Used to play this game like 15 damn years ago as a kid, I recently reinstalled it for nostalgia's sake, expecting to fart around in an empty server for 15 minutes.

I've since put 50 hours into it.

This game is evergreen, so much fucking fun. It's a shame more people don't play, hard to find a lobby outside of the usual peak hours.

Disclaimer: I'm going to compare this game to Bloodborne several times because the entire internet is doing it and I feel like it's a good reference point.

I'm a life-long souls fan. I became that way when I played Dark Souls 1 on release 13 years ago and fell in love with it. I've since played every Soulsborne game on release and have completed all of them 3-7 times; probably my favorite game series of all time.

Bloodborne has always been my least favorite in the soulsborne series, for reasons I can't quite pinpoint. Unpopular opinion, I know.

It took a while for me to pick up Lies of P because so many people compare it to Bloodborne, but I eventually started playing it because I got it on gamepass for free.

40-some odd hours later and this is up there with my favorite souls games, certainly better than any other Souls game not released by From.

I strictly prefer this game to Bloodborne.

It's similar in that you give up a lot of build and aesthetic diversity for the sake of tight gameplay but I full-heartedly prefer the gameplay of Lies of P to Bloodborne, probably the most fun moment to moment gameplay of any Souls game tbh.

I was worried getting into it that parrying might be overly necessary to the point of being a gimmick, that it would be necessary to beat some if not all of the bosses, further slimming the scope of gameplay.

Turns out parrying is so fucking fun in this game that I used the mechanic constantly, whether I had to or not. At it's best, in some of the harder boss fights, the game almost feels like a rhythm game, I would go so far as to say that the most fun fights in this game are the most fun fights in any Souls game I've played, period.

Also I didn't personally find this game that difficult, probably because I've been playing this type of game for going on 14 years now, I beat several of the harder bosses on my first try (no NPC help) and that didn't impact my enjoyment at all.

To end this review here are some quick bullet points on aspects of the game I didn't feel like talking about at further length:

Story - OK to Pretty Good
Atmosphere - Very good though prob not as strong as Bloodborne's overall
Music - Probably fine it's been a few months between beating the game and this review and I can't remember, Bloodborne, specifically the Old Hunters DLC has some of the greatest Video Game compositions ever so this probably doesn't compare
Gameplay Diversity/customization - Surprisingly pretty decent thanks to the Weapon Handle system.