Why Lies of P is not Beloved

this video contains heavy spoilers for lies of P viewer discretion is [Laughter] advised ever since developer from software made it big with its Dark Soul games a sort of new genre has emerged in video games some call it Souls born others call it solds like but almost everyone agrees that the from software blend of exploration deep combat Rich RPG mechanics and difficulty is something that no other developer has been able to truly match or at least that was the consensus until now it's taken years with from software continuing to release Banger after Banger from bloodborne to SEO to most recently eldering but finally a team has actually been able to achieve the depth and quality that can actually rival a from software game game that team is actually two development teams from Korea known as Neo witz games and round Eight studio and the game is lies of p and lies of p is amazing there's simply no if ANS or butts about it lies of PE is a game that's so good so intricately and lovingly crafted that almost every person that falls in love with the game has the same thought this really could just be a from software game it's that good if it wasn't immediately obvious my own opinion on the game is more or less in line with the adors IT Crowd lies of PE is a phenomenal game it features a beautiful steampunk world that's a fantastic mix of Gothic steampunk and the 1910s French Art Deco visual art style it's got a story and lore that adapts the 1883 Italian novel of Pinocchio by Carlo Kodi in a really adult unique and horror Centric way there's some great characters that you encounter in said story and the production values from the animation to the sound design to the lighting to the atmosphere it's all at a level that's from software and then there's the game playay Li ofp has some truly great linear level design some really interesting and deep RPG systems in its leveling weapon and Legion arm mechanics and it's got brutal difficult but fair and deep combat now I say all of that because I appreciate the game for what it is but what's interesting to me is that while this glowing loving sentiment around the game does exist it's actually not the overly common one Li of P despite the quality it has Isn't universally beloved or liked to the same degree as a from software game and after beating it a few months ago I've been really stewing on why that is why isn't this exceptional game more universally loved praised and recommended why are big content creators in the souls Community like ftra life and fighting Cowboy not heaping the same level of Praise as some others like iron pineapple or some smaller crators that seem more enamored with the game I've thought long and hard on this particular situation consuming a good deal of content Let's Plays and of course playing the game to completion and even taking a step at New Game Plus to test some thoughts and ideas and I think I have an idea of what the problem is with lies of PE despite its seemingly impressive level of quality and fun see lies of PE is a bit of a unique game among the pantheon of soulslike games in that it's a game that really Demands a lot from its player more so than perhaps any other game that's come before it lies of P demands your attention and it demands that you really really sit with it and experiment to understand its mechanics liip gives you a lot of tools and interesting mechanics to use and it expects that you will take the time to mess with it and ultimately master and really understand all that it gives you and yet for all that it expects of the player the game doesn't exactly properly explain teach or even ease in its player base in a way that organically allows the player to really make use of all that it has to offer it's not surprising to me that content creators like top YouTube fighting game creator maximilan love the game as much as they do while more General soulslike content creators just find the game to be okay in a lot of ways Liza really has the DNA of a fighting game even if it's a third person action RPG like a fighting game Lia is a bit obtuse but it rewards those players that really engage with its systems and try to understand understand its mechanics spending the time to unearth what really is a deep rich and engaging gameplay experience under the surface so yeah liop just requires that you spend a good chunk of time with it to truly get it and previous experience with Souls likee games actually doesn't help you much often times in fact knowledge and experience of from software games can actually hurt your initial learning of Lies ofas game systems because the game and the developer have built their own Unique Systems and takes on classic ideas like parrying build crafting and weapon stats and the end result of all of this is that lies of PE feels particularly punishing to a good chunk of the player base and the Very people that it's targeting a lot of its mechanics can feel obtuse or just simply feel off because most of the people playing this type of game end up bringing their previous knowledge of the genre into the game which is to be expected to illustrate what I'm talking about let's look at an example shall we let's look at the parrying system in the game parrying in lies of PE is something that seems similar at first to what you'll find in fromsoft Securo by hitting block at just the right moment before an attack lands you can execute what the game calls a perfect guard and basically avoid any damage and only have a bit of your stamina decrease failing to nail down the perfect guard timing will result in you just executing a normal block on most attacks which will cause your health bar to lose a bit of gray life similar to something you'll see in a fighting game when you block or when you say take damage and bloodb you can attack to get the health back but getting attacked yourself will make you lose all that gray health and then some more the risk reward Dynamics in just this change are pretty different from sakiro where the posture meter and your health are two different things as such there's certainly more to consider both in terms of the potential reward and the potential punishment for engaging with this mechanic but hey not engaging with perfect guard isn't really an option getting it down is actually really key to the core of Lies Of Peace combat as doing enough perfect guards to an enemy's attacks can actually create a stagger opportunity on Ted enemies and more importantly on bosses if done right you'll see the enemy's health bar get a glowing white outline signaling to you that it's time to stagger them similar to what you would see when you break posture in Seco but here's the kicker getting to that stagger point is hardly the end game unlike in seciro staggering an enemy gives you the chance to hit them with a fatal blow which gives you a chance to inflict massive damage but doesn't outright kill the boss right there and then staggering perfect blocks and fatal blows are just neat Tools in Your Arsenal and using them all in conjunction is required to come out on top of lies of pe's challenging combat but wait there's actually another wrinkle to all of this that I haven't quite mentioned yet executing a Parry or perfect guard in lies of PE Works in a completely different way to how it does in SEO which will further throw off Veterans of from soft games especially those who got really good at SEO for anyone who's played seiro you'll know how parrying Works in that game in that it's more akin to a rhythm game than anything else in SEO you tap the block button just as the enemies attack is about to hit leading to this almost Rhythm likee flow of tapping the block button to match the speed and dare I say Rhythm of the attacks being thrown at you it's a system that takes a bit to get used to but rewards precise timing and fast reactions in a way that no other game does lies of PE perfect guard system does not want you to tap block Liza pe's perfect guard system is unsurprisingly like most other aspects of the game a little bit more involved I've seen people in various videos on YouTube and just generally online suggest that lies of PE requires you to hold down Block in advance to properly execute a perfect guard and I think that's about 80% of the way there're in terms of understanding how perfect guards work in the game look I know you've been patient with me thus far so bear with me for a few more moments here as I explained this bit lies of pe's perfect guarding system is actually based on the guarding animation of each weapon itself rather than a particular attacks timing the key here is that it's the last part of the guarding animation which has what you'd call Active frames or to say it a different way the time frame of the animation where the game registers that a perfect guard can actually happen on an attack so executing a perfect guard is more or less about lining up the last few parts of your character's guard animation with an enemy's attack and this is why it's actually easier to perfect guard with some weapons than others the faster the animation the quicker you can get to the ending bits of the animation where the perfect guard can actually trigger incidentally this is also why you can only really block a flurry of fast attacks from enemies by holding down block and then repressing the same button just before the enemies attack hits again holding down block and then pressing block again while it's already held down skips the beginning parts of your animation allowing you to execute the perfect guard again and again and hello hello where did everybody go uh okay okay I get it I may have gotten a bit to into the weeds there my game designer background sometimes seeps out every now and then but the point I'm trying to make is with this very technical analysis of the perfect guard system is that lies of P ultimately even with something as well established as parrying does its own thing this parrying system isn't wrong or even better it's just different and the game kind of Demands that you figure this stuff out and do it with without much of any instruction or explanation Beyond a small text blur that appears on screen in the beginning of the game to make matters worse the niche Indie developed nature of the game means that there actually isn't a lot of content online explaining the intricacies of how lies of pe's perfect guard system works and how it's different from say seco's Parry system this I believe is the reason why only a small SWAT of the already small niche of souls like players are truly connecting with lies of PE there's actually three major groups that will easily connect with the game the first are the players that enjoy playing skillfully understanding the mechanics on the same level as say a fighting game and those are the people that are truly going to get what's under the hood of lies of PE the fastest the second group is going to be the type that actually plays more Dex likee builds and focus on parrying and focus on having that sort of build in their souls light games then there's the third group or you know those of us that aren't reviewers or streamers or competitive fighting game players and just people who are willing to really sit with the game and give it time that's me by the way I'm not a competitive fighting game player nor am I some amazing Perry Master like onig I think that's how you say it onig on um regardless if you haven't checked his videos on lies of PE out definitely give them a look as he kind of shows you how to really dominate the game and you know he does it in style and all that cool Jazz so yeah if you're not some kind of really skilled player then liip just require some extra time investment to really click the average time to finish a first run for Li of PE is about 30 hours or so that's what how long to beat.com mentions as the main stories game completion time and that's what quite a few soulslike content creators have also stated in their reviews of the game for me it actually took 60-ish hours to finish the game once that's almost double of what it took a lot of other people and I'll also admit that I beat some of the game's later bosses basically everything after the puppet king after an update to the game nerfed them the Nerfs in the patch didn't make the game G gigantically Easy by the way they just tweaked some HP numbers and some damage numbers and even I had to suffer through learning to basically get really good at taking down the puppet king boss pre patch and the puppet king boss is where I think a good chunk of people either did fall off or will ultimately fall off from the game but here's the thing I tried to really learn the game and learn each boss in a way that was less about just beating the boss B and moving on and more about really mastering and dominating the boss in a skillful way my pattern with each boss was really similar I'd go into a boss battle without using the Spectre or AI summon that the game gives you and I'd spend a few dozen attempts or so getting to the point where I could consistently reach the boss's second phase sometimes that meant reducing their HP bar to half other times it meant taking out their first HP bar and then once I understood the boss as a whole I'd either continue to learn and ultimately beat it or at that point I'd bring in the summon and speed things along and throughout that process I would experiment with different Legion arms use the game's Cube item which is a lot like Elden Ring's Fisk flask if you used that and I'd even try out different element imbuements via the element grinder I'd use a combination of all the different mechanics alongside just a general Mastery of the boss's attack patterns and perfect guard timings to really finish up a boss battle and that just took time I remember I spent a good two play sessions of playing lies of PE before I got through the puppet king boss a day after I had first run into him by the end however I really knew the boss and could counter a lot of his attacks and was able to beat him fairly convincingly a lot of it came down to using all the mechanics that the game had given you in conjunction with one another exploiting his Elemental weakness and ultimately getting the Parry timings down but here's the kicker and it's a big one that deep dive that I gave you on the parrying System since we just mentioned that I figured all of that out at the literal final boss of the game the actual last boss of the game which depending on your choices in the game's excellent story can be completely optional that is the boss the only boss that really truly requires you to fully master and understand how the Parry system works everything else even the very difficult puppet King you can kind of make your way through by parrying some of the moves and then kind of using all the other tools that you have at your disposal and that's how obtuse use and sometimes hidden lies of pe's gameplay systems are some people will naturally click with how lies of pe's Mechanics Work While others will either get very core fundamental things about the game really late or just not at all which of course will result in quite a few players potentially powering their way through the game using some less than fun methods and unfortunately the Parry system is just one example of this issue each of the game's core systems has some kind of thing in it that's easy to miss or flat out misunderstand examples include the POR organ system the elemental status effect system and the legionar system just to name a few the POR organ system has a bunch of potentially optional upgrades that are actually fairly essential including an upgrade to your Dodge which can be the other thing that you use besides parrying the the status effect system can be really really effective against certain enemy types and unlocking and upgrading the right Legion arm can vastly change the difficulty of certain boss fights all of this cool important stuff and yet the game kind of leaves it in your hands to dive into and invest your time and energy into learning these systems to get the most mileage out of them and yeah I totally get that it's the the game's fault that it doesn't set up enough teaching moments and robloxs for you to naturally engage with all these systems and use them but when it all works when you do get it man there's nothing quite like Liza when it's firing on all cylinders it's a soulslike experience that I honestly found to be on the same level as say either neo2 or you know any from software game and hey I haven't even really focused in on how great the visuals animations music and storytelling of the game is lies of Peace certainly does everything else beyond the gam playay to the level of a from software game but I'd even go as far as to argue that it does some things even better the way the story for instance is disseminated is a lot more straightforward and easier to digest and understand than the more obscure item hunting based drip feed narrative style that Miyazaki and from software like to use in their games the story and the world are a big part of any souls or Souls like game and lies of PE drips with atmosphere deep characters tragic and heartfelt moments and it's all complemented by player choice at Key moments in the game it's certainly a matter of preference but I personally find myself liking the more front and Center style of Storytelling that Neo witz and round 8 Studio adopt here ideas like lying or telling the truth at key points of the game affecting the story or how even things like listening to music can affect your overall ending that's some truly cool and unique stuff and obviously there's the standard stuff like really good side quests and things to find and item based storytelling and all that stuff that's there as well in the end I think all these ifications and adjustments on top of an almost obsessive understanding of what makes a from software game so special really really pays off for lies of p and its development Studios it's a darn shame that not everyone will be able to connect with lies of p and not everyone will be able to truly appreciate just how deep and superb some of its design decisions are but hey there's certainly room for some improvement in a sequel or two for for their freshman effort here newitz and round eight Studios were able to craft something truly special and with the confirmation that the game sold a million units alongside having been released on Game Pass well that's pretty much a success there and then but the director of the game actually released a video that was a thank you video but it also teased the future of lies of p in that there's DLC coming there's a sequel in the works and there's actually a patch coming as well to the game that's going to fix some of the issues like the POR organ upgrades that I mentioned earlier in the video and all of that information points to a truly bright future for this team and the franchise that they're creating especially if you've seen the after credit scene at the end of the game there's some truly interesting and unique directions that this franchise can go in and I for one I'm excited to see where it goes from here in closing I'll just say that if you haven't played lies of PE and if you're into either Souls like games or just really enjoy diving into challenging but ultimately rewarding and fair games then I implore you like many others to give lies of PE a shot you may just end up finding a worthy alternative to from software's unique brand of games and you'll find that a game has joined a club that I'd say is pretty exclusive and that's only ever really had neo2 in it up till this point and for those of you who did play the game I'm actually kind of curious about your thoughts on it all did you make it to the end did the combat mechanics connect with you what did you think of the story and especially that after credit scene sound off in the comments and let's continue the conversation on one of 20 23's best if not most interesting games [Music] a

Channel: HardResetO

Views: 37,919

Keywords: lies of p, lies of p review, lies of p thoughts, why lies of p is not loved, problems with lies of p, souls like

Id: hfxdMPjgdi8

Length: 23min 19sec (1399 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023