Lies Of P - Review After 100%

[Music] foreign what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you my review after 100 for lies of p a recent Souls like from developer neowz that sees us taking on the role of Pinocchio essentially in a dark and gritty imagining of that Fable which is certainly an interesting premise though before we get into that I review games after 100 all the time to set me apart from other reviewers on the platform and while that does include the achievements it also includes a lot more than that if you're curious about everything I cover it's linked in the description below and my steam profile is public and linked below as well on that note though I'm able to bring you this video slightly ahead of the game's official release though it is in its Early Access period right now due to a review copy that I got sent on September 11th alongside a press mailer to go with it though it's worth mentioning the Embargo for this title was actually a few days ago when I put up my first impressions video and we'll Circle back to that in a second in the meantime lies of p as I said puts us in the role of a puppet awakened by a mysterious voice to handle some problems plaguing the island of Croc crot is beset by murderous puppets who went into a frenzy and attacked everyone which happened on top of a plague that was sweeping the island known as the petrification disease our job is to step in and deal with this or at the very least attempt to in classic Souls like combat though the game does do a few unique and interesting things that I think are noteworthy alongside a few areas that could definitely use some improvement in my opinion now before we dive into all of that fully I like to start videos for newer titles with a comment on the technical state of that game as these days how a game runs especially at launch is a pretty important topic of discussion on one hand the game ran pretty flawlessly for me I have a very high-end PC I'll try to put the specs in the description below if you're curious if I forget they are on the Channel's about page as well but I didn't really run into any bugs the game didn't crash the only problem I really had is that sometimes the camera was less than hell helpful especially if you got pushed into a corner or something and every once in a while a hitbox would seem frankly just a little bit off but that was pretty rare however I think something important to note in the technical section of this video is that a couple of days before the launch of the game and after the review embargoes lifted Neo is added to Nuvo to the game which is a third-party software that is meant to keep people from tampering with it so a few things on that specifically for me de Nuvo has never really been a big deal there are some very credible reports that it will affect various games performance and in general third-party DRM is pretty annoying but I will admit it is not something that has ever factored into my own decision making when it comes to buying a game that said what I don't like about this is that the fact that they slipped it in after the reviews and embargoes lifted and everything and I'm definitely not a fan of that approach or the decision making there especially since I just told you how this game ran for me and combined with that already being a difficult metric to provide thanks to the large variety of Hardware configurations it's made that much more difficult because now I don't know if a problem was specifically caused by denuvo after the fact and it muddies Waters that didn't need to be muddy frankly but as for how you feel about that you're going to have to decide for yourself but for now let's talk about the rest of the game starting with a little note on the difficulty this is a Souls like which is a genre that is known for being challenging and the lies of p is certainly no exception I will say this game in particular relies pretty heavily on blocking and parrying or guard as it calls it and timing that out perfectly or close to perfectly I should say you'll likely still be able to beat it even if you're not great at it because I admit I'm honestly no Paragon of that particular metric but your life will be a lot easier if that is a system you can manage to learn and employ effectively however most of the non-boss enemies that's not really an issue you can mostly just kill them by blocking their attacks in general and to make this a little easier for people who are having trouble just just about all of the major bosses though not literally all of them have a specter available to help you in the boss fight that is to say a summonable minion of sorts that can distract the boss and attack it which will allow you to focus on dealing damage unless on the blocking outside of just generally getting out of the way and what's more a little later into the game you can get an item called A Wish Stone which is a customizable consumable that will allow you to either buff yourself or the Specter in specific boss fights which can make up for its somewhat at times woeful AI honestly so in terms of difficulty yes it's a soul is like if you're not a fan of that type of game or that type of challenge this one isn't going to be what changes your mind but I do think it was manageable from there let's talk a little bit about the story of lies of p as it is pretty interesting as I mentioned earlier we play as a puppet who wakes up on a train at the behest of a mysterious voice that would essentially like us to deal with the puppet frenzy and the plague on the island unsurprisingly this sets us on on a Grand Adventure of sorts where we need to deal with all these problems which brings us into contact with all sorts of monstrosities caused by both the plague and the puppet frenzy however what makes the story particularly interesting is that much like the story of Pinocchio it involves lying or telling the truth there are many situations where you can choose to either lie about something or tell the truth about it and choosing to do so or not do so can lead you up to three potential endings now honestly regardless of what you choose during the playthrough there isn't a whole lot that will change in a few cases you'll get a different reward than you would have otherwise but most of what changes here is the ending as the game itself is relatively linear we'll get into that more in the gameplay section but for the most part it's straightforward there's not a lot of exploration outside of where you're supposed to be or doing things out of order Etc after you beat the story however there is a new game plus mode available which you can do to either see the endings or just continue grinding away and working at the challenge Etc whatever loads your boat there and in fact outside of just the endings and things like that there is at least one achievement which is collecting all of the records in the game which are soundtracks you can play in the hub area requires you to New Game Plus you won't be able to do that without doing so overall however I would say I enjoyed the story it was surprisingly in-depth it was much more than I was expecting it to be it was an interesting narrative they do a good job of throwing you hints and clues about stuff that's going on Via notes Etc and just actual dialogue with characters that pops up and if you're paying attention and actually reading everything I think the story is there and pretty coherent which for a soul is like is somewhat of a rarity moving on from there however let's talk about some progression system so we're always going to be playing the same character however what we'll change here is how we build said character starting with leveling up and Stat increases as we kill enemies we will be gaining Ergo which is our experience and currency as it is with most Souls likes and we can spin this to level up each level up allows us to enhance one of our six stats when we first start the game we can pick from three presets that will give us a good starting point this is hardly final and you can customize it from here however you want but we can increase one of six stats three of these are important for basically everybody Vitality Vigor and capacity as these are going to affect our health stamina and weight as we don't want to have too much equipped or it will slow us down and thus make us easy to kill and you also need enough stamina and health to actually get through a fight the other three stats however are our damage stats many weapons and things scale off of particular stats and will deal more damage based on what you have in those so in that regard you want to raise the damage stat you are actually using the most however that gets really interesting when you start taking a look at the weapons of the game because the other big part of progression is of course our equipment the most interesting of which is easily weapons as this will of course Define our play style a little bit and the way we attack enemies there are all sorts of them there are both normal and special weapons Each of which has their own special attacks Etc but the interesting thing about weapons is that for the normal weapons in the game it is actually a weapon and a handle that you are picking up and a short ways into the game you'll be able to assemble weapons that is to say customize both the handle and the blade of a weapon now you can upgrade weapons with various materials you'll find and this will affect the blade of the weapon however in changing the handle you can actually change the stats and the way a weapon swings by putting a particular handle on it this allows you to effectively make any weapon scale off of the stat you want while at the same time making sure that it swings and moves in a way that is ideal to you personally I love that system it's probably the coolest thing about this game for me as that is a really interesting idea and a Souls like that I enjoyed a great deal it offers a ton of customization to the weapons beyond what would normally be there however the blades themselves determine the special attack of the weapon which we'll get into a bit later and overall it's just really cool the Beyond weapons however there are other equipment slots we can increase which will help out with various resistances to certain types of damage such as blunt piercing or slashing damage or particular Elemental damages that would inflict a status effect that kind of thing and you can find a bunch of gear such as your armor lining or your frame that will affect your resistances to those things though that is where your weight limit comes into play you want to have about 60 percent of your total weight equipped before you start taking penalties to your movement which is where the capacity stack comes in but we're not done yet because another option available to us is our Legion arm as you can probably see our left arm is a mechanical arm and this can be modified and changed out to an arm that has a special ability we'll find quite a few of these over the course of the game they can do things like perform ranged attacks for us one is like a flame thrower there's one that just acts as a shield that blows up when enemies hit it which was my favorite and one of your stats also increases your ability to use use Legion arms more effectively now I would say one of the other biggest forms of progression is your organ or your heart a little ways into the game we will get the ability to start customizing the mechanical heart that our character has which allows us to gain extra Buffs on top of everything else this is divided up into phases each phase is divided up into several sections of that phase that we can slot a special material called quartz into for every quartz we get we can pick one of four different types of Buffs to slot into that particular non-joule of upgrades however you can only use one of each upgrade type per slot and once you've filled a particular node up you will get a passive extra benefit on top of the Buffs from the individual material slots themselves this can provide some pretty substantial Buffs to your character especially once you start getting to New Game Plus because while there is a maximum amount that weapons and things can be upgraded you can continue to find extra quartz to fill out this organ and thus make you stronger and stronger that way on top of just continuing to level up and this helps you push past a sort of barrier in progression once you get to a certain point some of these are incredibly useful such as one allows you to quickly use your wish Stone in combat which can make dealing with certain bosses and keeping your Specter alive to help you much much easier and another one probably my favorite allows you to dodge roll after you've been knocked to the ground so when you're lying prone on the ground you can immediately roll that into a Dodge roll which isn't something you can do by default and that one in particular was very very helpful so a lot of options with upgrading that all the things I just mentioned can be respect once you reach a certain point in the title but it is like 60 percent of the way through the game so if you make a mistake or anything it is technically possible to undo it or just simply try something else however you will have to play a while before you get to that point from there let's talk about the gameplay and the world a little bit much like any other Souls like really there are checkpoints of sorts in the game called stargaze users at stargazers we can reset all the enemies in an area outside of shortcuts we've unlocked or big enemies we've taken down that don't respawn and it's also where we can perform tasks like leveling up switching out our Legion arm Etc however outside of the star gazers there is also a hub of sorts where we can talk to a lot of the other NPC characters this is called hotel crot and it's likely where you'll be doing a lot of your upgrading and talking to characters as well as getting their stories and everything outside of combat this is a pretty big part of I would say the rest of the gameplay as many of these characters can do things that will lead you to extra Secrets involved in Exploration or finding Collectibles Etc to give an example of this there are cryptic vessels as they're called that can be found these can be deciphered by someone at the hotel and then this will lead you on a sort of treasure hunt to find a particular reward however many of these characters also have their own little Side Story that you can sort of uncover if you make certain decisions in certain places which can tell you a little more about them which leans into it now beyond that more direct stuff I would say the world of lies of p is incredibly interesting it's got that sort of Victorian era appeal to it however later on there are things like swamps and Cathedrals Etc so I would say the atmosphere of this game is incredibly well done because ultimately the game is based on an old Fable and this dark and gritty imagining of it really leans into that heavily many of the environments are simultaneously Whimsical and ethereal while really managing to be oppressive and daunting at the same time which makes for an appropriately Sinister feel to basically everywhere you go and that is what I think the game probably does best so I enjoyed it quite a bit but as I mentioned earlier many of these areas are linear that is to say there are levels of sorts to the game that you'll be moving through and while there is some mild exploration involved that might lead you down a side pathway or two for the most part it's a pretty straight shot to the area boss at which point killing that boss will open up the path to the next area personally I think they struck a pretty good balance here like there was a good amount of exploration and you can teleport to all the star gazers you found so it's easy to backtrack and find things you've missed and it's a pretty decently sized game overall so I never felt like I was missing out on anything basically that said let's finally talk about combat a bit combat is of course the primary thing this Souls like is trying to do so there are naturally quite a few things I want to talk about here for starters the block and the Perry system the game calls this guard most enemies you either want to block or perfectly block their attacks otherwise they're going to deal insane amounts of damage to you now on a regular block you will still take damage however you'll pick up what is called guard regain that is to say that lighter red portion of your health bar after you get hit if you are to hit an enemy after this happens you can regain that lost Health up to the point at which that light red is still there now if you get hit again this goes away this is meant to incentivize you staying on the offensive and trying to pick up that Health however that can even be mitigated by the perfect guard or basically a Parry if you time this perfectly when an enemy hits you instead of taking the guard regain damage you'll take no damage and usually be in a better position to counter attack on top of that now where this gets tricky is of course enemy timing where they're hitting you multiple times very very quickly or the timing will change mid combo things like that so it's a little harder to do than it is to say but if you're good at that particular mechanic most of the combat of this game shouldn't be that big of a deal at all that said you can still roll and Dodge in this game like that's definitely an option for you however in most situations what you want to be doing is either blocking or trying to perfectly block something there are situations where Dodge is helpful but usually it's not what you want to be trying to do now what makes all of this tricky of course is the way animations and timers behind this scenes work for instance something I really struggled with for most of my first playthrough was the exact timing from the end of an attack I've performed to when I can start guarding it really took me a while to really get the handle on when exactly I could guard and block and thus when to stop attacking and start going on the defensive in between combos which of course means you can't simply whale on enemies and expect to win in most cases on anything besides a basic small enemy it doesn't end there however pretty much everything we just mentioned costs stamina of course if you run out of it it'll be easy to break your block or your guard and open you up to attacks so naturally we don't want that though our character can perform light and heavy attacks and hitting an enemy in general is going to fill up an invisible stagger meter when an enemy is staggered their health bar will start to Glow white at which point if we hit them with a Charged heavy attack it will knock them down and open them up to a fatal attack which is a big heavy damage combo attack that will deal massive damage it's also possible to do this to some enemies if you manage to sneak up on them from behind which makes it great for basically everything in many cases you want to try to be staggering enemies or bosses as quickly as you can so you can get that big heavy attack fatal combo blow in however enemies make this a little more complicated by the fury attacks sometimes as you've probably seen on screen up to this point when an enemy glows a red that is called a fury attack it's a heavy damage ability that you cannot block normally you have to perfectly Parry it or you'll take a ton of damage and usually be knocked down as well however both attacking and defending against everything enemies do is going to affect the durability of your weapon this can be dealt with by the grinder that we have which can repair our durability however going to a stargazer or anything automatically resets and repairs our durability for the moment and what's more certain status effects in particular Decay if we get that built up on our character we'll actively eat away at your weapon durability this is mostly a thing in the early game I found once I got about halfway through the title this kind of stopped being as much of an issue because there are lots of Buffs and things you can get to weapon durability that make this much less of a problem because if your weapon durability drops to zero your weapon breaks which dramatically reduces your attack and it is unfixable at that point until you find your way to a stargazer however this is also something you can do to enemies in fact if you're really great at perfectly blocking things much of what that does is deal damage to an enemy's weapon so it is possible to break the weapons of even bosses to make them much easier to deal with which again is one of the reasons being able to perfectly block well is going to save you a lot of headache here but if that wasn't enough we are still not done yet because then we have the Fable Arts each weapon that is to say the blade of the weapon you have equipped will typically give you a fable art option which is to say the special attack for that weapon as we fight enemies or simply heal ourselves in many cases we'll be building up this particular meter and once it reaches the point at which we need it to in order to use our special attack we can activate it when we're ready and this can deal all sorts of cool stuff it's really where a lot of the variety comes in especially in terms of the weapon assembly outside of just making the damage numbers go up and it makes a lot of weapons feel more unique and then of course we have the damage types themselves each individual weapon we're using will cause a type of damage both physically and then potentially elementally physical damage types like slashing piercing or striking which is blunt are pretty much what you would expect however we also have elemental damage types some weapons will deal normal physical damage plus an elemental damage type my favorite was fire as a lot of enemies didn't seem to resist this very well though there were a few and using weapons that deal both of them will then apply that status effect if you hit them enough so all the status effects that enemies can put on you you can also put on them and all of that combines to make a very robust combat system that can really be played a lot of ways and if you play it enough you're likely to find something that you in particular there enjoy and you do have a lot of options for dealing with many of the potentially very challenging encounters such as again the specters to use in boss fights to help distract the boss so you don't have to worry so much about perfectly blocking every time to give an example there but I do want to stress here at the end of the combat section there is potential for frustration here as this game can be very difficult especially towards the end and a lot of it is going to come down to how well you manage to learn to perfectly block enemies attacks at the appropriate time however outside of the general intended challenge I do think the game runs into a few problems in terms of its combat that are definitely worth mentioning for starters some enemies and it's especially noticeable for bosses tend to just Spam the same attack combo over and over again sometimes and I've seen bosses do like the same attack five six times in a row which at least from my perspective makes it seem like they could do some work in how the boss is determining what move to do when another much much bigger issue that I think is genuine only a problem is that sometimes enemies will sort of push your character into a corner and then kind of Rush up on you and at that point you cannot move out of that corner and the camera freaks out because you're in a corner and you're basically just dead at this point because you can't see the enemy to block their attacks and you can't move past the enemy to get out of said corner and the problem with this is that sometimes you can be playing exactly the way you're supposed to that is to say blocking and everything but even a Parry or a perfect block can sometimes push you back which can sort of force you into a corner inadvertently at which point you're suddenly dealing with this issue and I've died many times to exactly that and it gets kind of annoying and then last but not least before we move on mostly because I didn't know where else to put this part is the second phases with full health bars so the game is divided up into a lot of bosses as you might imagine but at the end of every level there is a major boss of sorts the first couple are pretty manageable however after the third one every major boss for a level outside of of like one or two of them that have a slightly different mechanic have a second phase with a full health bar and I'm talking this happens like nine or ten times it gets old especially since you have to do both of these back to back which means you're essentially doing two boss fights at the end of every single level and in some cases these phases have wildly different move sets as well which can be incredibly frustrating for starters because the second I walked into a major boss fight towards the end of the game you pretty much know it's gonna have a second phase which just gets a little stale after a while and the full double health bar on top of that really started to wear on my patience towards the end of the game now there are a couple of bosses that don't do this and have more Unique Mechanics which I preferred generally and while this isn't insurmountable by any means I just kind of wish they had chose to do a few different things here and there because when I walk into a boss knowing effectively what the surprise or twist is gonna be that's not really compelling to me but nonetheless while that particular thing got a little stale the combat is good enough that I think it makes up for it but that's going to come down to personal preference now from there let's talk about the steam deck compatibility of this particular game officially the steam deck has a rating of playable here and I think that might be underselling at just a smidge as the reason it is playable technically is because the text on screen and some of the menus is very small which is true however beyond that I was somewhat pleasantly surprised here as the game runs very well on Steam deck I don't personally like playing games like this with a controller which I'm aware is kind of the opposite of what most people enjoy however the game ran very well on the steam deck didn't really have any frame rate issues the game has full controller support of course Cloud saves Etc but remarkably even on that smaller screen the game still looks really good and plays very smoothly if anything I was surprised I didn't run into more issues here because just judging by the general scenery and things I was expecting more problems but there's really no reason you couldn't play this almost entirely on the steam deck if you wanted to that however brings us to our positives and negatives and then we will wrap this thing up so on the positive side of things we have the combat of course I think they did a lot here that makes the game feel fun and unique especially with all the different ways you can approach it probably my favorite part of which was simply the weapon assembly system I think that had so much customization to what you're able to do as a player to find something that works for you specifically and I really liked that system though in general I think the combat is really great and I also really enjoyed running around finding all these secrets and dealing with the NPCs that have their own little side Mysteries to discover and combined with the plot about either telling the truth or lying to these people in relation to those Mysteries I got a lot out of that personally however the game does have some negatives for starters the camera as I mentioned there are times where you get pushed into a wall or the camera just doesn't seem to work really well and in a game that's already challenging when you're dying because you can't see what the enemy is doing because the camera is freaking out on you because you got pushed into a wall or something gets old pretty quick and it's probably my biggest problem with this game by far however other other things like enemies just spamming the same move at you especially when it's a boss is just underwhelming to say the least which goes along with a lot of the major bosses having a full second phase with a full health bar that they just do over and over and over again I do wish there was more variety in what they tried to do with some of those bosses because like every major boss coming down to Big clunky first phase followed by much lighter and faster second phase with big combos just got very predictable towards the end everything beyond that though is minor nitpicky stuff for instance I think the Hub area could have been laid out a little better to keep you from running to individual points to deal with a certain vendor or upgrade a certain thing for instance upgrading your heart is upstairs in the hotel but like all the vendors and stuff are downstairs so every time I want to do this I have to run almost entirely around the hotel stairs when everything else in the hotel is like way away from that so just like little nitpicky stuff I think could be cleaned up a little bit but all of that brings me to my conclusion I had a blast playing lies of P it was a very very enjoyable experience for me I played through it several times to see the endings the story was better than I expected the combat was great and while it does have some issues here and there I don't think they outweigh how well the game does everything else it's trying to do which made it a pretty enjoyable experience this particular game is 60 U.S on Steam and whatever that is of course regionally for people but this game is also on Game Pass for very cheap as well which makes it pretty easy to recommend if you like Souls legs I will tell you that if you don't like this kind of game this one isn't going to change your mind it can be a very challenging and frustrating game at points and some people are just never going to enjoy that but if you like this kind of game it's very enjoyable which makes it easy for me to recommend as a buy especially if you're on Game Pass because that's obviously just a great way to enjoy this without spending 60 on it for me I would say even sixty dollars is well worth it especially if you're going to play through it multiple times all of that said that's gonna do it for me I certainly hope you enjoyed this video by all means let me you know what you think of this title down in the comments section below which of course means to like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 243,890

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, lies of P, lies of p gameplay, lies of p trailer, lies of p reaction, lies of p demo, lies of p release date, lies of p review, lies of p ost, lies of p boss fight, lies of p impressions, lies of p gameplay demo, lies of p release review, lies of p ending, lies of p all bosses, lies of p final boss, lies of p weapons, lies of p before you buy

Id: VGsuCAEFrbM

Length: 27min 32sec (1652 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023