played anything that hard, not sure I would recommend honestly. Maybe with the summons it's fine but I'm too stubborn to use those.
In the end, I loved my time with Lies of P, but souls-like is my favorite genre so I'm a little biased. This game makes me hopeful for the future of the genre, because I now know that From isn't untouchable. Can't wait for Black myth: Wukong and other competitors to innovate even more on my favorite genre.