It's so nice to see you.

Lies of P is a game that takes inspiration from the best of the genre and keeps it very close to its heart, if you have ever played Bloodborne, you will know how many things they are similar to each other, and yet how much the game focus on doing its own thing. (also, since I don't like to make comparisons, this will be the last time I bring up Bloodborne)

Inspired by Carlo Collodi's Pinnochio, the idea of having a Souls game that uses a fairy tale as its source material might sound a bit silly, hard to take seriously, and might make anyone wonder how the fuck can you pull it off and actually make it work, turns out that Jiwon Choi and the team at NEOWIZ knew how to, and I'm very glad they did! In fact, now I want more things to hit public domain, so people can do great stuff like this! (instead of just generic slasher slop films)

But what makes Lies of P so good? For starters, it's simply just fun to play, it rewards almost any playstyle you like focusing on, weapons are extremely unique, and they rarely play the same. You are going to spend a lot of resources trying new weapons and changing them over and over, and on top of that, the system allows you to change the movesets and scalings of weapons you might want to use but don't really fit your build which I think it's a very nice thing that I hope to see its more used in the subgenre, mix them up with your Legion Arm of choice, and you have a very fun gameplay loop, though, if you don't pick Puppet String, what are you honestly doing with your life?

Gameplay is not the only forte of LoP as it also has a very fascinating story and worldbuilding that relies less on the player piecing it together and just being more upfront while telling it, while still being careful of keeping you guessing where it will go next.

If I had to say which nitpicks I have with the game, is that aside from a specific few, boss themes don't really stand out, and on the later half of the game, bosses get so fucking high on crack that in order for you to keep up you probably have to do the same, but that's also because I was playing a heavy build so the urge of going unga bunga with everything would get the best of me time and time again.

Overall, if you like Fromsoftware's Souls games, play this one, because this is as close as it gets to being as polished as one of them.

Once you're at rock bottom, the only place to go is up.

A few days after I lost access to the game on PS+, it went on a sale, it's like fate wanted me to finish it. This was my first venture into the Like a Dragon series, after a long time of being relatively interested on it, a result of its exponentially increasing online presence as a franchise.

Like a Dragon is a very strong story about honor, respect, and most importantly, finding your own worth in the world, with Ichiban Kasuga being at the center of it. He values those features on a person so much that it leads him to take the guilt for a crime he didnt commit, which is as much as I can say about the story without getting into implied spoilers.
This serves to kickstart an amazing RPG that balances both serious, thought provoking and very emotional moments with silly laid back side content, one moment you find yourself being wrapped into a big conspiracy and the next one you are singing on a Karaoke or participating in Go kart races.

The game plays as you would expect any turn based game to play like, if you have played one, you have played them all. However in this game part of the fun of the turn based experience comes from setting up job combos in your party that allow you to minmax the shit out of everything. On top of that, you cant just brute force your way through everything by spamming attacks, you have to rely on as many tools (buffs, debuffs, ailments) as you can use to get through the toughest encounters, which is something I appreciate a lot when its done in this genre because it helps to prevent it from getting stale.

The worst thing I could nitpick about the game overall is that from chapter 12 onwards it starts relying on increasing the level gap between you and the enemies too often, which could have used some more thought to spike the difficulty if they really wanted to, but in the end, it was for a very good reason

As an afterthought, I would like to talk about how I decided to get into it, which was actually quite funny. It all started when I saw the trailer for Infinite Wealth that reveals that Kiryu has cancer and, for some reason, hearing that this character I knew nothing about (except how popular and beloved he is) was gonna have to deal with that in the next mainline game, made me feel like it was about time I caught up before the game released so I could see his story through. While theres no way I can play an entire franchise of long ass games in one month, at least I wanted to play those who precede IW first, that being Yakuza Like a Dragon, and Gaiden (which I hope to get to play sooner than later).

And so, with you as a witness, random user in Backloggd reading this, I make it one of my 2024 goals to play through these series, because I absolutely understand what the fuss is all about now, and I wish I had sooner.

After I spent a couple of months absolutely addicted to Marvel Snap, once that phase wore off, I decided that I might actually like Card games, so I wondered how I would feel about LoR now.

And so I reinstalled after not playing for a couple of years and I was greeted by all of my decks not being part of the "Standard" format now, bummer, thats not a very nice thing to return to. However, as I was making my way to the uninstall button, the Path of Champions roguelite game mode caught my eye, and it was an absolute game changer, it fucking did wonders to make this game live rent free in my head while offering me at the same time a nice way of gathering resources to craft a deck so I could hit the PvP modes again.

Legends of Runeterra is the best way to experience the Runeterra IP without the overwhelming pain of playing League of Legends, now I'm sure thats something you've heard once or twice, but it wouldnt be a common saying if it wasnt absolutely true. This game just feels good to play, you have a lot of control on the things that happen throughout the games, the champions spice things up in very fun ways, the art and animations are fantastic and have gotten better over time, the voice acting is as good as it is on League, and it's remarkably generous compared to other card games in the market.

All in all, I don't think I can sing enough praises for this game, and if you have drifted away from League like I did, but still enjoy its ever growing IP (because I'm extremely sure that if you played League, at some point you watched and loved Arcane as well), I highly encourage you to give this one a shot, if not for the PvP, do it for the PvE Roguelite mode.