Everybody Lies
We’ve all told lies, right? In fact, my favorite TV physician has a saying; everybody lies. And it’s true, sometimes we lie to deceive, other times we lie to spare someone we care abouts feelings; the fact of the matter is that everybody in fact, DOES lie. In the latest non- FromSoftware Souls games (a genre that we here at ZTGD are dubbing ‘OtherSouls’ Lies of P handles the question of lies with a story based on the fairy tale of Pinocchio; but this ain’t no Disney story here there aren’t bright and fun musicals to sway too, no this is dark and gritty, and you will Lie no more, repeatedly.
In Lies of P players walk in the shoes of Geppetto’s greatest creation the puppet now known as P and looks a heck of a lot like Timothée Chalamet. He is awakened in the city of Krat; a once very prosperous city now lying in ruins thanks to the disease plaguing the land. Krat is simply a beautiful place in all its splendor and sorrow, its once shining streets now infested with mad, glossy-eyed puppets, rotting bodies and the like. The world sports some impressive level design, especially in Vengini Works; the cities industrial heart. This place has been wrecked and even sports a nice boulder ala Indiana Jones that players will have to avoid. But it’s the level design that really makes this area pop, going from a factory floor to a subterranean area replete with pipes and all the trappings of a sewer so seamlessly just helps to keep players immersed in the world. Not just that, but Krat is a big place, and the developers at Neowiz & Round8 did a phenomenal job of keeping the world interconnected through various passages and locked paths that can be opened.
MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $49.99
As you have come to expect from these ‘OtherSouls’ games combat is not going to be a button mashing affair but instead the use of blocks and parries are what is going to be needed in order to overcome these puppets. There is a range of weapons from rapiers, swords, clubs and greatswords for players to try their hands with. Some of these can be upgraded and embued with elemental powers so that when players attack, they can add some fire or electricity to the damage. There are no shields in Lies and P but players can use their melee weapons to block and counter attacks. While I have been very vocal that these ‘souls’ games are not my jam at all, I did find a few very high points I loved about Lies of P regarding the combat. For one, players will gain access to an interchangeable arm known as Legion arms. These come in various flavors and can do things like firing a grappling hook at an enemy and pull them in close. This even works and allows players to do a one hit stealth kill on enemies making short work of some of the harder puppets.
Another area I want to give the team praise for is the potion system. Like every other souls game players are limited in their healing pots, in Lies of P players can recharge their charges by attacking and causing damage to enemies. I was able to survive the boss fight with the Mad Donkey just because I was able to get a health charge back. Also, in combat if players can land a perfect block, they won’t take damage and will add to an invisible stagger gauge that each foe has. Once staggered their health bar will get a white outline and players can charge their heavy attack which will stun enemies and open them up for a flashy combo. It’s imperative to utilize the stagger mechanic and hit those combos for big damage bursts.
These games are all about dying and dying again, and who among us doesn’t enjoy the jog back to pick up your dropped grace/souls/jangolo or whatever else weird name these developers give the stuff in these soul’s games. I am being facetious of course; I hate it and in Lies of P they have implemented a system that makes it slightly better. First off, if players are killed in a boss room their Ergo (which is what the grace/souls resource is called here) of course drops BUT its put outside the boss room. Which means they don’t have to go into the boss area and make a beeline for the dropped currency because they can pick it up before they even go in. The other thing is that just because I dropped Ergo and died doesn’t mean I lost it, in Lies of P, players will lose a percentage of their resource for every hit of damage they take making their way back to it. If they die, that just means they will lose more of it but the game doesn’t even just take it all away, which makes the sting of dying repeatedly a little less painful… but only by the smallest of margins.
The narrative in Lies of P is something I have found myself enjoying. The world allows players to explore and find secrets but unlike the From Souls games the narrative isn’t presented here as something that needs to be pieced together. Players will have cutscenes, conversations and directions on where to go in order to move the story along. Shout out to the voice actors who worked on Lies of P, they have a really solid cast, and I came away impressed by more than one cutscene. Likewise, to the team who designed the dolls, so many of them are in a word – creepy. They look at you with lifeless, dead eyes and if you have a phobia of dolls this game will probably trigger you, just a warning. I think one of the things that really hurts the most is the lying mechanic just feels tacked on. Multiple times throughout the story P will be asked to either lie or tell the truth; the choice is up to the player but each time he lies a message appears saying his gears have reacted. Nothing ever changes on P, his nose doesn’t grow, he doesn’t get a swollen tongue, nothing. These lies will depend on what type of ending players will receive and can make NPC’s less afraid of him. P is a puppet after all and you will often be lying to blend in as a human, this will make them trust you more but at what cost?
Lies of P is a beautiful game that moves very fluidly, but for me the combat is just too slow. It is faster than some of its souls-counterparts but still not to a level that I find truly enjoyable. Aside from a few issues where the game explained a mechanic AFTER the situation occurred causing me to fail or die; I never ran into any real technical issues with Lies of P on PC. I will say that issue is a BIG on though, for some reason these games (Souls games..all of them) are absolutely abysmal at explaining mechanics, abilities and sometimes basic gameplay functions. Why should I have to struggle for hours with something when you could have presented it in a tutorial and made things easier? I assume the same reason we, YET AGAIN can’t have a difficulty slider in these games. Steel Rising remains the gold standard with its accessibility options in making that game playable for everyone without taking anything from anyone who wanted to be beaten into submission. I don’t get why this is still a thing in 2023, options are a good thing I assure you.
Lies of P comes across as the ‘Bloodbourne we have at home’ from its gothic architecture and dark and gritty themes it feels very much like the Bloodbourne fans have been craving at 60fps. But Lies of P does enough to cut the strings that may be attaching it to Sony’s Bloodborne. Round8 and the team have carved out just enough to make this genre their own, from the tweaks to health and combat to the way recovering lost ergo works; Lies of P has become managed to indeed become a real boy.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
