When I saw the first trailer for Lies of P, it was difficult for me not to get excited with how clearly it expressed its obvious inspirations. Sony may refuse to ever announce a sequel to Bloodborne or a version of Bloodborne for the PC—because they must hate money—but at least smaller developers are willing to give us alternatives until that day never comes. Despite having fatigue for Souls games and preferring just to play Bloodborne every once in a while, my positive experience with Another Crab’s Treasure revitalized my interest enough to finally give Lies of P a try.

Anyone familiar with Bloodborne and the Dark Souls games will take one look at the game and get a pretty good idea of what the experience of Lies of P is like. This game wears its inspirations on its sleeve. It is a character-action RPG with fast-paced combat and punishing difficulty. As you progress through the game, you’ll level up, gain new equipment and abilities, face off against more powerful and difficult enemies, and die many times in the process. It’s a game that is all about the reward of its engaging combat and overcoming its sometimes-cruel game design. When it comes to comparing Lies of P to various From Software games, it has taken clear inspiration from all of them. Aesthetically, it’s very much like Bloodborne. Combat, however, is more like Dark Souls III, with elements of Sekiro and Elden Ring to add to the defensive capabilities of the character and attacks of various enemies. The real question is whether all these inspirations work together to create something that feels like it has its own identity or if it’s just a soulless homage.

The Short of It

What I’ve Played

• Ver 1.5.0

• 70+ Hours

• Completion of the story without the use of summons

• One playthrough with a “heavy” build and two (including a New Game ++ campaign) with a "dexterity” build

Pros

• Great, difficult bosses from start to finish

• Phenomenal art design

• Decent boss music

• Interesting levels with clever design

• Customization and leveling mechanics are really interesting

• World feels cohesive with how areas connect with each other

• Interesting story that makes the world worth exploring and revisiting

• Impressive graphics, sound, and animations

• Great enemy, character, and world design

• Nice small quality-of-life features

• Big and small reasons for playing New Game +

Cons

• A few noticeable issues with button inputs not always reading, especially backstab attacks

• The camera is the true final boss

• Got stuck on geometry a few times

• Some unsatisfying side quests

• Some bad voice-acting

• A lot of items were placed in precarious areas that were not worth the risk

• Text disappears from the screen too quickly sometimes

• Usual shenanigans with hit-boxes and hurt-boxes

• Gold-coin fruit mechanics seem undercooked

• Similar issues with Dark Souls III’s overabundance of checkpoints, enemy mobs, and excessive fall damage

• Repeated lines of dialogue during difficult boss battles

The Rest of It

Story

The city of Krat has seen a surge in prosperity relatively recently. With the discovery of a new resource called Ergo, alchemists and inventors have found ways to manipulate it to power their machines and create medical miracles. This includes the countless puppet automatons that serve the citizens of Krat. However, tragedy occurs in the city as a mysterious disease spreads throughout the populous and the puppets suddenly lose their sanity, becoming violent machines of murder. In the chaos, the citizens seek refuge within their homes and hold out hope that a cure for the sickness can be found and that the puppet uprising will come to a quick end. Fortunately for all of them, the puppet of Geppetto has recently awoken and is a very special puppet indeed as he is destined for greatness as the hero this city needs.

While Another Crab’s Treasure was a Souls-like that was very focused on its story with numerous cutscenes and dialogues with side characters, Lies of P follows the more traditional format of the genre. You are given a general premise and backstory to the world, but it’s up to you to really engage with much of it. Just like the SoulsBornes of old, a lot of the story and lore of the world is gained through brief dialogue interactions with other characters and item descriptions. Your mechanical cricket companion Gemini often chimes in to provide color commentary or description, but most of Lies of P’s story is told passively through the environment and items you find. In fact, there are plenty of places, characters, and side-quests that you can easily miss if you’re not being thorough in your exploration. Sometimes those quests feel worth it for the little extra story and physical reward, and sometimes they end up being a little uninteresting. While perusing wikis about this game for extra details and context, I saw plenty of comments from different players expressing frustration in how obtuse this game could be, which I found odd because every From Software and Souls-like I have ever played had something I missed the first time I played it, including entire areas. Have they played any of those games without a guide before? There are plenty of secrets in Lies of P, but nothing as substantial as something like Castle Cainhurst from Bloodborne.

While I found the story and the various twists and turns it takes along the way mostly entertaining and interesting as a radical retelling of the story of Pinocchio, I wasn’t pulled in quite as much as I was with the From Software games…at first. After I reviewed the various descriptions and dialogues on wikis to get a connected perspective on the lore behind the game, I had a bigger appreciation for what Lies of P was doing. It has numerous references to the original story. It has various side stories that you can completely miss if you’re not thorough with your exploration. It telegraphs its plot twist in a way that you can truly appreciate more during New Game +. The backstory to the Ergo substance and what caused the calamity at Krat is about as tragic and malicious as the events in Bloodborne. This was made by a significantly smaller development studio than From Software, so there’s only so much you can expect something like this to have, but they exceeded expectations in numerous ways. Simply put, there are some interesting side characters you meet along the way along with a few sub-plots that have to do with the puppets becoming more sentient, and the story behind who Pinocchio is and what makes him so special is definitely interesting if you’re willing to engage with it. If not, however, there’s still the main reason to play it…

Gameplay

Upon starting the game, you have three different Pinocchio builds to choose from. You can play as a standard balanced character with a saber, a dexterity version with a rapier, and a heavy fighter with a greatsword. Of course, you gain access to other weapons later on that are suited to the stats you upgrade which can vary greatly in how the game is played. My first playthrough was with a heavy weapon, which made my attacks hit extremely hard but slowly. I never strayed from this build much throughout the first playthrough. In fact, I doubled down and chose one of the heaviest boss swords in the game as my primary weapon by the end. Having played the game again with a faster build that uses dexterity-based weapons I can say that heavy weapons are essentially hard-mode for Lies of P. I still had an immense amount of fun with the game and got that signature rush of satisfaction after beating a fast and relentless boss with such a slow weapon. It forced me to get good with all the mechanics of combat and wait for the most opportune moments to strike.

When it comes to the combat mechanics, there’s quite a bit of depth to Lies of P. You have your primary weapon with heavy and light attacks that use up a certain amount of stamina based on the weapon. You can string the attacks together as well as charge your heavy attacks for more damage. If you use up all your stamina, you have to wait for it to recharge before attacking again and are susceptible to having your guard broken if you defend yourself during this time. You also get access to a puppet arm, or Legion arm as it is called. You can craft different arms that scale with various stats of Pinocchio and do a multitude of things. One can shoot electricity, one shoots fire, another is a mine layer, and so forth. Depending on your playstyle and build, these arms can be extremely useful in certain situations and can drastically alter how you approach a situation. In my first playthrough, I primarily used the electrical arm as an extra attack in between strikes where my stamina was low. In my second, I used both the gun and wire arm that allowed me to stay away from the enemy and hit them or zip in close for a fast and powerful attack. All were very different but effective and satisfying ways to approach the combat.

In addition to your standard attacks and puppet arm, you also have access to special moves that are tied to your weapon. Fable Arts, as they are called, use the blue meter below your stamina bar. Each weapon has two types of Fable Arts moves which can vary from a series of attacks, to one big attack move, to something that changes the property of your weapon for a brief period of time. Fable Arts and charged heavy attacks can also be used to cripple an enemy and put them into a stunned state when they’re particularly vulnerable to the attacks, which can lead to a critical hit that does massive damage.

Lies of P is a fast game that requires you to dodge a lot of attacks as you would in Bloodborne. However, it also has a block mechanic which is incredibly important to the combat. Blocking attacks with your weapon shaves off portions of health that can be regained upon delivering your own attacks, which is similar to the Rally mechanic in Bloodborne. In addition, if you block at the precise moment in which the enemy hits you, you can deflect their attack and negate any damage, which is a mechanic that is very similar to the combat from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Doing so also weakens their stance and slightly damages their weapon’s durability. This can lead to enemies breaking their weapons in combat, but more importantly, it puts enemies in the vulnerable state I mentioned in which you can stun them. While dodging is certainly important, I found myself trying to perfect the block mechanic a lot more because of how beneficial it was to the combat. It’s also required a lot of the time because many enemies have their own unblockable moves that you cannot use the invincibility frames of dodging to avoid and must parry with a perfect block instead.

When you’re not worrying about your stamina and health, you also have to be concerned about the durability of your weapon. In most games like this, weapon durability is often inconsequential or just to be used as an occasional inconvenience to the player. However, weapon durability plays a big part in the gameplay of Lies of P. Lengthy fights will wear down your weapon to the point that it can break, making your weapon useless until you return to a checkpoint and repair it. Pinocchio has a sword sharpener in his puppet arm that you can use at any time to repair the weapon, though it leaves you open to attacks, so knowing when and where to use it is essential. There are plenty of bosses towards the end of the game that push your durability to the limit and require you to repair it quickly in between their relentless assaults, adding a lot of stress and drama to each big battle.

In addition to your weapons, you can also find various amulets, armor pieces, and consumable items to help keep Pinocchio alive in combat. While I often found most of the consumable items beyond healing and weapon buffing items relatively useless in these games, Lies of P gives you several different items that I found exceptionally useful in clutch moments. What you equip can give you boosts to your stats as well as certain abilities, but you’ll need to keep an eye on your equip load as being too heavy will make Pinocchio evade slower and consume stamina more quickly.

Where Lies of P really shines in the gameplay is with the engaging combat and weapon variability. The combat, especially during boss fights, requires you to be aware of your situation and when to go on the offensive. Like many other similar games, the camera can work against you if you are up against a wall and your weapon can bounce off the background if you’re not careful. Many may find those to be annoying problems of these types of games that should be fixed, but I believe that it’s up to the players not to let themselves get into those situations in the first place. Nonetheless, there were some moments in which the game let me down. I got stuck on the geometry a few times and had to reset the level. The backstab mechanic, while not broken, still is not always accurate and requires the benefit of the doubt at times. The more annoying occurrence was when I pressed a button and the game did not respond. It didn’t happen too often, but enough to make me feel like I was getting hit when I shouldn’t have. Regardless, these were all mostly minor issues in my experience.

As for the weapon variability, there are quite a few to try. Aside from the weapons that are made using materials from a boss, every weapon in the game is customizable. You can upgrade them all, of course, but the weapons in Lies of P allow players to swap handles and blades with one another. The handle determines the primary moveset of the weapon while the blade portion often dictates the type of damage it can do and any additional properties. For instance, you can take a fiery knife blade and stick it on the end of a spear handle for a fire spear. Likewise, you can take a slow and heavy sawblade and attach it to the handle of a police baton to make it much faster. The Fable Arts available to the weapon are tied to both the handle and blade, so you can have a lot of interesting combinations, leading to more reasons to keep replaying it and trying new strategies. When I finished the game with my heavy build, I was eager to see what the experience was like with a focus on dexterity, which proved to be significantly different in a lot of ways as I got access to more weapons I had previously ignored.

It’s a good sign for the game when the first thing I wanted to do after beating the extremely difficult final boss was to start the game over with a different weapon and playstyle, eager to fight the bosses all over again. Most of them were fast, creatively designed enemies with numerous cool moves that forced you to learn and engage with the game’s mechanics. Even the bosses who forced me to retry them for hours were too much fun to fight for me to really get frustrated. There was really only one boss that I found to be very gimmicky and simplistic, but he was thankfully the exception to the rule. My second run with a faster weapon against the bosses that had given me so much trouble the first time around only further reinforced my opinion of how much more difficult this game is with a slow & heavy weapon. You have to learn the bosses’ moves and know when the right opportunity is there to take advantage, otherwise you will struggle to make progress through Lies of P’s more difficult sections. When I rolled through with a better understanding of the game mechanics and bosses with a faster weapon, it was a breeze…until I got to New Game +.

Lies of P is a very balanced game because it allows so much versatility in the weaponry and tools, as well as the upgrade paths, while still providing challenging opponents to test your playstyle. The game allows you to reattribute points and skills to your character, which may be necessary if you struggle to finish it on the first playthrough because New Game + adds more upgrades for Pinocchio as well as makes the bosses hit that much harder. The bosses I quickly defeated in my new fast-weapon playthrough became difficult all over again and forced me to use all the tools at my disposal to beat them. This may not sound great to people who are unfamiliar with the genre, but this is exactly what a From Software fan is looking for when it comes to these games. It shows that there is not one “right” way to play the game and it allows the player to experiment with their style and strategy. As soon as you start to feel overpowered, Lies of P turns up the difficulty and humbles you again. Facing off against one of the toughest bosses for the third time, I started to notice little differences I didn’t see before in their attacks that made me better understand when to approach and when to retreat. You want difficult games like this to have that sort of experience because you as the player feel like you’re improving as you’re learning more about the mechanics and the enemies. It’s a satisfying feeling to conquer a difficult boss the first time and it’s even more satisfying when you beat a more difficult version of them with a better understanding of everything that is going on.

In addition to the enemies, the level design is pretty solid with numerous branching paths worth exploring and countless horrific enemies to defeat. A vast majority of the game leads back into itself in a way that is similar to the original Dark Souls and Bloodborne, making the city of Krat a more interesting and engaging world. There were plenty of small areas that I missed the first time around because I was so eager to keep exploring in a different direction, which is one of those qualities that From Software fans like myself love. Some of the level design and placement of enemies or items come from the more annoying side of the From Software philosophy and are meant to piss you off or troll you, but most of the levels have plenty of reason to roam around and take in the atmosphere. If you’re not interested in doing that, however, you can run past a majority of the enemies to the boss if you know where you’re going.

Presentation

Anyone who has seen this game in action for just a few minutes can see that Lies of P nails its presentation when it comes to design. The enemy designs and environments are all impressive in how they look. With the Parisian architecture and steam-punk aesthetic, the environments in Krat ooze with style. It’s not as immediately striking as Bloodborne, however, there are plenty of moments in which you enter a new area and the game showcases the environment with dynamic lighting. For example, after beating the first boss of the game, you approach Hotel Krat, your hub, and the view of the building towering over Pinocchio shows off the sense of scale to this world. In fact, the use of lighting and shadows in this game does a lot to create the moods and atmosphere that really make the characters pop. It’s an impressive-looking game for one that was made with a significantly smaller team than the usual AAA video games. The world looks detailed and cohesive, even if there are certain environmental details that are repeated from time to time. It’s not quite as rich with detail as Yarnam is from Bloodborne, but it’s far better than average.

What does not look so good is when the characters talk and their jaws start flapping. They would have been better off not animating the mouths moving as it just looks goofy watching this small part of their face infinitely repeat its movements as the voice comes through. It also doesn’t help that the voice acting for the characters can be very hit or miss. There are a few characters that are fun to listen to, but some like The Fox and Cat or members of the Black Rabbit Brotherhood fall very flat on delivery.

Thankfully, other aspects of the sound do not fail. The music that typically only plays during boss battles is very similar to the music from games by From Software with big and bombastic orchestras and choirs. The music you can find and play at the hotel also provides a fair amount of variety. Likewise, the sound design is really solid and particularly important when it comes to the gameplay. The noises the enemies make are suitable for what you face. The roars of the puppets all have a grinding sound to them that resembles metal rubbing against metal. The biological enemies make noises that sound like words from a human that have been altered from various intrusions into their vocal cords. In addition, there are certain sounds that play during combat scenarios to notify players of something without having to look at a spot on the screen, such as when your healing item recharges or when your weapon reaches full durability. While there are plenty of From Software games that I have played with background music much louder than the gameplay, Lies of P I would recommend keeping the volume up on the sound effects because of its benefits in addition to the atmosphere they create.

TL;DR

I knew I was going to play Lies of P as soon as I saw the first trailer—it just took a bit of time for me to get over my Souls-fatigue. Having finally tried it for myself, I can say it’s been a phenomenal experience playing a game that was not made by From Software but still has the same feel and experience as one. For a long time, we have gotten many games that are similar to the style of From Software’s games, but very few have managed to get close to their level of quality. Lies of P manages to succeed on all fronts with clever level design, an impressively dense world to explore, difficult and fun bosses, and engaging mechanics. This is easily the best game I’ve played that was not made by the progenitors of the genre and is an easy recommendation to anyone who enjoys these types of games.