My first souls like that isn't made by FromSoftware, and it holds up and then some. The game combines the basics of combat from Dark Souls with Sekiro's parry mechanic, the gothic, dark and gritty atmosphere of Bloodborne, and some original ideas and mechanics like the handle and blade modification system.

The game absolutely nails every single one of these aspects. The gameplay feels smooth, rewarding and incredibly satisfying to pull off. Combining the handle of one weapon with the blade of another gives the game an astonishing amount of ways to approach each and every encounter, catering to every players gameplay style. Not to mention how incredibly satisfying it feels to, quote unquote, "create" your own original weapon and see it actually perform better in combat than any of the standard weapons the game offers you. Level design is top notch, with clever enemy placement and interactions always keeping me on my toes and making me desperate to find the next bonfi- i mean stargazer, whether that be by just finding a new one or circling back to a previous one via a shortcut that is only made possible by the aforementioned fantastic level design. Fighting enemies, and especially bosses, feels incredibly satisfying too. Learning their attack patterns and reacting to them by dodging or sidestepping like in Bloodborne feels fantastic, but most of my enjoyment out of this gameplay loop was found in the Sekiro-esque parry mechanic. Perfectly parrying enemy attack at just the right moment and hearing that clang, coupled with the stellar soundtrack, feels truly incredible. After parrying enough and landing a fully charged heavy attack leaves larger enemies and bosses in a stagger state, opening them up to a devastating fatal attack, not too dissimilar to Sekiro's deathblows. That is your reward for learning and mastering an enemies attack pattern, and it feels wonderful just like every other aspect of the gameplay. The similarities to Sekiro don't end there though, with the game also giving you its version of the prosthetic tools - the legion arm. Just like its Sekiro counterpart, the legion arm can be equipped with various attachments that you will acquire throughout the game. This will range anywhere from the puppet string that can hit and pull far away enemies towards you, to landmines, a straight up gun etc. All of these attachments can be upgraded and given even more utility later on in the game, giving you more options to approach each and every situation the game throws at you. If I had to nitpick, sometimes when you swing your weapon, especially one that covers a very wide area, it will bounce off the surrounding environment (a wall, pole etc.), canceling your attack and leaving you wide open to enemy attacks. This did get me killed a few times, but it happens very rarely so its isn't THAT bad.

Let's talk about what's considered by many the most memorable parts of these types of games, the bosses. The bosses in this game are, for the most part, fantastic. The game contains 25 bosses and most of them are a spectacle and a perfect way to test players knowledge and comfortability with all the gameplay mechanics the game introduced to them thus far. Some bosses suffer from having extreme difficulty spikes between phases, which depending on who you ask, can be a good or a bad thing. Good because mastering the first phase to save more healing items for the second and ultimately beating the entire boss fills them with an incredible sense of accomplishment. And bad because well, then first phase nearly becomes trivial when comparing it to the second since the moveset of the second phase barely resembles the first, so you cant carry over the knowledge gained by mastering it. One thing that is a negative, no matter who you ask though, are the stalker fights. Without spoiling aspects of the games story, the stalker fights are essentially this games version of Bloodborne's hunter enemies. But unlike Bloodborne where these hunters are just very difficult enemies you can find in the levels, Lies of P treats stalkers as individual bosses with their very own health bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen. Now, this wouldn't be too much of an issue if they were more similar to Bloodborne's hunters who nearly all feel very unique and memorable in their own way and require the player to use a different strategy to progress from each and every encounter, but Lies of P fails to do this. Instead of that, the stalkers all feel incredibly samey, nearly every fight is identical to the last and requires little to no deviation in strategy to beat. There are 8 of these fights in the game (10 if you really want to get into specifics), and i just feel that they took the spot of potentially better, original bosses. Now most of these fights are optional, yes, but something is wrong if the best part of the fight is the fact that you can skip it. Some of these fights are very rich with their own fully fleshed out lore, but that doesn't change the fact that the fights themselves are underwhelming most of the time.

The story of Lies of P is much easier to follow and is actually presented to the player as oppose to most of Fromsoftware's catalogue where you need to read nearly every item description in the game to get a sense as to what is going on in the world you are exploring. Lies of P presents the story to the player much more directly than any other souls game I have ever played. Additional lore can be found in item descriptions (which i encourage you to read), but they are never paramount for the player to understand the world's events. The story itself is very well put together, exploring the meaning of being human and it's morality in the midst of a city that has created autonomous puppets to help humanity progress in all walks of life. Everything seems to be working as expected until the puppets go against their masters wishes and start wrecking havoc in the city of Krat, the area where the whole game takes place. The player character, whose name is never mentioned, gets woken up by a mysterious voice and it is up to them to figure out what is happening and to bring the city back to its feet. Along the way you will presented with many decisions that will determine the outcome of the games ending, and that will question the morality of your, and for that matter everyone's, motives and actions. These choices sometimes lack any real impact on the world around you, but it's nice to actually have them. The story is full of twists and turns that had me on the edge of my seat right up until the very end of the game. The story and its characters really did grip me...for the most part. I don't know if it was just a very poor translation or if it's like this in the original Korean version of the script, but some of the dialogue and performances really did leave a lot to be desired. The games overall story is incredibly invigorating, but at points, some lines of dialogue felt like they were written by a middle school student and completely threw me out of my immersion. This is my biggest gripe with the entire game since these moments happen more often than not, but when you do get to a part of the game that is well written and voice acted, it really shows off just how good the story itself is.

Overall, this game delivers on all the aspects that make an incredible souls like, the gameplay, the level design, the characters and overall story. With a few questionable decisions like the stalker fights and questionable voice acting which bring this game down a bit in my rating, it is still an absolute must play for anyone who enjoys this genre, even comparable to some of Fromsoftware's outings. It is that good, especially considering that this is this studios first attempt at a souls-like.

One of the most hot and cold games ever made. The amount of brilliant ideas this game has makes it comparable to other indie title greats like hollow knight, hades, celeste...but I feel that, more so than not. it falls flat on its face in execution.

The gameplay mechanics themselves are incredibly well made and thought out. The combat is very satisfying with loads of build options that vastly change how you approach battles. The level up system is excellent too, getting better armour, weapons and stats via questlines and level up feels good and you can instantly see the difference it makes. This is all fine and dandy until you run into the baffling game design decisions made throughout the entire game.

The puzzles are well made but the insane amount of precision and timing for the game to actually let you progress is infuriating. Most of the time on these puzzles I figure out what I need to do, but can't do what the puzzle asks of me consistently and it results in me fiddling with the controls for minutes trying to make minor changes to my aim until the game decides that I may progress. This is especially bad when you have to complete multiple puzzles in a sequence to progress into the next room, since if you fail during any one of them, you are gonna have to repeat the whole segment all over again, fidgeting with you aim and all.

The side quest design in this game is genuinely one of the most tedious I've ever seen. 80% of the time you will be looking for, and getting lost on your way to the quest itself due to the poor map (the map just tells you in which room the quest is located, which is an issue since the rooms can be quite large). The quests themselves are fine but the pure amount of backtracking makes me want to not even bother with them. I kid you not, some quest required me to run to and from 2 locations on 3 separate occasions.

This game is also heavily reliant on platforming for level progression which would be fine if it wasn't for the non existent depth perception. More often than not I'm just making leaps of faith when it comes to platforming due to the fact that 95% of the time I do not know if the platform I'm jumping towards is above, below or the same level as I am. Similarly to the puzzles, the platforming is, more often than not, sequenced - if you fall, you have to do the whole sequence all over again, which you can imagine is an issue if you don't know what platforms you can and can't jump to.

All of this coupled with the occasional annoying enemy makes the game frustrating as hell to play, especially due to the fact that the game does so much right. It feels incredible to play, the controls are smooth as butter, the pixel art is fantastic, the music incredible...but all of that falls flat on its face because of the issues I've mentioned before. Its like if you build a ferrari and decided to put cinder blocks in place of the wheels. This game feels like it should be fantastic, and in segments it really is, but the glaring issues made me drop it halfway through.

My favourite game of all time. A much more linear experience than pretty much every other zelda game which isn't a bad thing, just preference no? The best story of any zelda game, most memorable iteration of zelda and link out of any zelda game. An often complaint about the game is the games use of motion controls and how they dont function as intented. I myself haven't run into this issue as much and in fact loved the games interpretation of motion controls. If it was not for the extensively long turtorial and the preety annoying partner character (Fi), I would have given the game a perfect score. But apart from those issues, the game is an incredible experience.