So now we've all played Lies of P

Does 'P' stand for potential?

Talk about an unexpected surprise! I know this is about the time of year that the indie demos come to flood the market, spurred by the famous 'summer of play' that Keighley instituted, but I honestly never expected to see a nigh-on AAA title make it's debut in the same fashion! Dropped that very moment as the Summer Games fest's conclusion, Lies of P has broken the mysterious aura around itself with a blowout that can't be beaten- a playable gameplay slice. Truly this is the way you give it all to the people who have been sitting on their hands buzzing about this title for the longest time- by allowing everyone to get a feel for the game themselves. And it is significant for a Souls-like, because that impossible to visually show feel of a Soulslike is just oh-so very important. As something of a lover for the Souls style of game myself, let me tell you how I think the Pinocchio tie-in game fairs up.

First off the game looks increadibly pretty, but that's something we all knew going in, now isn't it? The art direction is intriguing in its lavish grandeur plucked and dropped in decay and derision. It's nothing that we haven't seen before from the world of Souls, but it's brought to us with a unique steampunk/functional gothic flair many have found themselves quite captured by. I'll admit I love the 'puppet' enemies and their gear-ridden bodies and rigid mechanical strikes like the twisting arm of a clock face- familiar iconography, such as the classic British bobby police hat, slapped on a dead porcelain mug with sinister red life peeking from the inner workings. It's alluring and dangerous, like a lavish children's doll stuffed with knives- I'm drawn to the danger! I did notice one particularly bad texture-wash moment (which was heightened by the fact it was during a cutscene close-up) but that was one minor visual hiccup in a otherwise meaty demo- I can overlook such small things.

Many others who have played Lies of P, and even in the time before it got into our hands, came back with comparisons to Bloodbourne, and if the visuals are anything to go by that would make an apt comparison because Bloodbourne does very much seem to be the chief inspiration. (At least visually.) Unfortunately, last time I checked Bloodbourne was very much still a Playstation exclusive and so, yep, I still haven't played that game and so I have to base my thoughts on literally every other Souls game in existence. Lucky for me, there's a lot of crossover. Most notably the presentation, UI, unpausing menus- even the sound effects all borrow that basic 'Souls like' make-up box that everyone lends from with this genre. (except for Remnant.) However Lies of P does provide some slight distinctions of it's own, such as the two item quick select menus which I absolutely could not get used to throughout the whole demo. (I just ended up not bothering with consumables. I needed more time to break the hard-set single item-menu souls rule that practically every other game of this type follows.)

Combat is another apt comparison. Formulaic and conceptually simple with simply an attack, a dodge and a painfully narrow-windowed parry- paired against enemy animations being the key deciding factor oin combat evolution. Clearly this game has no interest in providing shields or defensive play options, but it can be quite frustrating to deal with a slightly heavier feeling style of character control whilst being told you're not supposed to eat literally any attack. P isn't exactly nimble, least of all when he 'dodges'- a movement option with a particularly ungenerous 'cancel' window, an action que (for some reason) and a movement radius so slight that most forward pushing attacks (which seems to be the most common type of attack for the early game) will hit you anyway even on a perfect dodge. So essentially the dodge is useless for it's function, but decent for getting behind an enemy quickly. Then there's the parry system.

I both respect and dislike how Lies of P deals with parrying. On one hand it borrows from the Sekiro system of having parry be a tap of the block button, so that even unsuccessful glances have a chance to absorb some impact of the blow if you miss. However there's no 'incoming hit' visual to play off, such as that silver glint on the blade present in Sekiro, and the window seems to be in the exact five or so milliseconds that the attack lands- a painfully unforgiving implementation of a system that large chunks of the combat feel built around. Still, there's a little touch of diversity to your arsenal which can make the player not entirely reliant on parrying, at least with smaller enemies. Their 'borrowing' of the Sekiro prosthetic arm concept allows for various alternative attachments such as a Scorpion-style cable for pulling far away enemies towards you- great for isolating enemies who wander in groups. We've seen but the beginning of this system, but it's a neat way of throwing an extra bit of life into the player's toolset without just overloading their consumables bar.

On a slightly stranger note that I have trouble really identifying myself, there's a curious slant to the way that dialogue is written and performed in the game that I found... vaguely disconnecting. Not in a massively jarring manner mind you, but more in a subtle 'unsatisfying' light. Perhaps it's just the pedigree of the genre throwing undue expectation upon me, mixed with the gothic grandeur of the visual local vicinity which seemed to demand the same standard of... verbosity. What I'm trying to say is that the game has a curiously casual and straight manner of writing it's dialogue and descriptions. No faux old English, no aristocratic turns of phrase, not really any stylised manner of speech at all. It's a little... bland to read. Honestly, it kind of reads like English is the writer's second language, which they're good at enough at to portray the basic idea they want to get across but not quite to the level where they can be artsy with it. (There's even a side quest with the option of lying to a woman with the dialogue choice 'She's cute baby'; which is the kind of grammatical slip up that feels unbecoming of the tone and pedigree of the world around it.)  

And finally I suppose I should talk about the bosses. Perhaps I shouldn't be so happy that Lies of P is leaning into the idea of boss phases, but after playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey in it's entirety I was starting to believe the practice was approaching 'lost art' status. The bosses we've seen so far have been largely in the 'big and bulky' category, with obvious tells offest by large sweeping hitboxes. Being unable to block and with parry being so temperamental, these fights pretty much remain 'tooth and nail' from beginning to end. Catching a single errant swipe you failed to dodge out the way of (no thanks to the particularly poor dodge animation) will put you in the danger zone- thankfully the 'Estus' animation equivalent is far more forgiving than what most Souls games have provided in the past. There's even a curious system somewhat similar to Sekiro's 'stagger' bar also in the game, where if you pile on enough concurrent attacks there's a chance you make the enemy 'groggy' and line them up for a free critical hit- but unless I'm blind to it there doesn't appear to be any visual indicator of when such a stagger is approaching possible so it's not really the most reliable metric to shoot for. That being said, a final finisher strike is a cool way to take down any boss, so points for style.

My only other thoughts on the game are insanely nit-picky things that only a Souls deepcut fan will understand, such as my utter bewilderment to why Lies of P would employ Dark Souls 1's increadibly outdated jump button mapping, being locked to same button as sprint. (I thought we moved past that as  a people.) But in general I really did find my time with the game to be a promising and interesting glimpse into a dark fantasy adaptation I never quite could have imagined. Alice in Wonderland becoming an increadibly dark fantasy? Yeah, that makes sense to me. But Pinocchio? That unexpectedness alone carries it better than average game on the wind of curiosity and mystery, both fine enough vehicles to lead any Souls-like towards well deserved fame.