Review: Lies of P

April 27, 2024

I love Lies of P. I can’t believe I waited so long to play it, and I’m frustrated that I’m stuck on a boss fight and can’t progress right now, so I’m writing this post to keep myself engaged and motivate myself to finish, when I have time. (Which, for reasons not yet blogged about, I frequently do not.)

I would be surprised if this comparison hasn’t been made in every other review of Lies of P, but it really feels like the Bloodborne sequel I’ve been waiting for, only on a lower budget. The writing is not on From Software’s level, but the combat is good and the environment is delicious and the mechanics are innovative and fun (mostly… there are just a few too many systems going on).

I’ll emphasize that I’m probably not very far into the game - based on feeling and what I’ve unlocked and, frankly, the equivalent story progression in Bloodborne, I may be about one-third of the way through the game. (I’m extremely curious to see how that estimate holds up.)

Why am I using Bloodborne to estimate my progression in Lies of P? Well, there are obvious differences, but so far there are several major components of the story that are beat-for-feat identical to Bloodborne. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, to be clear. Lies of P is obviously heavily inspired by Bloodborne, to the point of almost being derivative, but it innovates enough mechanically and narratively that it’s genuinely exciting and satisfying to this huge fan of Bloodborne. But… yeah, the overall plot absolutely feels like a riff on its predecessor so far.

And that brings me to:

Aesthetics: 1/3

While the visuals and sounds are actually quite good, and even some of the weapon designs are really cool, I am subtracting a point here for the poor writing. Maybe Lore/Plot/Dialogue needs its own category…? But for now I think this is fine. There’s a lot to like about how this game feels, but frankly the bad writing is a direct distraction from the environments. In addition, there are some rough edges in the visual aesthetics. These include repetitive decorations, illogical textures (like a lit window on the outside of a building that has no windows inside), and what I’ll call “unjustified barriers” - you know, where the game won’t let you walk down this path because something is in the way, but, like, you could obviously walk over or past that thing. Why not just add more stacked crates, or burned-out carriages? It’s not like the doodads don’t already look clone-stamped at times.

Is the music good? I honestly can’t remember. I think it’s ok. I think it serves its purpose of adding atmosphere, but I don’t think it’s particularly memorable so far.

Creativity: 1/3

I had to be careful here because I almost over-rated Creativity for what’s really more of a Design feature. One of the core mechanics of Lies is the ability to customize one’s weapons by mixing-and-matching weapon handles and blades (or whatever shape the striking-end happens to be). This is extremely fun mechanically, and it also lets you design some really cool-looking weapons. However, as a purely creative outlet, it’s a bit lonely. Customized weapons would pair really well with a detailed armor/clothing customization system, but Lies doesn’t have much of that.

To be fair you can somewhat customize your character, and you have some really cool options, but they’re limited to selecting your hat/mask and your outfit (like, the whole outfit, not piecemeal). And so far I don’t even have very many choices of either of those - about half of what I have seem to be post-launch freebie DLCs which aren’t especially lore-friendly.

Design: 2/3

Ok, this might be a little bit of an early-game-hype score, but building new weapons, one of the central mechanics of Lies, is so much fun. Every time Most weapons consist of a handle and a “blade”, which can be mixed and matched without restriction, and there are a lot of weapons. Mixing up new weapons is awesome, and while it’s not a substitute for Bloodborne’s trick weapons (because individual weapons in Lies have more limited movesets and feels less versatile), it does give more incentive to keep two weapons upgraded and equipped at all times and to swap between them situationally.

As for how the system works, I determined after a little experimentation that each handle has its own moveset and base speed, while the blade determines the damage type and modifies attack speed based on weight. So you could put a dagger blade on a massive wrench handle for a really slow pole-dagger, if for some reason you wanted that.

Other than that, there are multiple other systems going on which I am slowly coming to understand better. Special moves, one for each blad and handle (meaning you can have 2 available for each weapon), are powered by a rechargeable resource called Fable. I don’t love that, considering how lackluster many of them seem to be, but maybe I’m supposed to be treating Fable more like ammo and frequently recharging it with consumables.

Importantly, Lies draws not only from Bloodborne for its lore and its quick combat (granting quicksteps and the ability to regain health by attacking rapidly), but from another From Software masterpiece, Sekiro. Specifically, lies has two awesome features: a perfect-block parry system and a swappable utility-arm (called Legion Arm for reasons I don’t yet know).

Perfect blocking means that you parry not by using a specific parry move as in Bloodborne, but by triggering your regular block move at the exact right time. The difference may seem trivial but it feels really good compared to the Souls-style block or parry. However, either I’m just getting older or Lies has some extraordinarily unforgiving timings, so I actually find it very difficult to parry most enemies. Then again, I still haven’t finished Sekiro, so maybe I’m just not good at it!

The Legion Arm allows you to equip one of several upgradable utility tools such as flamethrower or a grappling tool used to pull enemies toward you. While there aren’t a ton of options here and each tool only has a single linear upgrade path, it’s a pretty good system to complement your custom weapon choices and playstyle.

One last thing I’ll say is that there’s probably too much going on. There are more mechanics I haven’t explained, and I just unlocked yet another which I genuinely don’t understand how to use at all, so I’m just ignoring it after trying it once and possibly running out of fuel for it permanently.

Gameplay: 2/3

Combat feels pretty good, although like I said, parrying is quite unforgiving. Combat and exploration are really all the gameplay there is, and they both feel pretty good, not phenomenal. I don’t know if there’s much more to say that I didn’t say in design. I feel the level design is good, but just a little weaker than From Software’s (and I mean come on, they’re the masters).

Progression: 2/3

I feel least sure about this rating since I’m not so far into the game, but it’s got a very standard Soulslike progression system. And that’s pretty good! The most notable feature is how the names of the stats don’t really make any sense - no “strength” or “magic” scores here. But you can figure out pretty quickly that those two map to “Motivity” and “Advance”.

Technical: 2/3

I mean, I haven’t encountered any bugs or performance issues yet. There are long load screens, which isn’t unique to this game, but I can’t say it’s flawless.


tags: review game-review gaming