Review in Progress: Lies of P
I remember when Demon’s Souls was released back in 2009, there were many people who called it a market-unfriendly game. There were pushes to get people to buy it just to experience this supposedly brutal and novel take on action RPGs. Flash forward 14 years, and it’s one of the biggest sub-genres in the industry.
On one hand, I love Demon’s Souls and most of the games that FromSoftware followed it up with. On the other hand, my favorite games to play are the ones I haven’t played before, and a lot of the Soulslikes that followed stick a little too close to the formula for my case. It’s something that nags at me. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but at what point does it cross into plagiarism?
Lies of P is one of the slickest Soulslike games that I’ve seen follow in FromSoftware’s wake. On the other hand, it’s also one of the most derivative, and I’m having trouble reconciling those two competing perspectives.
Lies of P (PC, PS4 [Reviewed], PS5)
Developer: Neowiz
Publisher: Neowiz
Released: September 18, 2023
MSRP: $69.99
Lies of P is based on The Adventures of Pinnochio by Carlo Lorenzini. It’s not a story that I’ve internalized, so most of the references are lost on me. I get the basics. It takes place in the ostentatious city of Krat, where its prized automatons have gone berzerk and, with the aid of a mysterious disease, have killed most of the inhabitants.
You play as one of Gepetto’s puppets, who is unique in being able to break the rules that most other puppets are supposed to be bound by. In a unique storytelling angle, there’s a lot of weight put onto breaking these rules. The game visibly hesitates when the protagonist is presented with an unavoidable lie or conflict with a human. These are difficult
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