Despite having been released over eight years ago, FromSoftware's Bloodborne continues to be among the most popular action role-playing games ever made, thanks to its unique atmosphere and gameplay mechanics. So far, a few soulslike games tried to replicate this formula with little success, such as Spiders' Steelrising, but with Lies of P, NEOWIZ proved that it is indeed possible to create a solid action RPG in the same vein as FromSoftware's legendary title, although the lack of innovation does impact the experience a bit, even with the many tweaks made to the formula.
The Lies of P story was inspired by Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, the tale of the puppet created by Geppetto, who eventually manages to become human. It is not an exact retelling of the original story, however, as the setting is very different from that of the novel and its most popular adaptations. Set in the Belle Époque-inspired city of Krat, the puppet P wakes up finding his creator Geppetto gone, the once beautiful city overrun by crazed puppets, and the population of the city hidden away in fear of both the puppets and a plague that is sweeping the land. Setting out to find Master Geppetto, P will have to fight through hordes of enemies to save the city of Krat and ultimately become human.
In true soulslike fashion, the Lies of P story is mostly told via environmental narration and short dialogue sequences, although it is not very difficult to piece everything together to understand what really caused the puppets to go crazy and the plague to spread across the land. At the end of the day, the story isn't particularly exciting, but it works decently well as a dark retelling of the story of Pinocchio. Multiple endings, which are determined by how much P lies during his adventure, provide a decent enough closure to the tale, which ultimately manages to be entertaining enough despite limited character development and lack of any shocking twists or unexpected revelations.
Playing it safe definitely seems to be the name of the game in Lies of P, as much like with the story, developer NEOWIZ didn't seem too interested in bringing any proper innovation to the formula made popular by FromSoftware. Controlling P from a third-person perspective, players will have to navigate the city of Krat fighting all sorts of powerful enemies that can make short work of the humanlike puppet using a decent selection of weapons, avoid dangerous traps, activate bonfire-like checkpoints called Stargazers, travel to the main hub, the Krat Hotel, to use their earned souls-like experience points called Ergo to level up, purchase items and enhance weapons in preparation of massive boss fights that can really put players' skills and knowledge of the game's mechanics. All in all, it's standard fare for a soulslike.
Thankfully, Lies of P comes with some unique mechanics that somewhat set the game apart from other similar titles. For starters, P can use his left arm, called Legion Arm, to deal tons of damage to enemies, inflict elemental damage, use a wire to snag far away enemies, activate a guard stance with an automatic counterattack, and more. The Legion Arm allows players to customize P's fighting style in conjunction with other mechanics, such as the P Organ mechanics, which are essentially a big skill tree filled with nodes that require Quartz to activate. Each node unlocks a special ability, such as the ability to dodge roll twice, as well as additional stat boosts and more, so with some careful planning, it is possible to create different fighting styles for P. Further expanding customization possibilities are the unique weapon customization mechanics that allow players to use different handles for weapons to give each weapon different Fable Arts, special attacks that require Fable to unleash, and even different scaling off certain stats.
The Legion Arm mechanics aren't the only mechanics that twist those seen in Bloodborne to provide something new. The ability to recover lost health by attacking enemies after getting damaged, to make an example, is limited to the damage received for guarding an attack. Guarding itself should be considered a last-resort measure, as Lies of P's combat was clearly designed around perfect guards or parries, which not only allow P to guard enemy attacks without getting damaged but also to put the enemies in a vulnerable state. Once the opponents' health bar shows a white outline, unleashing a fully charged heavy attack will leave them staggered and open to a powerful fatal attack that deals a lot of damage and recharges Energy Cells vastly, the game's recovery items which can be restored by one unit for free by attacking enemies repeatedly, yet another nod toward the offense-geared combat seen in Bloodborne.
While the solid mechanics and customization options may sound good on paper, they may not mean much if combat and enemy design are lacking, but thankfully this isn't the case with Lies of P. Enemy design is varied enough, and even puppets with similar weapons come with slightly different movesets so as to never make the player feel too comfortable in their perfect guard timings. Powerful mini-bosses are also scattered all over Krat, and they can provide quite a bit of challenge. Main bosses are just as well designed, and a few of them are sure to earn scorn from players due to the challenge level they provide, such as the annoying Archibishop Andreus, who sounds like a callback to Bloodborne's infamous Father Gascoigne, although the two characters have nothing in common outside of being clergymen, and the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, a clear callback to the Abyss Watchers seen in Dark Souls 3. Additionally, the game does feel better to play compared to the demo, as P feels more responsive both while attacking and while dodging.
Level design is another extremely important element of a soulslike experience, and Lies of P seems to get this gameplay element right, for the most part. The city of Krat is quite complex, and the variety of different locations that players will get to explore are made up of different paths and more than a couple of shortcuts, which are often filled not only with enemies but also with items, which include the aforementioned weapons, most of them of the makeshift nature, and other gear that can be used to increase P's defense and grant different bonuses. Despite the complex appearance of the different parts of Krat, the city feels a little linear, with little of the interconnection between different areas seen in Bloodborne and the original Dark Souls. As FromSoftware went in this direction with Dark Souls 3, it's not surprising that NEOWIZ went with a similar design philosophy with Lies of P as well, although this makes the whole city feel more like a gallery of horrors rather than a believable city like Yarnham.
Releasing on current and previous generation consoles, Lies of P definitely doesn't try to push the boundaries of visual quality. While the game generally looks a little soft, at least on PlayStation 5 in Performance Mode, the visuals don't look all that bad. Character models are actually well-designed with plenty of detail, and the locations manage to evoke an eerie atmosphere thanks to wise lighting usage and a passage of time that is, again, reminiscent of Bloodborne. The game also runs great on PlayStation 5, as in Performance Mode, it runs at a steady 60 frames per second without trouble, even during the most intense fights. Quality Mode increases details and resolution at the cost of framerate, which is capped at 30 frames per second, and while the better visuals are nice to have, the lower framerate compared to Performance Mode isn't worth it at all, especially in a game like this. A high framerate mode is also available for Quality Mode, but I could not test it as I do not have a monitor with HDMI 2.1 to enable VRR.
Wearing its influences on its sleeves, Lies of P is a solid imitation of FromSoftware's Bloodborne that manages to stay fun for the entire duration of a single playthrough of around 20 hours, despite a marked lack of innovation. While the callbacks and nods to the game that inspired it may be a little too blatant, NEOWIZ has developed a solid game that all soulslike fans can enjoy if they can keep their expectations in check.
PlayStation 5 version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.
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