Lies of P Review - The Best Souls Game Nobody Expected

Preface

As with the Khazan post, this review is actually the script for the video that went out on Youtube. I actually started throwing around the idea of this review quite a long time ago, before even Khazan, but never actually got off my butt to actually do it. I started to actually work on it a few months before Overture came out and made a few more adjustments and additions after it came out. So this script actually has a lot of old stuff that I wrote. If anything seems quite outdated, that’s probably why! That said, I did try to come back and update this script to be up to date with the DLC content! Still trying to find the voice I enjoy speaking with the most, so let’s see where that goes!

Introduction

So, Lies of P. I don’t think anyone was expecting what we ended up getting. I certainly didn’t expect to get pretty boy Pinocchio, but here we are. I also was not expecting this game to actually be my favorite release of 2023.

I was very skeptical of this game initially. One of my coworkers showed the trailer to me and the previews felt cool but I wasn’t certain it was going to be as good as it looked. God knows first impressions aren’t trustworthy nowadays.

I completely put this game out of my mind then, and only saw what he showed me. Then, it was announced that a free demo would be available for us to play. So I downloaded and tried it out. There were several points where I expected the demo to end. After the Parade Master. After the Mad Donkey. It was only after the third boss, the Scrapped Watchman (fantastic boss by the way) that the demo finally ended, and I was dumbfounded by how freaking long the demo was.

The weapon mix and match system was also insanely cool and was what hooked me in for real, though we didn’t have many options in the demo. Yeah, some enemy attacks felt really iffy or unfair (specifically looking at you, guard puppet with the parry into the unreactable counter). Overall though, I was sure I would enjoy the game. The fact that they were willing to let us try this much for free made me know that they were confident in their product. There were also no performance dips at all for me, and I was very impressed by it.

And boy did they deliver. The full release adjusted a lot of things, which included adjusting the previously mentioned unfair counterattack. I’m sure there were a lot more that they adjusted, because the game did feel generally better to play, though I didn’t actually take notes on everything, so ya know. Post release, they adjusted even more things based on the players’ feedback, and I think that they’ve done a spectacular job in making it more accessible and fun. I’m going through and adding a segment for the DLC and stuff that comes with the DLC.

Story and Presentation

Lies of P’s story is a story based on Pinocchio, which is a fairytale written by Carlo Collodi. The original fairytale is about a puppet named Pinocchio (duh) who is sentient. His nose grows when he lies, and he is noted to be quite a little shit, uh I mean, quite a rascal. 

I will be completely honest, I do not know the original source material. I grew up with the Disney version of Pinocchio, and I didn’t even notice half the references in the game. However, I have seen a lot of other youtubers go through the different references to the original work and I just think it’s really cool how they did it. I’ll drop a few links in the video description so you can check em out!

Now to go to what I can talk about, which is the story in the actual game. I’ll go through the general setting but keep it brief and a little bit vague so that you can explore the story yourself and not be spoiled.

The setting is in Krat, a city that has thrived through the discovery of Ergo, which led to the invention of Puppets by Geppetto. This invention propelled the city from a fishing village without much of note into the industrial hub of innovation it is by the time that you explore the game. Some time before the game starts, an event called the Puppet Frenzy caused all the puppets, which at this point are butlers, servants, policemen and other workers, to turn on every human that they could find. You play as Gepetto’s Puppet, and the game starts with you waking up in a train and a voice guiding you to Hotel Krat. 

It’s a bit hard to talk further about the background of the game without spoiling any of the twists, but I think it’s really well done. The side characters have compelling stories and are easy to get attached to. 

The main story is told in a way more similar to Sekiro than Dark Souls, wherein the story is happening during the game and you’re one of the key players influencing what happens. This makes it a lot easier to follow and I think it works really well.

A mechanic that the game uses is called the Lie System, wherein you are able to pick between telling a truth or lying. Normal puppets are unable to lie. However, Gepetto made you unique in that you are able to lie, and the different choices that you make in regards to lying or telling the truth can make you more human. 

There are a lot of details in the story that hint to you becoming more human, with relatively obvious messages as you trigger certain events. Your hair grows as you become more human, Springs the cat in Hotel Krat will play with you only if you’re human enough, among some other things!

The lie system directly ties into which endings you are able to unlock, and is formatted quite similarly to how Bloodborne’s three endings worked. You have the option to trigger Ending A, or go a second path which will branch to Ending B or C depending on the conditions you fulfilled during your playthrough.

Visual and Sound

Lies of P is visually impressive, and I don’t have much else to say other than the art direction and design feels fantastic. The vibes of the game had a lot of moments where it felt quite Bloodborne, but it is very distinctively more steampunk, which in my opinion sets the game apart quite well from the other games it draws inspiration from. The way that many of the enemies moved felt extremely creepy, which I think was intended. 

All of the designs felt really good, though jumping between the different enemy types and areas do feel a bit jarringly different at times. Shoutout to the first zombie for making react with “Oh god what the fuck is that”.

The sound design in the game feels extremely satisfying, with the hit sounds being quite impactful, and the parry sounds being fantastically sharp and crisp. The ambient noises and sounds add a lot to the atmosphere, and enemy sound telegraphs are generally easy to tell apart.

The music is generally really good. I’m usually a boss music kind of guy, but when it comes to this game, I actually think far more about the ambient music that plays in some segments of the game, or the music discs that you collect as you go through the game and do quests. Not that the boss music was bad at all, mind you, but some of these tracks like “Feel” or “Quixotic” were so memorable that I can’t get it out of my head. And yes, it is pronounced that way, I had to google the pronunciation for the script.

Funny thing I learned was that apparently all of the music disc tracks were remixes of songs that they made for their rhythm game, and it’s so interesting to see such a big jump in genre.

Gameplay

The game’s format is quite straightforward and railroaded. Unlike Dark Souls, there isn’t a large amount of exploring to be done. There are a lot of side paths that lead to treasure, but you can’t really decide to go take a different path and level so that you can more easily tackle the boss that you’re currently stuck on. This means that the only option in order to progress is to git gud.

I actually found this game to be harder than DS1, DS2, DS3 and Sekiro but easier than

Elden Ring. Admittedly, I did not use the phantom friend, which I’ve been told makes the game much more accessible and easier, so please take that with a pinch of salt. I’ve also heard from other people that they found Lies of P to be the easiest so I dunno.

While I found the difficulty of the game to be quite high, but I also found that it felt very fair about 90% of the time, where you can tell that it’s your greed or misplay that cost you the fight. The enemy’s tells are very obvious and clear, but the timing can be really tricky to learn due to delayed swings, awkward timings, double hits, and all that.

I think that most of the bosses in the game were great (except for two bosses too far in to spoil), and there was very little reuse of bosses other than two specific cases I can think of off the top of my head, where it made sense and felt quite unique even between them. The two reused bosses definitely make use of your muscle memory and expectations of openings to catch you off guard for sure though which does annoy me.

There’s a few unique gameplay aspects of Lies of P that sets the game apart. 

The first and most unique in my opinion, is weapon assembly. To explain, you can split any non-unique weapon into two parts, the blade and the handle. These parts can then be mixed and matched with any other weapons’ blade or handle to create your personal unique abomination. The handle that you use determines the moveset and stat scaling, and the blade determines the damage, reach and speed of the attacks. Each piece also has a Fable Art (essentially active skills) associated with it which can complement the setup further.

This can lead to some absolutely busted combinations like the insane crit damage monster Tyrant Dagger blade on the City Longspear handle, which is essentially a knife on a freaking signpost, or something absolutely useless like a Baton on the Rapier handle, which cripples both your range, speed and damage.

The second unique point in the game for me is its Guard Regain and Perfect Block system. They’re not completely unique, but the way they’re implemented I think is. To explain, the Guard Regain system works similarly to how the Rally system in Bloodborne works. In Bloodborne, if you take damage, you will have a few seconds to heal it back by dealing damage. In Lies of P, it works essentially the same, but while you’re blocking instead of when you take damage normally. This leads well into the Perfect Block system that the game uses, which is reminiscent of Sekiro’s parry system, though much more unforgiving timing wise. Perfect Blocking also allows you to heal back some of the Guard Regain as well.

Perfect Block is both an offensive and defensive mechanic, wherein you can safely defend against your enemy attack while reducing their posture so that you can stagger them for a Fatal Attack which will deal huge amounts of damage. I wasn’t sure how they’d reconcile all these mechanics from the different games into a cohesive system, but the way they did it really leans into a really fun gameplay loop that lets you play how you want to. This is what I mean by the implementation feeling quite unique.

You can stay on the offensive and keep chipping at their health for the entire fight. You can stay on the defensive and wait til they break their posture on you before going in. You can focus on evasion and dance around their attacks while throwing in quick counters. Ideally you’ll want to have a bit of all these playstyles in order to go through the game, but the different gear and equipment available really lets you do what you want to do.

The third unique point for me is the Legion Arms system. The Legion Arm is the arm that you use in combat, and there are several arms available to pick from. All of the different arms with unique uses and skills that lend themselves to different playstyles, and the arms can be upgraded to unlock even more cool attacks and different uses.

The final unique point for me is the P Organ system. The name really does make you giggle though huh. It’s essentially a talent tree that unlocks big passives based on small passives you can pick. Some of the options change the way you play, such as giving you a pretty big stat boost while you’re out of healing, or improving different aspects of your kit.

All the mentioned points combine to add more uniqueness to the customizability I previously mentioned and lets you really play how you want to play. 

One quick note before we move on, was that the performance of this game was impeccable. I don't think there were any crashes, and I don't remember any major bugs. I can’t even think of many minor bugs other than some animation jank and I just think that that is something extremely impressive considering all the other releases in 2023.

DLC

Now that the dlc is out, I’ve got a lot to say about all the changes and upgrades that come with it. The first dlc update of note is the Wo Long collaboration, which comes with a weapon and a costume. Wo Long is a game from Team Ninja that is essentially their answer to Sekiro. Not everyone liked it but I actually loved the game. The collab is not actually a whole lot, but it does come with my favorite weapon in Lies of P, Guan Yu’s glaive. The coolest thing about this weapon is that its Fable Art is actually the deflect dodge from Wo Long, which feels extremely fluid here if you manage to pull it off. If you successfully use it, it doesn’t eat a fable bar so it helps you stay mobile while perfect guarding AND gives you access to some really cool counters. If you know a boss super well, this weapon will be the best one for you bar none. If you don’t know the boss… I would strongly suggest avoiding this one.

We also got a lot of quality of life changes that I need to talk about. The first and most noticeable one is that we got difficulty settings. I have not done a new playthrough in the difficulties they added, I believe they added two difficulties below the original default.  However, I have done a quick run of the intro segment in the easiest difficulty to see how the changes are, and I’ve mainly noticed number changes that just makes it much more forgiving. I think that the original difficulty was perfect for me, but I’m glad that these difficulties have been added because I think that it’ll be easier for me to get friends into the game.

Another Quality of Life change that was added include the leveling bar under our Ergo count which shows exactly how far we are from having enough to level up again, and of course it glows to show you when you are ready to level up. This is something I’ll always appreciate in every game it’s added to and I hope it is in every game in this genre going forward. You are also able to level anywhere without having to hit the story point you had to to do so previously. God why did I write the script like this (fumble the to to do)

Anyway! 

One unique quality of life change that I haven’t seen in other games is the ability to use hard Ergo when shopping so you can top off that little bit you were missing without leaving the menu. It’s a good change and while it’s not a huge one, it does save a lot of time jumping between menus.

Next up is the new Boss Rematch mode which is accessible after you beat the game once. Each boss has 5 difficulties that you can tackle, with 3 initial ones. The first difficulty seems easier than in your first playthrough, second seems about the same and third seems scaled to the endgame of the first playthrough, with the fourth and fifth being even harder. I really like this implementation because there’s multiple tiers for you to practice with. If you struggled past with the summon friend and now have to do it solo, difficulty 1 is a really good place to learn the boss moveset without all the stress. Then you can incrementally increase the difficulty as you get more comfortable. I haven’t tried the fights at the highest difficulties, the highest I have is tier 4 King of Puppets, but I hear that the rewards you get are nice lil stickers that prove you did it at tier 5. 

Now we can get onto the main and huge update, which is Overture. Overture is the paid DLC that fills a similar position to DLCs from Dark Souls, wherein it comes with a decent chunk of content and contains the coolest and most challenging bosses in the game. The story hook even feels very familiar, with us going back to the past to experience some major story events that really changed the setting.

Overture is a fantastic package overall with a very well told story that is a huge improvement despite already liking the base game. There were many moments that I felt genuinely moved by things characters did or said, and there was even a moment where I actually lost my emotional balance in the story. Most people who’ve followed me know I’m a pretty gameplay first kind of guy, but I genuinely started playing sloppy because of how big an impact that scene had. I’m not gonna spoil anything, but I genuinely think it’s a great story and that you should check it out!

To finish this segment off, the bosses were great and probably the best in the game. The equipment you get is so cool though, genuinely. I want to insert a clip here to show you exactly my reaction to one of the weapons in the DLC, minor spoilers ahead.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/99cffd_cbf5982dc2234b8ba808fe662abf9355/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Now, that may seem like a big reaction, but it’s a goddamn rocket spear ya’ll. And the most surprising thing to me is it’s not even the only time I had a reaction like that. I had a reaction like that THREE times. Like, I had it once or twice in base game, and they managed to somehow top it off three times in a shorter segment in the dlc.

The main disappointing part to me regarding weapons is one of the bosses uses a really cool weapon and they don’t drop it. The other cool stuff makes up for it for sure, but it IS a bit sad

Conclusion

For me, Lies of P feels like “Dark Souls meets Sekiro meets Bloodborne”. The combat pacing is very Dark Souls 1, while the perfect block system and guard regain feels like they took parts of Sekiro and Bloodborne and implemented it in a way that meshes together really well. It feels like a love letter to these kinds of games and gets the feel down very well. It wears its inspiration on its sleeve, and even has a poison swamp as our lord and savior Miyazaki would have wanted. 

You may already be able to tell, I’m recommending the game. The game is fantastic, the story is engaging, and the presentation is really good. It knows what kind of game it wants to be, what it’s inspired by and leans really hard into it without pulling back. Especially now with the new difficulty settings available, I feel comfortable recommending the game to both gameplay focused and players who just want the story. I think I might be repeating myself a lot at this point, but Lies of P is a really fantastic game and I think anyone interested should give it a shot!