Lies of P: Absolutely Floored (Review)

today we're going to be reviewing the latest game by from software wait what it's not made by from software who's Neo wiiz otherwise it looking play exactly like it wa how could they how could they possibly I'm G to get to the bottom of this oh my God okay hold on let me let me just compose myself for a little bit okay woo for the longest time from software has been on its own pedestal when it comes to souls games and no matter how many developers try to emulate their success and release their own Souls likes none have been able to replicate from success in fact I would argue that none of them have even come close to achieving the magic that the soul series reaches on a consistent basis the overall package of level and enemy design atmosphere World building cryptic but enchanting storytelling and of course boss fights has been been unmatched by anything from other developers if one game has great gameplay they lack in story or if they have a cool world design it's held back by inconsistent performance the point is nothing has been on the level of from software games since their first Fay into the souls genre and then lies of Peace showed up what was that list that I had in my last review can we can we roll that back please high-fi Rush Hogwarts Legacy Dead Space remake Resident Evil 4 remake Star Wars Jedi Survivor not the PC Port tears of the Kingdom Final Fantasy 16 balers Gate 3 armored Core 6 fires of Rubicon we have another I'm just going to come right out and say it lies of p is the best Souls like I've ever played it's got flaws and we'll get into that later but this is the first Souls like that has ever been able to capture that Soul's magic almost to a tea if I knew absolutely nothing about this game and you sat me down handed it to me and said here's from software's newest game and I played it for about 30 minutes I'd be like wow once again another good from software launch I would believe you that's how good this game is I want you all to listen to me right now everyone watching this video if you have not played lies of PE or are on the fence about playing this game I am on my knees right now begging you go play this game it is free on Game Pass go download it right now you have nothing to lose if you're on Playstation pay the money it's worth it there should be no attitude out there that this is just another Souls RI buff no this is not this is much much more than that I know this year has been packed stacked and ready to attack but trust me if you skip over this game you are missing out all right now that I'm done sing for the game why am I sing for the game well that's what we're here to talk about aren't we so strap in boys and girls and let's get down to business lies of p is the first Souls like developed by neowiz who developed games like I'm sorry I got nothing and this is the dark retelling of the classic story of Pinocchio Yes you heard that right Pinocchio the game director Choy gwan took one look at this Str or and he said what we were all thinking this would make a great Souls likee wouldn't it the story takes place in the city of crot a place buil as the city of tomorrow due to its technological advancement and most groundbreaking the creation of Puppets who act as servants entertainment and sometimes love interest man if only Gman knew about this place he wouldn't have had to sell his soul in order to get his doll to come back to life he could have just placed an order but one day all the puppets go insane and turn against the city killing all humans in sight and turning crop from a futuristic Utopia into a hellish nightmare but an ironic twist of fate The Last Hope for crop is none other than a puppet the puppet jepetto's puppet take a shot every time I say puppet you awaken in a train woken up by a mysterious blue butterfly and start your journey to quell the puppet frenzy you know what that means it's steampunk time the concept of seeing how Pinocchio is handled in this type of setting should be enough to hook you but if that's not enough you're instantly thrown into an abandoned train station with Rogue puppets and you instantly realize all right this place has truly gone to [ __ ] let's explore it before we talk gameplay we have got to mention the setting in atmosphere the scenery of crot is just breathtaking it truly looks and more importantly feels like a haunted desolate City they got tons of bloody corpses lying around destroyed carriages and blockades distorted PA announcements and static warnings and oh yeah tons of patrolling bloodthirsty puppets along with some foreshadowing for much later on the series X the graphics look beautiful yet yet another example that not every game has to have life like Graphics just a gorgeous art style speaking of gorgeous we arrive at our Hub Area Hotel crot and this place is stunning like you actually just stepped into the lobby of a wizard Hotel the giant Stargazer in the middle does a lot to help out with that but the lighting of the hotel and the aesthetic of the walls and portraits I'm no interior designer but that looked good this extends to the rest of the areas as each painted picture that feels like crot is a haunted shadow of its former self will someone please turn that damn song off the sound design is also pristine the sound the puppets make this Disturbed mechanical howl nothing I tell you in this video is going to do it justice you have to play it and experience it for yourself but enough about aesthetic I wasted enough of your time already we all know you're here for one reason how does Li ofp play so let's talk gameplay you probably heard this said about Liza P multiple times the best way I can describe the gaml is bloodborne meets seiro and if you played a from software game this should feel very familiar to you even down to the way the enemies react and fall down once you kill them now I've heard many people say that this is too similar to bloodborne almost to the point of straight up copying and to those people I would ask this do you like the formula did you have fun playing the formula did you look forward to the formula then we're using the formula now obviously you have to change up the formula a little bit to avoid straight up plagiarism and carve out your own identity and I feel like lies of P does that very well without straying from the systems that everyone knows and loves the weapon system is the most unique mechanic brought to the table excluding boss weapons each weapon is divided into two parts the blade and the handle the blade determines how much damage you do while the handle determines the way you wield it and you have the a very unique option to mix and match whatever Parts you see fit with any weapon you want because I know what you're thinking this is a comically small blade to fight giant machines with so let's find a better solution you want to put great swords on a regular sword hilt go ahead you want to put a giant puppet axe on a great swword Hilt go ahead go right ahead you won't be able to see anything though you like this cool looking charge attack but don't want to spend the resources to upgrade again just put the hilt on the blade you're already using this creates so many different opportunities to mix and match and get creative like being able to stab someone with a hammerhead you know like that Cod animation this could get wild but what Li of P does to keep the system balanced is it speeds up or slows down your attack animation depending on what weapon you're using so you can't wield a great sword at the same speed as a regular sword but you still get the motion and abilities the handle gets each weapon comes with its own Fable art the equivalent of Ash es of war from Elden ring each do different things such as enhanced basic attacks or just simply calling down the wrath of God upon your enemies some Fable attacks only require one bar of fable While most boss weapons that I've seen require three or in my case all of them because I never increased my fable art meters in terms of combat mechanics as I said Liza P takes inspiration from bloodborne and seiro you got a sidestep Dodge and an option to Parry after performing a perfect guard though the window for that is very very small like it seems smaller than in seira but maybe that's just me it also introduces its own rally system where unlike bloodborn the only way you can get chip damage is by blocking and then you make up the health you lost by attacking and Performing perfect guards I got to say I kind of like the spin on the rallying mechanic so it's not just a straightup copy of bloodborne and you actually have choices When approaching your defensive Maneuvers though this game encourages aggression as not only with the rally mechanic but the enemies will also Al slowly regain their health from the chip damage if you let them live for too long now this is usually so slow it's unrecognizable but it can compile if you're not on top of things or if you're in a boss fight and having attacked for a while because you're looking for an opening you can completely forget about it and look down and realize wait a minute he didn't have that much health earlier the only way to fully get rid of Chip damage in lier p is The Game's most unique combat mechanic fatal attacks now you might be asking but every Souls game has has a fatal attack or a visceral attack how is this different the difference is once you break an enemy's posture their health bar will start glowing white and to fully knock them down you need to perform a Charged heavy attack then you can do your fatal attack and inflict high damage so there's a two-step process for this instead of just being able to do it once they're staggered like in other games some people might think this is unnecessary but I think it's a cool spin on the mechanic where knocking down the enemy turns into a risk reward situation do you want to take a chance and risk getting pummeled or do you hang back and just keep playing out the way they are it adds another layer of depth to the combat and at least for me it's more than welcome all of this I just talked about without mentioning one of lies of pe's best features the legion arm this game's version of the Shinobi prosthetic from seiro and I'm going to be honest I think the legion arm is better than the Shinobi prosthetic I never really found myself using the prosthetic and SEO aside from maybe the firecrackers every now and then but the legion arm has way more useful features that I was using consistently throughout the game you have a grappling hook that can pull enemies closer to you turning you into scorpion you have a short range electric blast that's super effective against puppets you can have a flamethrower that has some pretty good range and is great for pretty much free damage you have a shield that explodes when enemies hit it someone was watching that Dunkey video you could put down mines my God this thing is massive how is he holding this up we might have a problem getting this through airport security you can throw acid at puppets for Decay buildup and oh yeah we got a grenade launcher oh crap did I leave my stove on using the legion arm is just plain fun and that's all that needs to be said overall the gamep playay is a blast just like any Souls like should be but it is elevated by taking the more popular mechanics and other well-known Souls games while adding its own unique ideas all of which are executed to a near perfect degree let's talk level design every good Souls game needs it and and liiza P has it it pulls out the same technique that bloodborne did where even though the city aesthetic is consistent throughout they each find a way to stand out and be unique without having separate biomes and like any good Souls like it makes extensive use of shortcuts and interconnected Pathways speaking of interconnected let's talk Hotel crot I brought this up earlier but now we're getting fully into it this place honestly is one of my favorite Hub areas ever the amount of features Available to You leveling up upgrading your weapon upgrading your legion arm buying upgrade materials decoding treasure maps and eventually buying boss weapons and an actual training area yes thank you the NPCs at the hotel are also interesting to talk to and have Back stories but what sets it apart is the interconnectivity this is honestly the most interconnected Hub world I've seen since Firelink Shrine the reason I don't bring up Mula is because this was more of a set area that had multiple branching paths without anything looping back into it the past few Souls Games The Hub worlds have just been separate areas disconnected from the rest of the worlds which for established reasons of course but Hotel crot connects to five different areas of the game crot Central Station Plaza Elian Boulevard the malum District Rosa Isabelle Street and the relic of Tris mesus if you're like me upon finding the gold coin fruit tree and you hear the hotel theme playing oh that feels so good especially after hearing in so much about it throughout the game and discovering it's in your very own Safe Haven some other notable levels I want to discuss are first up the Estrella opera house this is a hauntingly beautiful level with that creepy choir playing in the [Music] background I originally hated the enemies in the area but the latest patch Nerf the spider lady's health so it is now much more enjoyable the jux Theos of a gorgeous high-end Gala with all the blood stains lying around is something I will never get tired of just before that Rosa Isabel Street is the Entertainment District that much like the rest of the city has been completely destroyed uh hey buddy I I I think that's burned enough you got Soldier puppets with rifles and flamethrowers xqc's maids and oh yeah suicide bombers all this time the background you got this old French song playing on speakers which was also the trailer music by the way and oh yeah Pennywise is back and uh he he ate all the kids from dairy another one the aisle of Alchemists implements something initially seen in the baron swamp where there are a lot of stronger monsters patrolling the area but you will also be bombarded with cannon fire now this sounds like [ __ ] yes well you also find out that there's friendly fire so just position yourself and lure them in that feels good doesn't it also I touched on it a little bit but this soundtrack this music is good like really really good like Choy gwan just came in and said if I don't have choir in every one of these songs none of you are getting your breast milk oh sorry wrong developer but this is a Souls likee so you know what we got to talk next the boss baby say hello to Liza P's boss lineup also known as spirit Airlines I call it that because everything's always delayed and they can cancel on you without telling I came out of my first playthrough with one opinion Jesus these bosses are brutal I mean towards the end I was like oh my God please let this be a normal boss fight with a no way however everything changed once I saw IGN's review of the game and the author says that playing motivity this game's version of strength you can simply smack down bosses with your head weapons that do enormous stagger damage I kind of wish I could just skip it and get to the part that's actually fun and challenging many fights felt like they put the first phase there just as a warm-up round before getting to the actual meat of the encounter so this tells me one of two things either motivity is the most broken stat in all the video games or I have to go bathe in holy water for about 3 days straight for committing the cardinal sin of having a harder time on a Soul's boss than an IGN journalist so I made a commitment I would do my second playthrough focusing entirely on motivity and letting technique rot in the baron swamp a few moments later I mean it's all right okay maybe I'll just bathe for two hours that's more time than an average Gamer does in a year anyway now I thought long and hard about this and I've come to this conclusion are the boss fights in lies of P good yes and no ahuh allow me to explain I had fun fighting a majority of the bosses in lies P but by the end of the the game I started to notice that almost every boss has or heavily relies on delayed attacks and some just switch up the speed on you now this is fine for a handful of bosses but when this many are using delayed attacks as their main form of difficulty it starts to expose the underlying issue with the fights itself but like I said I had a fun fight H I had a fun time with the majority of the bosses and these primarily were at the beginning and first half of the mid game I first want to highlight the two I would actually consider quote unquote s tier bosses first up the one I think is the best boss in the entire game the king of Puppets is a gigantic puppet Mastermind that will make you bend the damn knee whether you like it or not his arena is probably the best looking in the game this giant Opera Auditorium with tables everywhere none of which survive his theme is amazing evoking this kind of sad almost heartbroken feel to it I mean I would expect that from a song called stage of grief and you find that out much later in terms of the fight this guy is the ultimate balance of difficulty and fairness because he has access to a frankly disturbing amount of moves half of them which come complete with slave Knight Gail's double slash in the form of his pipe arms but once you start to learn the many sequences of his move set you have a clear path to Victory but you still have to whittle him down and that's easier said to done because he is an absolute unit if you get killed by him he just takes off his crown and shakes his head in disappointment just like your mom if that wasn't enough his second phase reveals that the man underneath the suit is literally just riding and the fight just turns into a break neck duel the entire boss fight is just so exhilarating the second one is the true final boss in the game the name was puppet and to avoid stumbling into spoilers I'll just put the fight like this the first phase is a dual straight out of seiro and the second phase is straight up lady Maria that's all I'll say go play it aside from those two every other boss ranged from pretty good to bad but the game starts off strong the parade Master is a great tutorial boss introducing you to the basics of Boss mechanics and relieving head trauma the Mad donkey isn't really challenging but does a good job of introducing mini boss fights with NPCs since you'll encounter a lot of these with other stalkers throughout the game the scrapped Watchman is a fast-paced Dodge Fest that speeds up his attacks in the second phase with the sight of lightning this is where we see the first delay switch up with his wind up swipe but here can be forgiven because it's one move and you can figure out the speed by watching how fast he winds up you figure it out after a while Jeff Bezos is a fun fight sorry Kings flame foko is a fun fight against a literal Blast Furnace minus the kick that has the same animation as a Sideswipe and the second phase is just uh sir there's kids watching this I will say he had one weird hit box with his slam move but I never had that problem since so don't really know what to say about that Fallen Archbishop Andreas is a pretty cool first phase with a really disgusting design but the second phase it's bad it's just bad it turned into a Duo fight Fallen Archbishop Andreas and the camera I know you can run around to the back to face his regular form but he'll take measures to make sure you don't the black rabbit Brotherhood I don't hate this fight wait what the fight looks like it's going to be a gang fight but it turns into a multi-d Duo fight where the eldest is the main boss but each other member comes in to assist and when they're both in the other members come after the player while the eldest hangs back and every now and then charges the player great this creates a separation that is critical for fights like this to work and the arena is big enough where you don't have to worry about triggering both because of the lack of space in terms of the eldest this guy's combos go on forever my God this is another underlying issue with the overall boss fights in the game where the animations sometimes aren't as clear on whether something is done or if it transitions into another combo and I got burned multiple times but maybe that's just me once you figure it out like most of them it becomes clear Champion Victor is a great boss that's not as challenging but he's a great and welcome change of pace after you most likely been getting curb stomped for the past few hours and it's a good thing this is Spirit Airlines because I was able to sneak this past airport security after that big drop off the green monster of the swamp is just me the Walker of Illusions is just a larger version of a knife wielding puppet the corrupted prade Master is just a reskin I know the move set is a little different but it's still a reskin the black rabbit Brotherhood round two turned into exactly what I was afraid the first one would be door Guardian is a gimmick boss no reason this guy dulls out shock damage aside from they needed a way to make the fight challenging luxasia oh boy now I needed three playthroughs to actually figure out whether this was a good boss and at the end of it I would consider her a fair and balanced fight with absolutely excellent presentation but I might no actually I know this is going to get hate I don't like this fight like I said it's fair and balanced but almost her entire first phase move set is delayed attacks like I said earlier having delayed attacks in Your Arsenal is not bad look at many bosses in Elden ring but luxasia takes this concept to an absurd degree where almost every single one she's doing out is a delayed attack and at that point it just becomes a slog to play through even when you have figured out the timing the fight goes from a dance to a guessing game and while you can decipher and figure out the timing on most of them in my opinion this doesn't make the fight better it just makes it more annoying also there's two attacks in particular that switch the speed up on you which is just another Cheap Trick her second phase is just like oh you don't like delayed attacks all right everything's coming out immediately psych I lied um are you going to come down I feel like the second phase is a little better but there needs to be a better Telegraph on the lightning dive overall through three playthroughs even though my feelings change on the mechanics if I was making a tier list I would be willing to put luxasia as an a tier but I am not willing to give her an S tier because through three playthroughs I never once had fun fighting her here's another hot take maybe I don't like the Simon Manis fight either I know he's got some fans and he's built up over the course of the end game but I generally don't like my final boss fights being reduced to my uncle's drunken stuper on a Saturday night the move set is not interesting or engaging the animations are not crisp the camera isn't zoomed out enough to read his overhead consistently the second phase is more of the same with some projectiles added in the giant hand of God attack is pretty cool but as the penultimate boss in the game and for some the final boss this was a giant let down and then of course you have the nameless puppet despite the fun I had on the early bosses these two made me look back on the other fights and question whether or not they were actually well executed in their design because these mechanics and gimmicks that were present in some form for the other fights were exacerbated in the last two if a boss fight prompts me to do that that's a problem again I have to point this out because Neo always showed me that with the king of puppets and the nameless puppet they are capable of making a challenging but fair and fun boss fight on the level of something made by from software and pointing out these problems is critical for them to improve on this otherwise you'll just continue to get mediocre boss fights and I think I speak for everyone watching this that we would love to see neowiz succeed after this installment again a lot of this just comes from inexperienced this is their first attempt at making a Souls like I'm not expecting something at the level of redon on the consist bases but ironing out these problems will make your boss fights and your game better and I feel like it would be irresponsible of me to just simply gloss over and just straight up overlook this okay now we're back to the good stuff remember despite everything I've said this is a Pinocchio story and you've seen the title of the game so you know what concept we're going to explore lying and the concept of obtaining your Humanity all puppet are connected through the laws of their primary programming known as the grand Covenant the first law being that a puppet cannot lie but you're not bound by the grand Covenant so you can do whatever you want the game however consistently hammers home the point that lying is a good thing because every time you lie you gain more Humanity because you don't want to be a puppet you want to be a real Boy puppets are bad and you believe it because well let's just say there's a lot of evidence you can't even get into Hotel crot without telling a lie due to its puppet defenses the game tells the player early on that lying is the right choice to make say something crazy like I'm wearing ladies underwear I'm I am wearing ladi's underwear are you I most certainly am not but as you progress through the game you're faced with more complex situations and your own moral compus kicks in yeah you can lie to the woman and trick her into believing this baby puppet is really her child cuz why do I care about lying to her I don't know this woman I don't have any attachment to her but what about the people at hotel crot that you do get attached to for instance if you've been following Eugene's side quest you're learning about her backstory with her Idol and once you find out the truth you have the option of whether or not to tell her and you could lie and gain more Humanity but this woman has been upgrading your weapons all game and she's chosen to confide in you so yeah I feel like Eugene deserves to know about this other times like when you tell Belle the truth and give the full description of what happened to our partner she gets mad and doesn't talk to you for the rest of the game how about when you're working with venini to uncover the truth about the puppet frenzy and you finally get the key message where only you can decipher it you're given the choice to either tell him the true culprit or withhold it which is a matter that you definitely should be telling him about yeah you can lie in every one of these instances to gain Humanity but how does that affect everyone around you how does that affect you personally how do you feel about the decision you made because you're going to have to live with whatever you say for the rest of the game you can choose to blindly lie throughout your playthrough after all the game is constantly enforcing the idea that it is the right thing to do but doing that is no different than a puppet telling the truth in accordance with the programming of the grand Covenant cuz after all making your own decisions is the most human thing of awe we are loyal soldiers we follow orders but we are not a bunch of unthinking droids We Are Men we must be trusted to make the right decisions especially when the orders we are given are wrong lies of p executes on this concept flawlessly and through your own actions you can pave your own way to truly becoming a real boy what if I told you the best thing about lies of PE was not its gameplay not its mechanics not its bosses not even its level design what if I told you it was the the story you pick your jaw up off the floor yet now I'm going to be getting into spoilers here so everyone that hasn't played just letting you know that you should play and experience it if you haven't but if you're still interested in hearing the rest skip to this time stamp all right let's roll the story of the game is more forthcoming but it's still shown to you rather than having everything placed in front of you this is demonstrated no better than the excellent opening cut scene where you get the full picture of the creation of the puppets what crop was like in its prime and how the puppets went mad and the soundtrack does a does a great job of adding weight to what you're being shown to an absolutely insane degree I'm not going to play the song here and risk any copyright but go watch the opening cut scene and listen to that beat switch up by the end of the cut scene you're like yeah we got a massive problem on our hands you wake up in a train and are quickly introduced uced to your guide Jiminy Cricket Jim restart soon our first objective is to get giny to quit smoking we make our way to Hotel crot find out that jepetto hasn't come back yet and set out to find him hey let's be more careful hey the chanics worked we make our way through alian Boulevard and get introduced to Our Father jetto who will be coming back to at the hotel but you start to realize something's off here what makes the story so engaging is the amount of layers to everything and I don't just mean with lore I mean with the way it's told through MPC stories and item descriptions putting the main plot aside for now the best storytelling from lies of P comes in the form of its NPC side quests because every one of these characters you interact with has some form of depth to them and their stories all take a turn where a lot of these just come straight out of left field alidoro is the guy who sells you boss weapons and he's regard Ed as sort of a folk tale including to Eugene who tells you that he saved her from a collapsing Tower but lost his finger in the process so she made him a glove that fits his hand because obviously the real alidoro doesn't have a pinky but when you give it to him he's just disgusted by it which is weird to Eugene that he didn't recognize it well that's because this isn't the real alidoro this is his partner who killed him because he wasn't a good businessman now this could have ended right then and there and it would have been a good side quest but then you learn that the real alidoro was actually Eugene's long lost brother that did not need to be there but the developers were like let's just throw a lore curve ball here to make your blacksmith have more depth PA andina starts off as just the puppet clerk for the hotel but he then starts to tell you he's developing feelings towards Antonia and through this side quest the game explores the idea that puppets can have some sort of feelings when you acquire the potion to cure Antonia's petrification you can give her the potion to cure her pain but she still passes away PA andena gives one last thank you to the player before pulling a near autometa and deleting his memory throughout the game you'll run into these payones where you answer riddles from the king of riddles arino depending on your answer you're given a trinity key that unlocks special rooms with rare loot it's a fun little detour listening to something straight out of Batman running parallel to this you're consistently interacting with Veni and learning about his life story and he tells you that he was the one that helped jepetto implement the grand Covenant to keep all puppets under control because his parents were killed by a puppet when he was a little boy the puppet that killed them arlino who you meet towards the end of the game and yeah this guy's a Fu psycho they have locked us in the prison they call puppetry I learned this truth long long ago that is what I've been exacting my revenge against them all ever since blood and Revenge Revenge and blood it's the only thing that truly drives me and it was so much fun want another okay here's one that nobody expected throughout the game you're constantly hearing about the great singer Adelina cord who has an entire Street seemingly dedicated to her the white lady who you fight before the main Avenue of Rosa Isabelle Street was her sister Patricia who was also an opera singer who had to retire and become a stalker because a poison destroyed her singing voice this told through the item description of her mask that you get when you kill her throughout the fight she's constantly saying she's taking revenge on the puppets that killed her sister but when you're at the Estrella Opera House you find Adelita alive and well well actually not well and it's a cool moment seeing an important figure described in the lore just s sitting there a a shell of her former self mumbling her songs since her voice was destroyed by the petrification disease but when you give her an apple uh she says this Patricia I coveted your voice if I can't match it then even if I have to break you Adelina C Day must have it all wait did did you just admit was I supposed to hear that there's just so many layers and we haven't even talked about the main plot yet you make your way through crot cutting through puppets until you arrive at the transport leading to St Fran helico Cathedral where you're stopped by the atones who fights you to keep you from discovering what's up there but it sounds like it's more to spare you from something you'll soon find out falling down here is better than devouring Terror a so what is so bad that you are trying to take my life to prevent me from experiencing it now crot along with the puppet frenzy is also dealing with an outbreak of what is known as the petrification disease a sickness that rots the body from the inside and leads to the body being covered in stone scales similar to grayscale in Game of Thrones so when we go up here and wait a minute what the what the hell is that surprise we got zombies now you slowly start to unravel The Mystery of the carcass monsters which lead you to the Alchemist and oh hi Kirk you're introduced to Simon Manis as your main villain and someone who uses the petrification disease as a way to godhood oh boy it's the healing church again the Alchemists with help from the black rabbit Brotherhood the fox the cat and alidoro eventually attack hotel crot and capture japedo leaving the one place where you're free from harm ransacked um hey guys you you know you can just clean this up right you don't you don't have to leave stuff lying around like this like I'm I'm out doing stuff oh yeah you want some more depth all right your listener Sophia your maiden the one that levels you up yeah this isn't her real form and her body is actually on the aisle of Alchemists being experimented on to learn about Ergo and the petrification disease and when we find her body oh man this is depressing and just when you thought there couldn't be more layers to this story you're hit with the biggest twist in the entire game as you've been working with venini to discover the truth about the puppet frenzy you're finally able to decipher the Ergo wavelengths to discover a transmission from the king of Puppets who reveals the truth true culprit first law all puppets must obey their Creator's commands law zero the Creator's name is japedo jepe japedo this whole time The Man Behind the puppet frenzy wasn't the king of Puppets it wasn't Simon Manis it was your own father the creator of the puppet puppets you are a puppet Reincarnation of jepetto's deceased son Carlo and the puppet frenzy was started so that your heart can accumulate the necessary strength and Ergo to become powerful enough to bring Carlo back to life dear Lord oh yeah and you know Romeo the king of Puppets he was Carlo's childhood best friend who Carlo confided in because jepetto never even cared about him when he was alive so when he died jepetto essenti eventually instigated a genocide all just to make up for a mistake he made but then Romeo eventually took control of the situation and commanded the puppets to go after the carcass monsters and Alchemists and it's even inferred that they're back to protecting humans again and you stroll right on in and kill your best friend under false pretenses and before the fight even starts the play that's going on stage is a foreshadowing of jepetto's true plans for you holy [ __ ] this this is one of the best stories I've experienced this year if not the best and it's not even told in a traditional narrative format and it is definitely top five stories in any Souls game I ever played it's that good all right okay let me calm down all right now that we have all the positives with some caveats now it's time to get into the flaws because like I said earlier lies ofp is not a perfect game let's talk about it the first and and main thing I have to bring up is the movement in the beginning is very restrictive when it comes to dodging this is because the abilities such as dodging in the middle of another Dodge animation you know the key to dodge spamming and rolling on the ground are locked behind skill upgrades what why why this critical feature this basic mechanic that every Souls game has is restricted at the start for the first hour of gameplay this is not an ability or anything like that this is a function of combat that makes the movement feel smooth and in terms of the Roll mechanic it's in the second skill phase which you need to have two upgrades unlocked in the first phase in order to open up which leads to [ __ ] combos from this guy from what I played this was the only enemy that was able to do this to me but if that is able to happen with even one enemy type that is an oversight problems with stuff like boss mechanics and enemy balancing can just be chocked up to inexperience it's your first Souls like you haven't honed your craft this long but for people who are inspired by dark souls and bloodborne I cannot think of why they thought this decision to have such critical features unavailable at the start of the game would make the game better and you know what they paid the price for it I've seen people on Twitter who were turned off by the demo specifically because of the movement and the crazy thing is once you get the upgrades movement is like a dream that's on you that is completely 100% on the developers that should not have been able to take place now granted this was the demo and things have much much improved from the demo in terms of movement but the dodging was still restricting there shouldn't have been restrictions on the Dodge in the first place that's the problem the only reason I can possibly think of that they decided on it was the story in terms of the story story like you're a puppet and normal puppets are very robotic and un agile but you're you're different than them but you're still a puppet and have limitations but built differently so as you get more Ergo to loosen your Springs and become more agile leading to the ability to dodge more I guess that was they're thinking but look at the mental gymnastics I had to do to get to that conclusion just have it at the start of the game another thing which I think might be worse because with the dodging once you get the upgrades it's fine the game doesn't have Poise for those of you who don't know Poise is the ability to take damage while finishing your attack animation this is critical for strength builds to work in Souls games and lies ofp doesn't have it there's some Fable attacks that let you Poise through things but for the most part if you get hit you get staggered this especially becomes a problem since you have to charge a heavy attack to fully knock an enemy down which takes time to wind up and the recovery time that enemies have is pretty fast so you got to time this window perfectly or else you're not hitting anything it also makes great swords and other strength weapons less attractive despite the Stagger DS out because the windup is longer and you have no protection against a faster strike I originally was going to comment on some of the stronger enemies just being way too tanky like there's no reason why some of these guys had this much health but luckily Neo was agreed because they released the patch like I mentioned earlier that balanced out some of this stuff I don't think they should have nerfed some of the bosses I don't think that was the problem but for the stronger enemies this definitely needed to happen I wouldn't really consider this part a flaw but it definitely holds the game back from some of its contemporaries the game is completely linear there's like one secret area that I found throughout the game but other than that it is 100% linear which works for lies of P honestly but in the future I would love to see some more secret areas and branching Pathways now that neoz has some experience under their belt I've said my piece on the overall boss design but aside from that I'm very encouraged because these changes are easy fixes for the next title balancing will come with experience like I said and if this is all I have to say negatively about lies of P we're in good shape here at the end of it all I look at lies of p and I am absolutely floored for a developer such as Neo wiiz who doesn't have many notable titles to their name to come in and create a game that is very difficult to pull off correct and to have this much success with it on your first attempt is nothing short of remarkable they have created a situation where now with the steampunk setting the ball is in from software's court if they do Venture into the steam punk aesthetic how will it compare to Li of P now I'm sure from will make a ridiculous world with amazing boss fights and cool mechanics but the fact that I can even think of making that comparison now just speaks to the work that Neo was put into this game and after seeing the end credit scene I am stoked for what they got planned next lies of p is truly an amazing experience you should play it right now and it gets a 9 out of 10 so thank you guys so much for watching what do you think of lies of PE do you think the same as me do you think differently than me either way let me know below because I am a madman and I do read the comments other than that most importantly drop a like on the video and smash that subscribe button for the ZD boy who gives you reviews this damn good all right everybody once again thank you so much and I'll see you all next time

Channel: Zitiboi

Views: 28,707

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Id: tPusjSKuV9g

Length: 43min 40sec (2620 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2023