The Major Problem With Lies of P

all right what's going on guys lies of P has been one of my most anticipated games of the last year and I bought the deluxe edition in order to get Early Access and I've been playing the game almost non-stop since it went live two days ago and I have a lot of thoughts to share about this game but overall I've been having a fantastic time with it the game is very good the setting is captivating I'm constantly intrigued by not only the story but the character quest lines we're finding throughout the world there's a lot to love here and for the most part I do love it but as I've been playing there are some very glaring issues that have come to light that I just feel I have to talk about on one hand to make you the consumer aware so that you can expect these shortcomings and know how to adapt to them to make your gameplay experience better and to also provide feedback to the developers so that they either update these things or know that Souls fans are finding issues with them for their next installment but before we get into that if you're new around here we cover all things soulsborne Souls like and from software so if you want to stay up to date on these games or enjoy the lore or general discussion go ahead and hit that subscribe button and now let let's get into it before I dive into what the big problem with this game is let me preface the discussion with a few things lies of P was created by the studio Neo is a South Korean developer and one thing to keep in mind is that this is their first attempt at the souls-like genre and for their first try it is a very good one so even though I'm gonna be frequently comparing this game to games like bloodborne or Elden ring it is important to remember that they don't have the Decades of experience that from software does in addition to that in order to understand my criticisms with the game we need to also understand the intended way to play it the inspiration for lies of Peace combat is bloodborne and it draws many of its core elements from that game we have a sidestep Dodge while locked onto a Target charged R2 heavy attacks a rally system to regain Health after blocking an attack and get heavy damage from a visceral attack and the one key purpose behind all these elements in bloodborne was to stay toe-to-toe in combat and lies of P appears to encourage that same playstyle as I mentioned one of the main combat features is the rally system where you can block and attack in order to chip damage and then experience a brief window where you can attack the Target in order to get that Health back there are also Fable Arts special weapon attacks that can allow you to perform various skills and use a charge of these mini bars beneath your stamina gauge and these are also charged through attacking targets we then have your primary healing items which when fully consumed allow you to re-earn another one once again by attacking enemies and then finally we have the sekiro style Parry which can fully deflect attacks making you take no damage and slightly staggering the enemy these are all core combat mechanics that you absolutely have to engage with and all of these encourage an aggressive play style which brings me to my first criticism General player speed it's no secret that the player moves incredibly slow in lies of p and this can very much be felt in combat when you're trying to counter an enemy or Dodge an attack the player cannot perform actions as fast as the enemies can which often means that if you get caught by one attack from an enemy you get pulled into a combo of other attacks without enough recovery time to get your yourself out of it and when some of these major enemies and bosses have anywhere from 5 to 10 sequence long combos it makes the player feel as though they don't have the tools to compete which makes the game in turn feel clunky slow and unbalanced now notice how I said it makes the player feel as though they don't have the tools in lies of P at least for the first half of the game they quite literally don't after you get to the scrapped Watchman boss and finally defeat him you'll unlock a new feature called the P organ and essentially what this is is the player's skill tree here you can upgrade your character and unlock new skills you have things like upgrading the amount of healing items you have charges to your Fable Arts increased time of enemy stagger and one that upgrades your Dodge now in order to unlock these new skills you have to go into the menu and unlock other upgrades and these come in many forms with some of the upgrades that can be found in this Sub menu are very important to making the game feel smooth such as increased stamina recovery time while attacking enemies and to purchase these upgrades it requires a currency called quartz I'm not entirely sure all the places you can get Quartz but I've noticed them dropping from mini bosses and I believe in a chest or two and after defeating the third boss I had two of these courts and in order to unlock one actual skill it takes two chords and the skill I immediately unlocked was the ability to chain two Dodges together now the wording when you unlock the ability is that it allows you to perform another Dodge in the middle of a first Dodge animation but this isn't quite true the animation for the first Dodge still finishes before you're able to do the second one what this actually does is remove artificial downtime that's present before you have the skill after a first Dodge before you can dodge again in a game like bloodborne that's a feature that the player has immediately when starting the game now as I progressed further through the game and beat more bosses thereby unlocking more courts I found that there is yet another Dodge upgrade further down the skill tree and what this one allowed me to do was roll out of being stuck on the ground in this clip here you can see that my player gets smashed to the ground and during the animation of getting up I don't have the ability to control my character and I'm stuck in a combo of hit after hit until I died and the ability to roll from the ground is yet another basic movement ability in the soul Series in bloodborne now the skill tree continues for a while and I've only seen the first two movement upgrades Now by assuming that this trend continues by the time we unlock all the upgrades and get to the end of the game the vast majority of the clunky feeling is gonna be gone so the problem here is that basic movement features that the player needs in order to survive the game are locked behind the skill tree and since quartz is so rare and hard to find if a player does not immediately invest in the Dodge upgrades they are at a significant disadvantage unable to perform movements that are present from the very beginning in many of the game's competitors so it creates an unnecessary sense that the game is clunky poorly balanced and feels like molasses when in reality the player simply hasn't unlocked that upgrade yet and the thing is I actually want the other upgrades in the skill tree but I feel that if I don't unlock the Dodge upgrades the game is going to be much harder than it needs to be then what makes this much worse is that the player has zero Poise whatsoever every single hit no matter when what enemy will stagger you out of a move even a fully charged Fable art can be interrupted from the most basic of attacks and what this does is create more downtime in combat where the player cannot input any controls to the character if they don't have the right upgrade and there's one more thing that goes along with this Perry timing feels way too strict in this game and oftentimes many of the enemies that have a lot of the long combos lack a sense of Rhythm in their movements when made the parrying in sekiro so satisfying was that everything had a distinct beat to it you could Parry bosses with a blindfold on simply by the sound alone because you could recognize the Cadence but in sekiro the deflect was the primary means of avoiding damage now I don't yet know if there's a skill that upgrades to Perry but at least for the early game the Perry like the Dodge feels underpowered and underdeveloped many attacks hit the player multiple times so even if you parry the first hit you'll still get hit again even during the same animation and this once again contributes to the game feeling clunky so here's the issue lies of P has a combat system that encourages aggressiveness the game wants you to stay in the pocket and use all of the abilities at your disposal but the problem here is that all of these abilities feel disconnected from one another separated by a stiffness that's only removed through upgrades that are locked behind the skill tree basic features that are intuitive to players that have played Souls likes before that if we're present from the beginning would not make the game too easy but would instead make it more smooth and thereby more fun and I say all that because this game is a gym the more I get into it and the more I unlock it feels better and better and had I these abilities from the beginning it would have alleviated so much frustration that initially felt out of my control as the player anyways though guys that is gonna pretty much do it for the video today I really am having a blast with lies of p and I do feel it's one of the best Souls likes we've ever gotten but I just felt like I had to come on here and talk about these issues to hopefully provide some feedback as well as awareness to players that are going to be jumping into this game for the first time when it officially releases on Tuesday but if you're playing through Liza P let me know how you liking it so far and if you've enjoyed today's video be sure leave a like on it and subscribe if you're new around here but with all that I will catch you in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: Ziostorm

Views: 117,436

Keywords: lies of p, lies of p gameplay, lies of p review, lies of p bosses, lies of p weapons, lies of p best weapon, soulslike, dark souls, elden ring, boss fight, new soulslike, bloodborne, bloodborne 2, dark souls 2, dark souls 3, dark souls 4, demons souls, elden ring gameplay, elden ring lore, elden ring trailer, from software, fromsoftware games, playstation 5, ranni, sekiro, soulsborne, souls, fromsoft, ps5, gaming, game of the year, lies of p combat, dodge, upgrade, xbox, gamepass, lore

Id: -MNvQpSr0AA

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I really hope the devs fix this, especially the timing for perfect parries. The game clearly wants combat to be focused around parrying, yet the window is so tight it’s hard to pull off consistently. This is especially the case with enemies who lack that natural rhythm to their attacks.

[u/Limp_Resort_5956]

I agree with you saying that the game must not be a souls copy. The Devs did a great job by making the game unique. I don't agree with making the parry like in other souls games, for me it's fine that it's not the same for every enemy, that brings a different challenge for every fight. The game is great, almost perfect actually for what it is, it just needs a few tweaks which can be easily done with patches like how they fixed the dodging problem from the demo.