It's so nice to see you.

Lies of P is a game that takes inspiration from the best of the genre and keeps it very close to its heart, if you have ever played Bloodborne, you will know how many things they are similar to each other, and yet how much the game focus on doing its own thing. (also, since I don't like to make comparisons, this will be the last time I bring up Bloodborne)

Inspired by Carlo Collodi's Pinnochio, the idea of having a Souls game that uses a fairy tale as its source material might sound a bit silly, hard to take seriously, and might make anyone wonder how the fuck can you pull it off and actually make it work, turns out that Jiwon Choi and the team at NEOWIZ knew how to, and I'm very glad they did! In fact, now I want more things to hit public domain, so people can do great stuff like this! (instead of just generic slasher slop films)

But what makes Lies of P so good? For starters, it's simply just fun to play, it rewards almost any playstyle you like focusing on, weapons are extremely unique, and they rarely play the same. You are going to spend a lot of resources trying new weapons and changing them over and over, and on top of that, the system allows you to change the movesets and scalings of weapons you might want to use but don't really fit your build which I think it's a very nice thing that I hope to see its more used in the subgenre, mix them up with your Legion Arm of choice, and you have a very fun gameplay loop, though, if you don't pick Puppet String, what are you honestly doing with your life?

Gameplay is not the only forte of LoP as it also has a very fascinating story and worldbuilding that relies less on the player piecing it together and just being more upfront while telling it, while still being careful of keeping you guessing where it will go next.

If I had to say which nitpicks I have with the game, is that aside from a specific few, boss themes don't really stand out, and on the later half of the game, bosses get so fucking high on crack that in order for you to keep up you probably have to do the same, but that's also because I was playing a heavy build so the urge of going unga bunga with everything would get the best of me time and time again.

Overall, if you like Fromsoftware's Souls games, play this one, because this is as close as it gets to being as polished as one of them.

Once you're at rock bottom, the only place to go is up.

A few days after I lost access to the game on PS+, it went on a sale, it's like fate wanted me to finish it. This was my first venture into the Like a Dragon series, after a long time of being relatively interested on it, a result of its exponentially increasing online presence as a franchise.

Like a Dragon is a very strong story about honor, respect, and most importantly, finding your own worth in the world, with Ichiban Kasuga being at the center of it. He values those features on a person so much that it leads him to take the guilt for a crime he didnt commit, which is as much as I can say about the story without getting into implied spoilers.
This serves to kickstart an amazing RPG that balances both serious, thought provoking and very emotional moments with silly laid back side content, one moment you find yourself being wrapped into a big conspiracy and the next one you are singing on a Karaoke or participating in Go kart races.

The game plays as you would expect any turn based game to play like, if you have played one, you have played them all. However in this game part of the fun of the turn based experience comes from setting up job combos in your party that allow you to minmax the shit out of everything. On top of that, you cant just brute force your way through everything by spamming attacks, you have to rely on as many tools (buffs, debuffs, ailments) as you can use to get through the toughest encounters, which is something I appreciate a lot when its done in this genre because it helps to prevent it from getting stale.

The worst thing I could nitpick about the game overall is that from chapter 12 onwards it starts relying on increasing the level gap between you and the enemies too often, which could have used some more thought to spike the difficulty if they really wanted to, but in the end, it was for a very good reason

As an afterthought, I would like to talk about how I decided to get into it, which was actually quite funny. It all started when I saw the trailer for Infinite Wealth that reveals that Kiryu has cancer and, for some reason, hearing that this character I knew nothing about (except how popular and beloved he is) was gonna have to deal with that in the next mainline game, made me feel like it was about time I caught up before the game released so I could see his story through. While theres no way I can play an entire franchise of long ass games in one month, at least I wanted to play those who precede IW first, that being Yakuza Like a Dragon, and Gaiden (which I hope to get to play sooner than later).

And so, with you as a witness, random user in Backloggd reading this, I make it one of my 2024 goals to play through these series, because I absolutely understand what the fuss is all about now, and I wish I had sooner.

I went into this very open minded, especially with how the quality of the games have been since 2017.
Yes this does what it sets out to do, and that is bring stealth and classic-esc Parkour back, they both feel great. However, stealth is so un-needed, the combat is piss easy that if you go loud its no bother, leaves stealth completely in the dark.

While I have tried to get this game 100%, Ive found myself literally falling asleep at the activities to do, let alone the bloody story (which was predictable as hell) I enjoyed some locations, the Oasis area, the secret under the lake ;) and some sections of the City, but I found it all samey, got lost because there is no variety. I guess you could say the same with the Ezio games as well, but the locations there had charm. This rendition of Baghdad feels so unoriginal, especially with the classic filter on, it feels and looks like AC1.

I cant say too much about this, graphics are good, Parkour is good, I wanted the steelbook, couldnt afford it, and I think would have been a terrible investment especially with how much I disliked this.

To be clear, I bought this for the campaign, and boy am I fucking disappointed, Half of the missions are boring Open Warzone missions, where you collect weapons and explore the way you want, not to mention they are just parts of the bloody warzone map. Some of the traditional missions are decent, but none are memorable, minus Passengers, Ill remember that for sure.

Whole the graphics and Cutscenes are well made, I cant Justify giving this more than 2 star, I found it very offputting that there was a lack of Soundtrack in missions as well, like wth!?

Zombies I booted up for 5 mins and closed, and multiplayer is multiplayer, you get what you get.

Warzone ugh smelly,