SOMA is a fantastic horror story with a mediocre horror game grafted onto it. The fact that it’s still regarded as one of the best games in the genre has everything to do with its exceptionally strong narrative, and nothing with its mind-numbing gameplay.

7 / 10
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Horror is a delicate subject. Not only is it perhaps the most primal and subjective emotion a person can feel, it more often than not acts like a mirror to yourself. What or what you may not find scary says a lot about you - like it or not. There are innumerable ways to go about eliciting horror, and the fact that it exists in just about any medium imaginable speaks to our collective desire of learning more about ourselves - be it on a species-wide, national, cultural or just purely personal level.

Horror games especially have always been a very popular point of discussion. Personally, I always found movies to be scarier than games, on average at least. Most of that comes down to the fact that dying and having to start a section over typically takes the wind out of the sails of just about any game that isn’t called Silent Hill. The highly curated nature of films, and uncertainty of whether or not the main character will be here the next second will always trump the knowledge that, whatever happens to me next, I’ll be fine. That isn’t to say I haven’t been thoroughly terrified by games, by the way. PT still gives me actual anxiety whenever I think about it.

But horror isn’t just about the immediate experiential side of whatever you’re watching/playing/reading. At least for me, more often than not, it’s the themes and topics that stick with you after the credits roll, and after the PC or console is turned off. The imagery and story aspects that linger on in the back of your mind even after you haven’t touched the game in months. Of course there will always be people that will do everything in their power to not be scared by horror media, for whatever reason they may have. Maybe they want to prove to themselves or others how tough and rational they are, and that nothing ever scares them. But even those people ARE afraid of things, and even if it doesn’t come up in the immediate moment of playing or watching something, it will come up eventually.

In my opinion, there are few - if any - games out there that show this off as perfectly as SOMA.

SOMA is, in my opinion, not a scary game. Not once did I ever feel threatened, tense, anxious or even just mildly spooked during the runtime of the actual game. And yet, when I think about its story, I can’t help but shudder at its implications, and when I remember its ending, it makes me realise that perhaps no piece of fiction I’ve ever consumed quite touched on just how fundamentally bleak this story’s outcome is. This game truly is equally as much of a blazing triumph with its story and themes, as well as a mind-boggling failure, gameplay wise.

The average horror game puts all on its chips squarely on the second to second gameplay. Be it Resident Evil’s focus on surviving being trapped somewhere with nothing but barely-killable zombies keeping you company, Silent Hill’s spiralling levels that drag you deeper and deeper into hell, Outlast’s obnoxious tendency of barraging you with jump-scares, and even Frictional Games’ other, seminal horror-series Amnesia, which popularised the now widely utilised “No fighting, only hiding” type of gameplay.

I bounced off Amnesia pretty hard when I played it back in 2018 or so. Apart from the frankly irritating puzzles that completely obliterated the barely existent pacing here, I find hide-and-seek mechanics to be fundamentally opposed to the experience I’m looking for. More often than not having to repeat a certain section because I failed to recognise a single glance from the enemy, or getting impatient while having to wait for the enemy to finally look the right way, so I’m allowed to progress quickly turns whatever little in the way of tension I may have felt into pure tedium. To me, this isn’t scary, it’s exhausting.

SOMA is, as far as gameplay goes, sadly not all that different. The general gameplay-loop here is mind-numbingly boring. Around 90% of its gameplay consists of you aimlessly wandering around with minimal instruction until you find some banal puzzle to do. And I’m not gonna sugar coat it, sometimes they are so bad I genuinely wonder how on earth Frictional Games were comfortable with putting them in the game. From the top of my mind, I can only think of a single puzzle that actually demanded you think about the solution in a manner that didn’t simply require whatever obvious solution could be found in the immediate vicinity, and if you’ve played the game, you know which one I’m talking about.

What’s even worse, and by far the weakest part of the game is the aforementioned Amnesia-like stealth horror, in which you are completely defenceless against whichever deadly abomination may roam the area. Apart from restricting the player to one single option they have to abide by for every single encounter in the game being a highly questionable design choice to begin with, SOMA’s enemies simply aren’t scary or threatening. And this isn’t even just my opinion about their design - I am saying, they literally do not pose a threat, gameplay wise. There were only 2 instances where I died in this game. First, simply trying to fuck around with the AI of a single enemy because I found it hilarious how easy it was to confuse them, and second during a mid-game encounter where I simply didn’t fully understand how exactly the enemy could see me.

What’s worse than how trivial and unnecessary these encounters feel is the sheer quantity of them. The game relies on them way too much, and they absolutely kill the pacing of the game’s story whenever they happen.

So far all of this has been fairly negative, and not without good reason. As far as this being a horror GAME goes, it’s a disastrous failure as far as I’m concerned, and one of the worst I’ve ever finished. There is exceedingly little I’m willing to give this game as far as it’s actual second-to-second gaming experience goes.

That is, unless we’re considering story as part of the gameplay. You may be asking yourself; “Djyunghoxha, how come you even finished the game if you hated it so much?” Because of this game’s story, that’s why.

SOMA’s story is, in many ways, exceptional. It is the exception to this game’s general experience of tedium and boredom. It is the exception to horror games often featuring some of the worst stories, acting and writing you could imagine. It is the exception in so far that the TRUE horror of SOMA comes not from its gameplay, but its story implications.

[MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE ON OUT].

[I will not go into every single detail concerning the story, but I will talk about the beginning and ending in detail, and some other story aspects that are best experienced first hand.]

I’ve talked around SOMA’s story a lot by this point, but now we should get into why I still regard this game as one of the better ones I’ve played in the genre. Let’s begin with the set up.

SOMA’s story begins with a dream sequence. The player character, Simon, is in the driver’s seat, having a conversation with his girlfriend / friend (it’s not really clear tbh) Ashley. Ashley comments that Simon’s head is bleeding, to which he replies that it’s just from “the accident”. She hands him a liquid, to which he replies that he needs it later for the scan. Simon wants to tell Ashley something which seemingly weirds her out, but in this very moment, his phone rings. “Why is there never enough time?” Simon asks before suddenly crashing his car and waking up.

The phone has been ringing IRL, not just in his dream. On the other end of the line is one Dr. Munshi, reminding Simon to drink a tracer fluid for his brain scan later today. Why does he need a brain scan?

We learn that the car crash that Simon just dreamt of actually happened. In this crash, Ashley, who was in the seat next to him, died immediately, while Simon sustained a grievous head injury which resulted in permanent brain damage, giving him only a few more months to live. It also causes his forehead to bleed profusely. Already, the imagery of the dream we just witnessed becomes clear. Simon is blaming himself for what happened.

Still, we don’t really understand the purpose of the brain scan just yet, but we will. For now, the game takes us on a little journey from a cozy but slightly off apartment building in Toronto, to an eerily quiet subway ride, to a seemingly-abandoned doctor’s office. During the subway ride, Jesse, a friend a coworker at the book store we work at, calls us to wish us good luck with the scan and hopes we can “reverse the whole dying thing”. They both also briefly talk about Ashley, and how her old position has been filled in. The casual manner in which both talk about both Ashley’s and your approaching death struck me as a little odd, and I’m wondering whether there’s a story detail I’m missing. But more on that later.

Arriving at Dr. Munshi’s “office”, we are met with a completely empty doctor’s office. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this is where things go awry. The tone here is a little strange. Dr. Munshi now explains to us what he’s trying to do: Simon’s brain is to be scanned, rebuilt in a computer simulation and then bombarded with stimuli. The idea is to come up with a mode of brain reconstruction that doesn’t involve potentially invasive and harmful procedures, specifically for people like Simon, who are about to die from brain damage. According to Munshi, this could potentially extend Simon’s life for decades, if it works out.

Simon sits down in a chair with a big brain scanner on top. “Will this hurt?” He asks. “Only about as much as having your picture taken.” Munshi replies. Simon then retorts that “[Native Americans thought that cameras would steal their souls”, not understanding the sheer weight of this quote. The brain scanner goes over our eyes. An electrical noise is heard. Everything goes black.

We wake up in a cold, harsh and mechanical place. Dr. Munshi is gone. Everything is dark. What happened? Simon is afraid. Turning on the light, we see metal walls, complex electronics that seem too advanced for our time period and a bunch of weird suits. Immediately, we assume that Dr. Munshi fucked us over, that he must’ve tricked us. This is a horror game after all. Maybe Dr. Munshi is secretly an evil genius who wants to experiment on us? Or alternatively, maybe this IS Dr. Munshi’s treatment plan? Maybe this is all a simulation? It feels too real though. Like, something’s not how it’s supposed to be.

This is where the actual game begins, and I have to compliment the game for how well this gets set up. Knowing this is a horror game, most people will probably have mistrusted everything from the get go. Maybe even the apartment seems kinda weird when you think about it. And yet, this moment still hits extremely surprisingly. You feel the exact same way Simon does. Confused. Alone.

Walking around the place, we slowly put together that we’re trapped in some sort of research facility called “Pathos-II”, and that this research facility lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. More specifically, we’re currently in Station “Upsilon” of Pathos-II. While walking about the early areas, we catch a small glimpse of the types of creatures we’ll encounter here, although we can only hear it for now. We also discover that we can somehow see the memories of other people before us. There are numerous locked doors everywhere. Everything seems to be covered in some black, blood-like goo called “structure gel”.

It’s easy to understand why you would think that, since SOMA very clearly sets this up to be a red herring. This is not a game with a happy ending. This is not a power fantasy.

Simon then meets a robot. Only - that robot doesn’t think of it as a robot. In fact, he is extremely adamant that he is a person. He insists that his name is Carl Semken, that he is hurt and needs assistance, to which Simon incredulously replies that he doesn’t see a human, but a machine. But he won’t hear it, no matter how many times we insist that he’s not actually human. And this is where I come back to SOMA’s story and themes being many times more terrifying and scary than any of the monsters/enemies you have to deal with. Just imagine. How long has he been lying there? This research facility hasn’t been properly kept up in a while. How can he not realise he’s not a person? He’s been here, lying in pain potentially for years. What kind of mental prison is he in?

We’ll get back to this question in a bit, but I want to highlight something else first. To progress the story, we’ll have to get a door to open. However, that door needs auxiliary power to open up. To do this, we have two choices. We can either divert power from the room Carl is in, or we can go to one room over and divert the power from the reactor there. If we do it in the room Carl is in, we will cause him extreme pain, causing him to scream in agony. Needless to say, when I did this without thinking about it a lot, his screams felt like a needle in my chest. It felt fucking horrible. This really is a person after all. If we pull the lever back up quickly after initially pulling it down, Carl will still be in pain, but he’ll forgive us. If we do it again, however, this time it fries his brain for good, leaving him in a catatonic state, without killing him. Naturally, most people will not want to do this.

So, instead we go to the reactor room, and divert power that way. However, this solution wasn’t much better. Where you previously caused Carl pain by diverting the electricity necessary for his upkeep, now you’ve shut it off entirely, effectively killing him. Not only that, but the power surge attracted the attention of the creature you’ve previously only heard, making the current section harder to deal with.

So you’ve been presented with a choice without realising it: Causing a person unimaginable pain, but making the next section easier to deal with for you, or killing that person and making the area harder to deal with. As far as gameplay goes, as already discussed, this barely makes any difference. But it’s the emotional horror of it that really gets to me, and this is perhaps the strongest gameplay element in SOMA. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the game presents you with ACTUAL choices here. There is barely any actual in-game consequence for your choices and actions. It’s more about story context. About how these choices make YOU feel. How it feels to be presented with an impossible choice that will result in suffering either way. This is going to be a running theme in the entire experience.

Back to the plot. After reactivating the reactors or diverting the power from Carl, a female voice speaks to us via the intercom. She introduces herself as Dr. Catherine Chun, and asks us which station we work on. After realising that we have no fucking clue where on earth we even are, she tells us to get to the communications centre to meet her there. When we’re finally there, Catherine again speaks to us via the intercom. But, unnervingly enough, she seems to be almost as confused as you are. At least she knows where and who she is, but she seems just as clueless as to why everything is fucked and why the robots are going mad. Just as the conversation is starting to get interesting, the entire station threatens to collapse. Just before the connection cuts, Catherine pleads with us to come to Lambda station. The station collapses, and we’re buried by millions of tons of sea water.

Simon wakes up. How can this be? He should be dead. He looks at his arms - where there were previously two human arms, they are now black, metallic arms. Simon realises he’s been in a diving suit this whole time. What the hell is going on?

This is where the plot of the game starts in earnest. From this point on I won’t be going into as much detail, and instead will talk more about why and how these plot elements work so well for me.

Over the course over the next hours, we learn that Simon isn’t REALLY Simon. The Simon we’re currently playing is, in fact, a copy of the original Simon. THAT Simon died in 2015, a few months after taking the brain scan at Munshi’s place. The actual current year is 2104, almost 90 years later. Earth has been struck by a massive meteorite some time in the past, killing all humans. All humans except for a small contingent of scientists and technicians that were stationed in this very underground research facility.

It turns out that the project that Dr. Munshi was working on really turned out to be an incredible technological leap forward - basically, he invented the technology to copy and paste a human consciousness into a digital environment, where it could exist indefinitely. However, it could not save the original Simon’s life, despite the Doctor’s best efforts. A few months after the scan, the original Simon dies in a hospital. But not before giving Munshi express permission to use his brain scans in any way he sees fit for the purpose of research and science. Simon’s copied mind thus becomes the prototype and prime object of experimentation, and thus becomes a sort of “legacy” scan for engineers in education to practice on.

How or why exactly Simon (let’s call him Simon-2 for clarity’s sake) got activated and put into this robot body in this exact moment is never really explained, and I suppose it’s purposefully left to the imagination. There is the popular fan theory that the WAU - the AI control system responsible for running Pathos-II - forced Simon to wake up the second it realised there were no more sane humans around. I personally always liked the idea that it’s just a malfunction of the system and has no real reason. Like a sick joke with no punchline.

So, remember Carl from earlier? Remember thinking “How does he not realise he’s a robot?” For the same reason YOU don’t realise it. As far as you’re concerned, you’re still the very same Simon from 90 years ago, even though he died. The most important part that seems to go over seemingly every character’s head is the fact that it’s COPY and paste, and not a simple transferal. The new, copied consciousness has no way of knowing it is separate from the original. Simon in particular seems at times to be downright incapable of understanding this concept, but more on that later.

For now, Simon needs to make his way to Lambda station, where we go on the first of many underwater walking sections. I really liked those, even though once again, there is not much to do here, and even less to be afraid of. While there are hostile robots inhabited by humans who lost their mind, they are once again not very threatening, neither in design nor behaviour. I like these sections because of how atmospheric and beautiful these underwater sections are. The lighting and scenery is phenomenal and I can think of only very few games that nail the feeling of being down in the deep sea this well. The visual FX and sound design do a lot to further immerse you into the experience, and that remains true for the entire duration, not only the underwater sections.

Atmosphere is obviously always an extremely important point in horror media. If the atmosphere isn’t there, it’s simply not interesting. But imagery and visual language in general often make or break the experience in a horror story for me. Luckily, there obviously was quite a lot of thought that went into how the concepts are relayed to you.

Let’s take the general enemy- and art design. While, again, not very scary, they certainly look interesting. The whole game seems to be enamoured with the idea of a split between body and mind (or soul) and how these concepts might function independently of each other. “Soma” means “body” after all, and the question of whether a soul can truly thrive outside of its designated body appears as central to the experience. The WAU, as previously established, is the AI that governs Pathos-II, and it has evidently gone insane trying to follow its most important directive; to keep humanity alive, no matter the cost, and no matter the form that human life takes. The WAU clearly prioritises the idea of the human soul being the most important thing, and that it needs to be kept alive no matter what. Throughout the story we can actually find the corpses of humans, and even a single live human fused to a sort of black, cancerous mass of flesh and technology, and this is also reflected in the design of the stalker enemies. They are fusions of flesh and machine in the most violent, grotesque way possible. The one live human we meet is herself fused to what appears to be a giant mechanical lung. “It won’t let me die. Nothing is allowed to die.”, she says. Again, THIS is where the true horror happens. It’s in the implications of an existence that goes on like this for god knows how long. The imagery of this sort of “forced life” taking the form of cancer cells is extremely fitting. Cancer grows uncontrollably. It clings to life, violently, mutating everything it touches. They ignore the signals that tell them to self-destruct, and are forced into immortality as such.

Back to the story once more. We finally made it to Lambda, and we’re excited to meet another human for the first time since the start. Only - you’ve guessed it - Catherine, like all the others, is just another copy-pasted consciousness trapped in a robot body. Upon our audible disappointment, she asks us to think about our own predicament a little harder, pointing out we’re literally a robot ourself. Catherine transfers herself onto our Omnitool (our handy little device with which we do most things in this game) and asks us to take her along. This is where the overarching goal of the game reveals itself to us.

Catherine was the lead scientist on a project called “The ARK”. Basically, the ARK is a mini version of the Matrix, a simulated reality in which the same type of copy-pasted human minds could live on forever, in an environment much less bleak, depressing and hopeless as being buried under miles and miles of water, while the surface world is still actively burning. While this seems to have initially been more of a passion project for her, it quickly became the sole source of comfort and hope for the remaining population of Pathos-II. One day, Pathos-II WILL fail, and all of humanity will be lost. Hundreds of thousands of history, simply gone, scattered into the cosmic wind. This way, if at least a handful of people actually manage to get copied onto there, and they manage to launch the ARK to outer space, humanity could theoretically persist indefinitely. The people on Pathos-II, emotionally and mentally scarred by their existence as the last survivors of the apocalypse, forever trapped in the pitch black deep sea, begin to see this as their only flicker of hope. And the illusion of hope, as you might know, can be the most dangerous thing in a truly hopeless situation.

Catherine began to scan all the people who were still on Pathos-II, accumulating a data base of their minds. However, they fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the ARK. They think of it as an escape, when it really isn’t. They don’t understand the distinction between a copied mind that lives on independently from them, and their own lived experience. Frustrated that they’re still trapped, they begin to develop the belief that, if they kill themselves quickly enough after the scan, they will be functionally transferred over, escaping this reality. This is, of course, not how it works. Moreover the WAU, as established, has one all-important directive: to preserve human life no matter the cost. Those very humans now begin to commit suicide one after the other, so it does the only thing it can; it forces them to stay alive by any means necessary.

This will be our goal from now on: to copy ourselves onto the ARK, and leave Earth behind for a life among the stars. Perceptive players will likely immediately notice the fatal flaw with this plan, but let’s continue for now.

The next couple of gameplay sections see us descend further and further down, from one station to the next. Our ultimate goal is to reach Phi station, where the Omega Space Gun is located. This “gun” is really a humongous, kilometres-long launch apparatus that’s supposed to shoot the ARK straight into space. This journey gets quite lengthy and involves various distractions and characters we’ll meet along the way, but I want to highlight two story moments in particular.

The first comes in the form of our next immediate goal - to construct a diving suit that can withstand the pressure of the abyss. The parts for it are located in Omicron station, where we can also find an elevator that takes us down almost 4000 metres. What’s interesting about this section is what happens when we finish constructing the suit. Catherine informs us that we can’t just wear the suit, we’ll have to copy-paste our consciousness into it to use it. Simon is very unsure about this. He still hasn’t really understood that he isn’t really him. He has doubts of swapping his body yet again. So, Catherine scans and “transfers” our consciousness into the new robot… only, this isn’t what happens. As we learned, it’s a copy and paste situation. As he gains consciousness in his new body, Simon slowly begins to realise what this so called “transferal” entailed. It’s not a transferal at all. The old Simon, aka “Simon-2” is STILL here. In fact, he’s still in the old diving suit you were wearing the whole time. We’re really “Simon-3” at this point.

Simon is furious at this and lashes out at Catherine, calling her a horrible person, despite having everything thoroughly explained to him, but it’s hard to really fault him. He’s in an extremely demanding situation and it’s understandable he’s on a short fuse. Also, it is kind of chilling how unperturbed she feels about copying a consciousness into another body without giving a lot of thought to what that means for the old consciousness. On the other hand, Simon’s outburst and severe scolding of Catherine for what she does here feels somewhat unwarranted.

Over the course of the game, Catherine tries to explain to him again and again how this all works, but Simon seems to not be able to comprehend it. So Catherine, knowing that Simon likely subconsciously refuses to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth, eventually lies to him. She tells him that it’s all like a coin flip. She claims that there’s a 50:50 chance concerning which body you’ll end up in. She explains that it’s like a coin toss. This is, of course, completely wrong. You’re ALWAYS the one stuck with your old body. You’ll ALWAYS lose the coin toss.

So once again, a choice. Simon-2 will wake up in a couple of hours, and when he does, all of this will happen again. He’ll once again be alone, and even more confused since Catherine will be gone alongside Simon-3. So we can instead choose to shut him off right there. He’ll die, but he’ll never know. This is where Simon’s view of Catherine begins to shift, and where he’ll begin to view her as a heartless monster. And while Simon’s perception of Catherine is evidently tainted by his own inability to even fully comprehend what’s going on around him, she definitely strikes me as quite a callous person to say the least.

Catherine - at the very least, this version of Catherine - does not seem to regard human life with a lot of weight. Apart from the previous incident, there are other situations where we can catch glimpses of the type of person she is. In one of the many memory-hologram-space-time-things we can listen in on, Catherine informs Peter Strasky else that their colleague, Guy Konrad, just killed himself. “What?? How!?” A shocked Strasky asks, to which Catherine calmly replies “Maser tool. What should I do?” It’s obvious that Catherine is more concerned about how this will reflect on her project than she cares about the fact that one of her colleagues just killed himself. This gets even worse when you consider that Konrad killed himself because of the ARK project, and the previously mentioned idea that, if you kill yourself immediately after the brain scan, you’ll get to live on as the copy. To be fair, Catherine did not propose this idea, and seems to have explained to the others that this isn’t how this works. It’s still shocking to see how little she actually cares.

Another such instance comes with one of the better puzzles in the game. The gist is that we need a certain password, but only one single employee named Brandon Wan, who died a long time ago is supposed to have it. So we do the only thing we can do - we boot up his brain scan in a simulation. Only, if we boot him up inside a simulation, he is weirded out and immediately develops a panic attack. If you think about it, he is in the exact same situation you were in a couple of hours ago. To him, it’s the same as for Simon. He got his brain scan taken and next thing he knows he sits in a chair and gets interrogated by an invisible Catherine Chun. Naturally, he can’t deal with this and we have to shut him down again - effectively killing him just as quickly as we resurrected him. This is some dark shit, and what’s even worse - we’re going to have to do this as many times as it takes to get this password from him. The actual puzzle involves determining what exactly we need to say and do to make Brandon feel comfortable enough to share this password. Ultimately the solution here is to assume the appearance of Brandon’s wife/girlfriend and get him to believe he’s still in physical reality for the time it takes to get him to spill the beans. This will take different players different amounts of tries, but for you’re going to resurrect and kill this man a couple of times at least.

There are 2 things that make this whole ordeal even worse. First, the fact that Catherine really just does not seem to care a whole lot about what she’s doing to that poor man, over and over again. To her, the fact that a copy of him does exist effectively means she can do whatever she needs to do as long as the original scan still exists. How many times has she done this before? What kind of a person was the real Catherine, exactly? Secondly… just how many times has this been done to Simon? As we established earlier in the text, Simon’s mind was some sort of legacy practice model for engineers and psychologists to perform experiments and tests on. Just how many times has poor Simon been awoken from the dead only to experience the most panic he ever felt and then be killed again just as quickly? I said earlier that we’re Simon-3 at this point. If we’re being technical, we’re probably closer to something like Simon-239923. It’s been 90 years, and our brain scan was the fundamental building block for this entire technology. Once again, the true horror of SOMA lies in the narrative elements.

The final big story moment I want to touch on is the elevator ride that follows Simon’s temper tantrum after getting copy-pasted into the suit. Despite Simon just saying that he thinks that Catherine is disgusting and that he doesn’t wanna speak to her anymore, he begins burying her in questions again. I haven’t mentioned it until now but Simon constantly asks Catherine all kinds of questions throughout their joint adventure. To an extent this makes sense, as he was literally born yesterday, or more like, a couple of hours ago. Towards the end this gets a little excessive though, and it becomes flat out strange during this elevator ride. And he comes in swinging with the big questions no less. “Where do we go when we die” “Is my place in heaven taken”, and others of similar calibre. I think this would’ve felt a lot less awkward if the two of them didn’t just have the biggest fight of their lives. Simon supposedly despises her but yet can’t stop himself from asking her a whole bunch of questions again. He begins to despair at the thought of having killed himself just a few minutes ago. He still does not understand how to process all this. But then Catherine, in a surprising display of humanity, begins to comfort Simon by telling him of her memories of Taipei, of what life there used to be like. Of her memories of how she was little, of how she climbed the roof of the massive apartment building she lived in, just to catch a glimpse of the masses of people working their way through the streets below. It’s honestly really touching and, after the previous things we learned about Catherine, a direly needed piece of characterisation that prevents the player from outright hating her. Simon again questions whether or not this existence is even a life worth living, and that no matter what we do down in the depths of the sea, that humanity will never regain its former glory. Catherine replies with the only sensible thing one could say in this moment: We are still here. And right during that moment, the elevator stops and the power cuts. A quick repair on top of the elevator, and we’re good to go. Simon and Catherine quickly discuss her experience existing inside the Omnitool, and how time kinda just stops whenever she’s not powered. Suddenly, an unexpected guest makes his way onto the elevator. One of the WAU’s monsters stands before us and… speaks. It tells us it will make preparations and that it will await us.

Down there, we need to make our way to TAU station. There, we will find the last actual, real, flesh and blood human alive on planet earth. Only, she does not know she is the very last one until we tell her. The woman is strapped to life support machinery, meaning she is barely holding on as is. But what’s interesting for us is that she actually has the ARK in her possession. At first, she is protective of it, but as she realises how unbelievably unlikely it is that an actually sentient being just happens to stumble across her here, she relents and gives us the ARK. And she asks us to kill her. Yikes. This entire encounter is perhaps the saddest and most heartbreaking in the whole game. It’s horrible having to watch this woman just vegetate on this spot, as she must have been doing for years by now. She pleads with us to do it. Simon is, of course, hesitant to kill the literal last human on earth, but seeing her in this state, he realises that this isn’t living. She makes the point that the ARK is all we have, and implies that humanity already IS gone. What good are the vestigial remains of humanity if they cause the last living soul unfathomable torment and pain? So we decide to shut off her life support. She asks us to stay with her during her last moment. Jesus fucking christ, this entire scene is so gut wrenching. She tells us of her home, Greenland, the capitol of which, Nanoq (not sure whether or not this is supposed to be an entirely new city or a misspelling of Nuuk, but whatever) has since become a booming metropolis of 12 million people. She tells us that she’s glad she could die here, and that she liked her colleagues here, even Catherine. Her last words are a plea for us to send the ARK to space. To save what’s left of us.

Now, I’m going to kind of skip over the next section of the story because it concerns what I consider to be by far the least interesting aspect of the narrative, and it’s to do with the WAU and its monsters. Essentially, right before the end on your way to Phi, where the space gun is, you’re forced on a little detour into station Alpha, the home station of the WAU. The same WAU Creature that climbed on the elevator shows himself to you again, this time revealing that he is Johan Ross, who was responsible for creating the WAU. He asks us to destroy it, since we’re somehow immune to it. This, like many other instances in the game, is a choice, and we could also simply not bother with it. This is perhaps the least interesting choice in the game, simply because regardless of what you pick, the exact same thing happens. The WAU gets destroyed, Ross plans on killing you to make sure the WAU doesn’t somehow reconstitute in Simon’s body, but he gets eaten by a big old fish robot monster coming out of nowhere. Yeah, again, I’m really just flying over this but I am of the firm opinion that the entire WAU subplot is by far the least interesting and fleshed out aspect of the story so I don’t really feel inclined to talk about it all that much.

Finally, we’ve reached Phi station, and all that’s left to do is to upload ourselves onto the ARK and leave this godforsaken planet. We’ve reached the end. So Catherine goes ahead and copies ourselves onto the ARK in just the nick of time, just as it launches into space… only, we’re still here. Simon is confused. What is going on? Why are we still here?

You know why we’re still here. We were ALWAYS going to stay here. Simon still hasn’t understood this. And it’s possible he will never understand. Catherine tries to explain to him that they DID succeed, that their copies are now out there among the stars, on the ARK, living the best life they could possibly have at this point. But Simon isn’t satisfied with this answer. Catherine again tries to explain it via the coin flip, but Simon won’t hear it. And to be fair, the coin flip was always a lie anyway. They - their current selves - would always remain here. Catherine always understood this, and understood that, to get Simon to play along, she would have to tell him this lie. There was never going to be a chance that they could escape Earth. She insists that they did the right thing, but all Simon can think about is the fact that he’s still here, while his copy is living the good life now. She pleads with him to think of it as having saved something of the hundreds of thousands of years of human history, but he will not hear it. Once again, he lashes out at her in desperation, telling her to go fuck herself. Just as she is about to respond with what seems like hours and hours of frustration she deliberately held back, the power cuts. Everything goes dark. Pathos-II has finally given up the ghost, and Catherine, who was logged into the system, is gone. All is silent. Simon cries out to her, but there is no answer. There will never be another answer. They parted on the worst of terms, and now everything is quiet. Simon is alone. Forever.

Fuck my life. This ending has got to be the bleakest shit I have ever seen. There is literally no fate I could imagine worse than this. Death would be a million times preferable than this. Imagine the sheer and utter horror of being the last sentient being on earth, and you’re not even allowed the privilege to die. You just have to wait until your mechanical body finally gives in after what might be hundreds or thousands of years. To wander the ruins of a once lively planet, now reduced to ashes and black seas. Poor Simon. He was an idiot, but he didn’t deserve this.

But, there is a silver lining. The ARK did manage to launch into space, and is fully functional. So what about the other Simon? In the very final section of the game we open on Simon-4, who is just coming to terms with finally being on the ARK. It’s a beautiful place, and there seems to be nothing wrong with it. There is no evil irony at play here, and Catherine didn’t double cross him. This really is the best they could’ve hoped for. Not only are they here, but presumably everyone else from Pathos-II that got their brain scanned is here as well. Now humanity can enjoy what little it has left inside this ARK, floating around the universe for many thousands of years from now.

While I do like this ending for the characters, I feel like it undercuts the horror of the main ending for Simon-3 a little too much. It’s too easy to simply forget about Simon-3 when you can tell yourself that Simon-4 is doing fine. It’s not terrible, and it doesn’t ruin the ending or whatever, but I wonder if there was a way to work this aspect into the ending without it feeling too sappy. Maybe opening on the ARK first, only to then reveal that Simon-3 and his Catherine are still on the bottom of the ocean.

So, that was SOMA’s narrative. I’m still processing a lot of this story and I still find myself thinking about it a lot even a good month after finishing this game. I certainly would like to experience this plot again some time in the future, whenever I have forgotten enough to warrant going through the whole game again. The thing is, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll maybe settle for a Let’s Play instead of playing it myself, because the best parts of this game happen whenever you’re simply listening in on dialogue or experience the narrative via the environmental storytelling. I can honestly say that the “gamey” aspects of SOMA are so weak, and the stealth-horror sections so obnoxious that I can’t really imagine playing it myself any time soon. Maybe I’ll get my girlfriend to play it some time in the future lol

That being said, before I finish this review I have to go over a few other individual aspects of SOMA that warrant a critical look or special note.

Let’s begin with something that’s perhaps a little subjective, and may very well be related to the PC I played it on, although I should mention that it well exceeded the recommended requirements listed on Steam. I experienced a lot of visual glitches, and at first the game was barely playable due to severe aliasing to the point where I could barely tell what was happening in front of me. When I turned V-Sync on it suddenly tanked my framerate to somewhere below 20. Playing around with the graphical setting for 30ish minutes, I finally managed to get a decently stable 40ish FPS going with only some occasional aliasing, but my PC is able to run games like the 2023 System Shock remake at a stable 60 FPS at 1080p without any issues what so ever, so I’m afraid this very much seems like yet another instance of terrible PC optimisation, and it’s sad to see that it’s been 8 years since release and it has never been fixed. I also have to point out just how absurdly long the game takes to boot up on my PC. The initial loading screen usually takes upwards of 3-5 minutes, which is completely insane if you ask me. I did not experience a loading screen like that on this PC with any other game I have ever played. So the performance sadly isn’t anything to write home about.

While I have already thoroughly explained my problems with SOMA’s general gameplay, there are some minor issues, or maybe even just nitpicks concerning the narrative as well.

The main cast of Simon and Catherine both deliver fantastic, believable and emotionally rich performances, but the rest are a little more hit or miss. There aren’t any in here that I would describe as downright bad, but there is a notable discrepancy between the main cast and everyone else. It’s more like, Cath and Simon are fantastic, the rest are ok.

I also found some parts of the dialogue perhaps a little too quippy and sarcastic for the situation that both main characters are in. For Catherine it makes a little more sense, since she’s characterised as pretty aloof and perhaps even a little egotistical, but Simon should have no business being as sassy as he comes across some scenes. I understand that they probably wanted to take the edge off some parts of the story and have it feel a little more human, but this just ends up feeling inauthentic.

Finally I want to talk about Simon as a character. He’s kind of weird. Overall, I really like him, and I think that his reaction to most of the things he sees is very relatable and sympathetic. However, I think that his sheer inability to grasp the concept of a simple copy+paste process goes a little beyond what is believable for me. If the writers wanted to make the point that Simon flat out refuses to believe/accept that there are multiple versions of him, they probably shouldn’t have included the scene where Simon-3 is forced to decide where to dispose of Simon-2 or not. So Simon clearly is capable of understanding the process, but he still acts surprised at the end that he’s still here. I know Catherine even says that she can’t do anything against his wilful ignorance before she gets cut off. Some fans have argued that the fact that Simon has to exist in make-shift bodies has rendered his mental capacity flawed, or that his brain injury from the accident in the beginning affected his scanned version as well. Personally I am inclined to believe that he simply isn’t very smart and really does struggle with comprehending the reality of more Simons at once.

Speaking of his accident, I did find it weird how everything to do with Ashley, the accident, his brain injury and even his head bleeding seemingly never comes up again after the beginning. I know that there’s a very brief dream sequence in which Simon is back at his apartment for a couple of seconds and we can see Ashley with her back turned to us. All she says that it’s all over now and we should relax. That is the extent to which SOMA’s story comes back to this and I don’t understand it. I can’t even really criticise it because I feel like I’m simply missing something here. It almost feels like the game itself just kinda forgot about all of that. And it’s so weird because the intro frames all of these events as extremely important. Simon is clearly filled with guilt about the accident, since he was responsible for the death of his friend, whom he also had a crush on. Why does that never come up again? I 100% expected to maybe recognise something about Ashley in Catherine, or something like that. Like, maybe Catherine somehow reminds him of her. Or why does the imagery of Simon’s head bleeding under stress never end up as relevant again? It just feels like all but the fact that Simon died in 2015 is kinda irrelevant to the rest of the story, and I don’t want to believe that’s the case, so I choose to believe that I’m simply missing something.

Well, that’s about all I have for SOMA. Once again, this review ended up a lot longer than I had initially planned, but I realised that I did have quite a lot to say about it after all. It’s definitely an extremely interesting experience, and a must play for all fans of slower paced, emotional and psychological horror - or rather, it’s story is. I firmly believe that this game would be better as a pure walking simulator, free from any pretensions of stealth gameplay or puzzles, because both of these elements border the line to “awful” at times.

It’s kinda hard to rate a game like this. The story is one of the best in the medium, and the gameplay is some of the worst. The story is a triumph, the gameplay a failure. Ultimately, SOMA did manage to make me think about it a lot over the last couple of weeks, and that’s just about the highest praise I can give it.

7 / 10

Lies of P is without a doubt the best Souls-like not made by FromSoftware. Hard-as-nails combat, amazing art direction, fantastic level design and just an unbelievable amount of love and care. While there is room for improvement, it’s amazing to see how much NeoWiz got just right on their very first attempt.

9 / 10
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[SPOILER WARNING - This review/critique will discuss close to all aspects of Lies of P, including its story, themes and endings. This isn’t a game that will be necessarily ruined by spoilers but beware regardless and play the game first if you haven’t already!]

It's not often that a newcomer manages to compete with a master, especially when that master happens to be one of the most accomplished game studios of all time. It's even rarer that such a newcomer might even surpass that master in some aspects. I've played other Souls-likes; Nioh, Ashen, Remnant, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, etc. But none of these games come even close to what Lies of P is doing.

I love the Soulsborne games. It’s my favourite game series ever made. Nothing comes even close to the type of satisfaction and fun they give me. From combat to level design to aesthetics, lore, music, stories, characters, etc. It often feels like they were made for me specifically. So of course whenever I see yet another company try to hop on the Souls-like wagon, I tend to get a little protective. And I would argue, not without reason. But Lies of P is different.

This game has a special place in my heart, because it showed me something. It showed me that the possibility that other people making games in this genre that are just as good as the games that Hidetaka Miyazaki & co. make does exist. It showed me that not every attempt at a Souls-like has to be something like Lords of the Fallen (the older one) or Mortal Shell, either taking a cheap crack at cashing in on a trendy formula, or a well-meaning but sadly incompetent attempt to translate the work of a team of extremely talented individuals into something the scale of a small indie title. For over 10 years, it seemed genuinely impossible that something like Lies of P could even exist. And I have to admit, it didn’t immediately wow me from the first moment on either.

I remember when the first few trailers for this game came out in autumn 2021, and I was.. sceptical to say the least. I had just recently tried the Nioh games, and bouncing off of them left a really sour taste in my mouth. As a matter of fact, every single Souls-like I tried out by this point had been disappointing. And the Nioh games were supposed to be the good ones! Sure, this game looked nice. But would it play even half as well? We’ve all seen it before - game looks fantastic in the trailer, and plays nothing like it when you actually download it. We would have to wait and see.

Come the demo in early-2023, I remember playing it for 3 hours and being a bit underwhelmed. Back then a lot of the combat still felt very rough, with dodges being basically useless, parries trapping you in place, lots of enemies sliding across the floor as if on ice, etc. The demo was better than I had initially expected, but overall I wasn't blown away by it either. There were definitely some highlights, like the Scrapped Watchman boss fight, which was the final enemy you’d fight int the demo. And while that last fight did make me appreciate what they were going for more than just about anything else in the demo, I kinda wrote the game off as "yet another one of those" and forgot about it, until release.

When this game finally released in fall of 2023, I could not believe the critical reception. People LOVED this game, Souls-fans especially. Critics adored it, and heaped praise on it in a manner usually reserved only for the real deal. Even Joseph Anderson, harshest of all online video game critics, uncharacteristically had barely anything negative to say about it. Naturally, this intrigued me beyond belief. This man had just last year released a video in which he seriously tore into Elden Ring, one of the most universally beloved video games of all time, and THIS game he loved so much he could not find anything bad to say about it.

I sadly didn’t have enough money to buy it on release, so I kinda forgot about it yet again until it finally went on sale in February 2024. I bought it, downloaded it and played it. And as you might imagine from the tone of this review so far, I fucking loved it. It is almost unbelievably good. It’s so good, in fact, that I am in sheer disbelief a game like Lies of P hasn’t been made much, much sooner. This really is the best Souls-like out there by a mile and then some. And that is even more impressive when you consider how much smaller Neowiz is when compared to FromSoftware AND that this was the first real video game they ever made. A small Korean independent development team with no prior experience, and their first game is good enough to be directly compared to something like Demon’s Souls. But that also means that it’s only fair to apply a similar level of criticism and objectivity to Lies of P than we do with its forebears. I will be comparing this game directly to the Soulsborne games a lot here, so if that bothers you, here’s your warning.

While this game is amazing, it’s not perfect, and there are definitely areas Neowiz could improve upon for a sequel, spiritual successor or even just expansions for the main game.

Usually in a review like this, I’d typically go over all the positive aspects first, and then the negatives, but I think this review will flow better if I go through the individual aspects of the game, and talk about what works and doesn’t work instead.

Let’s start with what is perhaps the most controversial aspect about Lies of P:

DIFFICULTY

I’m going to be completely honest upfront and say that I think that - on average - Lies of P might potentially be harder than any Souls-game on your first playthrough, even Sekiro. I think it may genuinely be too hard for some people, even if they have prior experience with FromSoft games. Of course difficulty is 100% subjective, and I’ve seen people say they found this game easier than even something like the original Dark Souls or Demon’s Souls, and others found it so hard they dropped it at around the halfway point or even earlier.

I’m not yet sure where I fall exactly. As of writing this review I’ve finished the game twice, once normally and then again with the same character on New Game Plus. There are individual things like certain boss fights or specific levels in other Souls-games and -likes that gave me more trouble than any particular thing or boss here (cough Malenia cough), but the way the Lies of P experience stays consistently brutal all the way to the end is unmatched by anything else.

I did play through the whole game with a DEX build, blind, and without summons, and I’ll say I found it incredibly difficult at times. At first, this was just because of the normal learning curve; I didn’t really understand how the game wants you to play, and so I died an embarrassing amount of times on the first few bosses. At around the halfway point the knot finally loosened and I understood the combat system properly… and still got my ass handed to me by every boss. Even if you understand what the game wants from you, you only realise just how tall the order you were given even is. A lot of what these bosses demand from you goes far beyond what any Souls boss would want from you. In Souls games, you’ll often come across a boss or two that you’ll take out on your first attempt, even if it’s your first time playing the game. That is NOT the case here. Every major boss feels like something a FromSoftware game would throw at you during the endgame or in a DLC. This game drops a Sister Friede-level boss at you around the half-way point, and an honest-to-god Malenia/Sword Saint Isshin-level boss towards the end. Every boss wants you to really sit down and learn their move sets. There is no magic or ranged system to cheese them with, there are no hidden exploits, there’s no real way to power-creep past these guys; you really, truly have to “get good” as it were.

Most of this difficulty is ultimately fair. The majority of it is possible to overcome by simple trial and error and good reaction times, but there are some aspects that I feel artificially inflate some of it:

I think the absurd tracking of some enemies and bosses is a bit too much. It’s not fun to perfectly dodge out of the way of an attack, only for the enemy to instantly turn 180° in a single frame, or suddenly slide 5 meters towards you during the last hit of a combo. I know that the idea is to mostly parry enemies and this is meant to stop you from just spamming the dodge button, but I think it goes a little too far. It’s not helped by the fact that the parry window is extremely precise. What’s more is that you can’t spam the parry like you can in Sekiro, you really have to deliberately hold the button down for about half a second for each parry you do, which can be very daunting when some bosses have 12-hit combos. However I think my biggest gripe with the combat system is the complete lack of poise. Everything else I can excuse, but this is just not great design. Especially for heavier, slower weapons, the fact that not even the charge-R2 has any poise makes some encounters feel ludicrously difficult.

There is also the fact that you actually have to unlock a lot of basic quality of life features in the game like stringing together dodges, weapons degrading slower, decreasing the amount of incoming damage when blocking, etc. If you don’t understand this system, you’re going to have a rough time. I’ll get more into it later but I think that this could’ve been smoothed out a bit.

Finally, there are no optional side paths or alternative encounters you can do, meaning:
If you get stuck on a boss, you are STUCK. There is no real way to come back with better gear and a higher level. If you get walled off by a boss, the only way through is to break that wall with your head. For some people, this is the quint-essential Souls-experience. And while I certainly enjoy learning a boss’ move-set if it’s fun and the boss is good, this can turn into a torturous experience when it isn’t.

And this leads me to the biggest criticism I have for the game:

WORLD & LEVEL DESIGN

So, I don’t know how controversial this opinion will be, but my biggest gripe far and away (that isn’t related to the nebulous concept of difficulty) is the fact that this game’s world design and structure are 100% linear. There are no secret areas, no secret bosses, no optional side paths, hell not even a quick diversion from the main path. You really do follow a straight line from beginning to end. I understand that Lies of P isn’t Dark Souls. I understand that this game isn’t meant to be a deep, cryptic and completely authentic experience in the same way as the Souls games, more than it focuses on combat above all else. I understand that the main idea was to create a satisfying and weighty combat system with lots of enemy variety and mechanical complexity. But despite me understanding all of this, it doesn’t change the fact that this is only half of the Souls-like experience for me.

Let’s imagine two typical Souls-players playing Elden Ring. Player A plays these games less for the challenge and boss fights, and more for the experiential side of it. They scour the map for optional areas, explore every nook and cranny and systematically become more powerful as a result of their spelunking. Player B will instead start a new character, pick the big stick weapon, and will run in a straight line towards Stormveil Castle without exploring the world at all, with the goal of fighting Margit with an under levelled weapon for an hour until they finally do it. Player A carefully explores each level, grabs every item they find, talk to every NPC to come across and engage in all the activities of each level. Player B instead runs past everything, engaging with nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary and focus all of their attention on the boss fights. [That is not meant as a qualitative statement btw, both approaches are equally valid.]

Lies of P is definitely a game meant for Player B more than it is for Player A. That is not to say that Player A won’t have fun here. I had a ton of fun moving through the levels and fighting all the smaller bad guys and occasional mini-bosses. But I really missed the feeling of finding something that the devs deliberately hid from me, like Ash Lake in Dark Souls or the Upper Cathedral Ward in Bloodborne. There is only a single, very small optional area in the game, although it really is more of a side-path if anything, and it’s not that easy to miss if you pay at least a little attention to the side quests in this game. The only thing to do there is to loot a few items and then leave again. If you’re the type of player that just wishes for those good old Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls 1 days, and you’re really just looking for that experience to fill this Metroidvania-world-design shaped void that those games left, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed.

All of this is not to say that there isn’t beauty and wonder and interesting things to be found in Krat, the city/land that Lies of P takes place in. The art direction is truly fantastic here, and easily rivals the likes of FromSoftware, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, etc. The city of Krat feels equal parts real and fantastical. A mixture of early 1900’s belle-epoch era France, with some cultural influence from a steam-punk-ified Italy. Somewhere in between beautiful historical snapshot and fantastical, larger-than-life energy, Krat is as idiosyncratic as it is familiar. From your usual, Yharnam-esque cityscape, to forest paths ending in a cathedral, a large puppet factory, a shopping mall to a grandiose opera house, to a grand exhibition, a poison swamp, a deserted island and much more. The world’s levels are varied and beautiful and fit incredibly well into the vibe the game creates. While, yes, the fact that every level does follow another in a straight line is a bit disappointing, it needs to be pointed out that the amount of levels is quite impressive. This game is quite a bit longer than you’d imagine, I would say it feels similar in length to Sekiro or Bloodborne (without DLC) and considering that it’s nothing short of impressive how solid the quality stays throughout.

While the general world design is more or less a straight line, the individual levels fare a bit better. There is enough variety here to make every locale feel distinct and memorable. Perhaps one of the best things about Lies of P’s level design is how enemy placement generally works. There isn’t a single spot in the whole game that feels like the enemies were put there haphazardly. Each and every enemy encounter feels purposeful and curated. There is no “100 Taurus Demons in Lost Izalith” situation here. It’s also impressive how seamlessly areas connect to each other, despite how linear they are. Playing through Lies of P, you’re basically walking in a circle around the whole municipality, and the game goes out of its way to create beautiful vistas that give a feeling of how far you’ve travelled already.

Sadly I do have to criticise how formulaic some of the actual design for most levels is. Every level feels the exact same when it comes to how you actually progress through them. I know this sounds like a weird complaint so let me explain:

Imagine every level as a circle with a specific starting point, where you complete one rotation, which unlocks a shortcut to the starting point, which in turn lets you progress further without losing any progresss you already cleared, itself introducing another circle you have to complete to get back to the checkpoint, and so on. Standard stuff, and honestly by itself there is nothing wrong with this design - especially since Lies of P is very reminiscent of Demon’s Souls when it comes to HOW those shortcuts look like. In Dark Souls or Bloodborne, you’re typically either opening a one-way-door or activate an elevator. That’s it. The Souls games rarely get more creative than that, other than Demon’s Souls. In the latter, you’d have more unconventional ideas for shortcuts, like redirecting water in a mine to flood an area that is filled with lava, making the lava harden and cool off enough for you to easily get back to the shortcut AND progress further. Lies of P takes a lot of cues from this approach in particular, like pushing a brazier down a hallway filled with toxic sludge, burning it and freeing the way to the boss, and I love that. What I don’t love as much is how literally every single level works this exact same way. Every single level works by this formula. Fight enemies, find the shortcut, progress. Repeat until you find the boss. There are no levels where the challenge is to get through in a single run, there are no areas where you can take either one of two paths, no areas which you can skip by knowing the geometry very well, etc. It all feels a bit… formulaic. There are also only a tiny handful of little secrets you can find within levels, and almost all of them require you to come back later in your playthrough, even though nothing in the main story OR the world design suggests that you should ever have to come back to previous locations. This honestly feels like a weird, vestigial element from Souls games that simply doesn’t fit the formula they made for themselves.

All of this would be a problem in a lesser game, but luckily Lies of P has such a strong vision of what it wants to achieve that it’s very obvious that all of this, the level design, the world, the story, literally everything in this game, is second to what this game does best above all others; the combat.

COMBAT

Let’s begin with the absolute basics. Lies of P is what I would call a “true” or “orthodox” Souls-like. And what I mean by that is that, instead of being simply inspired or influenced by the flow and rhythm or Souls combat, this game tries to fully emulate the “Souls” experience as closely as possible, while putting its own spin on it, of course. This isn’t just “take an ARPG and make it a bit Souls-y”, no, these guys truly did their homework regarding what makes this combat tick.

Lies of P generally takes elements from all of FromSoftware’s Souls-games, but the backbone of the experience is growing from the spine of two games in particular; Bloodborne and Sekiro. This decision is easily understandable, as both of them are generally regarded as having the best combat systems within the genre. Sekiro in particular seems to have been the foundation on which they built the rest. Let me explain.

Lies of P, much like Sekiro, sees its most important combat mechanic in the form of “deflection”. In the last 5 or so years, Sekiro has popularised this mechanic so much that I’m almost certain that even if you never played that game, you have definitely played at least one game with that mechanic in there. Wo-Long, Metroid Dread, Ghost of Tsushima, Grime, Jedi: Fallen Order, Thymesia, etc. And those are just the most popular examples within that genre. And much like Sekiro, it is absolutely essential that you learn this ability in Lies of P. But this game puts a few twists on this system.

First off, deflecting isn’t your only option, you also have the ability to simply block attacks. The catch is that this game starts you off with what would be hard-mode in Sekiro, aka playing without Kuro’s Charm. This means that blocking instead of perfectly deflecting attacks will give you chip damage for every attack not deflected. This alone might be reason enough for some people to call this game harder than Sekiro, but the devs aren’t being unreasonable here. Instead, they give you something very similar to the “rally” system in Bloodborne, which allowed you to recover some health after being hit by an enemy but attacking them back, which in turn allowed you to always stay a bit more aggressive and in-your-face. But here in Lies of P, this only applies if you block incoming attacks instead of deflecting them. So essentially, even if you’re not perfect at dodging or deflecting every single attack in the game, this does not mean that this will always result in you losing a set amount of health for it. This is a perfect addition to the core combat and feeds into its design goals, namely taking Souls-combat back to its methodical and deliberate roots. This game does not like it when you’re greedy at all. Instead it wants you to very carefully pick your attack timings, and let enemy aggression be your best weapon.

Deflecting attacks and getting your own in - especially charged heavy attacks - will eventually result in the enemy’s posture breaking, which will allow you to land a critical hit. A perfect deflection seems to me to be about as effective as half a charged R2 or Fable art, so if you’re a deflect-god, you’re going to be constantly breaking the enemy’s guard as a reward. But this isn’t the only benefit. You can actually destroy enemy weapons in this game. Sadly this isn’t true for every enemy in the game, but the general rule seems to be that if they’re holding an actual weapon that isn’t part of their body or is somehow ethereal/energy based, then you are able to destroy it by deflecting it enough (and/or through a status effect called “corrosion”, although you’ll still need to land at least a couple of deflects for it to work). Admittedly, it does require a lot of skill for this to even become a very noticeable mechanic. On my first playthrough, I don’t think I managed to break a single enemy weapon other than perhaps the most minor of fodder-types. On my NG+ run however, I broke their weapons left and right. It is genuinely one of the most satisfying feelings in any of these games and I seriously hope FromSoftware are taking notes here. The catch here is that your weapons are just as prone to break mid-combat as your enemies’. For this the game gives you an infinitely usable grindstone, which restores your weapon’s durability relatively quickly by holding down the button. Outside of boss fights, this is barely even a mechanic worth bringing up, but during boss fights or otherwise intense encounters this can get quite tricky to manage.

While we’re on the topic of weapons, let’s talk about one of the best and most creative weapon systems I’ve ever seen in any game period. I think I still prefer Bloodborne’s trick weapons ever so slightly but this is about as close as it gets. Every weapon in this game is made up of 2 parts; the “blade”, and the “hilt”. “Blade” in this case simply simply means “part that does damage”, they don’t have to be literal blades. They range from traditional(-ish) swords and daggers to superheated “1000° red hot knife vs butter” type cleavers, a poisoned crystal spear, an electric buzzsaw, a clock hand, a drill bit, a multi-pronged spear made out of a city sign, etc. You can pick any of these “blades” and put them on any hilt. The hilts are what determines the weapons move-set and scaling, so in essence, this is your actual weapon. The “blades” just determine which type of damage is being dealt. What’s better is that scaling in this game ONLY affects the damage you’re dealing with a weapon. There are NO hard stat requirements for ANY weapon in the game. Even if you’re a full-on Strength build, you can still use and experiment with all kinds of Dexterity or Advance based weapons. I’ll go a bit more in detail concerning stats in a later section, but this is all you need to know as far as weapons go.

Sadly, all of this isn’t quite as flexible as it sounds due to the game splitting up ALL attack motions into 2 camps: Thrust and Slash. Weapons are either good at thrusting, good at slashing, or both. If the blade-type isn’t proficient in the movement-type the hill prefers, the weapon becomes unusable as a whole. The problem could be something like you really liking a certain hammer-“blade” and wanting to put it on a specific hilt, but the hilt features one or two thrust moves, so now it’s useless. Maybe this could be fixed by allowing the movesets of hilts themselves to be customised or something like that. But this is a relatively minor complaint.

A thing that really bums me out and really hurts overall build variety is how exceedingly rare upgrade materials are across the board. Lies of P is unbelievably stingy when it comes to weapon upgrades, and doubly so with cranks, which allow you to alter a weapon hilt’s scaling. Seriously, these cranks are ludicrously rare. You only get like 4-5 cranks per affinity per playthrough, which would be ok if there weren’t certain weapons that want 2 cranks from you. This is compounded by the fact that they don’t really seem to be able to, say, turn a Strength-based weapon into a Dex-based weapon, more than they are meant to simply enhance a weapon’s scaling. So, basically, turn a weapon that scales with A in Dex to one that scales with S. Make a weapon that’s already good even better.

On any single playthrough, you won’t get to upgrade more than perhaps 4-5 weapons fully when there are close to 40 weapons in this game. This seems incredibly at odds with the “pick up and experiment” nature of the rest of the game. Even more so when you remember that you’re allowed to basically infinitely change your character stats after a certain point, even though those stats are arguably far less important to the damage you’re dealing than the state of your weapon. In my opinion, Lies of P’s upgrade system should work a lot more like Capcom’s recent Resident Evil 4 Remake, in which you can sell back your upgraded weapons and receive back almost all funds you put into upgrading it. It would gel amazingly well with the idea of you not needing to fuck around with arcane upgrade tables and simply get good at the video game. But instead we got a needlessly convoluted and gatekeep-y system that really didn’t need to be as restrictive as it ended up being. It very much seems like a purely vestigial design element from FromSoftware’s Souls games, which have a MUCH larger focus on exploration and character building.

One final, perhaps kind of weird complaint I have regarding the game’s weapon systems is related to the various boss weapons in this game; and no, it’s not that they’re underwhelming or bad or underpowered. In fact, the opposite is true. I think the boss weapons are a little too good. And no, this isn’t a “waaaah nerf the OP weapons so the casuals can’t play my hard game!!!” type complaint either; my problem is that they’re so good, and so fun and are so universally fantastic to use that, at some point, I had to practically force myself to use the vast majority of “normal” weapons. It felt like I was deliberately played on “underwater” mode, if that makes any sense. One weapon in particular, a sort of Katana you get some time after the half-way point, is so unbelievably strong and versatile that it’s objectively the best weapon in the game. Like, it’s really not even debatable. This single weapon has so many different abilities and perks, multiple attack types, 2 separate parry options, a ranged attack AND insane closing speed. It’s not really the feeling of “this weapon is soo strong that it feels like cheating”, it’s more of “wow all other weapons just seem kinda boring in comparison”. So perhaps the better way to phrase this would be to say, the normal main weapons need a lot more flash and stage-presence to be able to keep up with the boss weapons.

But the main weapons are of course not the only part of this combat system. Lies of P’s protagonist, much like Sekiro, has a prosthetic arm, which is called “Legion”. And where Sekiro’s prosthetic arm often felt more like an afterthought, Legion is a fully implemented mechanic which you can theoretically beat the whole game with. Much like the weapons, Legion has many different forms that scale off different stats and have different abilities. Starting with the clearly Sekiro-inspired grappling hook to a flame thrower, acid launcher, anti-personnel mine deployer or even just a straight up grenade launcher. It’s a fantastic addition to the main combat loop, especially when fully upgraded.

And you’d be remiss if you completely ignored the many, many consumable and throwable items this game offers to struggling players. Other than Dark Souls, throwable items like firebombs are actually really good in Lies of P, and can often make the difference in beating specific boss fights that may have been a little too tough otherwise. They’re clearly meant to be more of a compromise for the fact that you don’t have ANY ranged combat abilities outside of 2 Legion variants - and even those only have very short range. You’re completely free to ignore them, but they can make a lot of fights in the game a lot more manageable.

So, you can tell that this game really does give you a lot of tools and options to tackle any situation in front of you, and as you might have gathered from the section about difficulty before, that isn’t without reason. This game really is quite hard. And it is more so than most FromSoft games because you truly are required to “get good”. There is no way around the boss fights in this game other than learning their movesets, getting better at the combat system and being on your A-game. There aren’t any cheese strats for any boss in this game that I’m aware of. They really do want you to sit down and truly learn their moves.

Luckily those boss fights are exceptionally good for the most part, and I do mean that in the most literal form possible. They truly are the odd one out from just about any other Souls-like out there. No other Souls-like has boss fights that are even remotely on this level. In terms of general overall quality of these fights, I think that Lies of P is absolutely comparable to even FromSoftware themselves. Where FromSoft will always have 2-3 bosses per game that I absolutely fucking hate, I cannot say the same here. And, on the flip side, as far as highlights go it 100% can compete with the original, and I would say it handily surpasses Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1 and maybe even Dark Souls 2, it’s roughly on the same footing as Bloodborne (without DLC) and only behind Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro. For what is, again, their FIRST attempt at ANY video game, this is maddeningly impressive. Ever played a game that was so good it made you angry? Like “there HAS to be something wrong here, no way that this really is this good”.

I think there are only 2 (3 if we’re being technical) bosses that kinda rub me the wrong way. I mean both Black Rabbit Brotherhood fights, and the Door Guardian. The Black Rabbit Brotherhood are widely considered the worst boss in this game, and it’s easy to see why, since both fights are simply very poorly balanced gank fights in which the challenge is more about constantly running around the arena trying to avoid two enemies who simultaneously attack you. Honestly a fairly standard “bad Souls boss”. It’s a trap even FromSoftware step into often enough. What I think is a genuinely even more flawed boss however, is the Door Guardian. A hulking brute with a massive (unbreakable) weapon that inflicts the “Shock” special status effect on you with every single hit. Special status effects apply instantly and remain for a given amount of time, depending on how much build up an attack has. I really dislike all of these “special” status effect, but Shock is by far the worst. It reduces your stamina regeneration by something ridiculous like 80%, and the bar takes WAY too long to go down. In effect, this forces you to back off and simply wait. And that is just terribly boring. You can’t attack, you can’t deflect, you can’t dodge, you can only walk slowly and wait.

Luckily, these are just about the only bad ones I can remember, and when this game’s bosses are good, they are REALLY good.

I can’t talk about all of them or I’d be here all day, but my top 3 are Laxasia the Complete, Nameless Puppet and Romeo, King of Puppets. Each one of them feels like something you’d see in a Dark Souls DLC, which is about the highest praise I can physically give them. They genuinely gave me the feeling that someone finally cracked the code, finally understood what makes Souls boss fights so good, so thrilling. I also particularly like the “real first” boss, the Scrapped Watchman. I touched on it in the beginning, but this fight was made made me “get” Lies of P, and got me excited for the full release after the demo.

So, the bosses are fantastic, and the combat system on the side of the player is generally great. But I always say that a combat system can only ever be as good as the enemies you use it against. So how does this game stack up with the general enemies? The mobs? The ads?

Fucking fantastic, that’s how. Once again, this development team seem to have cracked the FromSoft code, and filled this whole game to the brim with so many unique, twisted and lively enemies from the lowliest grunts to terrifying mini-bosses who make your life a living hell. Each and every one of these is fantastically animated, their attack animations are (mostly) telegraphed very well, and their hitboxes and frame-data is very polished. Of course, there are minor hiccups here and there, like a bit too many enemies having awkward “ice-skating” animations, where they’ll inch toward you during attack animations without actually moving their feet, enemies can attack through walls like in Dark Souls but you can’t, and some of them have some pretty absurd stats even on normal NG, but it needs to be once again stated that there truly is NO Souls-like on this level out there. These enemies are generally fantastic to engage with, and are even more varied.

There are literally hundreds of enemies in this game, and they’re all very unique and deliberately animated. This might sound overwhelming, but there is a system to this.

Enemies come in 3 types; Puppet, Carcass and Human - although the latter are so rare and specific that they admittedly barely count. Puppets are the most common enemy type you will find in the game, and are the main antagonistic force of Lies of P’s story - or, so you are being led to believe at first. Later, you will encounter zombie-like enemies that are what happens to victims of the Petrification Disease when not properly disposed of. The few remaining humans in this game are highly trained Stalkers, vigilantes who either fight against the puppet frenzy, or use the chaos to pillage the town.

Each one of these has multiple subdivisions that feature unique attack animations or elemental affiliations, and are (mostly) specific to the area you find them in. The game also does a fantastic job at slowly introducing them to you one after the other, so you never get overwhelmed by too many new enemies, and you’re also never running into the feeling that you’ve seen the current enemies too much already. Again, even FromSoftware needs to take a look at this and perhaps think about it a bit. While humans really only come in the form of “NPC fights” (like Bloodborne’s “Hunters” or Dark Souls’ “Phantoms”) or full on boss fights, puppets and carcasses come in all shapes and sizes from small, weak fodder scrubs, to your average standard “knight” type enemy to terrifying and ferocious mini-bosses that are - for the most part - 100% unique to the area you find them in. There are individual enemies without health bars or names that only appear a single time in the entire game that are more thought out and mechanically interesting than some full on boss fights in some Souls games. This keeps things really fresh as (at least on your first playthrough) you never quite know what to expect from any level. Later on, these 2 categories will even start fusing with each other, creating many different forms of zombie-puppets, who will take on aspects of both.

I will admit that I’m not the biggest fan of the Stalker enemies. They're clearly intended to be equivalent to Bloodborne's Hunters specifically. They do have similar abilities to the player and some of them are more fun to fight than others but they all share the same design issues where they all have plenty of poise while you have none, they can attack non stop and some of their attacks can be suspiciously hard to parry, implying that maybe they're not all super polished. But on the other hand, they can all be easily backstab-cheesed if you can't be bothered to learn their move set. Overall they're fine. Not particularly bad but not my favourite either.

Back to the 3 big groups; each of these enemy types has a certain elemental weakness; Puppets hate electricity, Carcasses hate fire, and humans hate acid. This is what makes putting points into Advance actually very worthwhile. So if you’re struggling with any specific area, it’s wise to bring weapons that have damage type most enemies in the area are weak to. And ultimately, you’re going to want your character the right way for that. But building your character isn’t only about which stats you level, you get an entire new system additionally to that.

P-ORGAN & RPG SYSTEM

So, Lies of P has a skill tree system called the “P-Organ”, and it’s pretty interesting. Yes, that really is what it’s called. No, I’m not sure whether the dev team were aware of how this would sound to westerners. If I remember correctly, the “Fable arts” were also originally called “P-Energy”, so maybe they really did not consider how ridiculous a name that would be.

Gameplay wise, I think it’s generally a cool addition to the core loop, and I like how you’re progressively unlocking everything with certain upgrade items - called Quartz - you could potentially miss, so not every character will look the same by the end, but there are some elements that are a bit strange, and I’m not just talking about the name.

It works like this:

You have a tree of badges you can unlock. Each badge contains a skill or QoL improvement like “Gain +1 amulet slot”, “Gain +1 use of healing flask”, “Deal more damage with Fable attacks”, etc, and is made up of 2-4 nodes, each representative of 1 quartz. To unlock these skills, simply trade in enough quartz. What makes this especially cool is that each node also contains a skill additionally to the main skill you’re in the process of unlocking. So if you have a badge with 4 nodes, you effectively have 5 new abilities for the price of one. Each of these nodes can be fitted with an ability from 1 of 4 classes; Attack, Survival, Ability and Item. You can only pick one of them per badge, so you have to pick one of each class for each badge. Simple enough.

My problems with it mostly stem from how many of these options are totally useless, and how a lot of the ones that aren’t as useless are unlockable abilities in the first place, instead of coming with the base character. The most obvious one would be the fact that you need to unlock the ability to string together dodges. To be quite fair, you can unlock this ability very early on, but I still think that this really should be part of the core move-set. Another one would be the ability to shortly stagger smaller enemies upon a successful deflection. While this might not be as necessary to returning players, I think that the fact that SO many people struggle so much with literally the most fundamental aspect of the entire combat system might have something to do with the fact that deflecting enemies really doesn’t reward you anywhere near as much as it does with all of these quality of life improvements already unlocked.

It doesn’t necessarily break the game or anything like that, but it is something a sequel or future patch could solve. In the past, another ability you had to actually unlock was the ability to quickly roll out of the way after being knocked to the ground. If you hadn’t unlocked this ability, certain enemies like the big, burning shovel wielding robots could stun-lock and keep you grounded indefinitely. Clearly the devs were listening to criticism back then, so perhaps this will get updated in the future as well.

Before we move on to this game’s story and themes, I want to briefly go into more detail concerning the RPG systems of this game. I think that this is perhaps where future games in the franchise might cut even more access fat from this experience. And what I mean by that is; I really think that the choice to feature stats in this game was a mistake. I think that this game would’ve benefitted much more from a more in-depth skill tree which would maybe actually give you new abilities. Similarly to the upgrade system (although not to the same extent) I regard the fact that you still have to level up with XP farmed from enemies to increase certain stats so you do a tiny bit more damage with a certain weapon as a purely vestigial element. This isn’t organic to Lies of P, it’s the remains of a much more RPG-focused game called “Dark Souls” that got carried over.
Weapons don’t require stats. Stats make barely a difference when it comes to damage, at least much less than upgrading weapons. There are no spells, and no special abilities that are tied to stats - so why even feature them at all?

I think the fact that my least favourite aspects of this game are all elements that strike me as vestigial is a testament to the fact how good and creative the team at Neowiz really is. If my main criticism of your Souls-clone is “it’s too much like Dark Souls”, then you’re doing something right.

STORY

Finally, I want to talk about the story and themes of Lies of P. Just a few things right off the bat: I am not all that familiar with the actual Pinocchio stories written by Carlo Collodi. I know of them, I am aware that there are a few differences between that version and the one popularised by Disney, especially when it comes to tone and themes. All I know is that this game heavily references the writings of Collodi in its text, and as such I don’t feel qualified to really go into detail concerning that. Instead, I’ll just talk freely about the things that jumped out at me, and whether I liked them or not.

As far as this game’s main plot goes, it’s surprisingly decent. I’m saying surprising because my interest and investment in the story were cultivated despite a rather amateurish way of actually conveying most information to you, and despite it all being unfortunately very predictable. It’s much stronger with its themes and ideas though.

The opening hours of Lies of P are definitely really good at creating a strong sense of suspense and shock right at the start. The team here definitely took a solid chunk out of FromSoft’s playbook for environmental story telling. The cold, dark and damp Krat Central Station you saw as you stepped out of the train cart you first awoke in. The slow but devastating reveal of just massive the casualties of the puppet frenzy truly were. It all works rather well by itself. So it’s a shame that the devs seemingly felt like this wasn’t enough to fully convey the game’s story and plot, and perhaps they were right in that regard. However, the truth is that all of the expositional dialogue and character quips really aren’t playing to Neowiz’ strengths. And I’m not only talking about Gemini here, who already is rather infamous within the Lies of P community as perhaps the most annoying character in the whole game. I find that a lot of the actual dialogues and monologues you’re being treated to simply lack depth and refinement. Much of it is overly quippy and in stark contrast to the very orthodox Souls-ian atmosphere the devs try to conjure. In general and in summary you could say that the actual written word is perhaps the weakest part of Lies of P’s writing.

Upon beating the tutorial boss and finally standing in front of Hotel Krat’s mighty doors, we are met with a question by the hotel’s automatic security system: “Are you human?”

And this is where the other big signature game mechanic, and arguably the most important story element comes into play: P is the only puppet in the world that has the ability to lie. And to enter Hotel Krat, we must put that ability to the test. No matter how you feel about telling lies, here it is most often the most advantageous choice to make, but more on that later.

Entering the hotel we finally meet Sophia, this game’s Fire Keeper, or Emerald Herald, or Maiden in Black, or what have you. She will be our guide and method of levelling up. (at least for now) Sophia also informs us of our next immediate goal; saving Gepetto. We learn that Gepetto is the creator of ALL puppet technology in Krat, and as such is the only person that could possibly put a stop to all of this… and if you’ve played even a single Souls game in your life, you already know from this moment on that Gepetto will be revealed to be the final antagonist. But like so often, the journey is more important than the destination, so let’s put this aside for now, and continue with the other important Hotel Krat NPCs. Most importantly you have Eugenié, a friendly blacksmith and tinkerer who gladly offers her services, loves some small talk and thinks the world of you. Next, you have “old friend to Gepetto” Lady Antonia, an aging but still elegant dame of status, who will provide us with hints and stories about Krat and its people. Next is Lady Antonia’s puppet butler, Polendina, who serves as your typical shopkeep. While these are all the people you can talk to at first, this hub area will receive more people as time goes on, most importantly, the eccentric inventor, business owner, personal friend to Gepetto and richest man in town Lorenzini Venigni and his puppet butler Pulcinella, the sketchy treasure hunter Alidoro and… uh, some soldier from another town whose name I keep forgetting because she really isn’t all that important or does anything noteworthy.

Back to the plot; Sophia tells us that we must save Gepetto from Elysion Boulevard, one of the city’s seedier corners. Though whatever social inequity may have once put a stranglehold on this part of town is now long gone along with most human life. It is on the bridge over to Krat City Hall we discover our first Stalker, the Mad Donkey. Threatening Gepetto before our very eyes, naturally we must deliver this man a hefty dose of demise. This is where we understand that Gepetto regards us more like a son than a regular puppet, and he expresses how deeply important we are to him. Despite this, his very next action is to send us on a mission to retrieve Venigni from the Puppet Factory, since he might know how to stop the puppet frenzy - or at least, who’s behind it.

After successfully saving Venigni from the factory, we learn that a very special puppet seems to be behind it all - the King of Puppets. The king seems to be some sort of alpha-puppet that can command the other via the Ergo in the air - which is essentially crystallised life-energy that can be harnessed to power machinery with it. Before we get to him we must quickly make a detour to the city’s big cathedral just outside of town. This is where we meet the other main enemy type in this game for the first time; carcasses. Like I mentioned a while ago, this is what happens to people who die of the petrification disease who aren’t properly disposed of. I have to admit, I can’t really remember the exact plot reasons we need to come here specifically, but admittedly that isn’t super important. The area is cool, creepy and has some neat design.

I’ll fast forward to after we’ve beaten both the Cathedral area, as well as Malum District, simply because both don’t really seem to be terribly important when it comes to the actual plot. (Also, Malum District is a really short level) There are of course various NPC interactions, side quests and the like, as well as the introduction to Krat’s issues outside of the puppet frenzy, but the actual story doesn’t seem to progress until we’ve defeated the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, which might take the title for most annoying fight in the game, but that’s an aside. Two interesting things happen here. For one, we find a picture of a young teenage boy that looks a lot like us… to an eery degree. More importantly, we take an elevator up, and up, and up and after a while we begin to hear a familiar piece of music; it’s the Hotel Krat OST. We’ve managed to loop back around to the start. Normally this would be extremely impressive and probably my favourite moment in the game, but sadly the extremely linear nature of the game makes it a bit less impressive, had it been something you could’ve missed entirely. But there’s a reason for it being like this, because the next section of the game is locked behind a closed door in the hotel, which leads to Rosa Isabelle Street, which itself leads to the Opera house, where the King of Puppets resides.

So, by the time you’re walking down Rosa Isabelle Street you’ve almost certainly sussed out that Gepetto has to be behind all of this. Yes, the King of Puppets is the one leading them, but Venigni even says that this all seems like a bit much, even for such an advanced puppet. Keep that in mind as we go forward. So, we finally reach The King of Puppets, who has an elaborate puppet performance ready for us. We see a puppet-Gepetto stand in front of another puppet who looks exactly like us. He seems to take out our heart and place it into another puppet, which causes the puppet to get up and dance a little. Jeez, I wonder what this might symbolise! This initiates the 2-phase fight against the King of Puppets, who first appears as a massive, hulking mech that spins around, slams its massive arms into the ground and even fires some Ergo grenades and whatnot. The second phase is where it gets interesting. Out of the mech climbs another puppet, much smaller. In fact, he’s exactly our size, and he looks somewhat similar. His name is now Romeo, King of Puppets. Much later we learn that this was once our best friend in the whole world, who attempts to call out to us during the fight, but we can’t understand his language - yet. The fight is brilliant by the way, my favourite in the whole game. It really tests every single ability that the player is expected to have by this point, and it’s where the game’s combat truly clicked for me.

So, we’ve reached the halfway point of the game. After taking down the King, we step outside the arena to find our old man just standing there. He praises and rewards us, and unsurprisingly tells us that we need to do a lot more to fix all this. We’re supposed to find the Alchemists, because he suspects they are behind this. The Alchemists are a guild of quasi-scientists operating within Krat, and are defined by their utter lack of respect for human life and decency. Naturally we don’t believe a word he says but, we indulge, as the game must progress. So, off we go. Our first new direction is to head towards the Grand Exhibition Gallery. On the way there we also go through Lorenzini Arcade, which isn’t terribly important or anything, but it’s a really cool and interesting area, and one of my favourites in the game. Great environmental story telling and level design here!

Here at the Gallery is where we run into my biggest issue with this game’s story. The gallery itself is fine, if a bit short, and works great as a level. I also really like the boss, Champion Victor, who is a human but genetically modified via Ergo. He seems to be similar to those carcass monsters, but of sound mind and ready to defend the way forward. After an exhilarating fight, we suddenly get interrupted by a fierce looking knight figure, who impales Victor with a sword in the back. A shadowy figure speaks to us from the balcony above. He introduces himself as Simon Manus, head of the Alchemist guild and just flat out admits to facilitating the Petrification Disease throughout the town, and just being the villain in general. Basically, his deal is that he wants to make humans immortal by experimenting on them with the petrification disease - which would also make them incapable of lying, apparently. Honestly, I really dislike this villain reveal this late in the game. First off, it’s incredibly transparent that Simon is a red herring. There is no way that Gepetto isn’t the main villain, or at least the one responsible for the puppet frenzy, and it’s wild that the devs seem to think that simply introducing Simon at this point in the story is enough to confuse the player or make them reconsider their opinions. He isn’t foreshadowed what so ever (at least as far as I can tell) and the Alchemists aren’t even mentioned until shortly before you meet him. It’s made worse by the fact that all other NPCs completely buy the idea that he is responsible, and that your main mission has become to hunt this guy down. It really feels like the game does not respect your intelligence concerning this matter.

And this is where the plot of the game begins to break a bit, because now your next few activities are informed by Venigni going “Hmm, how might we get to the Isle of Alchemists?? Well, how about you go check out (Insert Area)? Maybe there’s something there??”. It feels more like a contrivance to get you where the devs want you to go, rather than a satisfying result of the actions you’ve taken thus far. It’s a good thing the levels are as solid as they are, and that enemy design and bosses are still going strong by that point, because the story definitely lost me by this point. What’s worse is that a lot of what you’re going through here until the final level feels a bit… uninspired? The first level is a big old swamp level, which admittedly is one of the more fun takes on the idea, but it’s not the best level in the game either. The boss here, Green Monster of the Swamp, gave me mixed feelings as well, because the first phase of the fight is really cool, but the second phase sees Scrapped Watchmen return for some reason. To be fair, it’s not just a reskin, they did give it some new moves and a new aesthetic. The fight itself is still enjoyable, but to see repeats of main bosses so shortly after the halfway point was a bit disconcerting. And not without reason, it turns out, because the next 2 bosses are ALSO reskins of main bosses you’ve fought before. One, a rematch against the Black Rabbit Brotherhood down in the depths of the Relic of Trismegistus, which funnily enough is another extremely short level that seems to only exist as a prelude to fighting these Melvins. And in contrast to Green Monster, the only notable difference here is that the big brother enemy does have a single new attack. This is the least excusable moment in the whole game as far as I’m concerned. And we’re not done, because before this we get to explore the first level again. Luckily, this is barely comparable to its earlier iteration, since the entire town is utterly destroyed by massive Ergo crystals emerging from the ground, which opens up massive rifts in the floor and generally dramatically changes the landscape. As for the boss… it’s literally the tutorial boss again, once again, with maybe one or two extra attacks. I’m not sure why exactly the last 2-3 hours of this game was dominated by repeated content, but luckily none of this is really egregious or bad. The gameplay is great, and even if I kinda logged out of the story by this point, the core gameplay loop was more than enough to keep me interested. And luckily right about here is where the story manages to pick up the pace again. Turns out, while we were gone the Alchemists raided Hotel Krat and kidnapped Gepetto, because he apparently stole some ancient relic from them, which they desperately need back. As expected, all the other NPCs in the game still suffer from a severe case of dumb-brain and still haven’t figured out that Gepetto is the main guy to watch out for, so they beg you to go and safe him. Through your travels through the reskin-lands, you managed to find everything you need to track down the Alchemists. But before that, we need to speak with Venigni again, because he has something interesting for us; a decoded message from the King of Puppets, but Venigni can’t understand most of it, and gives it to us. And this is where it happens; the big baddy of this game is finally, officially revealed to us… it’s Simon Manus!… no, I’m kidding, it’s obviously fucking Gepetto. Who would’ve thought huh? No way to predict this! So we tell Venigni, and he surprisingly doesn’t seem to care all that much? He mainly tells us that we still need to save Gepetto so he can fix what he started.

So we arrive at the final level, Arche Abbey, which is very, very long. The area begins with a big desert area we have to walk through, which gives the time to slowly dump some exposition on our heads via some Ergo ghosts of the past. We see visions and hear voices from back when we were still human. I didn’t mind it a lot, since it gives a lot of context to the things you’ve seen. Like your previous friendship with Romeo, your complete lack of a relationship with Gepetto, since he was always working and didn’t have time for P, your eventual infection with the petrification disease, which led to your untimely demise and of course, your real name: Carlo.

So, P, or Carlo, fights his way through Arche Abbey, until we meet the mysterious knight figure we met alongside Simon. She blocks our path and acts like the big wall of the end game. And my god, a wall she is. This is easily the hardest fight in the whole game and it’s not even close. She doesn’t have a lot of lore as far as I can tell, and seems to basically just be an enhanced human made by Simon. After finally defeating her after, like, 50 tries or something, we find Sophia’s true body here. It’s too complicated to get into the full backstory here, but in short, she is the daughter of Simon’s previous boss, whom he succeeded in leading the Alchemists. To oversimplify, Sophia is a “Listener” which means she can control Ergo and communicate with puppets. Simon wants to abuse this power for his own means, but Sophia won’t let him. So he traps Sophia in this tower until he’s able to break her. But you come along and have the choice of ending her suffering. Doing this can potentially unlock the true ending, but more on that in a bit.

So, finally onto the top of the Abbey we get to confront Simon, but not before bailing out Gepetto from jail. After telling him what a piece of shit dad he is, we go and beat Simon’s ass. Which is easier said than done, considering the guy’s colossal second phase health bar and the fact he can use three different projectile attacks at the same time. Here, Simon explains his plan a bit more in detail; basically, the petrification disease traps the body and time of an individual in place, forcing the life energy in them to crystallise.. sound familiar? This infinite existence somehow also prohibits people from lying, which seems to be the big motivator for Manus, who for some reason really can’t stand the concept of lying. The reason he kidnapped Gepetto was the latter’s stealing of the Hand of God, an ancient relic that has mystical properties, apparently including turning Simon into a god. In either case, we finally defeat this asshole and are done with the game.

Or are we?

After Simon is defeated, the game doesn’t stop. Instead, we need to take an elevator down, way down, beneath the foundation of the abbey. Here, Gepetto waits for us, and explains to us that all of this, everything he and you did was to be able to bring Carlo back to life as a real boy. So, what the fuck is really going on? What did Gepetto do?

This is where we need to discuss the nature of Ergo and lying, a specific side quest and the endings of the game in detail.

SPOILER WARNING FOR THE ENDINGS START HERE.

There is a side quest in the game that revolves around a weird little character called Arlecchino. He contacts us a total of three times throughout the game, always via public telephone booths. If we pick up, he asks us a riddle, always something to do with topics that deal with your humanity. As the game progresses though, Arlecchino becomes increasingly disturbing in his questions and demeanour. He hints at the fact that he has killed a bunch of people, and when Venigni begins to talk about the fact that his parents were murdered by a crazed puppet many years ago, things begin to click. Yes, it was indeed he who killed Venigni’s parents. Why, you ask? Well, it has everything to do with what Ergo is. All of Arlecchino’s questions work towards one central question: What is a puppet? And the answer is truly horrifying.

A puppet IS a human.

A puppet is an inanimate object animated by Ergo, which is the crystallised life energy of people who have died. Yes, basically, puppets run on the souls of the dead. At some point in his new existence, his Ergo awakened and he realised that he is a human no different from those made of flesh and blood. It seems that puppets have no actual memory of their past, but a longing sensation remains. One day, Arlecchino, driven mad by his subconscious realisation that he is in fact human, spots a happy Venigni family - the parents of Lorenzini and engineers of the first mass produced puppets. He murders them in cold blood and leaves their son behind, who vows to make sure something like this may never happen again, and invents the very same failsafe which the King of Puppets later manages to undo.

So, puppets are humans. Or, more succinctly, Ergo, the energy that animates them, is the equivalent of the human soul. THAT is what Gepetto discovered. It turns out, despite his profound distrust and hatred for them, he used to be an Alchemist as well. In fact, he seems to have been the most important Alchemist of all. He discovered that human life clings to this world in the form of Ergo, and that this material can be used to create artificial humans. The radical invention that will change society forever is the previously mentioned P-Organ; a mechanical heart, that harnesses the power of ego.

Much later in the timeline, the Petrification disease first spreads slowly through the town, which is deemed by the Alchemists to be a result of long-term overexposure to Ergo. The disease eventually infects Carlo, who perishes from it. This is what breaks Gepetto. He becomes consumed by a mad desire to reunite with his son. Now, Gepetto wasn’t a great dad. He committed his son into a boarding school at a young age, and barely even really knew his son. Carlo never thought very highly of Gepetto, and it’s possible he died full of resentment for this father. But Gepetto doesn’t blame himself for this - not outwardly, at least. To him, the real culprits were the Alchemists, who wouldn’t stop experimenting on Ergo and the petrification disease. In fact, it seems the fact that his son was so estranged to him is what makes it all the worse, and all the more necessary to bring Carlo back. At first, he simply attempts to transfer Carlo’s soul into a puppet body, but this doesn’t really work. The puppet body nearly destroys Carlo’s Ergo - it seems that puppets only run on trace amounts of Ergo, compared to the vast stores of Ergo in a fully human soul. So Gepetto begins to work on a new P-Organ; one that not only runs on Ergo, but is able to absorb it as well, presumably enough to fully rebuild Carlo’s mind. This enhanced P-Organ is stored away in a new puppet body, locked away in some train cart at Krat Central Station. Hmm.

Anyway, over the next few years Gepetto cooperates with Lorenzini Venigni to mass produce puppets and refine the technology further and further. They come up with a concept called the “Grand Covenant”, which restricts the puppets’ autonomy and enforces a set of rules they have to follow unconditionally. For Venigni, the point of this it to prevent something like Arlecchino’s murder spree from ever happening again. The rules are, in order of priority:

1 - All puppets must obey their creator's commands. 2 - A puppet may not harm a human. 3 - A puppet must protect and serve humans and the city of Krat. 4 - A puppet cannot lie.

But Gepetto included another rule in secret, a “rule 0” as it were, one that overrides all other rules:

0 - The creator’s name is Giuseppe Gepetto.

Gepetto then proceeds to take Romeo’s ergo, who also died from the disease, and makes him the King of Puppets. This special puppet has the ability to control all others via the Grand Covenant. And then, one day it happens:

Gepetto instructs Romeo to kill ALL people infected with the petrification disease, who extends this order to every puppet under the covenant. The problem; basically every person in the city is infected, even if they don’t show symptoms. Because, as we established already, this isn’t just a random illness that spreads by virus or something like that. It’s your body’s inherent reaction to overexposure of Ergo. Now, you might think that all of this is in service of stopping the Alchemists and thwarting their plans. And the fact that Gepetto even stole the Arm of God, which they desperately need to fulfil their plans, might even be a good argument for this. But if you’ve learned one thing from interacting with this dickhead is that he is anything but an altruist. He has but one desire, which dominates every facet of every single action of his: To see his son again.

Like we said, the puppet kill every human being with traces of infection. But every human in the city is potentially infected because every human in the city had the same amount of exposure. Also, if you think about it… aren’t these people just walking stores of Ergo? What if the puppets killed the people and absorbed the Ergo? And what if that very special P-Organ that allowed YOU to absorb THEIR ergo, was crafted for this very specific purpose?

And this is where the story of Lies of P suddenly turns exceedingly dark and horrifying. ALL of this, every single dead body, ever destroyed building, every ruined life was all in service just so Gepetto got to see Carlo again. And this is why Gepetto TRULY stole the Arm of God… not to stop the Alchemist, but to have the power to resurrect his son. Simon used the Arm to direct massive quantities of Ergo into one place, and Gepetto is using that very same Ergo to give the arm the power to resurrect Carlo. Initially, Gepetto simply wanted to steal the arm and then get back to P sitting in the train cart, but then gets besieged by the Mad Donkey and his ilk.

So, this explains close to everything we need to make sense of the endings, but there’s one more thing.

We haven’t really talked about one core mechanic of this game: Your ability to lie.

P can tell lies to people. Whether or not he is able to convince people he’s telling the truth seems entirely secondary to the fact that he is capable of lying. In terms of gameplay, on the surface at least, this feels surprisingly barebones with not much depth to it. It really does not happen that often, and it almost never has any direct gameplay implications, but that’s because it’s not really about the act of lying and its consequences, but rather what it means to you, a character who has to find their own humanity - and that’s the key word right here: Humanity.

Humans can lie, puppets can not. And, considering this is a Pinnochio story, our goal is of course to become a real boy. And we do this by maxing out our humanity.

“Humanity” is an invisible game mechanic that never gets explained to you, and is something you have to figure out by yourself. Throughout the game you’ll be met with choices, most of them dialogue based, and of those the majority will be about lying. Every time you lie, you raise your humanity, so basically, lying is universally good in Lies of P. But lying isn’t the only way to increase your humanity. In most cases, especially when it comes to dialogue options, the “human” option is almost always very straight forward. Whether it telling people they’re still beautiful, or telling a distressed young woman that the doll she desperately wants to be her daughter really is her sweet little baby, or telling a solider that her partner died in combat, when he actually turned into a zombie… those sweet little white lies seem to make P connect more to other humans. He understands that needlessly hurting those who already suffer so much is a cruel thing to do. There is also the way to max out your humanity by listening to the many records you can find in the game, although I wasn’t a huge fan of this, personally. I guess if you’re gonna make me listen to an entire 5 minute song in your game to marginally increase my chances of getting the true ending, you better make sure that all of the songs are masterpieces. Let’s just say that the majority of songs weren’t really my taste. There are outliers, I like most of the songs that don’t have vocals, and dislike most songs that do. A neat idea, but I would’ve preferred a little more thought went into it.

While we’re at it, let’s very briefly address this game’s overall OST. It’s no Bloodborne or Hotline Miami, but there are some nice tracks here. As far as the records go, my favourite has to be Misty E’ra. A nice little smooth jazz tune that doesn’t overstay its welcome and has some genuinely nice, melancholic atmosphere. The rest I can honestly take or leave. As far as boss soundtracks go, I have to admit I didn’t find a lot of them very memorable. That’s not to say that they’re bad, simply not really all that noteworthy. There are some outliers, like Romeo King of Puppets, Fuoco and Laxasia, which were the only ones I felt like they warranted a listen outside of the game.

Now with this out of the way, let’s get back to the elevator on top of the Abbey that took us down into the depths, to our final confrontation with Gepetto.

So, this game has three endings.

“REAL BOY”

The first one, the “bad” ending as far as I’m concerned, has you giving up your P-Organ and surrender it to Gepetto, so he can use the Arm of God and finally revive Carlo - only, is this what you really want? You aren’t Carlo. You never were. You’re P. You’re a puppet that physically resembles Gepetto’s son, and you even carry his heart with you, but you don’t have his memories, his emotions, his thoughts and feelings. Whatever “you” currently inhabits this puppet body right now will be gone. What’s worse is that if you DO decide to go with this ending, and you decide to visit Hotel Krat, you’ll find that ALL NPCs have been replaced by puppets, who say the same line of dialogue over and over again. It’s bloody terrifying and heart breaking. Gepetto didn’t learn anything. He killed whoever survived this whole ordeal and plans to rebuilt society with nothing but puppets.

“FREE FROM PUPPET STRING”

So, obviously we can’t do this, so instead we’ll refuse to give Gepetto our heart. Naturally, he’s furious and shows his true face. He never cared about YOU. He only cared about the heart you carry around. And now he’s gonna take it by force.

This is when he pulls out his suitcase and assembles from it Carlo’s old puppet body - the first one he built before you. This is another hot contender for best boss fight in the game. This Nameless Puppet reminds me a lot of Lady Maria from Bloodborne, and also in a way of Gehrman, who similarly decides to fight you, should you refuse his offer of freeing you from the dream. It is extremely fast, powerful and has a shitton of moves but there’s no fight in the game that’s this fun to master.

After a hard fought battle, we’re about to lose the fight in the cutscene even though we beat his ass in the actual game (kinda hate this trope, ngl) when suddenly Gepetto jumps between us when the Nameless Puppet is about to destroy Carlo’s heart. Sacrificing himself, Gepetto is able to save our life. After quickly taking out the enemy puppet, Gepetto lies on the floor, lamenting how deeply disappointed he is in us. He calls us a useless puppet and dies. Wow. Goddamn. I mean it’s preferable to the other ending, but not by much. At least we are free now, I guess. But we won’t find peace, not unless we manage to really max out our humanity, build connections to people, find our own meaning and become ourselves. Our OWN real boy.

“RISE OF P”

So, if you consistently lie in this game, and do good things for NPCs, and listen to all the music, and find the painting, you’ll be able to become properly human. While there is no way to directly check your humanity meter, there are a couple of things you can watch out for. The first indication will happen after taking out the King of Puppets, which, should you have done the minimum in terms of gaining humanity, will cause your hair to grow longer, and your face to look slightly older. Sophia will comment on it, stating that whatever you did so far, you should keep doing. There’s also the cat Spring at Hotel Krat, who keeps wandering about the premises. Depending on how much humanity you have, she’ll either dislike you, and hiss at you when you have no humanity, progressively warming up more and more to you, until, when you’re fully human, she’ll let herself be picked up and petted and kissed. I just wanted to mention this because it’s awesome and I love cats and I love being able to pet cats in games. The moment when I could pick up Spring and she’d cuddle with me was the greatest moment in this game for me, unironically.

Later, when you find the painting in Gepetto’s room, you’ll notice that there’s a small branch growing from the boy’s nose. This nose grows with every bit of humanity you gain, most noticeably whenever you lie - no idea where they got the inspiration for this from! Eventually, this branch will turn into a golden staff-type weapon, which grows in power with your humanity. The moment you’re actually able to pick it up, you officially have enough humanity to trigger the true ending.

This is one prerequisite you need for the best ending, the other one is to make sure to grant Sophia her freedom. If you did everything right, your hair will turn white and you’ll have become fully human. Now just go ahead, kill the Nameless Puppet, and here we go.

At first the ending is identical to the Free From Puppet String ending, up until the moment where Gepetto talks to us for the last time. Instead of stating his disappointment, he sees us shed a single tear for him, which in turn causes him to apologise for everything before dying.

P goes outside, enjoying a warm sunset on the highest peak of the Abbey. He approaches a puppet that looks a lot like Sophia. He kneels down and transfers his Ergo into this new puppet, which causes him to break down, and her to wake up. But P didn’t die, apparently, as we can see his face twitching slightly when puppet-Sophia touches him. Embracing each other, the sun rises behind them, heralding a new age.

But we’re not done yet… looks like we have a post-credit cutscene!?

We open on a figure sitting in a train, presumably going towards Krat. He is named “Paracelsus” and seemingly talks about our adventure, and how we’re “a new brother… a new type of humanity”. He apparently came here with the intent of retrieving the Arm of God. That, and a certain someone. A little girl with shining red shoes named Dorothy. I’ll let you figure out that one on your own.

CONCLUSION:

So, this was Lies of P! I genuinely can’t remember when I played a game that so thoroughly subverted my expectations not only for itself, but for the entire genre it inhabits. Like I said, I used to be extremely dismissive of just about any Souls-like not made by FromSoftware and this game has definitely showed me that I really shouldn’t be.

It is unbelievable how much quality there is to be found here. How much love and care and attention. It’s not perfect, by any means. There are some serious flaws here and there, and at the end of the day, I think I would still play some Souls games over this. But if this game is just the start of Neowiz, and we can expect similar or even better quality going forward, I think we might be looking at a new industry titan in the making.

If you have even a fleeting interest in Souls games, or are simply looking for a really cool, albeit very tough gaming experience, look no further than that. Lies of P will definitely earn a spot on my end of the year list, and I predict it’s gonna be somewhere in the top 3.

God, this game is so good and interesting I don’t even know how to end the review properly. There are still SO many things I’d love to talk about, but this review is already among the longest I have ever written.

Now the choice is up to you:

Lie or Die!


Moonscars often comes tantalisingly close to being a really competent game but then, just as quickly, will make some really clumsy mistakes that could’ve been easily avoided with more care and effort. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes even quite good, the potential is here, but the execution is sadly lacking.

5 / 10
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Man, I just don’t seem to have any luck with Metroidvanias as of late. Over the course of the last two years I must’ve played well over 10 of them, and I’m sad to say that the vast majority of them really aren’t anything to write home about. It’s gotten so common I’ve come to use the term “Midroidvania” to refer to the majority of them. And with that I don’t mean to simply shit on the (mostly independent) developers working in that genre; but rather I want to acknowledge that making one of these is HARD. There are so many individual elements you need to get just right. A good MV has to have a great world to explore, good combat and platforming mechanics, a good art style and good music to begin with. If even one of those core aspects doesn't fully connect with a player it can destroy the entire experience before it even fully started.

The best one I played last year was probably Ender Lilies (which I’ve spoken about in a review here), and that one was admittedly mostly pretty good, albeit with some definite room for improvement. The rest of them, while not terrible, were either too linear and short, or would try and force in some really unfitting game mechanics that did not complement the MV structure what so ever. Others yet were MVs only insofar you unlock abilities that let you bypass obstacles which you couldn’t before, while barely engaging with what are in my opinion the most interesting aspects of the genre; exploration, backtracking and environmental story telling. The last Metroidvania I played I would call a genuinely fantastic game front to back is Blasphemous; and it’s precisely the game that Moonscars seems to take heavy inspiration from.

Moonscars, like Blasphemous, is a Metroidvania set in a dark, (presumably) post-apocalyptic, medieval European inspired world filled with castles, caves, ghouls, ghosts and goblins, populated by weirdos who speak in riddles and with imagery drawing heavily from Christian iconography. It’s thick with atmosphere and asks the player to really take in the environments, and to wallow in the melancholy that the world presents.

But where Blasphemous is a game which masterfully weaves together an imaginative, rich world full of incredibly dense and cryptic lore, with great, fluid combat, great exploration and some of the best art and music in gaming period, Moonscars, in an attempt to more-or-less copy this entire formula wholesale, never really gets to define itself as its own unique experience, and also fumbles some of these aspects to the detriment of the whole game. The developers here were so busy creating an experience similar to Blasphemous, it feels like their inspiration became their literal blueprint, and this will become apparent the more we get into the nitty gritty.

Before I get more into the negative aspects of Moonscars, I want to highlight a few things I enjoyed about it first, and why - despite criticising this game quite harshly at times - I would still consider this an overall decent experience that’s at least worth a try if you’re a fan of the genre.

Let’s start with the fact that Black Mermaid (the dev studio) is a very small, newly established team from Moldova with no prior experience in making games, meaning that this is their first game they ever made. And considering that, it’s a very impressive feat that the game came out as solid as it did. I really want to again hammer home the point that I do NOT intend to shit on a small Eastern European studio with a number of employees smaller than that of a regular dentist’s office. Instead I want to offer constructive criticism where it makes sense.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of this game would have to be the combat. Here, it’s definitely the closest to actually feeling like a really solid game, making it feel like this is where most of the time and effort went. The animations on Grey Irma (the player character) look fluid and deliberate, and at times come very close to Blasphemous, with the difference that Moonscars actually manages to give the attacks and movements even stronger feeling of weight and impact. There is more inertia involved, which feels different from Blasphemous’ more “arcady” movement. The combat can be best described as “2D Souls-lite”, meaning you have your typical high-commitment attack animations which can’t be cancelled, an I-frame dodge, a parry, a magic/mana bar which lets you use spells, having to retrieve your XP on death aka “corpse running”, etc. You get the idea. In general it feels very close to Blasphemous, but I will utter my hottest take in the entire review right now; I think that Moonscars’ combat has the potential to be even more fun than Blasphemous. At least, I found myself slip into “the zone” a lot more often with Moonscars, than it did with the other one. You have more movement options, you’re faster, you have more attacks and you also die quicker. You have a Hollow Knight-esque heal that replenishes whenever you deal or receive damage, but you can use it a LOT faster and more efficiently than in that game. At first I thought that this was stupidly overpowered, with you being able to instantly heal basically whenever you want, but you can still be attacked and, like in Hollow Knight, you heal from the same mana pool that you use your spells with, which are going to become your main source of damage over time. There are also the so called “special weapons” (more like special attacks) you’ll occasionally find by beating certain enemies of completing certain tasks, but I’m afraid I’ll have to save talking about them until we get to the “bad” portion of the game, since this aspect is sadly the biggest flaw with Moonscars’ combat. Finally, the enemy design is really cool for the most part, and their variety is, overall, sufficient. It’s not fantastic, and there were times (especially towards the end) where I felt like I saw the same few enemy types over and over again but with slightly different attack animations, but it definitely gets the job done much more than other games in the Metroidvania genre. The same can be said for boss fights. They’re solid, some are even pretty good. I’d say their biggest problem is that they all feel somewhat similar, like, they’re all testing very similar skills, just in different permutations. But yeah, overall this is where the game is strongest.

Let’s talk about the level and world design. Both aspects are done rather well for the most part, and certainly better than other’s in the genre I’ve played, but already there’s a lot of room for improvement here. More on that later though. As for the good bits, the levels are all very pretty. The artists took meticulous care in illustrating the backgrounds and all the individual elements. The lighting is quite beautiful for the most part and I think the levels all do a very good job of leading you through them without making you go down a specific path. Sometimes they do get a little too linear for my taste but it’s fine. Short cuts are frequent and see more usage than checkpoints, which are surprisingly few and far between across the whole world, which in my opinion is a good thing. Using shortcuts over checkpoints is always a great way of cultivating an actual understanding of the map in the player, since it reduces the necessity for fast travel.

The music is also very nice, even if it’s a little understated at times. It’s melancholic, sad and bleak, but never without a glimmer of hope in there, somewhere, reminiscent of FromSoftware’s Souls games. The biggest compliment I can give it is that it always felt fitting to the environments, and that sometimes it’s really serene and beautiful, even if it feels like it’s kinda everything to draw attention away from itself.

A thing I found particularly impressive was the fact that the entire game works without a single loading screen, instead seamlessly transitioning between stages. It really seems to be one, massive, contiguous map, making it feel very similar to the original Dark Souls in that regard. You can go from the very first frame of the game all the way to the credits without ever leaving the actual gameplay - safe for some very scarce cutscenes. This makes for really great traversal, never taking you out of the action, no matter where you go. I always love when games are able to do this, it makes the whole act of going through a place so much more authentic.

All that said, I’m afraid this is where I’m kinda running out of things to praise. Do not get me wrong, so far this is all incredibly impressive and ambitious for such a small team with so little experience. If nothing else this really highlights their potential and makes me very interested in whatever they’re doing in the future. But now we have to get into what they need to work on and do differently the next time.

Without further ado, let’s get right into my least favourite aspect of Moonscars: it’s story - or rather, its presentation thereof. You know what, scratch that, just the writing in general.

In the broadest possible sense I would describe this game’s style of writing as: Death Stranding / Metal Gear meets Dark Souls / Blasphemous. Meaning, you’ll get absolutely drowned in expositional dialogue (more often monologues), characters will never stop talking at you but they only speak in the most arcane way possible, which means none of it will make any sense to you at all. You get buried in utterly meaningless world salads. This is bad enough when it comes to story moments or boss monologues or whatever, but in Moonscars, literally none of the characters EVER stop talking. I am seriously not exaggerating when I say that this game has perhaps the biggest ratio of unnecessary dialogue to gameplay I have ever seen. They NEVER stop talking. It’s mental. One of the most egregious examples of this comes in the form of the “memory mould” interactions. These things basically work like the consumable Soul-items from Dark Souls, which give you XP when used. Usually with these games, you just gulp them down and that’s it. But in this game, instead, you have to go to an NPC who will greet you with 3 entire boxes of dialogue each time, then you’ll have to give her one (for a pitiful amount of XP no less) but you only get it if you listen to TWENTY fucking boxes of dialogue - PER MEMORY MOULD. This is absurd to the point of parody. Was there truly no one in the development team who realised how utterly fucking grating this would be?

Given the way I just went off about the writing in this game you might not believe me, but I don’t even mind having to listen to a lot of dialogue if it’s any interesting. I love the Metal Gear series, and I particularly love the fact that they talk so much, because if it’s not actually interesting it’s at least funny or zany. Here, everything is just boring and nondescript. It’s as if the devs were deathly afraid to break out of the mould (pardon the pun) that Dark Souls set for the genre.

It’s quite sad that Moonscars is so afraid of actually just saying what it wants to say. Because despite the game’s best efforts of making itself as incomprehensible as humanly possible, I was able to pick up on something resembling themes here. Of course you have the setting, which frames the story as the experience of a clay statue, mixed with a surprising amount of dialogue that explicitly discusses Grey Irma’s identity as a woman. In fact, there seems to be a lot of imagery and symbolism relating to womanhood, menstruation and childbirth/raising children. It’s almost as though underneath all the rubble of forcibly abstruse walls of text, there might be something of an interesting story developing. It’s very unfortunate then, that this game chose this particular style of plot structure, because now I will never bother to find out anything, simply because the act of engaging with this story feels almost punishing.

Sadly we’re not quite done yet, as another problem that compounds with this comes in the form of really questionable translation. It’s been a bit too long since I’ve beaten it to accurately remember the exact wording of some of the badly translated lines, but I can recall at least a few phrases. For example, at one point King Drahan is referred to as “the only legit ruler of the land”, when they clearly meant to say “the legitimate king”. In general, people in the game would often use wildly inauthentic language, like using modern slang like “for real”, or “that’s cool” or similar things like that; and if this felt at all intentional I wouldn’t even point this out. But it’s fairly obvious that they tried to go for your typical pseudo-medieval Ye Olde English in the same style of Dark Souls and Blasphemous, but whoever was in charge of the translation into English sadly doesn’t seem to be fluent enough to competently write in that style. I did also very briefly check out the German translation (I speak German natively) just out of sheer curiosity, and unsurprisingly this translation is much worse. Spelling errors, grammatical errors and even some core elements of the story get translated extremely weirdly. Like, “Ichor” is translated to “Sekret”, which means “secretion” and has nothing to do with Ichor, the Blood of the Gods - in fact, it doesn’t really have a German translation as such. It’s usually just called “Blut der Götter / Götterblut”.

So this has been by far the game’s biggest flaw as I’m concerned, but sadly there is more we need to talk about.

Let’s continue with the fact that Moonscars is, at its core, extremely linear with no real instances of optional side paths, secret areas, secret bosses or anything at all really. The most you’re getting is getting to explore the individual levels relatively freely, although even here you’re led by the nose for most of it. What’s stranger is that you don’t don’t even really have to go back to previous areas at all if you don’t want to. In fact, the devs just don’t seem all that interested in making you actually explore the world they created. The only instance where you’re given the option to go back and explore is to gather a whole bunch of lost earrings. And it’s honestly pretty boring. Finding these is necessary to complete a side quest, but they only spawn in Ravenous Moon mode.

I haven’t talked about it yet because it didn’t really fit into the rest of the text yet, but to briefly explain it: The Moon Phase mechanic is a bit like Demon’s Souls “World Tendency” and is almost certainly inspired by it.

[For those that don’t know what that is: In Demon’s Souls, you have 2 forms. Human and Soul. If you die in human form at any point in a level, your so called “World Tendency” goes down one step towards Black, aka “Black World Tendency”, for that level. If you kill a boss, a Red Phantom or help another player do the same your tendency will instead shift to “White”. This works in a 7-tier system, where it goes from -3 to +3. -3 represents “Pure Black”, +3 represents “Pure White”. In Pure Black, enemies will deal increased damage, have increased health, will spawn in higher numbers but will also drop more souls and better items. In Pure White, the opposite is true. There are also specific events that will ONLY happen during either Pure Black or Pure White tendency.]

Basically, Moonscars tries to implement a similar system, with Ravenous Moon mode being the equivalent of Pure Black World Tendency. If you die a certain amount of times, the moon will become red and enemies will deal increased damage and have increased health, but will also drop more XP. You can also just switch it on or off at the Checkpoint with a consumable - at least at first. In Demon’s Souls, this would add new stuff to levels you’ve already been through, maybe include some otherwise unobtainable weapons or spells, etc. Here, it’s really just to increase enemy strength and so you can find those ear rings. It feels woefully half-baked, and like they just implemented it without thinking about how this would translate into an actual gameplay mechanic.

That tangent out of the way, let’s get back to the world design. This world consists of only 5 areas. The tutorial area village, the obligatory castle level, 2 (technically 3) separate underground sections and the top of the castle. In terms of variety in level structure, to say that this is the barest of minimums is to be euphemistic. It makes the world feel incredibly tiny. It would be one thing if the story of this game truly revolved specifically around the castle, but instead it’s about the fate of the whole kingdom and life and the universe and god and everything. And as such it just feels weird that the entirety of this game’s world-defining plot takes place entirely within the castle. As a matter of fact, only 4 out of the 5 areas in the game see actual continued usage. Once you’ve cleared the tutorial, you literally never have to go back there, not even to collect ear rings. I know this seems like a weird complaint, but to me having to go back to the tutorial area later in the game is a staple of the genre. It connects the beginning of the story to its end, and it recontextualises your journey, shows how far you’ve come. I 100% expected to emerge out of some underground passage and end up in the village at some point in the game, but that moment never came.

The lack of more individual areas would be excusable if the already existing ones would try and stand apart even the tiniest bit, but sadly they all follow the same design philosophy from start to finish, but game design wise as well as aesthetically. All areas sadly feel overly similar in terms of vibe and structure. Sure, the castle level is a bit more vertically inclined than the lower areas, and you have some very, VERY subtle colour palette swaps between levels, but the vast majority of the aesthetic design of the areas boils down to a lot of grey, black, white and red. At first this is cool and gives the game a strong sense of style, even if it’s a little cliché. But after the first couple of hours, you realise that the entire game looks like this, and it begins to get stale very quickly. Every area effectively feels the same. And, while I did compliment the game for this earlier, the more you play this game the more apparent it becomes just what a massive influence Blasphemous was on any level, especially in terms of art direction. It often crosses the line from “inspired by” to “derivative of”.

But for the strangest thing about this game is that it almost seems like it doesn’t even really want to be a Metroidvania game at all. As strange as it sounds, it almost feels like the initial idea for Moonscars was going to be just a linear 2D action platformer, maybe like the older Castlevania games, and then they tried to tape a Metroidvania system onto it. What do I mean by that?

Let’s start with the fact that, unlike practically any other MV out there, you get only a single ability in the whole game that (very slightly) changes your core moveset and allows you to access previously unreachable areas, and comes in the form of a long dash. This dash is utterly useless outside of the very specific interactions it was designed for, and would be the most disappointing thing about this game, if the other “””abilities””” you got weren’t even lamer. They’re not even abilities, they’re glorified keys. One lets you bypass some weird roots that simply open up when you approach them, and the other’s a literal key. That’s it. No double jump, no hook shot, no phasing through walls, etc. Nothing else changes about your core move set, and you never get to explore places you couldn’t reach before. Again, it’s as if the devs of this game were actively trying to make a Metroidvania game with implementing as few of the typical genre elements as possible. While that could potentially make for an interesting project, the way they handled it here, this game just feels unfinished. Like it’s gesturing towards an idea of a fully formed game, but was never finished.

Another thing I need to briefly address is Moonscars’ so called “special weapon” system. Except they’re more like “special attacks”. And they’re horrible. Seriously, they might be the worst thing about this game. I’m not exaggerating here, literally every single one of these is bad at best, and life-threateningly terrible at worst. Trying to actually use these is a surefire way to die in this game. They’re all infuriatingly slow - one special attack takes as long as about 5 normal attacks and does about half the damage - and they have no hyper armour either. They’re just straight up death traps and I cannot believe they exist in a finished game. There is only a single one that I found at least somewhat practical, and that’s the Harpoon, which is the only ranged option out of these. And believe me, I tried all of them, mostly out of sheer disbelief that they would ALL be this terrible. It’s abundantly clear that these things did not receive enough play testing before release.

And that kinda leads right into the next point; the fact that Black Mermaid’s QA department was either asleep at the wheel or simply nonexistent entirely. This game clearly did not receive a whole lot of play-testing before it got released. There are so, so many little glitches and bugs all over it. There are so many little things that would be impossible to keep in had they been noticed by a competent team of play testers. It begins with the controls feeling extremely unreliable in platforming sections, where platforms moving sideways will actually propel you forward if you land on them with too much speed. Or sometimes, they’ll simply slip away from underneath your feet as if inertia wasn’t a thing in this universe. Sometimes you briefly get stuck on level geometry on the floor and then get yeeted 50 meters to the right because the game stored that momentum. Sometimes you can just slide through wall-spikes and completely cheese the fuck out of a platforming sections. Or one of my favourites: Sometimes when I killed enemies, they would simply freeze in the air and stay there, like a statue with floating limbs, until I reloaded the area. But it’s not just related to bugs, it’s also the aforementioned special attacks, the platforming, the walls of text, the overly linear structure, etc. It’s very obvious that this game did not receive the care and attention it would’ve deserved before release. At least 50% of its problems could’ve been avoided with 10 dedicated play-testers playing through the game a couple of times, or hell, even just a couple of staff members. Honestly some of these oversights are so obvious and apparent that this is the only acceptable explanation for me. They simply never checked for this.

Ultimately, this sadly is a very mediocre game on all fronts. It has barely any original ideas here outside of its narrative - which as we discussed is barely even comprehensible. It’s very short and its world feels rather diminutive. It took me less than 10 hours to beat this, and that’s even though I did all side content I found. This needn’t be a problem in principle, but Moonscars does feel like it’s trying to trick you into thinking that it’s bigger than it actually is. It’s combat is solid but even here there are severe shortcomings. The bosses are neat but are about the only thing I can’t find some critical flaw with.

This review ended up a lot more negative than I originally intended, because I was going into this with the idea of primarily pointing out the good things about it. But the more I thought about it and the more distance I had to it, the more I realised that this simply is not a very good game, and I’m not sure if I would recommend it to fans of Metroidvanias. I’ve definitely played worse games than this, even within the genre, but only a few. Meanwhile, just about every other MV I’ve played is a more competently put together game than this, even the ones I really didn’t like that much, like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or The Messenger. Despite me not really looking to play those again either, I would much quicker recommend these to you if you’re looking for a new experience.

I’m not saying that there’s nothing to get out of this game; if you somehow manage to crack the code and actually understand what the fuck this game’s story is actually about, you might even enjoy it. You might really enjoy the combat as long as you never touch the special attacks. Maybe you’ll simply get something out of its minimalistic art style. Personally, I think I won’t play this game again any time soon, but I will keep my eyes peeled for whenever Black Mermaid should come up with a new game. Because what Moonscars does show is potential. The potential to mould a fantastic game out of the shards of a mediocre one.

I hope I didn’t come across as an asshole in this review, and I once again want to make clear that I 100% support small indie studios like Black Mermaid and want to see them succeed. But I also have to be honest when I see a game that simply doesn’t work, and I want to help as best as I can by providing constructive but honest criticism where it fits.

Good luck for your next game BM, I’m sure it’ll turn out better!