Lies of P: Review In Progress

mmorpg.com:

Up-front, I’ll say this much: Talking about Lies of P is going to be either a praise or indictment of much of what we imagine the “soulslike” genre to be. 

It doesn’t take long into the game to realize that Lies of P is essentially a display of the genre’s famous key features: tactical action, build optimization, a gritty setting, a lot of dying, and a lot more rolling. Lies of P strips these to a relatively basic state to make itself an approachable entry point for the genre, but does it do enough to stand on its own as one of the year’s most anticipated action-adventure games? 

This question is actually part of why I’ve decided to tackle this review, given, admittedly, extremely minimal experience with soulslikes. At first glance, it even lacked a lot of the more dramatic and complicated systems and gimmicks that other games have worked in. 

However, this approach meant I needed to get good, like, really fast. 

I’m still not sure if I am. But I’m better. I think. While I haven’t managed to finish yet (sorry editors), it’s certainly a game worth talking about.   

The quest to get good takes me through something of a barren landscape of intrigue. If I were told to make a steampunk Bloodborne, this would probably be what it looks like, in general, but so far it’s not really in an inspiring, out-of-this-world way.  

The lore and story are fine so far. It’s getting me through in the sense that, sure, I wanna see this all wraps up. I want to see the city and world saved, I want to delve deeper into how Pinocchio and the “ergo” of the world intertwine, and I want to know how that coincides with this weird pandemic that’s also happening parallel. 

On one hand, elements of Pinocchio just seem like they’re borrowed as an