Lies of P Is The Best Soulslike If You Like To Lose

I don't like Souls likes I think they're all bad even the ones that are really good and that goes for pretty much all of them Neo mortal Shell Code vain The Surge the original Lords of the Fallen some of these might excel in a few things but they also fall short in other ways Neo for example has interesting gameplay but it also has terrible level design and its story is nothing to write home about actually that's a pernicious problem with these Souls likes most of their stories are lame in my opinion they're not good and they don't even have the decency to be bad in an obvious way many of them choose to imitate the from software storytelling style where the story is obscure and needs to be discovered and even interpreted and that works for from software because from software stories are great they're excellent I'm happy to delve into a from software world and interpret its story discover its story because the story that I'm discovering is always worthwhile Souls likes don't do that normally what I find is that they have a bad story that just took longer to understand I should probably make clear here that I'm not including something like Hollow Knight or Blasphemous as a Souls likes for the purposes of this discussion we're talking about 3D sword wielding Souls likes the ones that are very obviously taking direct inspiration from Dark Souls so don't come at me about the lore and Hollow Knight being good I I get it I get it my point is Souls games scratch a very specific itch that Souls likes just can't seem to except for lies of P I think this is the best Souls like and the closest thing you're going to get to a from software game that doesn't actually come from from software I've seen people discount lies of PE as discount bloodborne that it's too derivative and there's some truth to that it does do a lot to imitate a from software title but there's a lot of flattery in this imitation and more importantly it's imitation that worked it's imitation that succeeded it actually does achieve the level of quality that usually is reserved only from from software titles and it's not just an imitation it also innovates some things it does do better combat in L of P has all of the souls Staples the blocking the parrying the dodging the deliberate attacks the finding opportunities and taking advantage of them to the point that it's actually easier to talk about what it does differently rather than what it does the same so here are the systems in combat that are unique first of all it has a system similar to Rally in bloodborne in bloodborne when you took damage you could regain some of that Health by attacking the enemy soon after which incentivized aggressive play in lines of P it's a little different you don't retain Health that way when you take damage you retain Health that way when you block in the game it's called the guard regain and you can get all of that Health back if you attack the enemy before the guard regain goes away it will disappear over time or if you take any damage while you're not blocking the game also has a Parry system similar to sakuro if you time your block just before the enemy attacks you will perform a perfect block to the monster a perfect guard will consume stamina but it won't consume any health like in SEO enemies have a stagger gauge although it's not visible in lies of p and those enemies will take stagger damage from all of your attacks and perfect guards eventually they'll enter a stagger state with their HP bar flashing white once this happens if you hit the enemy with a fully charged heavy attack the enemy will be fully staggered and open to a fatal attack each weapon also has access to two Fable Arts Fable Arts are the equivalent of weapon arts in Elden ring each one varies quite a bit some of them will just do one big attack or a series of several attacks some will buff your weapons they have a variety of effects Fable Arts use up Fable slots which you can see here under the health bar and you fail Fable slots by continuously attacking enemies in combat the Fable Arts that let you perform attacks also have the added effect of Staggering the enemy when his health bar flashes white and is then able to receive a fatal attack your character also has access to Legion arms these replace your mechanical arm with others with different effects such as an electrical charge a flamethrower a cannon These Arms can be unlocked and upgraded with resources you find in the world and the upgrades you can unlock could be substantial they often upgraded in a way that changes how it's used healing items work similarly to Elden ring and they need to last you until you replenish them at the next checkpoint or after the next boss but the healing does have the added mechanic that if you use all of your healing you will be able to replenish one by attacking the monster you won't be able to get more than one but you can keep using up that one and then charging for the next one this is a really excellent feature and shockingly useful for combat with bosses since you can use up all of your healing but if you perform well enough from that point forward you can potentially have a very big comeback weapons have a unique feature in this game in that they are comprised of a handle and a blade the handle determines the weapon's move set and its scaling and has a fable art Associated to it the blade portion of the weapon is the part that you upgrade and it has a different Fable art Associated to it when you get a weapon it'll come attached to its handle but you can unattach that handle and attach that blade or handle to any other blade or handle which lets you give your weapons a variety of different lengths different move sets different scaling and makes it match Fable arts in a unique way it's an interesting system and because the handles and Blades don't require any materials to put them together or separate them it encourages experimentation and it heightens the value of new weapons that you find because even if you don't use the blade portion of the new weapon the handle could give your existing weapons a new move set that you like or scaling that you want finally the last type of upgrade is your P organs these upgrades give you benefits like adding another Fable slot increasing the amount of healing you can use being able to dodge twice in succession increase the number of amulet equipable slots or the ability to dodge quickly when you've been knocked to the ground those are just some examples now these upgrades come in tiers so in order to unlock the ability to upgrade the second tier of abilities you first need to get two abilities from the first phase to unlock the third set of abilities you need to upgrade four abilities total from the first and second phase unlocking these abilities is a little bit unique each tier of abilities has a certain number of slots that need to be filled before you have finally unlocked the ability in the first tier that's just two to fill these slots you use the special upgrade material called the quartz and each time you insert a quartz into a slot you get get to choose a minor buff separate than the upgrade that you're working towards these minor Buffs are things like enhance the Stagger attack of charge attacks enhance the attack of fatal attacks enhance the attack of fable Arts increase the enemy stagger duration enhances guard regain recovery when attacking enemies lowers the damage received when you heal there's a lot of variety when you first start upgrading your P organ inserting a quartz will give you access to 16 different abilities to choose from and that number just increases the more you start up grading higher tiers all of these systems are very polished and they work together with the Bas Souls Souls like combat to give Li of P its unique identity since we talked about the combat we should probably focus on that and this I think is the most important part of the video if you are on the fence about getting lies of PE this is the part you need to listen to Li of PE is hard it's very very hard most people are going to have a tough time with this game even if they are from software veterans and are used to that style and that's because L of P has a lot of elements that makes it abnormally difficult at least compared to what the average from soft player is used to so first of all let's talk about the source of this difficulty what are the attributes that are making it so hard the biggest thing is that when you're stuck in a boss fight in lies of P your only option really is to get good there's a limit to the variety of builds you can make because all the builds are Mele builds there's no ranged or magic options which many people consider easier in games like Elden ring no this is more like seiro in that the combat experience the boss experience is more focused the melee combat does still provide a great deal of variety with the weapon mixing and matching and the Fable arts and the legion arm and the different way that blocking and parrying and dodging work but still it is melee combat and you only have access to melee combat if you're struggling at a boss or struggling with the game you have no option to make a magic build you can't radically change how the game is going to play you can choose to get a different weapon you can assemble a new weapon you can change how your build is going to work and that might help you but at the end of the day you are still going to be fighting these bosses at close range you're going to be playing at their Tempo you're going to need to learn their timings and for some people that's going to be a problem because some of those timings can be rough I've already described how the pairing works it works kind of like seiro but there's a big difference here and that's that parrying in Li of p is a lot harder to do in seiro if I'm trying to deflect boss attacks and I'm having trouble predicting where they're going to come from or he's overwhelmed me with the amount that he's doing then I often would just Spam the Parry button I'd just guess and tap that sucker and that was a sound strategy that would work you might still take a few hits but you would deflect a lot of them in L of P that is not going to fly the timing to the parrying seems much tighter and it's certainly not something that you want to try and spam here's the best advice when it comes to pairing if you are trying to Parry an attack and you push the Parry button and you press it far too early and you see the attack still coming to you do not attempt to let go of the block button and then try and Parry again most of the time that's not going to work you're not you don't have enough time you're much better off just holding down the block button and block blocking the attack in this way the mitigated damage will become guard regain and you can get it back through attacking the enemy the par timing is simply too precise for you to pull it off by spamming it enemies also have these red attacks called Fury attacks these are unique in that you can't block these attacks and you can't even Dodge them you have to Parry them or avoid them completely when I say you can't Dodge them I mean you have to completely get out of the way of the attack you can't eye frame through it and in many boss battles depending on where you're standing when the enemy initiates these Fury attacks you may not have time to physically get out of their way and since you can't iframe through them you'll often be in a position where you just have to try and get that Parry you're going to need to learn the Parry because it's often the safest Choice the enemy bosses are just too dangerous to stay in the fight for long learning the bosses attack timings and parrying these timings will make the boss fight last less Long since he'll be building up stagger damage the entire time that you parry him the Dodge in L of p is fairly short range and at the beginning of the game you can't link two Dodges together there's a short cool down before you can dodge again but that doesn't mean that the Dodges don't have a purpose in boss fights you'll want to Parry as much as possible but there will be some boss attacks that are just too tricky you might have trouble getting the timing right or some attacks that if you dodge them will put you in an optimal position to counter judicious use of your your parries your blocks and your Dodges will end up being more effective than insisting on using one or the other but even if you understand what I'm saying and keep all of this in mind as you play this game is still hard it's not just hard because of the qualities I described it's just hard if you're the type of guy that plays Elden ring and he doesn't use summons he doesn't use the ash summons you play a melee Focus build and you avoid the internet so has to not spoil yourself or get unduly overpowered it's still going to be hard for that person and this I think is going to be the most contentious issue for this game I've seen a lot of people bemoan its difficulty but I don't think it's unfair I just think it's not targeted towards the average player on the bosses I got stuck I got really stuck there were at least several times where I would get to a boss get stuck and spend the next 3 hours learning its attack timings in order to get through it and the game is extremely linear there aren't other paths for you to explore down if you get stuck in a location even the most linear of souls games would give you another path to go down if you're struggling on the path you're on in L of P your option is get good and that's pretty much it the thing is I don't mind getting stuck on a boss and spending 3 hours on that boss I like that I like that provided that the boss is good and I think it's fair if I notice why I'm losing and can recognize it as my own fault it's easy to make a game difficult it's not so easy to make a game difficult and still feel fair but Liza I think did exactly that and so I was perfectly satisfied to run back to the boss and keep learning its pattern until I won the problem is that not everybody is used to this and they may not have the patience or inclination to lose this much this often every time a new boss rears its ugly head getting stuck on bosses is not a new experience for soul players but there's not this expectation that it's happening all the time there are really difficult bosses like malakith Melania that are probably going to have a lot of people running back to them over and over you know these bosses have high enough HP they do enough damage their move sets are complicated enough that they demand you understand them before you beat them but that's not going to be the case for every random boss in a mini dungeon and it's not even true for all of the Rune bearers that you have to defeat now some times a lot of the times the game just gives you a break and you can beat a boss or several bosses in succession your first try or your first few tries without much difficulty and Li of P does that too there are bosses that are significantly easier than other bosses that you fight but there's a big difference in the degree even a lot of the easier bosses required a decent amount of tries you know if I get to a new boss and I beat him anywhere between my first and my 10th try well that's an easy boss that's a the cause for celebration while I was playing I couldn't help shake the feeling that this wasn't really targeting the average Souls player I think I'm pretty good at Souls games and I like losing I like memorizing enemy patterns I like getting stuck at bosses for 3 hours I tolerate that experience very well and I have to assume that many Souls veterans had a much worse time with these bosses for a lot longer than I did and they may not enjoy the process of learning these move sets as much as I do the question is is the difficulty fair is it [ __ ] is it too much and I think the right answer is it depends fans of the game will say I'm sure that Liza is hard but fair completely fair and they'll say this because the boss's attack patterns can all be parried you can learn to dodge at the right time you can position yourself better the bosses are doable and once you get accustomed to the games Tempo you're better able to int the boss's attack timings and all of those things are true but it doesn't change the fact that I spent an hour on the first difficult boss and around two on the second difficult boss and I know for a fact not everybody wants to do that not everyone wants to spend an hour on the same boss while they slowly learn to deal with its moves and even some of the people that do want to do that don't want to do it this often so while I do think that the game and the bosses are fair I suspect that there's a lot of the average from soft player base that would disagree and they're not interested in engaging in this kind of fairness the art style and atmosphere of lies of PE have been compared to bloodborne and with good reason it is like bloodborne it is trying to be like bloodborne even the story is a little bit like bloodborne but that's okay because it does a good job at being bloodborne the game takes place in the city of crot crot is a city characterized by the economic prosperity and technological innovations brought about through Ergo and the creation of Puppets these puppets were ubiquitous in the city which made them all the more devastating when they frenzied attacking every human in sight you play as Pinocchio a special puppet unaffected by the frenzy with the human ability to lie the atmosphere cultivated by lies of PE is top tier the city is marred by the destruction of the frenzy but you can still see the greatness and Beauty in Pride that it had before frenzy puppets wander the streets looking for new victims the surviving human stalkers fight back against the puppets and decorate areas with puppet corpses the city of CR is really really gorgeous and it's surprisingly varied even though it's still within the city there's Metro stations city streets Central plazas industrial factories Opera Houses arcades exhibition Galleries and even swamps and town outskirts exploration exists but it it's linear the game is very linear you can explore within the levels and it's worthwhile to do so the levels are welld designed and they do weave back into each other letting you open up checkpoints to avoid previously explored sections but these checkpoints are still very focused they're just checkpoints for that level there's never a situation where you can go on an obscure path that will lead to a different area of the game you tackle this game one level at a time and if you're stuck at a boss you don't really have the option to go elsewhere I didn't really see the lack of exploration as a problem to make up for it the game's levels are just well crafted the experience is very focused and it keeps you moving forward there's a low amount of stargazers in each level but there's a good amount of checkpoints smartly placed that let you get back to those stargazers easily the storytelling and Li of P takes its cues from seiro in Securo the story is told more overtly than typical for a from software title it just tells you what's going on but there's also a lot there for people that want to look into it and dig Liza P takes the same approach trying to capture The Best of Both Worlds which was a very good decision in my opinion as I mentioned earlier in the video one of my pet peeves with Souls likes is that they make their stories obscure but rarely manage to make their stories worthwhile they rarely warrant the obscurity the story in Li of is direct it's easy to understand you know who you're fighting against you know what characters are what but beneath that it's also infused with symbolism and metaphor really good symbolism and metaphor to the point that I'll probably make a lore video on it very soon a highlight in Li of p is the music and the sound design the Boss music is really good so is the Environmental effects things like rain and wind footsteps on cobblestones they're always very noticeable as is the sound effects of attacks blocking and perfect blocking especially have a very satisfying playing to them there's no environmental music most of the time but there are areas where music is played in the world through speakers and it contributes wonderfully to the atmosphere of the game the voice acting is Hit or Miss but more hit than Miss what I find most impressive about Liza p is that this is the Korean Studio that made its first attempt at making a souls likee and I think it's their second game they've made ever and They Came Out Swinging it has an amazing ing amount of detail polish and quality it has few bugs it has great performance un huge attention to detail good story good lore great combat no souls likee has ever scratched the from software itch for me and lies of P did it easily I believe it represents the beginning of a new golden age for these types of games the developers that make Souls likes are finally understanding what it is that made Dark Souls good and I predict that from here on out Souls like will be closer to the market of a higher quality and that's the end of this video as always thank you very much for watching

Channel: Ratatoskr

Views: 134,517

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Id: 4FBxf3iFKHg

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023