Lies of P is a Souls-like Masterpiece, But... | A Souls Nerd's Review

[Music] most Souls likes tend to differentiate themselves from from software games by giving us new mechanics lies of P however brings little to the table at first glance pretty much everything you can do mechanically in this game comes directly out of from soft games it merges sakuro's prosthetic system parry and posture mechanics with bloodborne's fast-paced Dash and healing systems and the weapon art system from Dark Souls an album ring the areas too in most Souls likes you can play for hours without ever thinking of from software in contrast in lies of P you think about from software quite a bit when you arrive at a new area and think oh it's farron keep or Blighttown or pretty much any point in the first few hours of the game oh look it's bloodborne so a cheap bloodborne knockoff then sakuro from wish.com Dark Souls at home oh God no to call lies of P my favorite Souls like doesn't really do it justice as to me this game is in a completely different League to any other Souls like I've played a league that was previously only occupied by from software games despite the fact that Liza P brings little new to the table and wears its inspiration firmly on its sleeve I love it so much because it does exactly what from software do it delivers incredibly satisfying combat a huge variety of well-designed enemies Exquisite bosses phenomenal music and a great world to go and explore and it feels so unique because it manages to make all of these parts which shouldn't necessarily fit together as I'll go on to explain work perfectly all this being said there is one big problem with lies of pain and one my fear May prevent some people from ever seeing how incredible this game is so I want to deal with that first then I'm going to talk you through my first impressions of the game covering these topics and give you some tips along the way then at the end of the video I want to cover some of my criticisms along with some smaller issues I think could be addressed I will be showing a lot of bosses from the game but if you're avoiding spoilers the audio to this video is completely spoiler free so what's the big problem well this game is hard it's really hard Liza p is harder than any from software game and I know the second that I say that a certain amount of you will say well I'm not buying that then and to those people I urge you to reconsider because this game is difficult in the same way that from software games are difficult you are going to get destroyed by a boss but most of the time you'll be so in awe of that boss so captivated by the music and So Satisfied when the combat begins to click that the experience of the fight becomes worth the frustration of the difficulty the late game of lies of p is up there with the very best from software games and I promise you it's worth the investment of your time to get to it the majority of the difficulty is overcome by getting good and learning the fights however there are a few small things that feel unnecessarily spiteful and I'll talk about these at the end to reassure anyone who might be struggling so first up the mechanics and the combat if any of you were around for the very early days of Elder ring speculation you may remember a general theory that Elden ring would include the mechanics of bloodborne sekiro and Dark Souls and I remember being like relieved when it turned out this wouldn't be the case because pairing sakuro's mechanics with dark souls and bloodborne's doesn't really work that well in theory if you put a Dark Souls boss in sakuro it would get completely monstered if you put a Sakura boss in a Dark Souls game it immediately becomes the hardest boss in the game so having the ability to make a sakuro style deflect build in a Souls game would be completely overpowered and make every other build sub-optimal and I suspected that the same would be true for lies of P parrying would be king and you never need to use dodging but that's not the case while everything in the game can be parried dodging is still incredibly effective and to my surprise sometimes felt Superior in the mid to late game whether it is depends on both the boss you're fighting and the build and weapon that you're using check out this boss now when I first walked in here I thought I was in real trouble parrying this one felt really risky and also a successful Parry knocked me back out of his range so I couldn't capitalize on the opening I thought I was going to be here for hours until what I realized that you can just dodge and on certain attacks playing walk around him like you're playing Dark Souls 2. and this gave me so many more attack opportunities dodging and strafing around his attacks meant that I could keep on the offensive all the time now check out this boss who's one of the easier fights in the game this combo is like 15 attacks long and catching a couple of them will kill you you can Parry every attack if you like or you can literally walk around the entire combo dodging only the last couple of attacks and then capitalizing on the opening all of this is with the standard Dodge that you start the game with by the way you can upgrade your Dodge using the unfortunately named P organ abilities but I haven't tried that out yet so this game isn't sakurotu then it's bloodborne 2. well no because say you were running a pure strength build and were able to deal all of the damage that you needed to during a single stagger opportunity always being on the attack would be far less important or if you just wanted to be flashing and get better at the game parrying would make a lot more sense and this is what sets lies of P upon mechanically for every single fight in this game the bloodborne approach works the secure approach works which one you take depends on your build the boss you're fighting and your preferred play style and this can make for interesting choices and completely different feeling fights or without ever changing your build or weapon another factor is how the Stagger system works in lies of P unlike sakuro an enemy won't immediately stagger once enough posture has built up you have to hit them with a Charged attack when their health bar starts glowing and a top tip for lies of pity don't try and force a charge either the second you see this you have to wait for an opening there is no hyper armor in this game so you will be interrupted if the Gap isn't big enough I really like this Choice as it forces you to learn the moves out well enough to know where your moments are for that charging sometimes you just have to accept that there isn't room and miss the opportunity and trust me you'll die far less if you accept this rather than trying to force it does stagger don't immediately take the repost because in this game the staggers last for quite a while this actually became a little mini game for me in trying to do as much damage as possible in a single stagger by trying out different combinations of heavy light attacks and Fable Watts and a final tip for the combat mechanics backstabs they exist in Liza p in exactly the same form as the Dark Souls games and are super valuable for dealing with the humanoid fights that you're going to encounter and by super valuable I mean almost a cheat code for them next let's talk about bosses the bosses in lies of P are excellent and almost none of them would look out of place in a from software game which is as high as praise gets their animations and moveset work really well and look perfect in a lot of other Souls likes there can be big issues with bosses ranging from very wonky hitboxes to janky movesets that are very unintuitive to dodge or deflect but these issues aren't present in lies of P for the most part the difficulty of these boss encounters means that by the time you've beaten them you likely have a very good grasp of their move sets similar to playing sakuro or doing low-level challenge runs in Souls games this means that your second playthrough of Liza P will be far less strenuous the cinematics for the bosses are excellent too Liza p is chock full of ridiculously cool two-phase boss fights that are revealed to us in the traditional from software way by being just cool enough to distract us from the terrifying realization that there's another bloody health bar to deal with next up mini bosses the mini bosses in lies of P don't have health bars like the ones in sakuro or Eldon ring but they are very much deserving of them I understand Neo is his decision to not give the mouth bars saving them from some of that there's too many generic bosses criticism that's sometimes leveled at Securo an elderly but I'm pointing this out so you don't feel too bad in getting stuck on them there's definitely a few that took me many tries to be I'd say as a very general rule the mini bosses go down easier with a parrying approach as they tend to be very fast compared to some of the larger main bosses next up areas and level design now the one downside to Liza P that I don't think is a valid criticism is to do with its level design this game is very linear at no point was I lost or wondering which path to take there is always a very clear progression part in each level and I finish the game pretty sure that I'd seen and explored everything this does feel a little disappointing when compared to from software games no alternate routes optional bosses or secret areas to discover on subsequent playthroughs but this isn't in my criticism section because I don't think it's fair to criticize a deliberate decision in a game that does everything else so well I'd much prefer a great linear game than a compromised semi-open one the areas themselves are great and there's excellent variety between them I was a little worried this game might be a little too samian levels but there are actually so many different settings that all have their own personality and are really fun to explore and like I mentioned you'll notice plenty of subtle and not so subtle nods to from software throughout weapons and builds now so far I've only done one all playthrough where I made an advanced build and tried strength for a little while I've also got halfway through the game on a more balanced build but based on everything that I've seen so far there seems to be a huge amount of build Variety in this game all of the weapons are super cool and having that ability to switch the blade and handles allows for a whole lot of customization and all of these possibilities are yet another way that Liza peace sets itself apart from from software games another thing that I found interesting is how most of the more powerful amulets in this game think rings in Dark Souls or talismans in album ring way a whole lot this meant I couldn't use them on my builds without being overweight or taking off some armor which I really didn't want to do so I do kind of wonder whether a capacity build would be a thing in this game letting your special powerful amulets do the legwork on your damage instead of levels while you wear the heaviest and most forgiving armor possible of all of the aspects of lies of P making some really silly builds is the thing that I'm most excited about now the enemy variety and this one is always a little hard to measure in an Ideal World we'd have every single area having bespoke unique enemies with absolutely no repetition but no game does that not even from Salt I think what's important is not feeling like you're going through the whole game fighting the same enemies with different skins and once again Liza P delivers on this really rather well sure there are early enemies that you'll see in slightly different forms all the way into the mid game but by the late game the enemy assortments have almost no resemblance to what you see earlier on they've done a really good job in distributing all of these different enemies throughout the areas and making them feel at home there it's always a gripe of mine when you reach a cool new area that's so visually distinct from the rest yet is populated by all the same dudes you've just been fighting in the last laughs next let's talk about the story and the law now this is always the thing that I tend to interact with the least in these games generally my Strat is go hit the big monster with a stick wait a month for Vari to drop his lore video and then say yeah I totally knew all of this and that is why I hit the big monster with a stick but in lies of P the story is a lot easier to digest than a from software game the law while not being anything like as deep or complex it's really cool it's not constantly forced on you through endless cut scenes like other games but also it's not as reliant on you seeking it out as a France object because of the relative narrowness of the law the temptation to interact with it at every opportunity was actually greater than usual I found myself reading every article or note that I picked up and in doing so throughout almost every area of the game I always knew the name of and some law behind the boss I'd be facing at the end and this gave further weight to the big reveal throughout my playthrough I felt myself genuinely caring about the characters and when paired with this game's Exquisite soundtrack some of the late game story moments felt genuinely powerful in a way that you'd expect more from AAA Sony exclusive rather than an indie Souls like along the way Eliza P subtly forces you to Muse on what it is to be human the dialogue choices you make us be in contrast to the source material present lying as a kindness and telling the truth as the colder option both of these have noticeable consequences in your playthrough having tried one I'm really looking forward to trying the other foreign ly for some criticisms of the game now the first one is a very personal and subjective run about a late game Boss so spoiler warning and feel free to tell me to get good in the comment section this fight is the worst boss fight in lies of p and the worst part of the game by a country mile if you ask me it's not to do with difficulty the boss doesn't make the top three hardest fights in the game the hardest boss in Liza P which I've tried my best to avoid spoiling in this video took me almost an entire day to be twice as much as any other and I think that fight is absolutely perfect I can't wait to do it again this one however just feels a little unnecessary it's annoying because by this point in the game near Wiz have already proved that they can bring back previous bosses with new mechanics in an interesting way and they've proved that they understand how to make a good multi-boss fire with the previous iteration of this one and because of that this boss ends up feeling unimaginative in a game that is dripping with imagination I ended up using a summon for this one for the first and only time such was my desire to have it over with and the feeling when it was over was that of relief rather than satisfaction which is always a sign that things have gone a little bit too far I don't know what I'm suggesting here and it might just be me but a low in a game filled with so many highs felt worth mentioning next camera centering there's a few fights in lies of P where you can get hit by attacks that you can't actually see the wind-up of the first example of this that I noticed was in the Archbishop Andreas boss fight this descending attack he does in phase two completely leaves the screen before it hits you for the second and probably the most egregious example I'm going to show the final boss of the main game so look away now if you're avoiding spoilers and I'll say when I'm done once again the overhead attack completely leaves the screen here and in phase two if you're standing anywhere near it the boss fully leaves the screen for this jumping red attack that has to be parried and Deals massive damage there were a couple of other examples of this throughout the game but these were the ones that stuck out to me the most all of these attacks can still be parried by learning the timing but that's a little unintuitive if you can't actually see the attack you're trying to learn I feel like these could be fixed by adjusting the field of view for these fights or simply adjusting the position of the lock-on to the boss having it a bit higher on the boss would solve this I think okay I'm done spoiling that now for the big two the only real criticisms I have of lies of pig first run backs there are two types of run back in lies of pig and I've got an issue with Beau the first is run backs to main bosses with the exception of one these aren't dangerous and don't involve fighting any enemies which makes me wonder what's the point of them they don't take long but when you're dying as often as you will do in this game that extra 30 seconds running back to the boss room really starts to grow the second type of run backs are the ones to mini bosses these tend to be slightly longer and generally do involve a bit of combat along the way as I mentioned earlier the mini bosses in lies of P are deadly fast and go from zero to a hundred a lot quicker than the main bosses while you're getting used to their move sets this can result in doing a two minute run to the boss room battling through some standard enemies along the way all to get killed in 10 seconds by the Minibots when you've been playing for 20 minutes and only have about a minute's worth of experience with the Enemy that you're trying to learn this can get a little annoying [Music] and finally for the big one and rather than a direct criticism this is a question that ties into the overall issue of the game's difficulty in my review of the lies of P demo earlier in the year I said that the Parry timing in this game was brutal and could be widened a little to make the game a little bit more accessible when I was making my way through the early game of the full release though I'd kinda change my mind on that parrying isn't necessary and if you widen that window to the size of Securus you risk upsetting that delicate balance between Dodges and parries easy parrying will take away lies of Peace hybrid fighting style and turn it into pure Sakura it's fine as it is then when I reached the late game of lies of P I changed my mind again and thought to myself that if they widened the Parry window to twice what second Rose is I still don't think it would help such as the ferociousness of the late game bosses so should the Parry window for lies of P be widened and is this game too hard the honest answer I don't know as I sit writing this script I'm doing so with twitch open in another window watching the wheels of the challenge run Community start to turn on lies of P if this game stays in its current state the speed runs the low level runs and the no hit runs will be absolutely epic and possibly the Pinnacle of seoul's mastery and I can't wait to see that and I can't wait to continue my second playthrough and improve on all of the boss fights lies of p is currently a Nirvana for Dark Souls nerds like me who want a decent Challenge and don't mind putting in the time to achieve the satisfaction of becoming competent at it but when I think of the care that neowitz has put into this game the storytelling the law the boss design the world design the music those incredible cinematic moments that are so impeccable I think this game deserves to be seen by everyone who likes good video games and a lot of people will be put off by this difficulty do I love Liza p as it is oh hell yeah I adore it would I still love it if near whiz dialed down some of the boss attacks from 11 to 10. widen the Parry window a little bit and made it more approachable to a slightly wider audience also yes because although I suspect that lies of Peace difficulty will be its biggest talking point just like Dark Souls bloodborne sakuro and Elden ring the difficulty of this game is the least remarkable thing about it thanks for watching [Music] thank you

Channel: Thingfishy

Views: 143,745

Keywords:

Id: M_vJ6DGOn3c

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Soulandsinew]

Lies of P is an amazing game, truly a special game, its not perfect but for the devs first souls game its unbelievably system rich and visually breathtaking.

His difficulty take is at 22min

[u/SkaenryssTheTiger]

I love Thingfishy and I'm going to watch the vid later but I'm sure his opinion is absolutely based either way.