A Commentary on Lies of P (and Soulslikes)

I generally don't have the best relationship with Souls likes way back when I first became enraptured by the Dark Soul series around a decade ago they were all I wanted to play all of a sudden my usual go-to games were on the back burner in favor of playthrough after playthrough of these compelling novel and challenging games as I experimented with different builds and discovered new quirks features and details each time I played before eagerly awaiting from soft's next groundbreaking game so enamored was I back then by the type of experiences found in these games I'd get genuinely excited at news of games from other developers which took influence from the franchise cuz the concept of souls likes really was new and exciting around that mid 20110 period people looked at the sheer quality of the experiences found in from soft's Modern titles and thought sure I'd like some more of this place the issue was every developer is not from soft and turns out there's a lot more to games like dark bloodborne and Elden ring than a blood stain mechanic automatically replenishing healing items a story told through item descriptions punishing combat and bosses with unnecessarily extravagant names you can put all these elements in your game and give it some Dark Fantasy setting and go for that style of Storytelling where you have almost no idea what the story even was even after reaching the end but baby sugar that does not mean you've got another Dark Souls on your hands and the aforementioned gameplay elements do not automatically lead to a quality experience don't get me wrong though I'm not just here to crap on Souls likes I mean it's not that most of them have left a bad impression on me it's just that they tend to leave barely any impression at all and really come remotely close to scratching that Soul's itch though admittedly there have been a few that have provided me with varying degrees of relief over the years namely Cod Vin and the Neo games Neo 2 in particular that game is incredible and if you just scoffed at my mention of code vain try playing that game Soo without any AI companions then see what you think it's hard my greater Point here is that over the years my excitement associated with upcoming Souls likes gradually dimmed to the point where now when I hear about some new Souls influence title indie or otherwise I think oh another one huh put it over there with the rest of them and that brings us to the subject of this video lies of PE as Souls like through and through I first discovered lies of PE in 2022 after seeing a Gameplay trailer of it and to be honest rather than finding myself Enchanted by what was shown I mostly thought wow this looks remarkably similar to bloodborne I mean I love bloodborne in fact I think it's one of the best games ever made but that doesn't mean you can just dress your game up like borne and take my money got to do a bit more than that Buckle nonetheless what I was seeing did look pretty damn impressive and the whole Pinocchio theme was certainly rather intriguing but even so I just couldn't bring myself to get all that hyped up at yet another Souls like especially one which so blatantly wor its influences on its sleeve and so I thought I guess I'll check it out when it comes out maybe fast forward to September of 2023 and lies of PE is everywhere everyone was talking about this hot new Souls like people would stop me in the street as I be on my way to buy the week's groceries they'd stop me and say candle type 1 a candle type on it you've got to play this new Souls like made by Korean developers Neo games and round ites videos it's hot it's hot hot hot honestly I've never really planned on picking lies of poop on release over the past several months I've mostly been preoccupied with making retrospectives of older games trying to achieve some success on YouTube so that I never have to go back to having an actual job yeah we'll see how that works out putting my YouTube aspirations aside though the buzz around the eyes of P was just thick enough for me to go ahead and pick it up I was hearing that this was no ordinary Souls like that it was perhaps a cut Above the Rest in terms of quality and well worth a play or two by any Souls born fanatic well over the past week or so I have indeed been playing a whole lot of lies of PE and I'll say [Music] this it's great it's really great and it's hard and I largely suck at its combat but despite that it's a really great game tremendous in fact I think it sets a new standard for Souls likes not a new standard to compete with with Souls born mind you but it's sure as hell A Cut Above most of the souls like competition over the past decade and so I'm making this video just to let you know what I thought about its various elements from its story and setting to its combat mechanics and everything in between regarding spoilers and all that if you haven't yet finished the game might be best to skip this one for now cuz I do prefer to be a bit more liberal when it comes to showing footage of late game areas and bosses and in my discussions of the plot though if you don't mind a spoiler or two I'd sure love it if you stayed please stay if you like what you see here why not check out my various retrospectives on other great games and hey maybe you can even subscribe to the channel if you want to see similar content in the future I put out a new video every week or two lastly before I get stuck right in let me give thanks to my fine patrons for their patronage via the patreon platform I really appreciate the support folks and with all that being said let's talk about lies of pay lies of p is Loosely based on the 19th century novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Kodi and in fact this classic fairy tale slant is probably the game's most unique narrative aspect though the extent of the influence of the source material to the actual plot of the game is rather minimal and let me make it clear that when I say it's Loosely based on the novel I really do mean Loosely I decided to read The Adventures of Pinocchio in preparation for making this video and the actual stories told between the game and the book are almost entirely different to the point where the source material mainly only serves as a vague reference point for many of the game's characters rather than lies of PE being a true Dark Fantasy Recreation of the novel The main element of similarity between the two are the existence of atomus marionet and in particular the character of Pinocchio or p as he's known in the game a special marionette created by his father jepetto but other than that the similarities become far looser to the point where they're more akin to Mere reference is for example around 40% of the way into the game you encounter a group of thugs known as the black rabbit Brotherhood and in their introductory boss cut scene they even bring out a coffin before the fight gets underway this is a reference to when Pinocchio refuses to drink down the foul tasting medicine given to him by the Blue Fairy whereupon four black rabbits March into the room carrying a coffin intended to frighten the puppet into taking the medicine there's really no meaningful relationship or connection between the DU virence here but rather they're just completely different sets of characters but all look there's four of them and they wear black rabbit masks and they have a coffin just like in the novel kind of I guess another example it's where P travels to the Isle of the Alchemists from within a submarine which happens to be painted to look like a shark a clear reference to where Pinocchio gets swallowed up by a shark in the novel then you have a character like Al aduru with a signature dog mask a reference to the Mastiff which Pinocchio saves from drowning around 2/3 of the way through the novel after Pinocchio is accused of bashing and other boy over the head with a book and is apprehended by a pair of soldiers and a dog as far as the alador of the game's similarity to the alidoro of the novel well they have the same name and they're both dogs in a sense and that's about it I don't say any of this as a criticism of the game by the way it's not like I was some massive fan of the novel before coming into this experience although it did make for a pleasant read but I will say that even if you took away a lot of the Pinocchio references from the game it wouldn't really lose its identity instead of jepetto being called jepetto he could have just been called John and instead of P being called P you could have just been called J which is short for John furthermore the story of lies of P does get pretty freaking out there throughout the second half and delves into some really dark and often disturbing territory compared to the comparatively more grounded setting and premise through the opening I guess that's a similarity the game shares with bbor actually one of many born starts out with the premise that there's a dreadful be Scourge afflicting the city of yanam turning people into beasts causing them to expand in size and grow F in places where there was no fur before as horrific as it all certainly is it's quite understandable you can comprehend beasts and trolls and Hunters but as the game progresses the plot goes to places you could never have seen coming after the relatively more grounded settings of the first few major areas and you go from fighting werewolves to exploring literal nightmare Landscapes and taking down unnamable eldrich Horrors and it's all awesome now I'm not saying lies of p goes so delightfully off the rails at quite the same trajectory as bloodborne but the plot certainly does evolve and expand somewhat from its opening premise of the puppets are running rampant and they must be stopped speaking of that premise I guess I should actually go through both it and the first couple hours of the game before digging into its mechanics and such rep playay is the character P which I'm assuming is short for Pinocchio though I don't think the name Pinocchio is ever actually said in game any point but it's possible that it just slept by me when I wasn't looking p is awoken by an Azure butterfly who advises him to make his way to Hotel Kat after arming himself and picking up giny a guide advisor and general Confidant who resides in a lantern the reason P must arm himself is because the fictional city of Kat is in the midst of a Scourge not of beasts but of puppets for many years Kat have been a thriving Hub of wondrous technological innovation in the form of Puppets automaton designed and produced to performed any and all tasks a city could want from cleaning construction firefighting chimney sweeping entertainment or this guy is just hilarious and even the police were made up of Puppets innumerable puppets of all shapes and sizes appropriate for their particular function the genius who designed the puppets was jepetto whereas the one responsible for their mass production was the self-professed prince of high society lorenzini venini with his rather questionable Italian accent hold on jepetto a friend of yours did he send you the puppets weren't purely a technological achievement though because rather than them being powered by traditional energy sources they are implanted with a mysterious material known as Ergo said to be the crystallized essence of life force capable of imbuing puppets with uncanny intelligence motion and in some cases emotion because of the puppets Kat prospered as an advanced thriving Jew of the world but then the puppets started to frenzy turning on the humans in great numbers and slaughtering them in the hundreds if not thousands and with the police force themselves being made up of the now rampaging puppets the citizens had nowhere to turn thus Kat fell to ruin and death as the once opulent and extravagant streets train stations and Opera Houses became Mass open Graves and an armed army of sometimes multi-armed marionet sto the streets in search of fresh survivors to bash cleave burn or shoot and the worst thing is that no one seems to know how the hell this all happened in the first place in fact it was thought to be impossible to happen and that's because of the grand Covenant a set of absolute commands imprinted upon puppets when they are produced these four laws were meant to be a foolproof way to prevent any possibility of the puppets turning against their owners with each one superseding the subsequent law in terms of priority thus the second law that a puppet may not harm humans would prevent any murderous Foul Play that may arise from the third or fourth Wars still despite the grand Covenant chaos has erupted inrat but far as fiery and Grim as the situation certainly seems there is an unlikely savior in the form of PE a puppet himself but one who is far more advanced and lifelike than the army of clockwork maids buters and soldiers who roam the streets but more importantly p is the only puppet not bound whatsoever to the Grand Covenant meaning that he can harm humans and that he has the ability to y two activities you will likely be doing a lot of throughout the course of the game thus the initial mission is to make it to Hotel Kat a key landmark of the city being visible from many places all lit up in lights a beacon to make one's way towards though not without first having to make it through Kat Central Station and the Central Plaza taking on many formidable puppets both large and small and armed with various crude Weaponry walking around and striking out in that odd jittery way car characteristic of nearly all puppet motion the scale of the devastation is made clear very early on as we see the dead bodies of people and even animals and such is the brutality of the puppet frenzy that some carry on mashing the wheless corpses of people into a pulp even after death in order to gain access to Hotel cat a simple question is posed to The wbe Invader so as to keep out haviing puppets with the required answer Being Human obviously a lie in the case of p and his first lie of the game causing the very inner Springs which give him animation to react as this puppet engages in something which should be impossible for puppets to do inside the hotel thought to be the one last remaining Safe Haven left inrat thanks to his various security measures a colorful cast of characters await a cast which will of course expand as the game progresses as is the tradition with nearly any Souls born or Souls like Hub area the most significant immediate character however is Sophia the originator of the Azure bot but fly which woke pee up and a clear reference to the Azure haired blue fairy from the novel who frequently and patiently takes care of Pinocchio several times throughout his adventures and to evoke yet another Souls born Trope and I'll be mentioning many others by the way Sophia is essentially the maiden in black/ firekeeper SL Emerald Herald SL doll of lies of P being the character who allows him to level up and also having a growing significance to the story as it all unfolds for the time being however the immediate objective is to Lo P's Papa jepetto from the hotel P fights through Al lesian Boulevard another ruined Street or Boulevard absolutely crawling with mad puppets down on ground level and on the perilous rooftops allowing for some excellent views of the city from above and necessitating traversal through various homes which further exhibit the style and standard of living enjoyed by the people of Kat it's at this point that we also encounter our first case of sickness amongst the city's inhabitants see although almost everyone here is dead there are a handful of remaining citizens here or there who sealed themselves in their homes though the ones we encounter also happen to be sick with a deadly plague known as the petrification disease a terminal Affliction which turns its victims blind turns their skin to Stony scales and ultimately shuts down their organs while we encounter some half mad victims or the disease secluded in their houses visible only by their haunting Silhouettes another bloodborne thing there's also the wheelchair bound lady Antonia back in the hotel who suffers from the same disease and whose condition progresses rather tragically as the game progresses although there's not a massive emphasis placed on the scale and threat of the petrification disease at this point with it mainly serving as an extra bit of tragic flavor to add to these early side quests it holds a great deal of significance to what's really happening in Kat and has a role in explaining some of the more grotesque and monstrous enemy types found outside of the city as well as the handful of regular surv survivors both healthy and Ill there are also several remaining Hunters sorry I mean stalkers scattered throughout Kat and its outskirts always wearing their distinctive animal headwear several of which are references to characters from the novel such as the aforementioned alidoro the red fox and cat and the nearby mad donkey and the latter figure is to be found at the end of leian Boulevard frantically pounding on the side of a carriage and demanding our sweet sweet Papa jetto come out and give some answers claiming that he must be the one responsible for the ongoing puppet frenzy what with him being the very person who designed the puppets after dispatching the Mad donkey first trbe with no issues this time it's destroyed for sure jepetto emerges from The Carriage even addressing p as his son also adding that this is the first time they've actually met bear in mind that it was Sofia who woke P up not jepetto though he was of course the one who created p as he did with all puppets and I think that's a pretty fair summary of the opening beats of the game though I'll Circle back to the story at the end of the video to wrap up how it all concludes first things first though I have to highlight the Mad donkey's death line iand it the truth now I feel bad for my comrad that has to be one of the worst death LS I've ever heard that sucks anyway that's the first few hours of the game it's a very strong opening putting you right into the thick of the chaos introducing you to several interesting characters and setting up future plot elements which don't mean much upon first hearing them but which makes significantly more sense later on I really like the meeting with jepetto too cuz right from the start he seems just a bit too nice for most of the game he's very encouraging and even tender to pee but all the same he sends him off to increasingly dangerous parts of the city to take down increasingly deadly puppets all while telling him to be a good boy and to keep safe and that he's very precious to him even at this very first meeting he's being manipulative in a way I didn't even fully notice on my first play through when he tells P that in order for him to begin taking responsibility for the frenzy as their creator he first needs to deal with the puppets at City Hall oh could you help me with that son could you take down the Hing mechanical horror lcking on the rooftops at City Hall while I Lounge Lounge back at the hotel he just never feels totally trustworthy though it's not until a second play through where you understand more about true jepetto's motivations that some of his earlier dialogue becomes all the more Twisted deceptive and perhaps even sociopathic plus you do walk in on someone screaming at him and making all these dark claims and even if the accuser's name literally is mad donkey you can't just throw out everything he's saying when you encounter moments like this in games or films or whatever they tend to foreshadows some sort of plot significance it's the same sort of cliche as in an action movie where one character tells another how he's just got one more job to do and then he's done he can go home to his family which is a signal for this character is going to get killed in an upcoming scene or when a character supposedly dies but you don't actually see them die on screen which means they're not actually dead well spoiler alert everything the ass says here is true jepetto is actually the bad guy but I'll talk more about all that later on for now let's talk gamep play so let's get this out of the way right off the bat lies of PE brings very little to the the table that's actually new in terms of gaml almost everything here from the exploration to the combat to the character progression are elements and mechanics either taken from or heavily inspired by Souls born or Souls likes except some of the elements have been given their own twists or even improvements lots of your standard Staples are here such as A bloodstain mechanic Dodge rolls pares deflex a rally mechanic consumable Ergo special boss Ergo which can be exchanged for Boss weapons the same weapon upgrading system found from Souls born games except with Moonstone instead of Titanite or Bloodstone equip load charge attacks a stagger system multiphased boss battles and even bosses which are clearly heavily influenced by certain Souls born bosses like the scrapped watchman's resemblance to dark beast parl from born Simon's resemblance to godric from Elden ring or the nameless puppets resemblance to Maria also from bloodborne but when I list all these familiar elements I'm not really doing it to bash the game for being uninspired and afraid to create and Implement its own novel ideas I mean I'd love it if developers were a bit more daring and creative just as fromsoft originally were when putting together demon souls and Dark Souls but as it is we've got a whole Lo of games coming out each year who say no we'll just use a bunch of these foundational mechanics please and then build from there and I guess you've got to either accept that and try to enjoy these Souls White games or just not play them and wait for some future paradigm shift to come along with its own novel ideas and mechanics my point here is that you will be encountering many many influences and even borderline ripoffs of things from Souls born games when playing lies of PE and while you can spend a lot of your time sneering snorting and sighing it's best to just accept and enjoy the experience because lies of PE truly is an awesome gaming experience and that's coming from someone who's both bored and fatigued by Souls likes Direct L before playing it as far as my discussion of Lies Of Peace combat goes let me kick off by declaring that I struggled like hell with it and that I'm not good at this game I feel like that it's important to say that up front because nothing I say in this video or any of my videos ever comes from a place of great skill or intellectual Authority and just some Scottish dude who likes talking about games but right from the get go I was indeed having a hard time with lies of Peace combat despite how familiar the core movement and controls felt because this game truly does both look and feel uncharacteristically smooth for a Souls like which is one of the things which sets it apart from so many others of course there's a mostly reliable Dash to evade any attacks complete with a certain amount of eye frames though interestingly enough frequent use of the dash is not key for optimal play which is where the perfect guard comes in a combat feature which is largely to blame for much of my skill related shortcomings see if I had to sloly sum up the field of Lies Of Peace combat I'd say it feels like an amalgamation of bloodborne and SEO but also with some noticeable sprinkles of neo2 here or there though I personally detected more neo2 influence in the level design and even the art design in some sections particularly towards the end of the game when parts of the city start collapsing back to the combat though you've got your blood bornes dashes which contribute to the Frantic feel of combat not to mention born's rally system except slightly tweaked so that instead of being able to regain lost Health from all damage only the partial damage taken from blocking can be recovered though admittedly perhaps the general dark aesthetic and themes of the game are more responsible for the broad Bor feel than the core combat and as for the secular influence well of course that's where the perfect guards come in almost all damage can be partially blocked by simply holding down the block button same as with SEO but if you time it just right and blocked right as the enemies attack lands you achieve a perfect guard resulting in a satisfying white flash canceling out all damage inflicting damage to their weapon with the potential to result in it breaking and reducing the enemy Poise or posture or whatever the hell it's called here contributing to them eventually becoming pre- sagger allowing for a follow-up charge attack or fable art to stagger them completely so as to allow for a fatal attack as for the neo2 influence well that's a we bit harder for me to point to being more subtle compared to the bloodborne and secular influences but the general tankiness of the many Elite enemies felt very Neo 2ish to me and the rage attacks from this game also reminded me of the burst attacks from neo2 so I found them to be a hell of a lot easier to deal with in Neo compared to in this game where they were often my undoing and where I'd get hit by them nearly every damn time seriously there were certain enemies where I was literally never able to successfully perfect guard the rage attack I'm looking at you th Archbishop Andreas rage attacks are very clearly telegraphed turning the en red and often accompanied by a long and winding charge before unleashing a devastating blw which cannot be dashed through or blocked instead requiring a perfect guard to counter though simply getting out of range in the first place is sometimes an option that can be easier said than done see it's the perfect guard thing which frequently tripped me up for most of my playthrough and which can absolutely be a contributor to the difficulty because personally I find it really really hard to correctly time enemy attacks this was the case for me back in Seco 2 which I considered to be from soft's most difficult modern game though since the release of lies of P I've noticed an increase in the sentiment that SEO wasn't a hard game at all and that people were wrong for considering it challenging and that instead of having a difficult time fighting that game's many enemies and bosses everyone was just wrong and they should have simply found it easy instead now I don't know about all that nonsense but I have heard a whole lot of people complain about lies of Peace party timing being too strict at least compared to Second R where the timing is supposedly more generous personally I didn't really feel that the timing was stricter during my playthrough of lives of PE I'm not saying it wasn't I'm sure people aren't lying but I actually felt the window for perfect guards was quite Fair the issue with perfect guards and ruling to some extent is the enemy attack animations themselves because quite frankly they take the piss a bit before I start talking about the enemies and attack animations I must preface it by by saying that the enemy designs in this game are absolutely top tier and the same thing goes for the attack animations and in fact I consider that latter aspect to be crucial because I've always found it to be one of the many elements which always set from soft games apart from their souls like competitors or should I perhaps say imitators there is a heaviness and smoothness to from soft's Attack animations which is so aesthetically pleasing and impactful even back in Demon Souls and Dark Souls a simple example is the barque Knight lcking within the undead Chapel in Dark Souls 1 just look at the damn weight and impact of its maze slams not to mention how imposing its design is and the same can be said for enemies and bosses from other Souls born games like the redyed Knight theat the Harold Knights the executioners the samurai of the top of Asen a castle and ragon now these are just some arbitrary examples of enemies and bosses whose animations I like I could have chosen loads of others but my point is simply that the animations found in these games play a really big part in their overall quality at least for me a quality I often found lacking in Souls likes but I'm pleased to say that this special quality was more or less matched in lies of PE of course we're not fighting demons Knights beasts samurai or gods in this game they're fighting puppets and indeed they move like puppets giving their movement and attacks a very distinctive Clockwork character lacking most of the grace and fluidity found in human motion the puppets are mostly an absolute pleasure to see in action from the most basic ones at Kat Central Station to the more monstrous and anomalous varieties such as a scrapped Watchman the parade leader and my absolute worst enemy the mad clown puppet I hate him similar praise can be heaped upon the carcass enemy type too and just as the puppets come in all sorts of weird and wonderful forms you'll see a large variety of gross and grotesque carcasses particularly when it comes to the elite type enemies with the designs can get truly horrific however as damn lovely as these designs and animations certainly look from a purely aesthetic standpoint on a gameplay level mechanically well it's hard the game's really hard okay call me do I need worship CIA the difficulty in determining when an enemy's attack animation ends and when the actual hit box will connect can be very challenging and the game plays into this heavily in fact I'd go as far as to say that it's key to what makes the wise of Peace so damn hard for so many I mean sure enemies do a lot of damage but usually it's nothing crazy not really more than in your souls born games and certainly not when compared to something like neo2 you can tank a good few hits here especially if you rely on blocking a bunch but the issue is that blocking a bunch doesn't really have any offensive capabilities same with eye framing through an attack with a well timed Dash whereas the perfect guard absolutely does have offensive power to the point where it's near integral to the core combat experience having the ability to break enemy weapons so as to diminish their Threat Level and also contributing to an enemy's regrettably invisible stagger gauge something that's damn near crucial when dealing with the very tanky Elite enemies not to mention the incredibly tanky bosses though as I understand it path path patch 1.2 decreased the HP of a bunch of these enemies which is probably a good thing cuz even with me only experiencing the game post patch shit's still pretty freaking tanky of course of course attempting a perfect guard puts you square in the firing line of the enemy's attack which is a big difference from your trusty Dash which as well as providing eye frames also moves you away from the enemy perhaps even placing you out of range of the attack and making the eye frames redundant but for perfect guard attempts better make sure you read that long winding attack animation absolutely perfectly unblock at the right time otherwise you're getting hit and often you'll be hit many times with long Combos and I mean long combos some of the most frustrating moments I've had with lies of P were with absurdly long combos but it's not enough to perfect guard the first hit or even the first four hits cuz it's a godamn 10 hit combo and will be tied you if you can't accurately read every [ __ ] hit cuz these follow-up hits are coming perfect guard or not even aside from the combo issue though single attacks can be very difficult to read too even from the very first enemy you fight after getting off the train any anyone else struggle to pull off a perfect guard at first with these very first Choo Cho Boys it's like the actual moment of impact comes just a bit later than you think it would and that's a trend the game proudly plays into the animations are literally designed to trick you into garding too soon or make you think the wind up is going to be longer than it actually is before the attack suddenly pops out to the point where a significant percentage of attacks in this game seem n on impossible to accurately ENT interpret upon first seeing them at least unless you have extremely fast reflexes reflexes that even a decade of playing fromsoft games were not enough to sufficiently hone in my case I mean fromsoft themselves have increasingly dabbled in extravagant attack animations over the years and you can even find some back in Dark Souls before they became more common place in SEO and then even more common place in Elden ring SEO in particular also introduced perilous attacks some of which were near impossible to cter upon First Sight cuz it was just very difficult to interpret whether the incoming attack was a Thrust grab or sweep and choosing the wrong response in that particularly deadly game of rock paper scissors meant big damage or death that same element of you almost certainly get hit by the attack the first time you see it is very much present in lies of PE and that goes for regular field enemies Elites and certainly bosses and I'll be honest it can feel unfair and frustrating to get hit or die to an attack you had very little hope of ever being able to understand and perfect guard against which begs the question is the game unfair well I guess that's pretty subjective and depends on what your personal standard of fairness is if your standard is the game should give you a reasonable chance at succeeding in every challenge or attack it throws at you on your first try then yes the game is unfair but if your standards are a bit looser and perhaps more reasonable with the understanding that it's a very challenging Souls like game and that you're going to get hit a lot I'm going to die a lot then no the game is not unfair I must confess I got quite frustrated and pissy quite a few times during the playthroughs particularly when it came to the elites and bosses and I'm the sort of dude who after dying a few times to a boss types lies of P Fallen Archbishop readit into Google to look at everyone complaining about the boss and seeing how the game sucks and that it's unfair because it makes me feel better about myself when I see other folk also struggling with the same enemies but usually after getting absolutely hammered or should I say shoveled by that horrendous puppet in the factory before eventually learning the correct timing for its overhead smash or after getting flattened by the green swamp monster and then ravaged by its chaotic second phase before eventually coming out on top just barely or any other example of ultimately Conquering the game's many many challenging punishing encounters after a multitude of frustrating deaths I'd almost always concede that hey that boss was actually kind of sick in fact I think the whole game's kind of sick furthermore something of a turning point for me occurred around halfway through my first play through with the realization and acceptance that I didn't have to try and perfect guard every single attack I mean the objectively optimal option in every attack scenario is to perfect guard and if you're good enough at the game then hell yeah go for it but if you're trying to force it only to just die over and over again then there's really no shame in mostly sticking the dashes with the occasional perfect guard attempt for those easier to read attacks if a mechanic isn't actually helping you compete with the challenge of a game at your current skill level and it's not essential then just ditch it personally I guess I was a bit confused about what exactly the game wanted me to do because I generally try and play games how I imagine the devs want them to be played and with the perfect guard and stagger system being very similar to the deflect and posture system from SEO a game where you're almost exclusiv supposed to rely on well timed parties I assumed I'm was supposed to follow suit in lies of PE but you really don't have to and unless you're a God gamer which I'm not maybe best to just stick to Good oldfashioned Eye frame dashes perhaps until New Game Plus where you're more familiar with enemy move sets also although it is very challenging the game provides you with many tools consumables and heals to make the journey easier as you expect the traditional Souls healing system is present in lies of PE known as pulse cells here but as with several other bored elements it does have a really nice twist where if you completely run out of heels a gauge will gradually charge up as you land attacks adding an additional pulse cell heal upon the gauge being filled it's a really simple addition to this traditional healing system but I absolutely love it it means that even if you're totally out of heels within the first minute of a boss you can still get more by getting in there and being aggressive whereas often in Souls games if I'd have a really poor start and burn through too many STIs early on I'd feel far more deflated than I would here there are other combat mechanics that come into play too which can help scale the wall of difficulty but perhaps the feature which most powerfully dispels the accusations of sheer unfairness is the inclusion of specters before any major boss you can summon an NPC to join you for the fight and this helps massively I mean seriously it kind of trivializes bosses even with the various Cube wishstone Spectre buff things you can buy from janjo on my first play through I remember getting to the boss door prior to the scrapped Watchman fight and seeing the summoning pool and I decided to try out just to see how the summons operated it was just curious and turns out they operated spectacularly cuz I beat the boss first time with almost no challenge afterwards I remember seeing someone talking about how much of a difficulty Spike the scrapped Watchman was in some comments section on YouTube and I thought this was weird cuz I'd flattened the damn thing but we'd flattened them me and my Spector then on my second play through I tried fighting it Soo and holy [ __ ] turns out it's a really hard boss now of course with a variety of weird jittery delayed attacks with deceptive wind ups which deal big damage now you could say that it doesn't really count as having properly beaten a boss if you use a spectre and I actually do agree with this CU there's a very big difference in challenge between fighting it with a companion and doing it Soul same as is the case in Souls born games but nonetheless the option is there if you absolutely cannot beat a boss and you're having a crappy time and you've had it up to here with the extended combos confusing animations and inflated Health pools just summon a damn Spectre in fact I've got a confession to make I summoned a spectre for both black rabbit Brotherhood fights because I hate them and I also summoned for the fight with luxia cuz frankly she was just too [ __ ] hard for me mind you with how difficult like saxi it was I was expecting Simon to be twice as hard but surprised l i don't find him all that bad I think Simon might even be my favorite boss in the game but yeah while I did personally feel pretty godamn overwhelmed by the challenge of lies of p and while certain elements of its combat did frustrate me after tempers cooled and sense prevailed I'd realized that where particular enemies and specific attacks might not seem entirely fair or reasonable on first attempt lies of p as a whole is not unfair it's just a very hard game as well as the core mechanics of dashes perect guards fatal attacks and more there are a bunch more elements to spice up the combat I guess one aspect of lies of P which sets it apart from bloodborn and such as its weapons cuz here you have the ability to mix and match between different weapon blades and handles to craft your own ideal weapon best suited to your particular stat prioritization and play style to be honest I didn't really engage all that much with this feature on my first playthrough cuz I didn't quite understand it or realize the actual point of swapping out different handles and such and furthermore for the majority of the game I made use of special weapons obtained from auro by trading in Boss Ergo and these class of weapons cannot be dismantled however the weapon customization feature actually turned out to be pretty damn cool if the weapon blade primarily determining base damage output and the types of damage the weapon inflicts or the handle primarily determines start scaling the weapons move set and also range the range part really threw me off a bunch when I first discovered it cuz I assumed it would be determined by the blade but nope you can see me here using the boom hammer or pardon me exploding pickaxe with its original handle exhibiting excellent range but now we give it the shorter electric coil stick handle to make its range a fair bit less impressive though perhaps with a more desirable move set depending on what you're into or here I am attaching the significantly shorter Master chef's knife handle and now my exploding pickaxe doesn't look very impressive at all having drastically shorter range but a faster are slashing move set and so as you can see these aren't mere stat modifiers they alter the way your weapons actually move as cool as this feature is I mostly didn't make all that much use of it and in fact usually when I would get conventional weapon I wanted to use even if the option was there to attach a different blade or handle more often than not I just stick with the original though that's not to say that there aren't a variety of interesting and effective combinations to experiment with I'm just a bit of a boring bastard and was as happy as a pig and [ __ ] with my Trident of the Covenant for much of the playthrough so make sure you don't sleep on the acidic Crystal spear either now these weapons generally aren't as interesting or varied as your multi- formed trick weapons from Good Old Mother bloodborne but even so some of them are super cool and have interesting and as far as I could tell unique move sets particularly the special weapons from Mr woof woof a nice bit of spice on top of all this weapon crafting Tom fery is the inclusion of fable Arts Special attacks Buffs or pares specific to every handle and blade in the game and another reason why you might want to try out different weapon combos if I wanted to be a real prick I'd see that these are just lies of pe's version of Elder Rings Ash of War but I think that would be a we bit reductive cuz I definitely appreciated being able to pull off these special attacks though they do vary in Effectiveness which you'd expect they weren't just fancy flourishes to only occasionally pull out when I even remember they were there either but rather I damn well needed them for many Elite fights and bosses particularly because they tend to do great stagger damage and can also push the enemy into full staggered status just like charge attacks can so this was certainly all made easier thanks to patch 1.2 like I said I only picked the game up after the Patch had already been rolled out and so I didn't personally experience it in its prepatch state but I did see others play it and yeah the pre- staggered State didn't last anywhere near long enough before that was [ __ ] the whole stance break thing really is rather perverse too cuz you see the enemy's health bar find finally turn white you get excited at the prospect of some big damage you rush in recklessly and start preparing for a charge attack to trigger the full stagger and then you get killed you were baited lured tempted in by your own greed and because you don't want to miss out on that sweet sweet stagger and such situations were responsible for an embarrassing number of deaths for me and I'm sure many many others perhaps even you that's right you Fable attacks are particularly nice in pre- staggered situations though because they can truly lead to some excellent damage and then followup damage and there are few things more satisfying in Rise of PE than wiping away half of an Elite's health bar and seeing them literally blow apart head hurled theunder like I said handles also have their own Fable Arts usually requiring less Fable charges to use compared to the blade Fable art though many of these are more defense oriented being special types of guards Buffs or pares with classic Dark Souls timing rather than the deflect based timing of the perfect guard apologize if anyone's a we bit confused by some of the terminology used here by the way it can take a we bit of time to get a proper handle on what the hell Ergo Fable and Legion even are and then you've got your stats which is a whole other thing I didn't even know motivity was a bloody word before again though these do all have souls born equivalents just with A Clockwork twist if we were to use Dark Souls I as an equivalent Vitality is Vigor Vigor is endurance capacity is a combination of Attunement and vitality motivity is strength technique is dexterity and I guess Advance is pretty much Arcane from bloodborne or Elden rank determine the effectiveness of particular weapons which scale well in advance like the acidic Crystal spear I mentioned earlier though also comes into play with certain Legion arms like pandemonium flamb bege and F minus as for what the hell the legion arm is it's kind of just the Shinobi prosthetic from SEO cuz why not I guess the main difference is that the shobi prosthetic played a significant role in traversal in SEO whereas it plays absolutely no role in traversal in lies of P only being of any utility in combat there aren't a vast number of Legion arms in the game only eight but each of them is different enough that I'm happy enough with the variety on offer though some certainly interested me more than others which is to be expected you start out with the default left arm of Steel which can't be modified in any way and really doesn't seem to be terribly useful but throughout the game and with the help of special items called Legion plugs you create Legion arms to zap burn and slime every unfortunate puppet Cass or Alchemist who crosses your path just like with SEO Shinobi prosthetic I rarely ever felt that the use of these tools was the reason for my success in general combat or boss encounters but they definitely helped but a favorite of mine being the Falcon eyes Legion arm which fires armor piercing shells from a distance although I just said they tended not to be all that essential in combat the Falcon eyes in particular really did save my ass on a couple of occasions ever had an enemy at really low Health but you're also a death store and you're nervous and you think hm how do I damage the enemy without getting close to the enemy well the legion arms can certainly help with that see with the game's many throwables also each arm can be upgraded a total of three times and rather than these upgrades being basic damage Buffs they instead add increased functionality making each arm more versatile and effective with each upgrade heavy inspiration from SEO aside the legion arms are a really nice feature and while not being essential do add to the overall flavor of lies of peas combat resulting in an engaging and satisfying overall combat experience also I really shouldn't rag on the game for taking this idea from SEO when SEO pretty much just took the idea from berser see one of the reasons I was able to reconcile all the strong influences and borrowed ideas is that for as much borrowing as lies of P does it still has its own flavor at times it looks like bloodborne and the perfect guard feels like SEO and you could draw all sorts of other connections as I have throughout this video but despite the variety of clearly recognizable herbs spices and other miscellaneous flavors here the end result somehow manages to be its own distinct dish perhaps not quite as delicious a pie as dark souls or bloodborne but a tasty pie nonetheless a succulent Korean meal as for lies of pe's level Design This is an area where I think it shares perhaps a bit more in common with the Neo games than the souls born ones I mean sure the dark streets of krack certainly share a similar sort of Ambience to yanam with roaming packs of beasts being replaced with clanking bands of Puppets but the way I moved through each level just didn't feel excessively souls bornes to me and perhaps that's one of the elements which contributes to the game ultimately feeling like its own thing despite the headyy mixture of elements added to the Brew compared to bloodborne or Dark Souls Etc lies of pe's levels are a good deal more linear that's not to say they're completely linear or geometrically Bland cuz they should as hell are not but the levels aren't quite as dense as in its Souls born counterparts I mean for one there isn't a single optional level in the game and so whenever you find some side path or ladder diversion on your way through a level it's never going to take you to some whole other place it's either going to lead you to some sweet loot to an elite enemy with some sweet loot or it might just provide you with a short or route throughout the level towards the same end goal usually a boss just to be clear I really don't consider all these aspects to be a negative in fact I largely found the levels to be a pleasure to explore and I even got lost a few times though I do wish there was at least one optional level with its own boss to fight having an entire intricately crafted secret area like the painted world of Aramis or Arch Dragon Peak really would have gone a long way here but alas there are not any such major secrets in Wise of PE as I said though the core level design truly did give me flashbacks to Neo 2 in that game every level was its own entity only accessible via a mission select stream and while each level was large and explorable with a ton of extra enemies and rewards around every corner every diversion was essentially minor even if the level itself had a rather complex layout I mean lies of pe's levels are essentially linear and that they have a distinct start point and end point but getting through them isn't just a case of walking through a hallway fighting the enemies in each room along the way like in R Cry 5 or something I was pretty damn impressed with the verticality found in the chapel and there were times in the laen zini arcade where I may even have out of the words I don't know where the [ __ ] I'm going a couple of times and actual navigation really is required so even aside from the navigation aspect the unique atmosphere and character of each level plays an equally important part in making them enjoyable the levels look really really good this is a damn fine looking game I remember back when I first got my hands on a PS5 to try out the Demon Souls remake and being very impressed with the graphics wondering how good other games were going to look over the next few years but then I never saw those graphical leaps I'd imagined that's not to say that there haven't been some very pretty games that have came out but nothing has floored me now lies of P didn't quite knock me off mature either but it certainly came close in places and that's not just due to the sheer graphical Fidelity on display but also the art design and the extent to which it changes from level to level of course you start off in central Kat drinking in the late 19th century Elegance of the city still somehow sophisticated and appealing despite the surrounding Carnage and corpse piles but then you make it to the factory and the flippant finery of the city center is replaced with steam and steel with all unnecessary detail and adornment being done away with in favor of utility efficiency and function there were a lot of awesome moments throughout my playthrough where I'd be surprised or Enchanted by some really cool section of a level or some distant view of Kat but honestly one of my favorites was first entering the grounds of the factory only to see this massive steel machine stomping around Below in the poison pit and there's something I love about its name puppet of the future that's just such a cool name and kind of unexpected because it certainly doesn't look futuristic to our eyes being very crude in design compared to the comparatively more mobile and dextrous puppets found in the city but I guess the idea was for bigger and more powerful puppets to be built to perform ever larger tasks progressively decreasing the need for human labor with further Innovation into puppet technology you can see similarly crude machines on display later on at the Grand Exhibition 2 like this double shield guy hm where have I seen you before of course the feel of the game takes an Abrupt shift once you travel past Kat and get to Moon Town and Beyond places left behind by all the technology and elegance and introducing the carcass enemy type moving and behaving very differently to puppets got to say I really didn't see all this coming and nor did I expect how damn horrific some of these enemy designs would be not to mention the crazy sound design they got very cre creative and grotesque with some of these monstrosities and they make a fantastic counterpart to the puppet enemy type the whole blue aesthetic is also really cool in the sections where you need to Wade through pools of their Decay inflicting blue blood or run through clouds of blue gas it's ruined and shabby as these levels are when compared to the crack levels there are still very appealing bursts of color and dark style to be found I wasn't really a big fan of the malum District though it wasn't a bad area but I just didn't particularly enjoy traversing through through these cramped alleys with this Bleak drizzly atmosphere and nor did I find the black rabbit Brotherhood to be interesting as characters or enjoyable as a boss the game does do something that I always like to see through where towards the end it takes an earlier level and makes it much much more dangerous replacing the basic puppets of Kat Central Station and the Central Plaza with carcasses and even these weird puppet carcass fusions it's just like when the Forgotten Crossroads in Hollow night turns into the infected Crossroads it's exactly like the actual and I like it taking an easy familiar area and making it unfamiliar and frightening I did find myself a wee bit fatigued throughout the last level through we you travel to the aisle of Alchemists and Ascend the tower compared to the other levels I just didn't find it to be all that interesting to Traverse through though that might be because of how dull and Stony everything looks compared to the bright and stylish CR furthermore the tower goes on for so bloody long don't get me wrong I was still having a lot of fun playing the game at this point but I do think the last level just dragged on for a bit too long and I'd also stopped finding the game all that difficult at this point well with the exception of like Saia who was so difficult that I had to [ __ ] out and use a spectre one element of lies of P which did kind of fall flat for me was the voice acting and dialogue most of the time it was fine and sometimes even very good but in general it's a weaker aspect of the game I think a perfect example of this is gemin our cricket companion I shant mince word here gemin is not a good character and his dialogue sucks almost any time he speaks almost nothing of value or interest is added to the experience and in fact I'd often want him to just shut the hell up though thankfully his dialogue isn't all that frequent listen to this oh fantastic the pipe fit like a glove well like a pipe that fit idioms you know is that supposed to be funny or endearing how about this ladies and gentlemen welcome aboard the pilgrims cable Railway now those of you who joined us in Moonlight town we hope your preparations for the pilgrims Journey are well underway fascinating Town moonlight just fascinating back in the day the only way to reach the cathedral was using a rope and pulley so thanks for building it on a cliff sa frel I kid wonderful Vini was another character that really wasn't doing it for me he just talks too much and usually about half of the [ __ ] that came out of his mouth was rapid fluff I get that that's an aspect of his character but regardless it simply didn't make for interesting listening I'm not averse to dialoguing games where the way if it's interesting meaningful and or believable I'll eat it up I never skipped any dialogue in bloodborne that's for sure but as I did find myself skipping through some lines in lies of PE that's not to say that there isn't gold to be found here cuz there were some highlights at first I really wasn't particularly amused or impressed by the rambling long- winded nonsense from the AR Laino phone calls but when I actually met this poppet later on I was captivated by the voice acting and dialogue truly great stuff and very dark the subplot involving lady Antonia and Paul Anda was also wonderfully done and surprisingly emotional also forcing the player to make a pretty brutal Choice tying into the partially unique lie mechanic I say partially unique because it's essentially just a spin on the old good evil karma system the games have been doing for a dog's age though I shouldn't try to detract from it over much it's a nice touch and of course Very thematic considering the source material at several points in the game p will be asked Qui questions by NPCs giving you the choice to either tell them the truth or just why and telling wise will cause peas inner workings to react anomalously each time contributing towards achieving the best ending in the game I really liked the messages that appeared after each lie and how they escalate from two it added an intriguing air of mystery to the first half of the game because while I didn't know exactly what these messages meant I could tell they meant something and I was eager to find out what it's also interesting that while we attribute lying as being an inherently negative thing when you're faced with questions and lies of P the LIE almost always seems like the kind response like when lady Antonia asks if any traces of her former Beauty still remain obviously I'm going to say of course here the other option is way too mean as you lie more and more throughout the game a certain portrait in jetto study on the second floor of the hotel will exhibit some rather alarming characteristics and furthermore even pe's physical appearance will change a rather odd feature for a puppet and I guess that circles us back to the story most of the game involves P following up leads investigating areas and taking down particularly dangerous puppets at the behest of jepetto who is ostensibly trying to find out why all the puppets started a frenzy and how to stop it also having P rescue venini the owner of the puppet production factory to better understand the depth and cause of the crisis apart from the words of the Mad donkey pretty much every other person you meet places a lot of trust and even affection for jepetto and so you're supposed to think his intentions are pure and that he's really trying to solve all this as well as the petrification disease running rampant throughout Kat not to mention the Mindless blue blooded half rotted Horrors roaming around in places like Moonlight town the malam district and even laurenzini arcade within the set itself well although a different group was responsible for the emergence of the carcasses the true architect of the puppet frenzy turns out to have been jepetto himself cast your mind back to the Grand Covenant with its four laws the second law was of course that a puppet may not harm humans but the first law is that all puppets must obey their Creator's command but it's not until making it to the Isle of the Alchemists that we find out that there's another law which takes precedence over them all up until this point every one's whacking their brains trying to figure out how it was possible that the puppets could have lost control in such a violent way but the simple answer is that they're merely doing what their creator told them to do and that all goes back to the death of jepetto's son it's kind of weird how he always greets p as his son cuz we know p is a puppet how could he be someone's son well jepetto did indeed have a real son many years before named Carlo who died tragically as a young boy though the exact circumstances of the death and the precise identity of all figures involved is left a bit vague this is all told to the player via Ergo Visions while exploring the shore of the aisle of Alchemist and we also discovered that Carlo did not have much affection for his father and no wonder considering he was sent to live in some charity house with japeto apparently being too busy to be involved in his own son's life Carlo's death sent japeto into a guilt-ridden emotional tail spin at having lost his only son and having had too little to do with him even while he was alive but rather than accepting the tragedy and attempting to move on he instead devised a dark scheme to bring Carlo back even if it meant turning an entire city into a living hell meanwhile there's a separate group called The Alchemists who you only occasionally hear about in the first portion of the game but who come far more into play later on the Alchemists have always played an important role in governing Kat but rarely out in the open preferring to work behind the scenes from their secluded Island the leader of this group is a figure named Simon pistus Manis having taken over from the former leader a man named valentinus who is also the father of Sophia and with his change in leadership came a change in philosophy see while jepetto was the one responsible for the puppet frenzy it was the Alchemists who were to blame for the petrification disease and particularly the emergence of carcasses victims of the disease who have been experimented on by the Alchemists changing their physical properties towards the goal of pushing Humanity towards the next step in Evolution and as monstrous and Mindless as the carcasses themselves are as failed experiments you do also encounter more successful cases with superhuman properties like champ and Victor and like saxi the complete Ergo itself that Strange Life Force which powers or puppets actually originates from victims of the petrification disease and this is another reason why the Alchemists have released the disease throughout Kat and its outskirts it's because Simon Manis is attempting to gather a massive amount of ero from the city to be flowed and funneled to The Alchemist Island and up to the top of their Tower SL stronghold another important character present within the tower is in fact Sophia the same Blue Fairy of sorts who has been helping P throughout his journey so the version of her that we see is merely a projection the real sopia has been secluded within the tower trapped there by Simon for her unique ability to manipulate time itself using Argo and in fact this power is the ingame Reon for why p is able to effectively respawn each time he's defeated in battle it's because of the watch Sofia gave him back at the hotel as well as the power remaining in the stargazers P does encounter the actual body of Sofia inside the tower and it makes for a pretty Grim sight and so as per her earlier request you can choose to give her peace that being the Catalyst for peace final transformation coloring his hair gray providing you've attained enough Humanity throughout the journey via telling lies and listening to records back at the hotel which is a pretty weird mechanic by the way but I guess I don't mind cuz the songs are really nice but all this brings us back to jepetto who gets kidnapped by the mischievous red fox and Cat stalkers on behalf of the Alchemists and is locked away near the top of the tower for pet to rescue even having the G to ask him whether or not he's been a trustworthy father or not no the answer is no though at this point the full scale of his deception and insanity is not quite clear yet because P's Journey as well as his upcoming battle with Simon are all key for making jepetto's plan to bring back his son into a reality the reason jepetto created p and started the puppet frenzy in the first place was because he needed a p organ infused with a vast amount of Ergo the P organ is the prime feature which makes p distinct from other puppets being a kind of clockwork heart capable of absorbing ergu and not binding him to the Grand Covenant as all other puppets are throughout P's Journey he's been collecting enormous levels of ergle finding it lying around crack near victims absorbing it from puppets and getting special Ergo from bosses all of which have gone towards strengthening and preparing the P organ for transplantation from P to a different vessel though in addition to this a powerful holy Relic known as the arm of God is required possessed by Simon towards his ultimate goal of creating a world without lies which he aims to make a reality with the power of the enormous amount of of Ergo he's harvested thanks to all the death and disease he has spread throughout Kat after defeating both of Simon's boss phases and this entire fight really is top tier by the way holy [ __ ] P collects the arm of God and at this point all that's left is to descend to the bottom of the tower where jepetto awaits because now the two required components have been prepared an ergo infused P organ and the arm of God this is where the three different endings come into play regrettably I actually got the worst ending on my first playthrough because the game gives no indication that this is the point of no return and if you initiate dialogue with jetto here you can't back out of it and so when he asked for peace heart I said sure cuz I just didn't know what the [ __ ] game wanted from me well this is the bad ending and concludes the game outright exactly like the submit your life option and woodor does here jetto straight up rips the heart out of P's chest killing him before placing the hearts into a puppet he's been carrying in the nearby case from which emerges a new incarnation of his son Carlo except presumably having the memories of the actual Carlo before he died I guess I'm a bit of a dumbass here but when I first got this cut scene I really couldn't tell if this ending was supposed to be good or bad but upon watching it a second time and noticing the fresh corpses of eugeni venini and Panella clearly having just been killed by Carlo himself as per the fresh blood stains on his face I think it's safe to say that this ending is a great deal more dark than would be ideal the other two endings where you reject given chetto peace heart are a fair bit more substantial even having an additional boss fight with a nameless puppet the same vessel which peace heart gets placed into transforming this destructive marionette into Carlo and in fact that whole scenario was completely foreshadowed in the opening cut scene to the king of Puppets boss fight in both heart's rejection endings though japeto will sacrifice himself to stop the nameless puppet from destroying peace heart after it loses control if you haven't lied enough through the game the free from the puppet strings ending will trigger or japeto will scone pee with his dying breaths deriding him as a mere puppet because after all he's acted like a puppet refusing to Li even when it would be the human thing to do and thus does the game end but if you have wied enough to the point where pe's hair turns gray upon freeing Sofia from her torment the rise of P ending is triggered instead where jepetto for once genuinely addresses p as his son after seeing him shed a tear as no puppet should be able to do that before he slips away in the penultimate scene P approaches an Azure haired puppet resembling sopia before placing her Argo inside the vessel Ergo that she passed on to pee after earlier passing on herself with this act the Sophia puppet is animated with her life force and the scene ends with her tenderly cradling pee after he passes out from something resembling exhaust and they all live happily ever after I hope there is of course a rather surprising epilogue seen with The Alchemist xanu or as he's really called paracelsus who makes some intriguing comments to an unnamed woman on the phone about his observations at Kat and referencing having to return the arm of God to someone before mentioning a certain Dorothy concluding with a triple click of ruby slippers from a girl overlooking the ruined city of Kat just as Dawn begins to break oh my you know I wasn't excited about Li of PE in the months leading to its release in fact I didn't really give much of a [ __ ] for reasons I've already covered but after its release I simply heard too many promising things and also I was looking for a new game to make a video on and so I picked it up and turns out that was an excellent decision because I had a thoroughly fantastic time from beginning to end and unfortunately that's something I very rarely get to say with new games these days lies of PE is not a masterpiece and nor does it really break any new ground but at the end of the day pushing the envelope is not of primary importance with any piece of media be it game show or movie the number one most important aspect is is it any [ __ ] good is it fun and the answer here is yes despite the mishmash of various Souls born in Souls like elements and the often frustrating difficulty spikes lies of PE is about as solid as they come and it even brought a Rare Element to the souls like table Quality quality in its combat and its visuals and its animations and more and because of that I shall tip my heart and on that note let me give a final fond thank you to my kind patrons cheers for watching and cheerio

Channel: CANDLE Type 1a

Views: 18,068

Keywords: Lies of p analysis, lies of p review, lies of p lore, lies of p story, lies of p commentary, lies of p summary, lies of p explained, lies of p critique

Id: f9KpE-7Jm_Y

Length: 68min 21sec (4101 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 10 2023