Lies of P Review - Mimicry at its Finest

lies of p is finally here and folks want to know if this Clockwork Souls I can stack up to the competition after giving players a chance to go Hands-On with a rather lengthy demo it's almost time to jump into the world of crop and explore it for yourselves in today's review we're going to be talking about what you can expect we're going to be going through a early area of the game in the review this is actually the same area from the demo so we're going to be keeping things spoiler free and mainly talking about the mechanics of the game and my experience with it my name is cowboy and let's Jump On In so I will say right out the gate the game does a pretty good job at preserving the soulsborne DNA that is quite obvious here you know you have enemies waiting to try and Ambush you in Corners Pathways that you're going to unlock shortcuts going back to Bases uh pretty good enemy variety Treasures to find everything that you would expect out of a good Souls like is definitely alive and well in this game and there was definitely no time while I was playing it that I was like oh you know this just doesn't quite scratch that itch if you're looking for a new Souls like and one to you know just kind of get that Vibe going this is definitely going to hit the spot the same time I do think there are a couple of areas in the gameplay that could have been improved so we're also going to be touching on those but I will say that right up front I do think this is a good experience so jumping more into the combat the combat of this game is pretty interesting you have your standard soulsborne type idea with the light attack heavy attack but there is a big emphasis on blocking in this game in particular while you are holding down the trigger are you able to block but if you time it at exactly the right time you'll execute what's known as a perfect guard and by doing enough perfect cards on an enemy you can actually break their weapons in some cases such as this guy here I can get him to do a wind-up you can see there with a well-timed block I have now broken his weapon and now he hits me for a modicum of what he used to hit me for but so on top of the perfect guard we also have a little bit of a rally mechanic kind of similar to bloodborne the idea here is when we are just blocking attacks outright we are able to basically mitigate the damage we're going to be taking from them actually go to a slightly weaker weapon I'll go to the dagger here and if you look up at the health bar you'll notice that there is a portion of the health bar that is basically a more translucent red now that is Health that is slowly going to drain over time very similar to Rally but if I attack I can gain that Health in the back and so what's interesting here is you have a system where you're able to block and then follow up to get your health back or alternatively execute the perfect block which is kind of like this game's version of a Parry to end up doing stagger damage to an enemy potentially throwing them off center in some cases breaking their weapon on top of that we of course do have dodging I know a lot of people were curious about the dodging because that was a lot of people didn't think it was all that tight in the demo as you play the game you have something called a p organ where you can evolve so I'm able to to get a double dodge now so for while I'm in combat I can dodge and then Dodge again giving myself a proper Dodge but at the same time I will say the game is very focused around you getting those perfect guards and this is one of the areas that I felt was a little bit weird in a sense it almost felt like a little bit of identity confusion because you have this system in place where you're able to to block and then follow up to regain your health you have the ability to to dodge and you know counter Dodge but at the same time because of how the the perfect guard system works you're really intended to use that a lot the perfect guard being able to help throw off enemies throw them off uh off balance essentially and line up for a chance to stagger them on top of the fact that you can break weapons with it it's definitely something that the game wants you to utilize to its fullest but despite that I think the window on it is actually a little bit too tight while fighting basic enemies it's not going to be really something that you noticed as I got farther and farther into the game and fought certain bosses were multiple perfect blocks in a row would be ideal to mitigate out the damage the enemy is going to do to you the game felt more and more like sekiro but without the same level of pairing that we have in psychiro and so you know while you could largely just block a lot of stuff and then you heal up that damage there were times where I'd want to like block block block and then the enemy would try to finish off a flourish with a fatal attack not a fatal attack a fury attack and the fury attacks you have to get a perfect guard on and so this would throw me off because I would have a playstyle where I was planning on blocking a bunch of attacks and then attacking the enemy to heal on up but it would be block block and then a fatal attack would come out and that attack would cause me to lose the health if I did not get the perfect block so it's it's kind of interesting because on one hand I like this system of the perfect block and how it plays but on the other it definitely felt like I said a little bit of a identity confusion because there were times where the game played very much like secure with me trying to get multiple perfect blocks in a row and there were other times where I was more focused on just kind of dodging around and trying to dodge everything that was coming my way and there were other times where I'd want to just straight block and then try to heal that that Health on up and while I don't think there's anything wrong with having the multiple mechanics I do think that while the game emphasizes perfect block as much as it does I think the window on that could have definitely been a little bit more forgiving not unlike when the woe long demo came out and a lot of people gave feedback like hey you know this is a this is a super tight deflect window and we actually saw it cleaned up a little bit for release and I think that that felt pretty good I think that would have been beneficial here and not even huge but if you consider consider it to be like a 0.33 millisecond window I think putting it up to like a 0.5 millisecond window would have been enough to where the perfect guard would have been more manageable in some of the more hectic encounters and felt a little bit more rewarding because while it is you know somebody that plays these games constantly I can hit it pretty consistently there are some fights where it was quite difficult to hit and there are some bosses that like to jump up into the air and throw your camera off like this and then come down and so dealing with that that you know the change in the camera throwing you up and then coming back down and then trying to time the block at the same time I found that to be challenging in a couple scenarios uh besides that another small grip that I have with the combat is the lack of poise now if you're playing through the game as a dexterity build or as this game calls it technique you're not going to really notice this because you're going to be able to just you know either Dodge and stab look for opportunities to attack kitten you know you can see I'm able to easily Dodge an enemy like this get some pokes in I have no issues at all and faster attacks are going to do great at that but if you end up playing with something slower which this is a weapon I've cobbled together a big slow stick with the early on electric Rod you know I have these these very very slow attacks and while they do tremendous amounts of damage and that's nice at the same time they leave you very open and since enemies don't really care if you're in the middle of your attack animation and there isn't Poise it's very easy for you to be in the middle of a startup and actually get interrupted and this can happen with you know trying like just look at how long that heavy attack took to come out you know that is something that in any other Souls I like if I was trying to do that I would want to have some type of poise to ensure that attack was going to go off and sadly there's there's really nothing like that in this game now this kind of goes back to the idea of the perfect guard if you're able to get enough perfect guards off you could stagger the enemy and then potentially follow up with that charged attack and get some damage in but you know if I'm fighting multiple enemies here for example if I'm trying to to get well he walked into that but if I'm trying to get this off and I'm I'm fighting a sword man and I'm trying to you know it's just gonna interrupt me I'm like I'm gonna do it that time I got it when I was like already in the middle of the animation but this will also happen even with your uh your your webinars if you're in the middle of trying to to execute a weapon art you know like this one going into a multi-hit attack there if I get attacked in the middle of that multi-hit attack it's going to interrupt it and it's going to also cost me the Fable that I use to try and execute that attack and so the problem with this is I found myself just kind of shying away from the heavy weapons what's interesting is this is actually two weapons together this the big electric head was originally initially on this big stick and I just found the stick too damn slow to use so instead I put it on the the handle and now I can swing my big thing around and you'll see it's still a little bit slower than the mace would be initially but that's one of the benefits of the weapon combining system is you're able to you know kind of mix and match your the handle of the weapon along with the blade of the weapon and make something that fits your needs so I'm able to take the head of a silver weapon and make it a little bit faster but I don't think that really excuses the fact that the uh the slow weapon isn't necessarily all that viable besides that the combat does feel pretty standard in a lot of areas uh there you know there is back stabs like you'd expect we're able to you know if you can get behind an enemy they do a big animation you can open them up to a backstab but the window on it is a little bit goofy every now and again like there's a uh you can see it right there for like half a second and the game does give you a clear indicator which is very nice compared to something like Souls where you just have to kind of look for that sweet spot to get it but it's it's a little bit tricky to hit on certain enemies another thing that's pretty interesting is against uh bigger enemies one of the big ways you're going to get in damage is your fatal attacks and the idea is if you're able to uh do a big example of how my stuff's just going to get interrupted if you can get an enemy to stagger you're going to open them up to a fatal attack where you're able to basically execute a critical I probably won't be able to do it here just because I have the late game stuff and I'm sitting here fighting early game enemies but the enemy will fall down and then there is a sweet spot that you need to stand in to execute this this attack this fatal attack that's going to do a lot of damage not unlike say a visceral attack or something like that visceral attack or a crit from like Elton ring but typically it's it's a specific spot so the idea is you know I'm gonna get the enemy stunned and then I have to run around to their head and position myself on this little red circle in the ground to execute the attack and on one hand I kind of like the freedom of it because I can just keep spamming heavy attacks and charged Heavies if I want to do that instead on the other it's a little bit janky at times because if an enemy were to collapse and their face was in the corner like this I wasn't able to even get off that fatal attack so I feel like that should have been a little bit tuned up you know whether you could hit them from behind or in front because there would be times where I'd stagger an enemy from behind because I was getting in more damage to the perks and then I'd have to run on into the front of the enemy and try to get that attack in time and given there aren't perks and stuff that will increase the Stagger window I still just found it a little bit goofy that I was having to you know okay you staggered let me let me run on it and get him now now these staggered I can get to the front and get this done off uh talking about level design the the levels are definitely kind of what you would expect from a Souls like with exploring around and then opening up shortcuts to to come back to places that you've already been enemies climbing over Ledges lots of different traps you know you see an enemy over here you're like I'm gonna go get it and then oh God that collapses then well what's happening here and oh there's a guy waiting to Ambush me so it definitely has that vibe that I think a lot of souls fans look for in games like this at the same time I do think the levels are a bit too linear I think one of the the big things I really tend to enjoy with Souls likes is kind of getting lost and being like man I don't know where to go do I go this way this looks like it could be the way but maybe it's that way and I will say as I played through this there was never really a time where I was like I don't know where to go man I'm just going to take this path and see where it leads most of the time if I was exploring and I'd find a alternate path I would go down on it and within like a minute or two I would come to the end of it and there would be like a treasure waiting for me and I was like hey that's great I got my treasure and then I would go back to the main path another thing that I think the game kind of suffered from in that regard a little bit is it was very often that you would run into a strong enemy like an elite something much bigger than this guy and you would be able to run ahead from him and then grab a checkpoint so instead of you know having to fight the encounter there were a lot of times where I would see a big enemy and I would just say look at that I actually had a critical attack so yeah if I position myself just right I can get that attack off and they are quite flashy I like them a lot but it's just a little bit a little bit tight on the positioning for those but as I was saying you would you know get into a big encounter where there'd be a ton of enemies or like a mini boss or something and I would be like you know what I'm low on health I bet if I get past this guy I'm gonna be safe and I would run past the enemy go up a staircase around the corner and sure enough there was a checkpoint just waiting for me and I definitely think it took away a little bit of the the trepidation that comes along with playing Souls games you know when you're when you're going through and you're like oh man I'm fighting for my life I'm low on heels I gotta I gotta find the by fire where where is the bonfire running for my life where's the bonfire like I don't really think that feeling happened all that much you kind of see the struggle trying to use a slower weapon right now but you know a lot of the time it was just it was easy to see okay here's here's a big dude I'm gonna get past you there's either gonna be a shortcut back to the Stargazer or there's going to be uh one that I can grab I know it I know it's just waiting for me to get and so that definitely took away from the experience a little bit I think because of the the linear level design in terms of the storytelling it's definitely a lot more upfront than Souls games typically are there's plenty of mysteries to be discovered and there's some good good yeah hopefully I'm getting my words all jumping up I do gotta apologize because I wanted to get this review out but it's like 3 30 in the morning and I just got done the let's play and I've been playing for like 12 hours straight today so my brain's just like a wee bit melting right now um but all in all I did like the story here there's definitely uh some interesting little side quests pop up and the game obviously has a big emphasis on you know uh puppetry and humanity and you know whether whether P you know what makes a puppet versus what makes a human and so that's a big part of this game is you deciding whether you're going to lie or tell the truth and how you're going to interact with people and that's going to determine uh how certain side quests end or what side quests you get or what rewards you get and so that is really cool the story is also a lot more upfront because of that with like less mystery around various stuff but I will say I like the story a lot of the the ending I got the responsible endings but the ending I got on my first playthrough without spoiling anything I will just say I was very satisfied with it it was a it was a pretty wild reveal and then I was like oh man this is good um also kind of on the like you should know but not spoiling it out I will say uh some of the bosses in the game are wild uh some of the bosses I felt were a little pushovery but especially getting towards the the end of the game they like crank the bosses up to like 11 and I was like yes this is this is what I have been waiting for um you know two bosses in particular took me like over an hour well I had one boss took me almost exactly an hour in attempts and then another one I think I beat them like at the 45 minute Mark just 45 minutes of just banging my head against it figuring out exactly what I wanted to do for the strategy until I got it so if you're in this for like you know really tight boss battles and whatnot rest assured that's that's 100 going to be the case there's some really good ones another thing that's nice about boss battles is as you approach them there's like a little pool so you can summon a phantom that's going to come along with you this is only for many bosses not for like mini boss or anything but I think that's nice that they they give that option to players especially because I think a lot of people are getting into these games off of Elden ring and so having you know a lot of people obviously you get used to having your action summoned and so having the the access to a summonable that you can pull along with you on bosses that's optional but not necessary is definitely a nice move and I think that's a good play on part of the Developers moving on from there in terms of sound design sound design in the game is is really good the the clang when you like get that perfect deflect or when there's a guard break or when your weapon hits or I mean even when you heard me getting the criticals that was all top-notch music is super nice you can even go back to the central Hub and play records that you obtain uh just kind of jam out that's really nice to do in terms of visuals I think the artistic style of the game is really good I think they did a good job with graphical design and and kind of shading and lighting and colors here there is a little bit of pop in that I noticed here and there specifically in the hub actually I noticed it more than in other areas of the world but there is some but you know I think every game has a little bit of pop in these days it's just kind of something to expect but it's not enough to where it's like oh my God this is how can I play like this like it's just you know like something looks there in terms of stability I will say the game was very stable for me on a 3080. I had one crash in about 25 hours of gameplay which is more that can be said about most games uh I will also say that in terms of General performance the game performed really well I had one area where my recording software got overloaded while playing you know I'm playing the game in 4k 60 Max and trying to record it at the same thing actually I might even be higher on Graphics I don't know I turned off a video overlay because it was being a resource hog but I had like one zone that had like water and a bunch of effects and enemies and all this stuff going on and I had my recording software kind of crapped the bed for like a minute and a half but the game was still running smooth so it threw me off because I'm just like running for my life in this area surrounded by animes and then I look over at OBS and it's just like a PowerPoint slideshow but you know performance within the game was fine uh but you know if you're trying to record and play obviously you run into a different set of issues I think um some other things to talk about so let's see what have we covered I can't remember it off this is the downside of recording when you're sleepy so we talked a bit about gameplay we talked about world design talked about graphics and sound design um yeah I mean it's a really fun game I guess to talk about the the fun factor of it I did have a lot of fun playing it especially like finding finding different weapons going after different bosses uh some of the characters I like more than others there's there's one character in particular that I'll let you discover on your own but he he uh likes the sound of his own voice so I found myself rather compelled to get through his dialogue really quickly um I will say the game also really likes its mini bosses um and I do think It suffers a little bit from Elite enemy syndrome where Elite enemies are more dangerous than the mini bosses or the bosses in some cases there's like this one enemy in particular that's like a dual wielding killer clown type thing and every time I'd run into it I was like nope nope nope it's just a terrifying enemy to fight and it causes the brake status which reduces your healing and when you try to run away it Yanks you back and just yeah Bad News Bears did not like going up against that thing in terms of length as I mentioned my first playthrough clocked in a bit under 25 hours just taking a quick look I'm not going to scroll to the later chapters but as you can see there is definitely a lot to be done here in terms of the chapters and layout in terms of some other unique stuff the legion arms definitely a really interesting mechanic here you have a couple different ones and they all scale off different builds since I did an advanced build I mainly focused on those so like I had a flamethrowers type one the shock one uh worked with pandemonium quite a bit so it's pretty fun it's gonna do like an acid throw and so those are really fun especially as an advanced build because I was able to really utilize from the elements and then you know weapons that did like lightning or the uh the dagger I had on earlier the fire dagger I have a couple different Advanced weapons here uh you know like a fire fire great sore this thing's cool so weapon of variety is definitely huge in the game and then another thing as I mentioned is we can we can mix and match things and build our own weapons that's a really nice system for those that are unaware of how that works just to show it real fast so like I have the fire grates or the swings like that and then I have the fire dagger which is very fast but you know maybe I want to have the great sword on a dagger so I'm able to go into the game and assemble a new weapon I could take that and then I can put on that handle and now I've assembled it and so now I have that move set but with the great sword and so what ends up happening in particular is the the uh the scaling the attack abilities as they're called here along with the damage and the top Fable art that's going to come from the top of the weapon but the move set as well as the second Fable art is going to come from the handle of the weapon but so being able to kind of build your own weapon here with like you know if you like a particular move set but want a different weapon you know like for example you you you know well I guess this is probably one of the biggest examples for me I really like the saw but I felt it was way too slow on the stick so I just put it on something faster and I can just swing around this little saw and beat stuff with it and it's huge and goofy looking and it's like baby whirly gig and that's something that's that's really unique you know I haven't seen that in a game before that's something that I really liked here um some other stuff I didn't really end up doing these much but you have these little grindstones where you can temporarily imbue a weapon with a power I didn't get to use that stuff because I was using Arcane weapons so or excuse me advanced weapons which are you know pre-elemental weapons uh there's also the wish Stone system this is interesting we have different little Stones we can put into our Cube and we can use the cube these are like single-use type items so I usually save it for for a boss fight but you know stuff like temporarily restore your HP make it so the boss is gonna attack the Specter instead of you make it so the Specter avoids death make it to reduce the specter's damage so there's a lot of stuff that I could do here to to kind of amplify my my buddy and boss fights it's another thing that I thought was really cool the gold coin tree thing you see that's the tree is a glint with Gold Fruit coins that's a interesting system you can collect these it takes uh Baseline 80 minutes in game time for eight coins and you can use these coins to respect or also buy the items that go into your wish tone so we do have respecting you can respect your stats you can respect your P organ and you can respect your legion arms so lots of good stuff there we are also able to find items that allow us to buy upgrade mats which is nice you can't buy the the final tier but every other one you can buy and even then the final tier I found you get you get quite a lot I mean where I'm at right now I'm at the end of the game I have three Moon three full moonstones left over and uh I believe yeah three so six so there's enough stuff to upgrade six weapons to Max in a single playthrough and then there's a a separate material for for boss weapons and I have enough to upgrade three of those no more because I think the merchant sells some so six main weapons and probably like five or six boss weapons um one thing that I I didn't like as much about the weapons though is so we have the ability to change the the scaling on a weapon scale it changes properties and for whatever reason there were no boss weapons that had Advanced scaling and so somebody playing an advanced build that was definitely something that was kind of a bummer you know I kept hoping that I'd I'd get Advanced boss weapon and it was like nope this one's string nope this one sticks nope this one's quality nope this one's strength and I get to the end of the game and I'm like damn not a single Advanced boss weapon and even using the handles they would only go up to like descaling advance so you know I had some some cool weapons here I got my my ass Spear and my whirly gig electric coil stick handle combo but I didn't get to use any of the boss weapons and it's just it's really weird to me that there wasn't a single boss weapon of the game uh that's scaled with advance and that the the handles didn't really change things around all that much in terms of Defense it's very straightforward in this game we just have different frames that we put on you can see they increase in weight as well as the amount of physical damage reduction you have a converter which will have a little bit of everything but primarily it's going to help you against fire electric or acid and then you have a cartridge and these are more for secondary resists so disruption shock and break and so you're you know you're putting on one of these you're putting on one of these you put on your frame and then lastly we have a liner I just ended up using the slash damage one but there's one for slash one for strike one for Pierce and so the the defenses are very straightforward in the game and then besides that obviously the accessories for the outfit these are all entirely cosmetic they just you know change change what your face and your outfit looks like so so fairly simple there I will say I like the the upper belt lower belt system instead of scrolling through six separate items I think having a three and three system worked pretty well and then we have the extra bag system kind of similar to what we had in Alden ring we hold down a button and a second set of four items can come up so I do think Inventory management was pretty straightforward and simple um the P organ I haven't talked about that really because it's back at the Hub and things happened at my Hub which are kind of spoilery so we're not gonna go there but the P organ system is is really interesting we're able to to pick up different upgrades for our character and those are going to change uh bit how we play and how our character functions so you know for example the the ability for me to to do that that double dodge like that where I can dodge and then roll afterwards that's something that I got from using p organs on top of that I got a thing where where I get a bonus stagger damage if I if I get behind an enemy and I hit him I do bonus stagger damage I do bonus stagger damage on charge attacks um I have one where if I get a perfect perfect break on an enemy it'll basically stun them so there's a lot of customization there she can build your character out more for guard regain or fable arts or dodging or whatever the case is going to be and that's a system that I thought was was really cool and definitely something original you know allowing the game to adapt your play style a little bit more but all in all to wrap things up what would I give Liza p uh honestly I'd probably put this at like an eight out of ten I had a lot of fun playing it I had a lot of fun with the bosses but I I do think there were a couple there were a lot of little things that I think held it back from being like truly great um and one big thing the one big thing is just that the linear design of the levels I did like the levels and I had fun going through the game I will say the the more linear nature of the levels definitely took something away from the you know standard souls-like element that's usually so popular in these games you know I think there's that was funny I think there's something about getting lost in Souls games and you know not being able to find your way and just trying to figure out where you go I think that's a big part of the experience and the more linear design here taking away from that it certainly makes it more accessible but at the same time I think it takes something away so I think that definitely held it back a little bit and then kind of how I mentioned with the the the identity crisis here because the game has a big big emphasis around your perfect break but the window on that is so tight so like between needing to get those perfect breaks and then the lack of poise and then you know well hey well you could kind of guard this but you need to actually get a perfect card here and well you can dodge that but you're not going to be able to dodge this but you can if you use the Samuel but then you're going to be overweight there's just a lot a lot that was going on a lot of like very minor issues with the combat that I think would have been resolved by you know basically just poison a slightly bigger perfect brake window uh and I think that that really kept the combat from hitting that top-notch factor that I think these games really want to have but either way I mean don't let that dissuade you by any means I do think that in terms of Indie Souls likes I think this has probably done the best job so far of capturing that Soul's like feeling you know I think about the various Souls likes I've played you know the Surge and Neo and Mortal shell and Lords of the fallen and out of all of all of the Indie type Souls like sort of all the games that have tried to to mimic the from software formula I definitely think this is the one that's come the closest so if you've been looking for a new Souls like to jump into this is absolutely going to be the case there is a lot here to dive into you know multiple playthroughs really good bosses lots of weapon customization lots of different weapon choices and enemy variety and all that stuff so even with some minor combat quirks and the more linear level design I do think there's still a really solid game here so either way I'm gonna wrap things up and go to bed because this has been like two days of working 12 hours straight to get through this in time uh but either way thanks for coming on by and checking it on out I got the let's play series also has already kicked off I'll be dropping two episodes of that per day so make sure to check it out otherwise thanks for watching the review and I'll catch you all next time

Channel: FightinCowboy

Views: 205,361

Keywords: lies of p, lies of p gameplay, action rpg, lies of p release date, lies of p reaction, lies of p gameplay trailer, lies of p review, lies of p trailer reaction, lies of P demo, lies of p fightincowboy, lies of P new gameplay, lies of P summer game fest, lies of P, lies of p boss fight, lies of P PC gameplay, lies of pinocchio game, lies of pinocchio, lies of p pinocchio voice, lies of P lets play, lies of P walkthrough, lies of P weapons, lies of P guide

Id: E-mAcHtnC7g

Length: 30min 12sec (1812 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023