In 2011, From Software released Dark Souls, a dark fantasy Action-RPG that garnered a reputation for being incredibly challenging while simultaneously extremely gratifying. It was an improvement in almost every way over their initial stab at the genre, the PS3 exclusive Demon’s Souls, and was received so positively that it heralded the start of what would eventually be known as the Soulslike genre. I did not play Dark Souls on release mainly due to its reputation, and believing I would not enjoy such a punishing title. In March 2015 however From Software and Sony released the PS4 exclusive Bloodborne, and I was intrigued. The change of setting from medieval dark fantasy to something that resembled a cursed Victorian London caught my interest. Perhaps it’s because I am from London and the blood and gore-slicked streets of Yharnam reminded me of home, who knows?
Bloodborne is, in my opinion, a masterpiece and is one of my favourite games of all time, and it made me realise I actually loved this genre of game. Since getting the platinum trophy in Bloodborne, I have gone on to finish all of From Soft’s Souls series, Sekiro and Elden Ring, as well as a handful of Soulslikes like Nioh. None of them, not even Sekiro have hit quite the same way Bloodborne did, but Lies of P has come incredibly close.
I slashed, parried and lied my way through 48 hours of Lies of P to earn all of the Trophies, and here is my review.
Lies of P is an action-RPG where you play as a boy called P, named after the titular character from Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel Pinocchio, except instead of a puppet made of wood skilled at getting into mischief, you are a puppet made of steel skilled at murder.
Awakening alone in a train car, you soon realise the city of Krat is almost completely empty, most of its citizens brutally murdered by your mechanical brethren. These puppets have been affected by a strange phenomenon known as the Puppet Frenzy, which has driven them to ignore their prime programming laws which forbid the harming of humans.
The start of P’s bloody quest is discovering what caused this bizarre change at first but it quickly progresses to show there is more going on than just some malfunctioning robots. Almost as soon as you get past the first boss you hear about something known as the petrification disease that has been running rampant in Krat for some time and the game hints that these two things might be linked through the mysterious substance known as Ergo, which also happens to be games currency. Discovering the truth behind this and putting a stop to it becomes the crux of the story and I don’t want to go into spoilers for it but there were reveals I found genuinely surprising and interesting.
It is a really fun uncomplicated story, and this is something I think Lies of P did really well compared with a lot of other Soulslike games. Its story was very clear, not hidden in item descriptions and vagaries. There was a definite sense of forward momentum in the story and the characters progressing it both in the main quest and in optional side conversations, and although it wasn’t a story that had me glued to each cutscene, I felt the tale did enough to keep me interested in solving its mysteries, and honestly, this was more than I expected going into the game.
One of the core narrative mechanics in Lies of P is the fact that, unlike other Puppets in Krat, P can lie. As you explore the city of Krat, you meet other characters, some of whom will stay in the Hotel and act as merchants or help you upgrade your gear, others will be enemies. Many of these have side quests associated with them, and during these, you are given the opportunity to tell the Truth or Lie. An early example of this is there is a woman standing outside a Tram that you need to use to progress the story. She asks if you are a Stalker, which is a militant organisation in Krat. You can choose to Lie to her, giving her a Stalker’s Salute, with which she lets you use the Tram, or you can be a good honest boy and say nothing, in which case she will attack you, and defeating her drops the key for the tram. As you work your way through the story though these options have other effects, the more lies you tell, the less puppet-like P becomes, and there is even a weapon locked behind lying as much as you can. In some cases, the choice you make will affect a sidequest reward or how a character ends up. Two of the three possible endings you get relate to how Honest or Deceitful P has been throughout the game, and I enjoyed that when I played through New Game + there were new story beats and character moments to see.
One small thing I really enjoyed about the story in Lies of P is how many references and nods to Carlo Collodi’s story there are. I loved that many of the Stalkers you meet and fight in the game are based on the animals from the original tale and all wear animal masks to make the connection more obvious. Gepetto is here as the creator of P just like in the original, but there is also a turquoise-haired fairy character, Antonio the carpenter is now Antonia the owner of the Hotel among other cute touches. My favourite of these is how Lies of P represents Pinocchio’s conscience, in this game, named Gemini but spelt GEMINI, who lives in a small lamp at P’s belt and offers some helpful dialogue throughout. I only wish he was a bit more chatty as it felt sometimes I went whole chapters without him saying anything or reacting at all.
The other main characters of the game, as in any Soulslike, are its enemies. Lies of P has a really good variety of creatures for you to shout at as they pummel you into seeing the death screen that taunts you with “Lie or Die”. The initial puppets you meet are really well designed and I liked how much thought seemed to go into what these puppets would have been used for before the cataclysmic event happened. There are traffic wardens, butlers and policemen in the initial areas but as you progress you start to encounter Robot Soldiers, gunmen and even creepy faceless robots, which reminded me of the Working Joe’s from Alien Isolation make up the bulk of the puppet forces that you must fight your way through. The game also has elite enemies, stronger and often larger enemies that are essentially mini-bosses that you run into and these are used just enough to feel like challenges but rarely frustrating. They also have really cool designs, like the Giant Harlequin robot that throws juggling clubs at you. These Elite enemies tend to not respawn either once you have killed them, so it really felt like beating one was a milestone in my progress, even if they cost me most of my resources.
On the other side of the coin, are the organic enemies, creatures mutated by the petrification disease, and I found a lot of these to be grotesquely brilliant. They are generally faster than the puppet enemies and tend to use different status effects and the game switches between these two enemy types depending on where you are in the game. I loved this though as it kept things fresh and engaging, and I always felt like I was meeting new enemy types all the way up to the end of the game. I also really enjoyed that none of the enemy placements felt random, like each enemy type made sense to be in the locale it was in, and it helped some of the later developments with the locales and enemies stand out all the more.
Lastly are the true superstars of the game the Bosses. There are quite a large number of these in the game, and there were not many I managed to beat on my first attempt. Many of them took an almost embarrassing amount of tries before I finally beat them, but with very few exceptions each boss felt unique and exhilarating to fight against. There were so many bosses that I thought had incredibly interesting designs and a lot of them had so much sheer cool factor to them that even the frustration of dying to them so often has not left me with bad memories. On my first playthrough of the game, the last 3 main bosses I found to be incredibly hard, almost to the point where I wasn’t sure how I would beat them, and if I was even going to be able to earn the platinum.
However I did eventually learn their movesets and managed to beat them, and looking back on them now, even if I was incredibly frustrated in the moment, I loved those three fights, with the last one asking so much of you it almost feels unfair. However as I beat the last boss again on NG+ after about 3 hours of trying, I felt the same satisfaction I felt after beating the Sword Saint in Sekiro, or Gehrman in Bloodborne and I loved that Lies of P’s bosses elicited those feelings in me.
So now let’s talk about how you rip and tear your way through Krat to beat the behemoths that stand in your way. Lies of P plays essentially the same as most other soulslike games. You use your stamina to attack, dodge and guard and managing this is key to victory. You have stats that you can level up and each level costs a certain amount of currency, in this game named Ergo which you earn from defeating enemies. You have a finite healing source that is restored when you rest at Stargazers, but doing this also resets all the minor enemies in the area.
This will all sound incredibly familiar if you have played any other Soulslike game before and Lies of P doesn’t do anything really to reinvent the wheel here, and I’m not sure it needed to. What it does do though is draw inspiration from the games that came before it in its combat and make them into a wonderful cocktail of brutal but fun fights. When you are fighting you can choose to dodge attacks or guard against them. Guarding an attack costs stamina and takes a small chunk of HP, much less than you would take if you did not guard, however. The game lets you earn this HP back though by hitting the enemy back, similar to Bloodborne where it rewards aggressive risky counterattacks after you guard. There is also a parry, where if you guard at the correct time, you don’t lose HP at all and you do a large chunk of Stagger Damage to the enemy in return. If you do enough stagger damage, through a combination of Parries and attacks, the enemy will stagger and you can do a big critical attack on it.
These micro decisions in combat make it feel incredibly tense and exciting, as you need to react to the enemy’s moves correctly to not get hit. The enemies also have fury attacks, where they glow red for a moment first before striking. These cannot be dodged through or guarded against, but they can be parried or if you run far away enough avoided. If you parry these attacks it will do a huge amount of stagger damage, and potentially break the enemy’s weapons.
Other attacking options include Legion Arm, which is a robot arm that can be swapped around for different effects. The default is like a grappling hook that drags enemies towards you, but as you progress this can be swapped for a flamethrower, a shield or a gun. You have throwable items such as small sawblades, a grindstone that restores weapon durability but also can add a temporary elemental or status effect to your weapon and other items you can use. The number of weapons is incredible with all of them feeling very different, and being really cool-looking. Most of these also let you swap the blades and handles around so you can keep the big hammer you found but put it on a sword handle to keep the faster moveset with higher damage. In fact, with all of the upgrades and options you have, it can feel a little overwhelming. I spent a lot of time in the Hotels practice yard, trying different weapon combinations and different legion Arms trying to find one I really gelled with and thankfully the game gives you enough upgrade materials that you can experiment with a couple of weapons without feeling like you have made a mistake.
This breadth of build variety is something I really appreciated, especially on my NG+ run of the game. At some point during the game, you unlock the ability to respec your character for a small cost of a currency known as Gold Coin Fruit. Around a quarter of the way through my run, I found I was really struggling and decided to make some changes to my build. My Initial build was a mixed technique and motivity build that focussed on dodging and swiping after a dodge and using a Legion Arm that placed Mines to catch enemies off guard.
I divided to respec and went with a pure Motivity build, putting way more points into Capacity than before and used the extra stamina regen to focus more on guarding and parrying with the Shield Legion Arm. This build felt so different, and effective than my previous one and it carried me all the way through to the Last Boss. I did not change my weapon though, the Bonesaw is the best blade in the game and I won’t hear otherwise.
The game’s combat is brilliant, it is fun and frantic and sometimes stressful but never dull. I feel like Lies of P asks a lot from its players. The parry timing felt so much more narrow than something like Sekiro or Wo-Long’s did and some of the boss fights expect you to really get good at this mechanic to be able to beat them. This feels especially true as all of the bosses in the game had unpredictable combos and seemed to be able to delay their attacks to fake you out. Many times I thought a boss’s combo string had ended, only to get my health bar deleted as it pulled out an additional couple of hits that I’d never seen before. I felt like I had to really earn every victory I achieved. Each area felt like a real struggle to get through and truly challenged you as you slice your way through to each Stargazer.
The areas you will be fighting your way through are incredibly diverse and interesting. You start in a train station, and make your way across the city, hitting up locales like a ruined cathedral, an opera house and my favourite area, an abandoned shopping arcade. All of these areas are so atmospheric and the sense of dread and decay in them was palpable. I really like that there seems to be a sense that real thought went into the design of the city and the way each area flows into the next never felt jarring or out of place.
Graphically I thought the game looked wonderful. Character and enemy models were really great to look at and watch move, their attacks all looked and felt believable and this was really important for a game that is trying to be as horror-inducing as this one.
The backdrops of the city all looked great and some of the vistas were downright beautiful. The game never felt drab and dull despite its ruined city themes. I played the entire game in performance mode, and I didn’t notice any frame rate issues or drops below 60fps at all which is always something worthy of praise.
The sound design in the game was another highlight for me. The music ranged from haunting to epic, one stand-out in particular, is a boss theme in the Cathedral that sounds a lot like Duel of the Fates from The Phantom Menace, and the combination of such great music and an incredibly cool boss design made for a really intense and exciting fight. I also really loved that a little record icon popped up on the side of the screen in Boss Fights to tell you the name of the song. It was actually the sound design of the game that really wowed me, however. The sound of P’s gears whirring as you pull off a fable attack, or watch the big door opening animation was always a joy, and the sound of you hitting a parry and having an enemy weapon breaking in a shower of sparks was a thing of beauty that really highlighted the satisfaction you already felt for getting the timing right. The sound and animation of sharpening P’s weapons on his robot arm is just so good.
There are collectable records you can find or buy that you can play on the Hotel Gramaphone and all of these were pretty good, with “Feel” being a standout that I have listened to on repeat many times both in-game and out of game, and it is these little extras for me that really made me love this game. The selection of costumes you can get, that have no effect on your defense, just letting you choose how dapper you look, is something I would love more Soulslike games to carry forward, and if there is DLC for this game I hope it comes with even more costume options. Also, there is a cat that you can pet, what more could you want?
Lastly, then let’s talk about the Achievements and Trophies you will need to earn in Lies of P. As mentioned earlier, there are three different endings that you can earn, and each one has a trophy tied to it. 2 of these endings are tied to the Honesty and Lying mechanic in the game. You will need to play through New Game+ anyway as some of the collectible records are only obtainable from merchants on your second run. You will need to collect all of these records and Gestures, as well as complete some other collectables such as Cryptic Vessels and finding all the Trinity Sanctums. Keep an eye out for different coloured butterflies as there is a trophy for killing one of each of the different colours, but they also drop incredibly useful upgrade materials which you will need. There are also some Side Character quests that give different rewards and trophies depending on your choices, so 2 playthroughs are a minimum. Many of these are missable so it’s best to stick to one choice throughout your run and do the opposite on NG+ and also to make sure to return to the hotel regularly between chapters to exhaust everyone’s dialogue.
There are obviously trophies for beating each of the main bosses and collecting all the weapons the game has to offer. You also need to upgrade a Normal Weapon, A Special Boss weapon, and One Legion Arm and Increase your P-Organ to Phase 5 which is the max level in your first run.
There is no sugar coating it, I found Lies of P to be incredibly hard at some points of the game, and if this is your first Soulslike I imagine it will take some adjusting to, and NG+ only makes this harder, but really it is only the bosses that get a huge bump in difficulty. If I were to give any advice it would be to stock up on throwables as many bosses take a lot of damage from these, the Shotput in particular can trigger the fatal stagger if the boss HP bar is glowing white so you can get a big fatal attack in. The Aegis Legion Arm is so good once it is upgraded as you can attack while guarding, and also tap the weapon guard button for a much larger parry window than a regular weapon parry. This will wreck so many bosses stagger threshholds and let you get lots of big attacks in. Also try and keep your weight below 60% to keep the best balance between stamina regen and defence.
I would rate this game easily a 7 or 8 out of 10, maybe a 9 if you have never played a game in this genre before.
In summary, Lies of P is one of the best games I’ve played so far this year, and in a year with Baldurs Gate 3, Final Fantasy XVI and Resident Evil 4 Remake in it, it has some incredible competition. Its obvious adoration of its source material and Bloodborne make what should have been a ridiculous concept into something truly fun and memorable. Even with a few Boss fights I felt could have been made a little less challenging, it has become a game I adore and more than holds its own amongst the genre’s best.
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