The Dark Souls series is one of my most favorite series in games so I'm always looking for a new title in the Soulslike genre to get that next dopamine hit. Lies of P is one such game I've just beat so here's my thoughts on it. I have both good points and bad points to say but I'd like to preface this review by saying I genuinely enjoyed this game despite the mountain of criticism I have for it. Lies of P is pretty much the most enjoyable Soulslike I've played; it's the closest to come to the original in terms of harboring the essence of the series. My criticisms mainly come from a hope of what could have been.

In Lies of P you play as a puppet reawakened in the city of Krat; a Victorian steampunk society where puppets used to coexist with humans, but has since been overrun by a machine revolution. The mechanics are faithful and don't stray far from the original (for better or worse depending on your liking for innovation). You have the same basic stats that dictate health, stamina, carry weight and so on. The gameplay loop is exploring from stargazer (this game's bonfire) to stargazer with a limited healing flask whilst periodically challenging bosses and minibosses.

Graphics

Made in Unreal Engine, this game delivers on graphic fidelty one can expect in 2023. P looks great, lighting is amazing and DLSS means I pretty much can't see pixels at all. All this comes with a very stable framerate (with shaders compiling on launch). As recent games often come out with unacceptable performance issues, this alone makes Lies of P stress-free from a technical perspective.

Gameplay

For weapons you have a variety of weight and animations ranging from light umbrellas to heavy cleavers. The twist is that weapons can be disassembled into a blade and handle that can then be combined to mixup weapon arts (fables) and animations. You also have an arsenal of mechanical arms (legions) like a flamethrower or shield.

In true souls fashion you have the three standard defensive options of dodging, guarding and perfect guarding. Perfect guarding and charge attacks build up a hidden stagger meter which when filled up means another charge attack will put enemies in an immobile state, open to a fatal blow. The basic loop is the tried and true formula of choosing the appropriate defensive option to bypass the enemies attack and weaving in your own when possible.

The first issue I have is that P is so sluggish and weighty. Heavy weapons take forever to swing (with no heavy armor), there's a hidden time lag before your guard comes up, a hidden cooldown after swinging where you can't dodge, your dodge goes nowhere, the inability to dodge out of a grounded state (unless upgraded). I say hidden because a cooldown is expected but it's much more than what you'd expect out of any other game. If any of you play Smash it's like every attack being as laggy as Ganon.

The second issue is that the bosses are designed under this meta assumption that people have played and beaten Souls games. It's like how early titles of the Souls series had predictable and telegraphed movesets but Elden Ring is filled to the brim with delayed attacks and mixups. The developers must think that having a normal moveset is boring because every single enemy in the game has delayed attacks in that stereotypical stuttery broken-puppet movement. These moves are basically the jumpscares of actions games, sure they might work to ramp the difficulty but it's cheap and a well designed boss fight shouldn't have to rely on them, at least not to the degree they appear in this game.

Now you might be wondering how these are inherent issues. You can just learn the nuances of your character and the enemy, which I did, to beat the game. But even when I'm doing the correct thing, the experience isn't engaging. To me, the ideal Soulslike boss fight is one where you're instinctively weaving your moves to the boss like a dance, it's a natural flow state that once mastered makes me almost disappointed that I've beaten the boss because I want more. I'm thinking Isshin, Slave Gael, Mantis Lords from Hollow Knight. In Lies of P bosses have this unreactable delay or mixup, which combined with general inflexibility of P, means I'm relying on wrought memorization to do minimal pokes into a health pool that's way too big. Every single time I beat a boss it felt like I was cheesing their AI as a mosquito. The last (optional) boss was by far the funnest boss with the most engaging experience due to P's upgraded abilities by the endgame, and the reduced amount of bullshit moves in their arsenal. I would've liked it if more bosses were designed this way without relying so much on throwing off timings such that no player could realistically react to on their first try.

Verdict

If you're a fan of the Souls series but have exhausted their options then definitely pick this up, Elden Ring DLC isn't here anytime soon and there's basically a severe drought of games that implement the formula well. In that regard Lies of P hits that note better than say Nioh or The Surge and is the closest thing to Dark Souls 2 2. However if you haven't played the Souls series then I can't in good faith recommend this game because the original does everything better and there's an unnecessary hurdle to overcome in the gameplay.

⭐⭐⭐/5

Miscellaneous Tips

• Capacity is by far the most important stat. Anything worth using in this game requires weight and weight has a soft breakpoint at 60% not unlike the threshold for fat rolling. You have 4 'armor' slots that provide valuable passive resistances and amulets with huge passive effects but the best ones require so much carry weight. Capacity translates to defense, offense and unique passives; basically the ability to realize the full benefits of the equipment you acquire.
• Dodging aside for attacks that have weak tracking can take the enemy's back and is incredibly effective against a lot of humanoid opponents.
• The shotput can be used on a staggerable enemy to instantly put them in stagger. It comes out fast and with range so is much more reliable than landing a R2 on a boss that's spazzing like a maniac.
• Be deliberate on your actions. Because of the aforementioned downtime on attacks, the general tightness of parry and dodge frames and lack of poise, you can't really get away with doing things sloppily.
• When first encountering a boss, enter with the mindset of memorizing their moves and that death is inevitable in the first few tries. Because you can't act on reaction to a lot of moves, you simply have to take it and use the opportunity to memorize them, it's tedious as I mentioned but it is what it is.