Combat in the game is supposed to be fast, but you're the slowest character in the game. Some of your attacks have longer recoveries than most bosses even. The bosses' attacks are unintuitive. Most have some sort of delay, discouraging reactive play and turning it into a memorization game, like the worst fights in Elden Ring.
Combat in the game is supposed to be aggressive, but most of your attacks can be interrupted, while doing it to bosses is really hard. You're supposed to be up and close to the bosses, but blocking pushes you back, and all bosses have moves that put a lot of distance between you. The game tries to marry Bloodborne's, Dark Souls' and Sekiro's combat, but that ménage à trois is too big for one bed.
Light weapons suck. Since attack windows are small, and animations are slow, the amount of hits you can get in each window don't vary much. They do less damage, less stagger, have less range and close to no benefit.
Level design is so mediocre it becomes bad. The moments where it's almost really good quickly go back to mediocrity, leaving you actively dissapointed. Some shortcuts are baffling, because they're almost purposeless. Exploration is underwhelming, even going through the areas is kinda boring. The flow of enemy placement can make some parts feel barren, and not in a mood-setting way. And on the other side of the coin, some areas have more ambushes than normally placed enemies. At points it feels like the worst areas of Dark Souls 2.
Then there is the big one. There's being influenced, and then there's wearing your influences on both sleeves, and then growing a third arm to also wear them there. Some enemies, animations and even location themes are lifted straight up from Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro. As much as this is something that should be talked about, it's not the biggest problem for me, even though I agree with those sentiments. Lies of P feels like a Dark Souls 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro stew, with a sprinkling of new ideas thrown in there. These new ideas keep it from being a full-on ripoff, but aren't enough to distract you from the many moments you'll have where you'll think: "this is like that thing from (insert game)".
Game feel is pretty great, and it looks and runs amazing too. As a first attempt it could be worse. It's not great, but they understand some core things which most soulslikes don't. This sub genre is hard to get right, I'd argue not even From themselves got it in their first try. But personally, i don't know that Round 8 is going to become a soulslike powerhouse.
It seems that in stealing taking from the soulsborne games, they forgot the leave to bad things behind, and brought some new bad things with them.

"You know what this reminds me of Zack. The 2010 video game cult classic. A horror influence potpourri by legendary action developers, Remedy. That's right Zack, Alan Wake."
Wait, wrong game.
Or is it…
So Alan Wake 2 finally came out and it looks pretty good so i thought: "I'll play the old and busted one quickly so i can get to the new, shiny one."
And old and busted it is.
Alan Wake has aged terribly. In fact, most of its design is so underwhelming and janky, that i would say it was already aged at release.
The combat shows all its tricks in the first ten minutes, and tricks it lacks. It's very simple. Boringly so. I wouldn't go as far as to call it tedious, especially on easy, but i can't see it not becoming so in a full playthrough.
And the level design doesn't help. You walk forward through samey looking forests ad infinitum, which are only occasionally and briefly broken up by city sections. Its classic PS3/XBOX 360 forgettable design, but applied to a horror game, which means its even more boring cause of the lower density of puzzles and combat. Not that i would want more combat, but still.
Puzzles aren't anything to write home about. So i won't.
But the worst aged of all the fine wines is the presentation. Some transitions from gameplay to cutscene are laughable. One occurs early on, when Alan goes to the little dock behind his cabin to ponder on his shitty writing or whatever. The editing, if you want to call it that, is disastrous. That whole sequence was so forced i genuinely laughed when it happened.
The narrative, or more specifically, the dialogue, isn't very good either. Alan's narration is a mood killer. I can see why he has writers block.
The writing mostly moves between failed Twin Peaks inspiration, and failed horror fiction inspiration. Alan Wake stands on the shoulders of horror legends, and it mostly limits itself to repeating what they did.
There's a great example early in the game. Alan shuts a door behind him, only for it to get The Shining'd. This moment doesn't work for me in two ways. The first, and admittedly more biased one, is i believe references mostly don't work in fiction. Most times, i find they take away much more than they add. And second, it is such an overdone reference (also true in 2010), that it feels kind of lazy. The surprise third reason arises mere seconds later when Alan himself remarks (paraphrasing): "I need to go before i get The Shining'd". This goes even further in taking away the already little tension the moment had, and transforms it into a pure reference, with barely any substance.
Many times, the game feels like a more "serious" Deadly Premonition. For some that may be a compliment. For others, me included, not so much.
Maybe it gets better later on, but there are too many games to play and too little time.
In the end it turns out i can't even play Alan Wake 2.
Damned technology.

"A shadowy figure emerges from the corner of the website. It screeches, and shouts some incomprehensible gibberish at you. Upon further inspection you realize it's a wannabe backloggd reviewer, on account of the Vitamin D deficiency. How you can detect that by looking at it, who knows. In its hand you see a small book.
[TAKE THE BOOK] (Muscle 10)
YOU: Gimme' that.
You steal the book from its dainty hands with expectably low effort. It appears to be an English-GameReviewer Dictionary. It's mostly buzzwords and extreme takes. Not the worst thing you'll read today.
(You have gained the Dewtongue perk)
You explain to the book why Silent Hill 2 is an underrated masterpiece. It flees in horror.
The reviewer gets closer, this time with a small paper in hand. You take it and start reading."
Shadows over Loathing is the followup to West of Loathing, a comedy rpg… "You zone out, blocking out the reviewer nonsense and skipping ahead. Hope it gets good."
After four hours of my playthrough, something was bugging me. I wasn't enjoying it as much as its predecessor. Was it not as funny? Was it more tedious? Or was my memory playing tricks on me?
I booted up West of Loathing. "I'll play it for a bit. For science.", i thought.
Well, dear (potentially zero) readers, i was wrong. I come to you after finishing my second playthrough of West of Loathing, six years after my first. And i can say, with certainty, that Shadows over Loathing is a considerable step down from its predecessor.
The prologue is fun. The way it spreads out your character creation "diegetically" was pretty entertaining. And that's about it.
The crux of Shadows failure, like this very review, is pacing. Dialogues and narrative descriptions are longer. This bogs down the humor quite a bit, mainly because it can't maintain the snappiness of West. There are many merry japes to partake in, but more than a few get lost in the walls of text. The story and characters aren't any better either, so most of the text feels useless.
Combat falls prey to the very same problem. It's more complex than in West, but not any better. It simply takes more time to get through it, and much of that time you're not doing anything. In West you control your character and a Companion, with most of the weight of combat resting on your character. Shadow boasts parties the size of 4 creatures, cause that's how many they have. You, your companion, your familiar, and the ever opportune friendly spider join the fray to help defeat the not so lovecraftian menace. One of the problems is that you don't control the familiar or the friendly spider. And between them and the enemies, you spend most of combat looking at the game play itself which, while charming, isn't anything to write home about visually. Changing Action Points (the resource you spend to use your more powerful abilities) from a per combat resource to a per round one is a good choice, but it isn't followed up by any other interesting design choices.
The game is also way too broken up. The hub based world makes it feel disconnected; especially compared to West. A minor gripe, but a gripe nonetheless.
Character progression feels less impactful and, you guessed it, slower.
Quests follow the same progression style of West, but they take more time.
I could get into more specific examples, but then i would be a hypocrite. That would make it too long. And besides, i know none of you got this far. I see the reviews you upvote. I see the word count.
"You finish reading the review. Now you can be sure you won't read anything worse today.
The creature takes a step forward.
GAME REVIEWER: Everything taking too long!"