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!