First I want to point out, this is not a review for the campaign since I didn't play the campaign. I installed the game and only played online matchmaking/local multiplayer and wanted to review my experience separate from the campaign experience.

I grew up playing Halo 3 like many other 90's kids, and I had a huge appreciation for the Halo IP. I however was part of the group of people that split off to be a Gears of War fan, so while I dabbled in Halo here and there over the years, Halo 3 was where 95% of my time went into the series. I recently had a hankering for a new shooter to play when I had some time to kill and had heard that Halo Infinite was doing just about everything right. While the game launched in a bad state, the game had gotten a ton of support that was making the playerbase very happy. While the playerbase was a far cry from what Halo used to be in it's hayday, the numbers were slowly but steadily climbing. I had also gotten wind of what the team was doing with the battle pass, finally someone besides Fortnite that had a BP that actually seemed to be doing stuff that was beneficial for the consumer in some way. I already had Gamepass so there was no reason to not give it a try.

I expected some growing pains as I had not played Halo for more than a day in about 15 years, so my first day went about as expected. Migrating from controller to M&K when I got my first PC was a rough experience I never wanted to go through again, but having to fight the muscle memory I had for this game brought that pain all over again. It's so frustrating to know I had full absolute control of my character in the past but now I felt like such an old man. I would try to switch my grenade and then throw one in quick succession but would get the buttons backwards, or completely forget the keybinds. As frustrating as all this was, this was just a me problem. Plenty of games have a ton of keybinds and it was just gonna take time to overcome the muscle memory I had built over hundreds of hours, that's not the game's fault.

However what is the game's fault is the game's feel, and maybe I'm just crazy but I don't remember the game feeling so, floaty? I know that Halo was somewhat floaty, but it never felt quite this extreme? I think part of it comes from the addition to clean movement options that were added over the years (mantling ledges, sliding, etc.) that make the disparity seem so extreme. You have these quick, fine tuned movement options and then you have this SLOW floaty jump and movement system that just don't mix. It makes the slow parts seem so much slower and it doesn't feel good.

Another really bad change I've noticed is the weapon systems. Not only have they seemed to go full in on the weird naming conventions for weapons. It's not the Shotgun or even Combat shotgun, but it's the "CQS48 Bulldog." It's not that Assault Rifle, it's the "MA40 AR." It's not the Commando, it's the "VK78 Commando." It's not the pistol, it's the "MK50 Sidekick." This may seem nit picky, but it's a really rough learning curve. If I want to test a weapon in training mode I have no freaking clue which some weapons are to even pick them out to practice them. I absolutely don't know how the weapons look when slotted in a wall so name is the one universal way to remember them, but these arbitrary numbers and letters just complicate the process. If I wanted to play a simulation shooter or a hyper realistic FPS, I'd play Tarkov. I want to play a high pace, tense PvP shooter and for that I want quick and immediate visual & textual clarity.

I realized that while I put about 5 hours into the game, it just wasn't getting any more fun. The gameplay was way too floaty for me, the minor details were making it difficult for me to just come to grasps with the game, and my matchmaking experience was horribly inconsistent. It's probably a combination of the fact my account was new and didn't know where to place me, the playerbase isn't plentiful enough to give consistent balanced matches, and the time that I played exacerbated that issue even more. Sadly all but one match I played was insanely one sided. I decided to throw in the towel and came to the conclusion Halo just doesn't offer anything to me I want. While I acknowledge part of it is just me needing to adjust to the changes that have naturally occurred over time, there's also a lot of the game that just doesn't feel good at all.

I am a huge Nintendo fan, and I am a huge Mario fan. Platformers are my bread and butter. While I'd say I'm at least competent or decent at most genres, platformers are the one genre I'd confidently say I'm really damn good at. So whenever a new main series, 3D Mario game comes out I am hyped as hell. But when it's a 2D game? I honestly haven't been excited for a 2D Mario game since Super Mario 3D Land on 3DS. Yes I'm considering it a 2D Mario game in this case. If you want to be a stickler and say it has to be in 2D then the last one was New Super Mario Bros. Wii back in 2009. (And that only wins by default since the last 2D Mario game that came out before then was in 1992 when I was 8 years old and wasn’t even aware of it.) The reason being that 2D Mario games after the original Golden age of NES and SNES have just been really forgetful in my opinion. The only one that felt memorable and standout was Super Mario 3D World (SM3DW). There were three (true) 2D Mario games released between 2009 and 2012 and if you took a screenshot of any of them, made them the same resolution, removed the token new power up it had, and it wasn't from the "unique" World 1, you wouldn’t even be able to tell which game it was from. They're all the same and have no substantial identity. Because of all this, any announcements from Nintendo about a new 2D Mario basically went in one of my ears and out the other. Mario Wonder had a very difficult hill to climb with me.

The new art style was a welcome breath of fresh air even if I wasn't the biggest fan of it. (I still think Yoshi looks terrible in this game) It still was new and unique and it gave the game a sense of visual identity. While most 2D Mario games put a huge emphasis on the game's identity with the new power up it added like Wii U's Acorn or New Super Mario Bros. 2's Gold Fire Flower, wonder instead decided to showcase a new mechanic the levels all had. The Wonder flower would take a level and "remix" a segment of it in ways that I just could not imagine no matter how hard I tried to predict. They would be wonderful musical showcases (ones that managed to nail it perfectly, as opposed to Origami King for example) or sections where the physics are completely upended, or small obstacle courses in their own independent vacuum. There really aren’t any rules to what could happen or where it would happen, the only constant was when you got to the end and touched a wonder seed, the effects ended. It really can't be emphasized how unique these experiences were. And every single level with a flag poll has one. It makes sense to make this mechanic the focal point of the game's focus, image, and advertising because not only is it damn fun, but it's the only way to truly encapsulate all the extremely varied experiences it can offer.

While the Wonder flower is the face of the game, the thing that stood out to me personally as this game’s crown jewel and sign of 2D Mario actually evolving is the enemy/NPC designs. Most 2D Mario games follow a similar formula. Create a stage gimmick, introduce it in a safe environment, put it in different scenarios of increasing risk (add pits or enemies), complete the level, and more or less ditch the gimmick unless it's used as a tool in the "increasing risk" step for a different new mechanic that’s introduced later. Maybe bring it back later in a bonus world as an extra hard challenge. But the worlds are usually the same you expect from a Mario game. (Grassland, desert, oceans, etc.) The enemies are what you expect from a Mario game (goomba, koopa, boo, etc.) with a small handful of new creations thrown in per game. But Mario Wonder? They not only go all in on new enemy types and designs, but they also serve as the stage gimmick as well. The Skeddaddlers run away carrying goodies and collectables and hopping over obstacles while firing off acorn projectiles that attack you, but they also break the environment. Outmaways kick ice blocks that push you around, kill enemies, offer you rides, and in later levels reappear to show you they can kick not just ice blocks but other objects like shells too. Hoppycats mirror your jumps making them difficult to get by normally, but also trip you up as you find out they can defy gravity and cling to a ceiling and jump upside down. But they can be used to break through the environment to reveal secret collectables and new paths. That's just three new enemies out of dozens, but that's also just enemies because there's friendly NPCs you'll find in levels you have to make use of too. Bloomps shove enemies aside and give you multiple high bounces across gaps. Blewbirds shoot massive bubbles that allow you to climb up to high places. Hoppos roll sideways, knocking over enemies, an continue rolling until they reach a bottomless pit and cover it up to protect you from falling in while also offering you a new bouncy platform to bounce off of. Again just 3 new characters to help you out of dozens. In an IP that's kind of expected to be a bit stale by falling back on its “tried and true” cast of Goombas and Koopas, this was such a standout change for me. Not only were there nearly a hundred new characters designed with great mechanics and appearance, but they also didn't just simply function as an enemy or obstacle but a tool or puzzle piece of the environment. (Oh and on the topic of familiar enemies, they did also breathe some extra personality into them by doing extra little details like having Koopas/Goombas/Dry Bones playfully bump shells/butts when they walk into each other. Or have them look up angrily at Mario as he enters their cone of vision. Or having them very clearly panic when they see a fireball/bubble get close or witness one of their comrades be murdered right in front of them.) The levels are beautiful and fun and unpredicting, but for me the most standout thing was the beautiful multi-functionality of nearly every new NPC you found in a level.

Also I need to take just a brief minute to talk about the art and music in this game. Holy shit the music in this game is so god damned good. These remixes are incredible! (the remix they made for "Underground" has now become my favorite version of the song) And for those who played all the Mario games and are big fans and love when games reference older entries, this game is like a wet dream. It's just like absurd fan service but in the best way possible. Seriously every freaking second of music in this game in every way is a delight for the ears. And the visuals and art style for this game were so good I did something I’ve never done before. They were actually so damn good I went to the freaking credits to see who the Art Director of the game was. His name is Masanobu Sato and he BETTER have this roll in more games because holy fucking shit man, the visuals for this game were out of this world. The color schemes for enemies like the black and Green Piranha plants, Neon color outlines of the Piranha clouds around Bowser, the weird Inverted and glowy effect to Bowser Jr. when he was in "Wonder Mode," the implementation of "silhouette" levels, the visual effect of the "black hole tearing" on some levels, I could honestly go on and on with this game's visuals. They're fucking stunning. This is one of the best looking games I've ever seen to the extent I honestly died a couple times just because I got distracted by admiring the background or color patterns of levels. If one thing happens as a result of this game's release it's that Masanobu Sato gets the raise and recognition he deserves.

I've gushed about the game long enough so I want to talk about the few issues I have with the game. One minor thing being the wall jump was noticeably finicky. I thought maybe I was crazy but when I brought it up multiple people said they agreed. It works like 80% of the time but it's damned frustrating to fall to your death because the game just kinda let you fall. But the main issue I have with the game is kind of a combination of two things and I don't know which of the two it's more of. This game is $70 and I beat it, full 100% in under 14.5 hours. I beat every level, topped every flag poll, got every wonder seed, got every 10 Coin, found every secret exit, completed every challenge, got every badge, bought every standee, this game has no more content left to offer me in under 15 hours. I did say earlier that Platformers were the genre I was best at so I didn’t expect to struggle TOO much while playing but there were only 2 levels that I’d label as hard. I’m sure no one will be surprised that they are the 2 final levels in the optional Special world. Anything besides those two levels that were labeled as “hard” by the game were at max a 5/10 on the difficulty scale. That means most levels in the game overall were a 1-2/10. I can’t tell if I cruised through this game because the game itself really is short, or if it was that easy. I’m not naive, I know that Mario games are meant to be accessible to all ages. A large part of why 2D Mario games were brought back with New Super Mario Bros Wii was because elder folks were complaining about how they couldn’t bond over video games with their grand kids like they used to because they simply couldn’t grasp 3D movement in games like they could at least 2D games and were left in the dust. So I’m not trying to be that gatekeeping Souls fanboy who thinks all games should be hard, there’s nothing wrong with some games being made easier so they can be more accessible. But for example SM3DW had freaking 2.5 post game worlds of levels that were significantly harder than previous content. I think the “Special world” in Wonder was supposed to be the game’s equivalent to that but besides there being only 10 levels, all but 2 of the levels were a 5/10 difficulty.or less. I was having fun playing Wonder but a part of that was because while playing I was regularly thinking in the back of my head “god this game’s really easy. I can’t wait to get to the post game worlds for some fun challenge.” To then be met with 2 hard levels and the game just ending really took the wind out of my sails.

Overall, this game is beautiful, inventive, creative, imaginative, unpredictable, fun, short, and easy. The music is incredible, the visuals and art direction are unmatched, and it’s the first 2D Mario I actually had fun with since I first played the original 4 classics as a kid. If you like Platformers there’s no question or doubt about it, you will have fun with this game. The only real issue is determining if the short and easy time is worth $70 to you.

The last thing I'll say about the game is, seriously Nintendo, give Masanobu Sato a raise.

Sorry, this review is a LONG one. This game was long enough to have a lot of content to write about, not too long like a massive open world game where a lot of content is forgettable, and it’s also a part of one of the most beloved genres currently with many games to make comparisons and parallels to. I do put a TL;DR at the end, but if you want an in depth review that goes over the pros and cons I noticed in this game, enjoy the read.

This was a game I was really excited to play. While Bloodborne was my least favorite of the FromSoftware (FS) games to play, visually it was easily the most beautiful. Lies of P looked to be very similar to it and it hooked me in instantly. Tie that with the story being about Pinocchio, and I was all in. Taking a familiar "happy" story and giving it a much more dark and depressing tone is something I have a bit of a weak spot for. The icing on top was that this was essentially a first major release from an indie studio that looked like they actually could handle what they were trying to do. I love rooting for an underdog or looking at a new up and comer. And I would say they did a great job.

I won't try to make TOO many direct comparisons to FS games in the review, but there is obvious reasons why I will do it some. That and apparently the studio was making comparisons themselves so I don't feel as bad. I’ll try to get most of them out of the way first. Nearly all of the "Soulsborne" (SB) games use Dark Souls as the foundation, and this game does that as well. I-frames when rolling, killing enemies gives you a resource that's both a level up currency as well as general purchasing currency, dying drops it all, to get it back you must successfully make the trip back to where you died, you are given limited healing items, etc. etc. All of the basic mechanics that most people think of as being very Dark Souls are in Lies of P as well. It then takes the world aesthetic as well as the UI interface that Bloodborne has. It also has the mechanic of regaining health by attacking enemies. Lastly, I haven't played Sekiro yet so I can't talk about all the mechanics Lies of P might have taken from it, but I do know Sekiro has an emphasis on parrying in combat and boy howdy do they do the same in this game.

While those are the mechanics that it took from FS games, the question is did it do it well. I would say yes, and actually better overall in my opinion. Which should be expected, the FS games are 8-12 years old. I would hope a game released on average a decade after the games they were inspired by, would polish up the mechanics a bit. In nearly all FS games if you die to a boss, you drop your souls/echos/whatever wherever you died in the boss arena. In Lies of P you drop your Eros outside the arena. This is actually really nice. Nearly everyone on any subsequent boss attempt would B line for their souls and THEN begin fighting the boss. This only resulted in at best wasting some time before actually playing, or at worst eating up a heal. Placing them outside the arena so you can get them and immediately focus on fighting the boss each attempt was a REALLY nice QOL change. In Bloodborne, when hit by an enemy if you responded with an attack quick enough, you'd get back some of the health you lost. This is a cool mechanic that incentivized an offensive play style, but in my experience the window was way too narrow, and if an enemy was chaining attacks the mechanic was essentially useless. The end result from my perspective was a mechanic that taunted you with potential health returns but never really worked or was worth going for. It was just a dead mechanic I ignored entirely after the first 10 attempts. Lies of P does a much better job in my opinion. Now if you get hit, you lose health and can't get it back. But if you BLOCK a hit, you can get it back. This was nice since if you're blocking you're usually in a position to return blows when the enemy stops. It was also cool because it wasn't a one way thing, enemies have a similar mechanic making it a 2 way street. Like I said I still haven't played Sekiro so I can't talk about the changes/improvements to mechanics taken from that game. Overall, the result of these minor changes was a game that had an excellent skeleton and structure through polished mechanics. The ingredients to make a good game were there, it was up to how those pieces were put together.

While the game isn't perfect and I have my gripes, I enjoyed the game a lot overall and have a lot of positive things to say about it so let's start with those. First, I really like the weapon assembling system and how you can mix and match parts. While this game has a lot that's unique going on in it, most of it can be traced back to, or is an off shoot of a mechanic that exists, in a pre existing SB game. This is the one true blue original self defining mechanic I think this game has about it. Nearly every weapon you get in the game can be broken down into two parts, the blade and the handle. The handle has the weapon scaling attributes (if it benefits most from say a strength build or a dexterity build), the actual moveset of a weapon (The swings animations and combos), as well as one half of the weapon's Fable Arts (Special moves). The blade/headpiece on the other hand is what's actually upgraded at the in game's blacksmith, it contributes the other half of the Fable Arts offering a second special to choose from, as well as deciding the range of your attacks since you could have a meager dagger at the end of your handle, or an enormous axe head. These factors that can be mixed and matched offer a lot of player autonomy to create a weapon that fits their unique needs for combat. And to add on to all of this customization, there are ~10 "specialty" weapons (Usually boss weapons). These are weapons that can't be broken down into two pieces to be recombined like all others, but offer some unique Fable Arts, heavy hits, look flashy visually or while attacking, and so on. There's an absurd amount of weapon variety and customization to this system and it’s wonderful. One last thing about the weapons in this game, most SB games have a “weapon degradation” system. Eventually a weapon will break and you have to spend resources of some sort to repair it. In this game, instead of spending resources to fix your weapon or having it happen slowly over time as an almost background hidden mechanic, this is a front and center mechanic that adds another thing to juggle during fights. Your weapon has a durability meter that’s present at all times and things like hitting enemies, blocking attacks, and status afflictions lower it. The lower it is, the less damage you do. To repair it, you simply pull out the weapon grinder, and use it to sharpen your weapon mid fight. To fully repair a weapon from 0-100 it only takes about ~6 straight seconds. It’s not a long time generally speaking, but during a boss fight 6 uninterrupted seconds is hard to come by and could be used to attack instead. It becomes a balancing act of do you let the meter nearly empty then repair, or repair in small increments all through the fight. I prefer this system since it doesn’t drain resources, but also adds a small layer of multi-tasking to the fights.

As for combat, normally in SB games when you run out of healing items, you're shit out of luck until you sit at the game's equivalent of a bonfire. But this game has a fun mechanic where when you use them all up, every hit on an enemy builds up a meter that when maxed gives you one more Pulse Cell to heal. While this sounds like it makes the game easy, it builds the meter at a slow enough rate that it doesn’t feel like the game is just handing heals to you. I love this because it incentivizes aggressive gameplay instead of just running. And for boss fights it can be hype as hell to be on the edge of death but getting enough hits in to get one more heal to keep you alive. On the topic of bosses, the bosses in this game are great. The designs are really varied and badass. Tons of variety visually as well as attack patterns and mechanics. And out of all the bosses, I only felt like 1 attack was pure BS. Everything else felt completely fair. (Although 1 boss in particular felt like BS in its entirety but I'll get to that later.) One small and easily overlooked QOL addition about the bosses that I loved was the indicator for a fatal blow. In a lot of SB games, if you bring a boss to its knees, you can go up to them and get a critical attack for huge damage. Problem is, while it's usually right at their head, it isn't always. The positioning can vary slightly. And more often than not, when you hit them with any attack that doesn’t trigger the critical attack, it makes them get back up which means you lose your chance for the meaty extra damage. Lies of P does this wonderful thing where not only is there a little glowy circle where you need to stand, but also a clear indicator on the enemy when you enter the right position that tells you "hit your attack button now and you'll get the fatal blow." It's wonderful and I hope it becomes a standard in all SB games. (Also as an aside, the animation and impact of fatal blows feels SO damn meaty. They feel like you hit them like a truck. There’s so much impact when you do them and they feel SO damn good every time you do them.)

Next are the quests. Quests in SB games tend to be very cryptic. Not just in what you need to do, but also if you forget about a quest, tough shit. The game doesn't hand-hold at all. And whether you like that or not is 100% a matter of preference and not a design decision that is simply good or bad. But because Lies of P is fairly linear, I like that when you get an item for a quest, or unlock unique dialogue for an NPC, or when main story progression unlocks a unique interaction, the game tells you on the teleport screen. While I do wish this function was a toggle option somewhere in the settings, the creation of this function is a welcome one. While talking about side quests, the Cryptic vessels in this game are great. As I said, Lies of P is pretty Linear so you don’t have much reason to go back to previous areas in the game. There aren't new locations to discover or anything. So cryptic vessels are a fun incentive to retread older areas. And they aren’t just simply “Go here.” They’re fun little puzzles too.

The last big thing I loved that I want to talk about is the parrying. This game is pretty much built around parrying and it wasn’t until the third boss where I realized this. I was stuck in my ways only doing rolling. Could you beat the game only doing rolls? I’m sure you could, but parrying is huge in this game. When you block an attack, it lowers your weapon durability, but a parry doesn’t. If you block an attack you still take some damage, but if you parry it you take none. Also, if you have some temp health you can earn back by attacking an enemy, a successful parry also earns some of that back. A lot of normal enemy attacks (as well as some boss attacks) when parried bounce them off, stopping them in their tracks. For human sized bosses and all remaining enemies in the game, if you parry an attack you ruin the opponent’s weapon durability and you will eventually break their weapon, effectively neutering their attack damage by an ABSURD amount. Parrying attacks is by far the safest as well as quickest method to build up an enemy stagger meter leading to fatal blows. And the most glaring piece of evidence that the game was built around parrying, is Fury attacks. Enemies glow red, have an audio indicator, then use an attack that can not be blocked and can not be avoided with the I-frames that rolls give you. They can only be parried. So to summarize rolling vs parrying: Rolling gets you to dodge an attack. Parrying gets you to negate an attack, damage an enemy’s weapon, build up their stagger meter, potentially stop them in their tracks, can give you back temp health, and are the only means to negate a Fury attack. The best part? Parrying feels so damn fun to do. Having an enemy do three successive swings where you parry every single one of them feels so empowering. Fighting a boss and having their weapon shatter makes you feel like you outplayed them in the best way possible. Nothing makes you truly feel like you’ve mastered an encounter like fighting a boss and parrying every swing of their 8 attack combo. While you don’t HAVE to, parrying is definitely the way the devs intended you to do combat and it feels so damn good when you learn the timing to do it consistently.

I’ve gone over the good in the game, and while I enjoyed Lies of P overall, the game isn’t perfect and I had my gripes with it. The first and most obvious issue I had was that the basic enemies have so little variety to them. The idea of puppets (essentially robots) has so much room for design variety and creative ideas. While the miniboss puppets are really cool and memorable, the grunt enemies you see all over are so repetitive, basic, and forgettable with very little variety. They’re all dressed fancy, dressed like a guard, or that’s it. And even when there’s “new” enemies, they’re just reskinned ones. The chimney sweeps are identical to farmers. Only difference is one used a chimney sweep and one uses a pitchfork. The infected grunt enemies also all look way too similar. Purple, small, tentacles somewhere on the body, that’s pretty much it. Like I said the miniboss enemies were really cool and intimidating with the Jester guy, the clown guy, the monkey guy, the guard guy, the metal shield guy, the giant amalgamation with the huge cog wheel on his back, all such great varied designs. But the generic basic enemies? Disappointingly repetitive and boring. And of course the main bosses themselves have plenty of cool identity themselves.

Stepping up from grunt enemies to minibosses, the minibosses have WAYYYY too much health. Like holy shit way too much. They’re honestly comparable to full fledged bosses. In the late game it’s not as much of a big deal, but in early to mid game I think it’s an unnecessary difficulty. You’re new and still learning the mechanics, you don’t have great weapons or armor or legion arms, you don’t have many pulse cells for heals, you haven’t leveled up much for damage or your own health pool, and these minibosses are aggressive and hit like a truck. This just means that you have to beat them by playing perfectly since you slowly dink dink dink away at their health and if you make a mistake they chunk away at your health and you have limited heals to make up for it. I think they could have dialed them back just a bit on the health so you didn’t have to play so perfectly for so long early on in the game.

Going up to the top of the ladder from minibosses to bosses, I really REALLY wish they didn’t have spectre summoning pools spawn outside boss arenas until you die after your first attempt. Interacting with a door to be met by a cutscene gets me so excited. Walking into a room and being greeted by a giant monster appearing is such an epic surprise. Turning a corner and seeing that spectre pool just ruins all those potential surprise feelings you get when realizing “Oh shit boss time now.” Making it so they aren’t there at first and magically appear after you die one time would still let people ask for help but not ruin the reveal. As for the actual bosses themselves, I want to emphasize that this game being linear is not a bad thing. Just like how quests being cryptic isn’t inherently good or bad and it's just a matter of preference, it’s the same when it comes to a game being linear or nonlinear. Both designs have strengths and flaws. However I do think it’s worth noting one important flaw this game has with it’s linearity and that’s when you get stuck on a boss, you’re just stuck. You can’t go to a different section of the game and try to progress there, you can’t go to a different boss instead, you can’t go do a side quest for a reward, none of that. Literally the only option you have is beat your head against the wall with the boss you’re stuck on, or just grind against basic enemies for level ups and hope that’ll make the difference. Getting stuck on a boss is never fun in any SB game, but in this game it’s especially frustrating due to the game’s linearity for progression.

Quests in this game are great for learning about character backstory and seeing their personality come out, but that’s it because the rewards for quests in this game quite honestly are just ass. I guess compared to FS games there really isn’t many things like armor and weapons and spells and rings and key items for quests and keys for optional rooms to be given as rewards for quests. But man, I was TIRED of completing a quest and then the reward was 3,000 Eros in the form of a Ergo fragment/chunk/crystal. This happens like 80% of the time. It’s funny because when you beat a miniboss, it’s a great reward to look forward to every time. A new weapon, or a quartz piece, or an amulet, it’s always something you get excited for. Yet completing quests always made me roll my eyes. All players should only do quests for the story and not the rewards.

The last major gripe I want to talk about is something that’s not as obvious and that’s the lack of skills to level up in. For this part I’m gonna make direct comparisons to Edlen Ring because it really shows how limiting this aspect of the game is in Lies of P. As you play Lies of P, most players will really only choose to level up 1-2 stats some, and then 1 stat almost entirely. I’d estimate it’s a 10/20/70 split. Whereas in something like Elden Ring, it’s more common for players to split up their stats much more. With Elden ring to use a weapon they’ll typically require one stat in particular to be much higher than others, but some other stats will still be required. Maybe it’s a high dexterity weapon but still requires some strength to use. Or it’s a faith focused weapon that also requires some dexterity to wield. With Lies of P you don’t need any stat to use any weapon, they just have proficiencies with certain stats, so you don’t need to split your level up amongst different stats. You can get by just fine by putting some levels in vitality until you have a decent health pool, some into capacity so you can use the objectively best armor without fat rolling, then you literally dump the rest of your level ups into the one combat stat you’re deciding to play as. If you’re a fan of Legion arms you can split it up a bit by putting some points into your Advance stat making the split something like 10/20/20/50, but that’s literally it. There’s not much decision making into what you want to level up in this game and that feels really boring. Compare that to Elden ring which not only has the importance of requiring certain stats just to wield certain weapons, but there’s EIGHT stats to choose from. And they’re much more important to balance compared to Lies of P. In Elden Ring there’s 8 to choose from, a bare minimum 3 will be important, 2 will be important long term, and for people who aren’t doing “pure” builds then the reality is 4-5 of the stats are likely to be important throughout the game. Making a decision to level up in Elden Ring feels much more important and nuanced than making the decision in Lies of P. In Lies of P you have 6 stats to choose from and only 3 are important with only 1 of them being important long term. Unfortunately this is something that’s baked into the game and can’t be “updated” or tweaked. If they do a sequel or a similar style of game in the future, I hope they’ll revamp the level up system then.

Okay, time for a quick lightning round of stuff that was less than stellar but couldn't be grouped up with anything in particular. The voice acting in this game is really inconsistent. Some people like The King of Riddles voice actor did an incredible job, some like Sophia did a fine job, and some like Simon Manus were just bad. The camera overall does a fine job but holy shit when it’s bad it’s BAD. It’s noticeably bad in buildings and closed off environments where it gets pushed up against a wall and the game seems to default the camera to showing from a top down view so you can see literally nothing but your scalp. Makes responding to enemies a guessing game. Enemies frequently body block you in corners. Would be nice if rolling could allow you to roll around them but I died more times than I could count because I backed up into a wall and when I tried to roll to the side, the enemy’s deceptively large body hitbox prevented me from moving and I could literally not move at all. I could have tried to parry and kill them but as stated before, the camera liked to go to a top down perspective making parrying an enemy’s attack nearly impossible so I just died 99% of the time. The second fight with the Black Rabbit Brotherhood is just awful. Truly, terribly, awful. I go much more in depth on the log entry I made about the game dated October 2nd 2023 if you want to read my full rant about it, but to quickly summarize, since this game emphasizes parrying, multi enemy fights suck because it’s impossible to accurately parry the attacks of 2-3 enemies. So it just devolves into “spam the parry” and hope it works. I was able to beat it by being extraordinarily patient and careful and using a ton of consumable throwables, but seriously that boss fight is ass. Absolutely the low point of my time with the game. How they introduce NG+ was inexcusably bad. After you beat the final boss and credits roll, the game then asks if you want to boot up NG+. The way it's worded I assumed if I said no, it would load me back to the last stargazer before the final boss so I'd be forced to beat them again if I wanted to do NG+ again, so I chose NG+. Thing is if I said no it would have sent me to the hotel where I could have gotten the post game lore and items and achievements, but now if I want them I have to beat the entire game again. This is honestly unforgivable and an update should go out that the only way to do NG+ is from the home menu or maybe a letter left by Sophia somewhere in the hotel.

Overall, I really like the game. A 3D SB game as a first major release from a studio is not an easy thing to pull off. The genre is really hot right now and it undeniably attracts a certain crowd of gamers that are especially critical and gate-keepy. While things have eased up a bit, it’s still hard to toe the line between making a SB game that’s similar enough to Dark Souls that the die-hards will still enjoy it, while also making it different enough that it has its own identity. I think Lies of P manages to do that. They definitely did a FAR better job than I expected them to do for their first game, I’d argue this is the best SB game made by someone other than FS. I would LOVE to see this studio make a second SB game. If they polished up the shortcomings that Lies of P had in a second SB game, I think it could stand shoulder to shoulder with a FS game

TL;DR The atmosphere is beautiful, the bosses and miniboss designs look badass, the weapon selection is varied and satisfying on it’s own without even factoring in the forging mechanic, the actual combat is one of the most satisfying I’ve experienced in a SoulsBorne game, the emphasis on aggressive combat makes the game much more intense, and the game has some wonderful QOL polish to standard SoulsBorne mechanics that I hope become standard. The game isn’t without its flaws though with the entry level grunt enemies being uninspired when it comes to variety, minibosses are disproportionately tanky in the beginning, the linearity of the game makes difficult bosses especially demoralizing, the level up system only has 6 stats to choose from so decision making there pretty shallow, and quests are great for character development and backstory but piss poor for the actual rewards. Overall, if you like Soulsborne games, this game is wonderful and I highly recommend giving it a try. If you have Gamepass there’s literally no reason not to give this one a whirl.