Here’s a boss fight video I have recorded for this review. It doesn’t necessarily support my thoughts, but in case you want to watch it, here you go: https://youtu.be/ALLPMFvZ0Mo?si=0BJtAlatypNdsbwH

Also, spoiler warning. I’m gonna namedrop every important boss and local so consider reading this after you are done with the game.

What I expected from the demo playthrough was that this game was just gonna be a typical Souls game with a deflection mechanic. What I got in the end with the 30+ hours of journey is that this game is…. still a typical souls game, but with the combination of the best aspects of the modern post-DeS/pre-ER FROM games. Of course, there are some downfalls driven from that scope, but I won’t sugarcoat that my experience with this game was almost close to my first playthrough of Bloodborne. If this game came out in 2015, it would have been my identity to praise this game till death. Of course, this won’t be my game of life, because at this point in my gaming journey, I’m more interested in games that aren’t really souls-like, but there was a spark of joy to have for a long-time fan of the formula.

Lies of P’s thematical structure is similar to BB at first glance. There’s a dying city, there’s also a problem with outbreak of monstrosities, celestial beings behind the veil, yadayda… you know the drill. But once you dive into the game, you can see that the game is trying to convey a different thing while maintaining the value of the traditional Souls game.

In the older Myazaki’s Souls games. There’s a sense that the world in that game is an elaborated place instead of just being a pretty background. When we go back to Demon’s Souls, you might remember that you have to open the giant gate in the castle area, pick up the key and use it to open the doors in the asylum area and activate the mining elevator in the mine area, all for the one purpose: opening the shortcut or the next passage. Even though they are just a little detail, you wouldn’t disagree that this little detail in interactions make each level feel distinguished and elaborated. While this environmental detail is what FROM still excels at, you can’t deny that modern FROM games aren’t really good at delivering that premise as they look more dungeon-y than a thematically accurate place. This aspect got worse after Dark Souls 3 and we all know that Elden Ring introduced soulless manufactured mini-dungeons, which kinda ruined the game as a whole even with the inclusion of Legacy Dungeons.

Compared to this, Lies of P is full of elaborated environmental details and interactions that convey the game feel. For example, one thing you will realize soon is that this game took place around the pseudo-Belle-Époque era. To elaborate it, the game actually introduces levels themed around such as a gigantic factory manufacturing dolls, a gigantic market arcade, and a world expo with grandiose exhibitions. And those levels are, instead of being too dungeon-y, structured like an actual place for that purpose. You have to lower the pipe hanging on the crane to make a shortcut in the factory. You can ride the tram that was shown at the beginning to open a way to the expo. The arcade area is full of little shops that function as ambushes, lootable places, and backdoor shortcuts. In this aspect, Lies of P holds the torch as the best non-FROM souls-like that gave a shit about environments. If I have to nitpick, there are some obstacles that made me question “Why can’t I just jump over this”, but honestly the stronger part is so strong that I kinda forgot about it.

We are still talking about the world-building so I can add more about the thing I liked about Lies of P’s way of distinguishing itself from other FROM Souls games.
Firstly, I think the members of Hotel Krat are much more likable and sympathetic than any FROM’s hub dwellers. In FROM Souls games, after the 4 similar entries, you kinda see the boring patterns of the NPC placements. A calm and cryptic maiden figure that levels you up, A cynical-ass depressed soldier, A bulky blacksmith, and some boring merchants here and there. And you know some of them will go off and die in a ditch at some point. Bloodborne did kinda experimental things with survivors in the chapel, but they didn’t do stuff like that after BB which is pretty weird. While Lies of P still has that cryptic maiden figure, the other NPCs are full of distinguishable characteristics. A nerd girl who is very enthusiastic about gears, A CEO of the puppet industry who has a depressing backstory even with the hilarious facade, a swindler treasure hunter who tries so hard to be known as a real one, and a hotel counter robot that secretly loves the hotel owner. You may say these characters are almost like caricatures, but I personally think some amount of campiness can work as a good contrast in the consistently depressing scenario. Also, the motivations of those characters are well-established compared to FROM game NPCs which require two parts of Vaatividya videos to understand the full context.

Secondly, I think the collectables in this game are pretty neat. Unlike Souls games, there are varied types of collectables to get the lores and trivia behind the world. Message notes, guide tour books, newspapers, advertisement posters, and all that. While there are some Resident Evil documents moments that made me think “There’s no way that people would write this thing before dying lmao”, the varied way of describing the worldbuilding establishes that this world is a place where people actually lived, not a glorified dungeon after dungeon. There were some cute moments too, like the notes from Black Rabbit brotherhood. The message cylinders are probably my favorite addition to this formula since it is thematically accurate and I just like doing the treasure hunt while looking at the visual clues. This game’s strong suit is the environment department, so it works wonderfully when I just can guess the location right away with a blurred picture in the clue. There are also vinyl records to collect which can be played in the hotel lobby. Here’s a thing you should know: this is not the same as the Nier Automata’s jukebox where you can play the in-game themes again. This plays an actual original song just for this sole function! And all the vinyl record music is wonderfully composed fitting to the narrative of certain characters or the general mood so it actually had an intrinsic value for me even if it doesn’t benefit the gameplay department at all. It’s not a lie that I was happier to find records more so than the weapons.

Speaking of weapons, I think Lies of P has probably the best weapon customization in all the souls-likes I’ve played. (I’m only talking about the weapons here. If we are talking about player toolsets as a whole, there are many games that did better than this.) One of the biggest gripes I had with Souls games, in general, is that experimenting with other weapons requires an entire stat rollback or a complete re-upgrade for that new weapon just to make it useful. And even then you are limited to given weapons moves which are pretty basic most of the time. In a way, all the Souls games “build progression” can be boiled down to [Get the base weapon] - [Stick to that weapon till you find a better weapon with the same stat requirements] - [Change it to that new weapon and fully upgrade it] - [Stick to it till the end]. Even with the stat rollback functions, people rarely want to change the gears ignoring the floods of “other options” in their inventory, because trying out other weapons optimally is such busy work to do in the initial playthrough. In an ideal world, we should be able to get the Armored Core treatment where you can pull out every weapon from a cargo, but that won’t happen in the Souls game structure because they need to drip-feed the reward to fill the exploration aspect, like the hidden weapons or upgrade materials.

Lies of P took the middle ground by making the weapon parts combinable. Blades are completely separate from your stat requirement and you can upgrade these parts with moonstones. Handles on the other hand require your stat requirement, but it doesn’t determine the overall power of the weapon and it changes the moveset instead. By combining these two, you can experiment with the builds freely, as your stat requirement or the lack of upgrade materials doesn’t halt you from trying out the weapon customization. For example, you want to try out the drill-like lance which fits your stat requirement. but you may think it is obnoxious to upgrade it from the +1. Then you can just go to the Stargazer, switch the blade to the fully upgraded one, and there you have it! It may have a different speed or attack range, but you still can use the drill lance. By the end of the game, I used 5 or 6 weapons throughout the game without reallocating the stats even once. People say Souls games thrive on build variety, and Lies of P shows how to upgrade the formula to meet that expectations.

If we dig deeper into the combat side, we can find even more interesting changes to the formula. While it is basic, the fable arts and charge attacks are neat additions to the combat system. In a way, this is not a new thing as these things have become standardized since Bloodborne, but these combat options have much more clear purpose in this combat loop - the groggy attack. Unlike the traditional souls games where your basic maneuver leads you to the small victories (enemy stagger) and then big victories(enemy death) in a linear fashion, Lies of P makes you “earn” the small victory by requiring you to do a high skill action: dealing damage with fable arts or charge attacks while the enemy healthbar is glowing white. This mechanic provides two interesting things in your gameplay. Since your fable arts consume the meter and charge attack requires a long start-up time, you have to be more knowledgeable about enemy patterns or your positioning to actually punish, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions as the white bar won’t stay longer. Because some enemies just don’t give you a lot of breathing ground, you have to think about hit trading or ignoring the white bar for now and waiting for the next one.
This interesting dynamics also can be seen from the guard mechanic. Lies of P’s twist on the BB’s regain system is that players can regenerate the lost health by hitting the enemies, but only after you guard the damage. The raw damage will just go straight to the health bar and you won’t get anything after that. However, once you manage to nail down the perfect parry with the guard button, it gives a groggy damage to the enemies and you can also regenerate the lost health a bit, just like when you hit the enemies. But the perfect parry’s frame window is much shorter than Sekiro or Wo Long, so there’s definitely a high-skill ceiling aspect to master this.
This little dynamism makes the game much more than strict whip punishes even if the game is framed as a reactive side on the whole action game spectrum. Also, with this combat framework, the enemies are just fantastically designed. Fitting to the narrative, most of the enemies are malfunctioning dolls or erratic zombies. So most attacks have non-conventional timing with all the twitching joints and irregular steps. Because of this aspect, you can’t just comfortably parry or I-frame dodge every attack from the get-go. You have to consider the enemy attack distance, tracking angle, and your position in the environment to make yourself safe. This is something that lacked in Sekiro where you could comfortably deflect everything (Well, except for some main bosses, mind you!) while being stationary to the point that it feels like a rhythmical Punchout.

The bosses are great examples that elaborate the importance of positioning. The second main boss Scrapped Watchman has insane amount of patterns for an early game boss. It starts out as a simple parry/i-frame dodge test, but then the boss quickly introduces lightning effects on the ground which makes you adjust your movements more thoughtfully. Probably my favorite bosses would be Archbishop and The Swamp Monster. Visually they both look grotesque and cool, there’s a fun aspect of finding a good spot to deflect the attack while maintaining the distance, and also there were some satisfying moments where you have to pull off the groggy attack while the gigantic monstrosity is sweeping around the arena erratically.

Bosses are the highlights of this game, but where the game exceptionally excels at is how they handle the normal enemies. I heard that the director’s favorite Souls game is Dark Souls 2 from some rumors around here, but it surely shows his taste in some areas with an extreme amount of ambushes, traps, enemy compositions, and just a sheer amount of enemy numbers after the mid-game levels. I reviewed in Thymesia that souls-like games really need to grow balls to introduce multiple hazards at once, but they did it with this game. Also, there are just TONS of different mini-bosses. Each of them has borderline-boss-tier move lists hidden in their sleeves, and there is a bunch of new type of elites in one area. And these enemies appear only two or three times in the whole game? This uniqueness makes the area much more memorable than it should be. There’s a swamp level near the end of the game where all the abandoned dolls are gathered and crushed, and there was a unique scary-looking scrapped monkey mini-boss which scared the shit out of me. It has a fun moveset, but also it really elevated the mood of that freakish environment. Considering that most games just try to reuse the elite enemies over and over once it was introduced, I kinda liked the approach here, where it uses the unique enemy sparingly to make the area more special.

However, there are some dirty tricks the game abuses to the point that it kinda soured my enjoyment a bit -which is also the reason why I couldn’t give this game the perfect score-. Even though the game respects your positioning, there are some baffling enemy patterns that are just designed to “hit” you. If you have read all of my other reviews, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the god damn automatic movement assist from the enemy's side. If you ever felt like this game is a bit “floaty”, it’s because of this. Some of the patterns just ignore the context of that animation and slide them to the front so that the attack swing collides with the player. The Eldest of Black Rabbit Brotherhood shows a clear example -even though conceptually, the fight is good-. There’s a vertical strike attack combo which gives you massive damage if you get hit. Looking at the animation, it looks like he is swinging the blade in the same position as the legs are locked in one place, so you think it is safe to distance from him a bit and then prepare your next move by charging up the heavy attack, healing, or grinding your weapons… something like that. But then he slides way further than you anticipated so you get smacked by the chunk of iron, and then stun-locked to death. This dirty trick can be worse if it is combined with red attacks which require you to do a perfect parry or do a manual positioning to negate the damage. If you have completed the game, there’s no denying that Laxasia’s first phase is the perfect example of the great test of spacing, finding the punish window, and parrying. But then the second phase shows up and it forces you to parry the red attack from the sky above and the attack distance is absurdly large and fast that you are forced to remember the exact TIME to parry that attack. Considering that most red attacks so far had some window to play safe, this one felt absurdly forced. At this point, the automatic gap closer became a normal thing in action games built with Unreal Engine (I’m looking at you, En Garde, Sifu, Thymesia, and all that janky shit I played) but I wish this game didn’t abuse this trick at all, because when it didn’t rely on it, it worked wonderfully.

There are more nitpicks to add to this critique, like why are there so many gigantic two-phase bosses, why the puppet king’s first phase is much more interesting than the second phase but then the devs decided to nerf the first phase, why aren’t there many boss weapon upgrade materials in the mid-late game, and why the game didn’t have the interconnectivity of Dark Souls 1 even though there are many oppourtunities with the structures of levels, but even excluding that, there are more reasons to love this game, and it is very cultural one. It might be a cringe reason, but it’s because it’s a Korean game.

You see, I didn’t expect a lot from my home country’s industry. The whole industry here has earned titles like “the gotcha factory of the East”, and “the place where MMORPGs are born and die” and there’s no way I can deny that. It’s a cynical landscape where people’s enjoyment about videogames is heavily concentrated in irl transactions, number crunching and gamblings in disguise. This aspect extends to the indie scene except for some glowing exceptions like Unsouled. But then there’s this game, released by the company built from the web card game in the old days. I was expecting a soul-less clone, a husk of a game with money-grabbing scheme but this actually turned out to be a good game. It also understood the merits of the original Souls games, but it also paved its own ways to twist the source material(Pinocchio) in their unique taste and addressed many issues the original Souls games had. It’s a beautiful holistic combination.
And looking around the forum or communities, even with some mild criticism here and there, it’s quite a scenery to see this game getting big praise from everywhere. Even though I didn’t participate in the development at all, it made me feel happy in some sense. Maybe that subjective thought is the reason why it clouds my “fair and reasonable” eyes to read this game, but what I can’t lie about is that I really really adored this game in the end.