Lies of P Has Ruined Dark Souls For Me

no this is this is this is it dude this what I'm looking at is the game I've wanted from another Studio since Dark Souls 2 came out this is it this is the one this is it people who don't think that this is it will never be satisfied by any game that ever comes out in their entire life this is it this is the one I could kiss this game I want to hug the director I want I want this game in my DMs all right if it if it if this game Peaks Beyond this moment I will [Music] cry [Music] the soul series is Loosely classified as an action RPG and they rapidly became an incredibly popular sub genre in the Video Game World starting with Demon Souls back in 2009 and developed by from software and arguably perfected in 2011 with Dark Souls which lest we forget for all of the Rabid Souls fans who just saw the title little of this video and are already seething at the mouth like an overflowing washing machine it won the ultimate game of all time at the golden joysticks award in 2021 Souls likes as a sub genre have birthed a near countless number of reiterations from a number of different Studios all based on that original game from from software from software have since released essentially two sequels to the original Dark Souls game with Dark Souls 2 dark souls 3 and have since experimented with the initial games formula with bloodborne seiro and finally came back full circle by returning to the Dark Souls formula paired with a massive open world through Elden ring no matter what though the genre always comes back to what Demon Souls began with which is a large emphasis on enemy Le combat tough enemies grueling boss fights excellent and intricate level design and in my opinion a great emphasis on exploration and obtuse quests my history with the souls games is rather weird but I was right there from the beginning I had an old friend of mine who was trying to get me to play Demon Souls which they got through GameFly and they were adamant that I would love it but I was pretty confident that I wouldn't because at that time I didn't really get RPG games and especially ones that looked like this but after reluctantly making a character whose name was literally A random assortment of letters because I was confident I would give up the game in under an hour I very quickly found myself clicking with the pace of the game's combat and even though I was getting my ass handed to me I was having more fun with a video game than I had had for roughly 5 years I eventually bought the game for myself and somehow managed to beat it but I skipped a [ __ ] Cloe Before Dark Souls came out Dark Souls in all of its sprawling Beauty with a game world that is honestly still so impressive that it's a genuine miracle that is real was so intimidating that I actually didn't finish it or literally any other Souls game until 2019 but once I finally got the confidence to actually beat one of these [ __ ] things later in my life I became obsessed again with them and and have since beaten all of the games in the main series at least two times despite my dislike for Dark Souls 3 and I have since beaten all of the modern from software catalog with the exception of Elden ring at least once it's hard to actually oversell the influence of the souls games as it not only spawned an entire subg genre but it has since influenced thousands of what would be normal Gamers into hateful little [ __ ] online who spout Dark Souls to be the single greatest thing that has ever graced their lives and anyone who has an issue with any of these games to be unable to see The Genius of these games or their lord and savior hitaka Miyazaki and look I know that the title of this video seems a bit hyperbolic and a little bit clickbaity and I need to let you know here and now if you haven't been on my channel before and you haven't clicked off this video yet and or haven't left a hateful little comment proving my point I love love these games my ranking of these games might be insane to some of you but I can't emphasize enough how much I love these games I love them they have become podcast games for me and I don't know about you but for me that's a big deal I can just turn these games on and zone out and play through sections of the game at a time until either my eyes glaz over or I get creamed one too many times and get a little bit frustrated either way though I'm saying to myself at the end of the day I guess enough is enough for now the amusingly difficult thing about this fact is that there are only so many times that you can play through these games before you get tired of them it doesn't matter how much you love any game sure you can add mods that change the game a little bit or drastically essentially completely overhauling the entire framework of the game but at the end of the day there are really only seven of these games made by from software and that's where the souls like sub genre really comes into play but this is the monkey paw wish because while there are hundreds if not thousands of souls like out there there are only a tiny tiny handful that are in my opinion even worthwhile to play through and this brings up the rather important question what makes a Souls game good I asked this question because these Studios pumping out these Souls likes must be struggling with this exact question because the ones that even are worth playing through don't hold a candle to the standard set by from software the best in the genre have their own unique strengths but never truly have their weaknesses even out against those positive ones a game like Neo for instance can honestly introduce a really interesting combat system of stances but the game is hindered by a truly atrocious system of micromanaging every single aspect of clothing and weapon attention almost literally more than half the Playtime of Neo is spent in the menu comparing numbers to other numbers which would normally be fine by me as I love Euro trash board games and doing exactly that is what I love doing in those board games but when I'm playing a Souls Lake I kind of just want to play the [ __ ] thing a game like thyia however has a wonderful continuation of the par mechanic of Seco with its own little kind of unique spin on the stamina bar also in seciro but the problem that I think I have with thyia is that just like a lot of other quality Souls likes there seems to be this inescapable reality of the game just being a little janky sure the game is fun and it's one of the ones that I hold in the highest Regard in the sub genre of souls likes but there's no escaping the fact that games is a little janky what I'm getting at is that no game despite all of the faults that I think are basically intrinsically imprinted onto the DNA of from software games no Studio has even come close to matching what the studio in Miyazaki can push out lies of P however has always appeared different at least to me when the game got truly unveiled with an early gameplay teaser myself and many others were impressed by what we saw but we always had that reasonable concern for doubt yeah you know it looks good but I doubt it'll play half as well is a phrase that I heard a countless number of times from The Souls born fandom and I mean yeah that was always on the table but the more that round eight Studios showed us of the game the more confident I became that these people knew what they were doing they would trickle out visuals of information that alluded to many tweaks of the souls gameplay like a new type of durability system as well as its own unique take of the Shinobi prosthetic from seiro but the thing that really turned my world upside down was when they finally dropped a demo for the game earlier this year Not only was the game play Just Exquisite but the confidence that the devs showcased in their game was honestly the most reassuring thing about that demo I made a whole video about my takeaway from the demo that I can link here if you want but it showcased three entire boss battles and plenty of separate systems including not only combat but level UPS your legion arm a skill tree as well as others no Studio would put out a demo of that length and showcase the amount of stuff in their game if they weren't sure that people wouldn't like it I beat that demo upwards and I'm not kidding 15 times because I was just flat out astounded by what it presented to me a Souls likee that could actually match and potentially surpass from software's Monopoly on the sub genre but now I'm sitting here to tell you that I've beaten Li of p and have mostly gotten through a new game plus and I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that not only is this my favorite Souls likee that has ever been made not by from software but it is potentially my number one favorite game in the entire sub genre and that is including from software games people are giving this game plenty of praise and that's great but I really don't think that people are appreciating what this game is as well as not lotting the studio for the impressive way they managed to make this game as good as it is lies of p is more than a good Souls like it's more than a great copy of a Souls game it's more than all of that lies of PE has ruined Dark Souls for me so let me just get this out of the way right now I firmly believe that this game was pretty pretty much made for me and if you want to know whether or not that you're also me I have a handy little rule of thumb for you to follow if your top three Souls games are Securo bloodborne and Dark Souls 2 specifically then I have the utmost confidence in saying just stop watching this get lce of PE and go play it you will love this game if you're not me which honestly you know good for you then you are the one that I need to talk to so I must come back to this original question of what makes a Souls game good so like I had mentioned earlier there are some things that qualify a game to be a souls likee and they usually come down to these few factors that I'll expand on here one deliberate and methodical combat two meticulously detailed animations three a light RPG system that can lean towards gear specific builds even if this is argu ably the least important mechanical similarity four boss battles that incentivize you to learn and master their attack patterns five intricate level design that utilizes shortcuts to help the players progress to the next six bonfire lamp idle checkpoint whatever the [ __ ] you want to call them that resets enemies in the area upon use of them so most of these points are strictly a bullet point that a studio would have to check to qualify it as a soulslike it doesn't really qualify the quality of these gameplay points but lies of P while not necessarily breaking new ground with many of these design pillars consistently pass the bar with flying colors and in my opinion honestly kind of show up from software at their own game with just a few of these tweaks and changes that the team brought to this game it's really these slight adjustments to the standard scal set by fromsoft that really elevates this game to the Heights that I'm praising it at some tweaks are more drastically implemented than others but each one meshed together into this awesome claw-shaped little heart that Li of PE really is one of my favorite quality of life features that the game introduces is this beautiful little idea that adds these little Quest icons to specific stargaze or checkpoints that help remind you that you have a quest to complete here sometimes it's just the face of a character you need to talk to like Mr venini back at the hotel crot but also sometimes it's it's just blatantly an item that you're carrying Souls games have always had this design philosophy of quest designs that lean hard into the obtuse and occasionally hallucinatory talk to this person get this vague nondescript description or dialogue of a specific thing and just kind of hope that you wrote it down and remembered to go do something that you're only 80% sure is actually the right thing when all is said and done sometimes it just leads to a conclusion of a narrative quest which tends to end in an incredibly vague and non-descript voiceover that appears to indicate that something has happened but you may not even be sure of what of course there is always the literal item reward such as a weapon or a spell of some sort now there is something to be said about the style of quest design it invites conversation provokes the imagination and even rewards due diligence am I shaming this style of quest design no not really but it does come with inherent issues for player engagement what lies of P contributes to this style of quest design is in a sense having its cake and eating it too what is lost so to say in allowing the player to be able to look at a listed locations and say oh yeah I need to go do that pretty much eliminating the reward of solve the puzzle on your own still gives the obvious physical or literal reward item but still leaves the player with the conclusion to a loose thread a depressing line spoke by a fallen enemy that gleans some sort of undefinable assurance of a character's relation with another or the simple idea of something bigger happening beyond the scenes and that leads to another tweak and in my opinion Improvement to the standard which is actual storytelling disclaimer I have not played armorcore 6 at the time of making this video yes seiro has done this before lysp I'm not saying that one is better than the other but what I will say is that Securo story well actually pretty good is not enough to make up for the fact that the entire modern catalog of from software games except for seiro has a story it's nice to see a game of this quality actually have a coherent narrative that is relatively easy to follow and still has a lot of interpretive benefactors of a traditional Souls like I could tell you roughly The Narrative of the game having only really beaten it once at this point in time but for story purposes I won't go into detail because that's not really the focus of this video but it was genuinely so refreshing to see a game of this nature tell a story that actually touched me and made me feel rotten inside on mult multiple occasions another thing that is added that in my opinion was the first real big change that a lot of people were aware of which is the brilliant system of combining blades to Handles in a traditional Souls game being based on standard RPG stats like life stamina strength decks Etc you are guaranteed to find a weapon that you were just unable to use because of it being out of your character's skill set while liip doesn't completely eliminate this issue it does mitigate it pretty strongly based on on these two things one that the magic stat isn't really based on a specific play style but is instead delegated to the Boost of your legion arm and its abilities the legion arm is essentially this game's reimplementation of the Shinobi prosthetic from seiro and in a sense works a lot closer to the Arcane system in bloodborne as it also can affect some of your weapon stat bonuses two the fact that you can swap and interchange weapon blades and weapon handles this system is so [ __ ] cool so in P blades and handles are swappable and what this means is that your handle is delegated to your attack animations as well as your weapon stat requirements as well as possibly not granting you your ideal stat bonus you find a blade that initially deals big damage but it's attached to a handle that is not geared towards your build find a handle that will work do you have two handles that will work even better try them both and see which move set you like more more and even better yet you can assemble and disassemble at no cost find the weapon that works for you what this means is that you can essentially make your ideal deck based gr swword which is what I did now arguably my personal favorite fullon addition is this implementation of a skill tree as I've gotten older I've come to enjoy many many more types of games and during that process I've come to realize that I really really love board games and what I love about some of my favorite board games is this really obvious mechanical usage of gaining a skill set while in the game there is something to be said about a game video or otherwise whose design is based around mastering its systems and becoming better at what is given to you a game like chess for instance isn't fun because you can unlock an ability that makes your ponds move in additional two spaces or something that you can use to make your rocks move Di agell for a turn it's based on skill and skill alone but I've come to realize that over the years that I really do enjoy artificial progression the version of Chess where you can unlock an ability that makes your king Invincible for return or where your Bishops are bombs that destroy all in its radius Li of p is still absolutely a skill-based game make no doubt about it but it utilizes a skill tree system that is personally unlike anything I have ever seen it functions relatively normally as one would expect but in order to activate and unlock any of the skills on the tree you must first find quartz and you use those to unlock the skill but what makes this system just [ __ ] awesome is the fact that each quartz can in turn unlock its own special ability so not only do you get the skill that you wanted but you also get small Buffs added onto it allowing for so many little niche build varieties to a game that already has a potential endless weapon combination and move sets that's a game of the year dude another seemingly small but actually super important addition to the formula is the durability mechanic did you ever wonder while playing a Souls game what the point of all of these repair items were apart from being used as a quick fix if you find yourself in an area or against an enemy that is designed to literally rapidly drain your equipment's durability as a solution to that problem the mechanic works well enough but always felt like a forced necessity like from soft sort of said given the nature of this game we should probably not make equipment invulnerable and then added the mechanic as a means to an end and yes I know that Demon Souls implementation is a lot more brutal but generally speaking from soft made the mechanic almost useless but definitely made it light on the required attention during your gameplay sessions liip while removing the durability from your drip altogether has actively made the weapon durability mechanic become not only integral to the gam playay but part of an overall constant combat strategy if you don't pay attention to this little meter during intense combat encounters specifically bosses then it's actually not unlikely that you'll be swinging away at it and just accidentally break your own weapon forcing you to equip another one during combat but even though that it's most utilized during boss fights it's also nearly just as easy to forget while wandering around the game's levels it's a simp addition but truly adds this Dimension to combat that no other Souls game can really equal to lies of peas combat while arguably not as fluid like a game such as sakiro still taught me a very valuable lesson Souls games are at their best when they get rid of ey frames and look lies of Peace still does have eye frames I think the proper wording of that sentence should be Souls games are at their best when they don't make using ey frames the single best option I don't keep it a secret to anyone that I do not play the souls games for the boss fights there are exceptions here and there if I ever run through Dark Souls 3i for instance for whatever reason I will likely do it just to fight the dragon slayer armor Demon Souls has the flame lurker Dark Souls 1 has artorius Dark Souls 2 has well kind of sort of like a lot of the boss fights into bloodborne has father gascoin and seiro has well okay I like most of the boss fights in Psycho too but I'll get back to that one what I'm getting at is that while I don't hate bosses in fromsoft games all I'm saying is that I do not play them for the boss fights I play them for the level design the soul series gets a lot of credit for its epic boss fights and insane difficulty but I think that only Dark Souls 1 really gets praised for its level design as I've stated before the nature of its interconnected world not only impresses today but back when it was released it was practically a revelation the way that lran is that how say it the way that lran effectively is shaped like a diamond with so many Pathways that loop back on themselves or connect to completely different locations that you've been to previously is something while not unique to Dark Souls I have since affectionately and jokingly referred to any game that remotely follows this level design concept as the game Dark souling me oh my God oh my God I just got Dark Souls so [ __ ] hard right now I can't even oh my God but the whole series is filled to the brim with top tier level design the uphill battle you must endure to even make it to the bosses is truly the glue that holds the series and gameplay together Li of p in my opinion carries this tradition very proudly as pretty much every individual location in the game is excellently designed and executed on from graveyards to ruined Cathedrals to ancient temples to Everyday city streets the world of crot and its connecting locations ooze atmosphere intricacy and well-placed enemies that always keep you on edge even though crot doesn't blend seamlessly together in the same way that leran does as the city of crot usually links to larger locations behind a generic loading screen the actual Maps themselves are nothing less than impressive and that's not to say that Liza P doesn't have those wow moments when you realize a place Loops back on top of itself unlocking a completely new route to take from The Game's main Hub which is the hotel crot a majority of the locations in the game are what I like to call simple but intricate in their design and what I mean by that is while you are essentially walking a straight path through each of the main locations they Bob and weave and walk back on each other in a very clever manner that being said however there are still many levels in the game that are intricate but also truly showcase the team's ability to flex their creative muscles my favorite location in the entire game is the lorenzini I lorenzini I'm Italian I should know how to say this my favorite location in the whole game as far as actual level design is concerned is the lorenzini arcade as it's the first location in the game that breaks free from the confines of the relative straightforward design that I mentioned earlier this level is not only a light maze but you will constantly loop back to to the one single Stargazer which is this game's bonfire equivalent multiple times and each time you do you will have opened another pathway that cuts the walk back towards progress by about a third until you finally break through to the next section of the game it's just a masterful execution of what feels like a perfect blend of new and old level design new in the sense that it still absolutely feels like a modern soulslike title but old school in the sense that I could so easily see this this entire section of the game laid out in a maze likee 2D Sid scroller where you have to enter through doors to progress through different screens to unlock doors and progress at the end of the day while liip doesn't necessarily innovate on the souls formula when it comes to the Jr's level design it sure as hell knows what makes a Soul's World polished and constantly impresses by the quality of its levels and that's nothing to say about the game's atmosphere lies of P pretty much from day one was called by fans of the game as bloodborne 2 due to its very obvious aesthetic choices it goes into plenty of familiar and yet Uncharted Territory what starts as a pretty simple game about finding japedo and killing puppets quickly becomes a rather in-depth story about ambition sacrifice and turning the plot points of Pinocchio on its head and asking some truly philosophical questions about what it means to have a soul what a soul even is and what defines a human Li of PE is as somber and as Melancholy as the genre can get without being drenched in genre tropes it feels as empty as Dark Souls 2 and as for boing as bloodborne while still maintaining a tough balance of well-written characters tragic plot points and story lines and a beautiful soundtrack all leading back towards this feeling of hollow which funnily enough perfectly suits being in a game where you play as Pinocchio but the thing that really elevates liip into the status that I hold it in now is more straightforward than that it's really just the combat liip as a Souls like play is like Dark Souls no that's not right liip PE as a Souls like borrows heavily from Dark Souls but feels more like bloodborne no that's still not not it either lies of p as a Souls likee borrows heavily from Dark Souls but it's actually a combination of combat mechanics from both bloodborne and seiro yeah that's it but that's really just the surface layer of this point that I'm making because while you could just stop the qualifier of the game's combat Loop there you'd be missing out on so many little things that the game does if you've ever had a little annoyance with any of the combat systems in Dark Souls like durability not being important or being unable to use a weapon that you found because it's outside of your skill set or hell if you've ever found yourself in my shoes and don't really enjoy the overall boss Encounters of the Soul series or even if you've never played a Souls game Li of P has the potential of making a fan out of you yet and improving on all of those little Annoying instances and especially because as I explained in the previous section and how I'll detail this in the upcoming section round a Studios found a way to make the game as accessible as possible and streamline the soul formula in nearly every single way feasible except for the game's combat which is arguably just as hard and just as demanding as the most cherished of souls games Souls combat by its very nature is a system of mechanics that gear the player towards a deadlocked one-on-one combat they may not always play to their own system strengths but generally speaking that is the nature of souls games combat it's so engaging partially because of the narrow focused nature that the games present its combat to you in but also because of the fact that the game is difficult unlike a lot of games where the most basic enemies are dangerous really only in groups with the threat of being overwhelmed the souls games ride high on this ability to make practically every enemy in the game potentially very deadly and what that means in turn is that every enemy requires you to study its attacks and react accordingly to them the way that the the souls games help you deal with this issue is one of two ways you can block attacks like a coward or Dodge the souls games sure as hell didn't invent ey frames but they sure as hell popularized them and essentially changed the focus and overall use of them since Dark Souls was released back in 2011 dodging in Souls games works on a pretty simple system of the game giving invincibility frames during specific weight type Dodge the issue that I have with dodging is that with the souls games in particular with bloodborne being affected really only by proxy is that while the game does allow for blocking unless you're doing the heavy Chevy totally ding-dong Dandy havl build then dodging is pretty much the only real option that gives the players any real way to interact with the game's already enemy Le combat design and just to be clear as a side what I mean by enemy Le combat design is that the game's pace of combat is dictated less by the player and much more so by the enemy or the AI of the game in general a simple example differentiating the two would be a game like Ocarina of Time and a game like the 2005 God of War a bizarre comparison I know but in Ocarina the combat is as one Mr screaming slim thick Legend icon of the internet will tell you filled with so much God damn waiting and this means that you're essentially only allowed to engage with the combat on the enemy's terms you can't attack and in turn Dodge an attack unless the enemy opens itself up for an attack this gives the game a very duelist nature and makes not only the pace of combat slow but not controlled by the player God of War by contrast is pretty much just and getting back to Dark Souls even with dodging being pretty much the single best way to avoid damage and even giving blocking the benefit of the doubt as it does take significantly less skill at the game to accomplish is at least to me kind of boring it's a completely fine way to play the game and you do you if that's the way you want to play Souls games but as we'll get into later I think a lot of what makes the souls games fun at its core is the accural of skills while playing through the game dodging to speak positively on it for a moment is a fun way to interact with the combat it requires precise timing and a base skill floor to be able to do effectively lies of P however manages to make the blocking mechanic from The Souls games actually you know good or at the very least not an objectively worse option that it has been in Dark Souls what lies of P does is simply rework the already wonderful rally mechanic of bloodborne where you would be able to regain Health by attacking enemies after Health has been lost but only for a brief window of time and what this did in bloodborne is further incentivize aggression because because if you can get your damage up to a certain threshold then it's not unlikely that you can just tank a bunch of damage because you're getting the health back just as fast or at least fast enough that you can outpace the damage being dealt to you I think that this mechanic in the game is carrying most of the weight in relation to the much more aggressive style of gameplay that bloodborne promotes and incentivizes and I feel like it's because of the really effective way that bloodborne pushes its aggression onto you and actually succeeds at making that work that not many people believed that it could be improved on from software being the infallible Gods Among Us that they are could never be improved upon but guess what they did see what L of PE tweaks and changes to the rally mechanic is actually sort of brilliant now you aren't able to recover health that's just lost it has to be lost through your blocking mechanic now that sounds significantly less aggressive than bloodborne and yes it's not but what that means for combat is that it allows for you to have a viable way of dealing with the game on a more simple manner that still requires some modum of skill out of the player sure in both cases you are still just blocking but the fact that you have to react offensively to your defensive reaction to an attack means that it's not just you waiting for an opening but instead forcing you to respond back into combat from what would be a relatively safe stance making the rally mechanic be one behind blocking instead of just normal damage gives even more control of the mechanic to the player whereas in bloodborne damage dealt to you is simply just a mistake you've made whether it's by being too greedy or a Mis Dodge input lies of PE gives all of the agency of its rally mechanic entirely to you sometimes that forc nature of response is one that gets you barely barely scraping by with the health that you could recover or maybe you see an opportunity and just barely missing it resulting in you taking more damage or even dying but just blocking taking less damage and knowing if I hit back with a combo attack now I can get all of my health back is such an engaging spin on the rally mechanic and I know this is going to sound crazy but hear me out even lies of pe's basic combat is much more engaging than a normal Souls game because lies of PE adds this other option to the table for defense and while not really A New Concept it is new to the game play of Dark Souls I'm being very specific when I say that because obviously seiro exists but SEO is even arguable by many to even be a soulslike but even to those people that do consider it to be one I don't think that even they would agree that SEO plays like Dark Souls on the contrary I think most people would feel pretty confident in saying bloodborne and Dark Souls play very similarly be sure to hydrate please sponsor me liquid death what Li of P does is add this deflect or Parry system to its combat and what this does is stunningly make L of P really feel like a sequel to SEO or at the very least finally letting us see what seiro would look like if it was made as a much more standard soulslike that's a game of the year dude what parrying does not only to this game but what it also did to SEO is simply forcing the player into combat and going real quickly back into dodging real fast this time I promise it's not going to be that much longer I swear to God I thought long and hard about this because I was left with a curious thought experiment why at least in my opinion does parrying attack feel so much better than just dodging one because when you think about it they're the exact same concept and the exact same player input why does spam dodging in Dark Souls feel less skill intensive and less fun to me than let's say spam parrying realistically there should be pretty much no emotional difference between the two to but I thought about it quite a lot and I came to this conclusion dodging pretty much by definition takes you out of combat parrying forces you into combat and makes the player the aggressor even just look at someone casually playing Dark Souls versus someone playing let's say SEO someone playing Dark Souls would tend to physically Lurch backwards in a defensive manner because dodging is a defensive maneuver versus that same person playing seiro you'll likely find that person leaning into the screen with each successful Parry as their lips tighten and their body jolts with a preemptive surge of violent joy as they wait to hear The Clash of Steel from their speakers each of these types of interaction with the game are in an objective sense the exact same thing but it's the reaction that each one gives where I think the differences really start Li of P takes the same sort of visceral intensity of pushing you into the action and adds these little nuances to the game playay that just Elevate the experience to be quite unlike anything that fromsoft has made up until this point what I meant earlier about fromsoft games being better when iframes aren't so heavily incentivized is that it leads to a much more even playing field between me and the game itself in Dark Souls I I always just find myself being hit a lot more frequently than I do in seiro or in Li of P the fromsoft formula when if frames are far less useful leads to me studying enemy moves much more intently and reacting much more forcefully and in turn being that much more engaged with the game whereas in Dark Souls I would often find myself getting annoyed at boss encounters just hoping to be able to move on to the next area and explore it in seiro and in Liza P I found myself actively anticipating each boss battle and the endurance of having to learn their move sets if you ask me the entire combat system of Li of PE is built entirely around aggression and I personally think that the team nailed designing the game in such a way that not only rewards aggressive play but incentivizes it too lies of P knows what is important to the faster paced stylings of seiro and bloodborne and throws it perfectly into the well-balanced nature of the original Dark Souls and unlike SEO where the Perry system was used more or less as a means to an end to abuse the game's unique battle in HP systems Li of P adds and subtracts what would work best in his Souls formula but what's great about Li of p is that even though that parrying is clearly the defensive system that the game is trying to get you to learn and to master if you're having difficulty with getting the Parry down unlike seiro dodging is still completely viable in lies of P sure I didn't really utilize it hardly at all but I've definitely done it and I know for a fact that they do give you enough eye frames to work with will you still get crushed if you only Dodge yes do you need to learn to Parry yes but all this means is that the game gives more options for you to work with depending on the situation and Whittle those skills down to a fine tooth Rapier that you can use to stick into the cogs and gears of your enemies no Souls game really gives you this much agency in terms of the actual dance of combat than what lies of PE gives you in Li of P the pois system remains more or less unchanged from seiro in the sense that each enemy including yourself has a meter that is depleted upon taking damage or being parried that will result in their attacks being thrown off killed allowing you to attack freely for a few moments or allow you to get one high damage attack in but unlike in seiro the meter in liip is completely invisible to you I'm personally not sure where I stand on my thoughts on this but I know that having it there would allow the player to strategize and attack around it whereas it being invisible tends to have you sort of swinging blind occasionally just praying that this charge attack will finally be the one that staggers the enemy letting you get the necessary attacks in to fill up your pulse charges which coincidentally is the last thing that ties into this final big twist on the from software formula that round 8 has put into Liza P what they did is really so simple but when put into practice it changes the entire meta of combat all they did was just allow you to recharge one use of your p charge after it's depleted the way that you recharge it is simply hit an enemy this simple change makes all of the difference in the world when it comes to the flow and feel of combat you ever been playing Dark Souls or watching someone play Dark Souls and they have one charge of their SS flas during a Bosque and they have like 60% of their HP remaining odds are you or that person you're watching won't use that last charge because it would be a waste you'd want to save it deal some damage and if you get hit again then use it because you would get so much more HP back this way and it would feel like less of a waste in L of P You're incentivized to use that last charge because you're not at full health and you can just get another charge back while dealing damage to a boss at full health and then get another charge on backup for later it makes you feel conf confident in being aggressive it also leads to these truly wonderful instances where you're low on health and you're so desperately close to refilling your last charge and when you're swinging away at an enemy and you finally hear that there's no better feeling in the world that could happen in that moment you back up recharge get a bunch of HP back and just keep going in for the kill this game's pretty good I can only hope that I'm selling you on this as hard as I'm feeling it because I don't know if if I can properly emphasize and put in the words how much of a change this little tweak brings to the games combat it really ties the room together at the beginning of this video well okay more like the early part of the video I guess I asked the question what makes a Souls game good and I think that my answer to this would be a Souls like exceeds expectations when it has level design that showcases the Hallmarks of the genre in a way that can still surprise you and at the same time still feels natural to explore and to discover a soulslike game can feel like quality when its systems put into place actively incentivize the kind of action that the developers want from you a Souls like doesn't feel like Jank when it's animation work is meticulous and well thought out and implemented a Souls light game is at its best when your feelings of frustration are never the emotion that you feel throughout a majority of its runtime oh you've got to be [ __ ] my [ __ ] balls off right now and that last point is really only achieved when the first three criteria are met lies of P came out of nowhere relatively speaking and showed us that you can wear your influences on your sleeve and still demonstrate to the world that there is more to be tapped out of the systems and mechanics that from software laid out for the world back in 2009 with Demon Souls it may be weird and I guess only at the end of my point will you understand cliche to say but I do my best to be a good boy to you the one watching you take the time out of your day to watch my videos listen to what I have to say about games and Li of P has me in a pretty tricky little predicament I do worry in my little old heart that I may be overhyping this game to some of you I do suffer occasionally from recency bias I mean we all do but I think that it's important to embrace how art makes you feel at any point during your experience with it lies of Peete made me feel Joy that I haven't really felt from a video game in a very long time tears of the Kingdom made me feel Wonder but its gameplay bore me down pretty quick Elden ring was magic and cap lated into 40 GB but that magic kind of wore off at me and I still haven't beaten it Starfield was amazing for the first 30 hours or so but it quickly lost me Allan Wake 2 kind of sucks a little but Liza P from start to finish made me feel for its characters feel for its World feel for its combat and feel for its soul and even if in the future I look back on this video and I say that my feelings on LS of PE have waned a bit or or that I even take back my stance on this game's placement in the soulslike ranking I don't think that really matters as much as it means to me right now and I cannot lie lies of PE has ruined Dark Souls for [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] me [Music] for Fore spee [Music] [Applause] fore [Applause] [Music] tomato is a fluid Po in vegetable I can't even believe how good this game is dude this is like the padding two of video games

Channel: Sputnik34

Views: 127,494

Keywords: Dark Souls, Lies of p, souls-like, souls like, Lies of p review

Id: LIrUQjjsDYg

Length: 48min 15sec (2895 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2023