Lies of P

"Dark Souls but Pinocchio" sounds like the kind of pitch people make as a joke. Then Lies of P actually did it. Krat is one of the biggest reasons the concept works. This is not another collection of ruined medieval castles. The Belle Époque architecture mechanical puppets and streets filled with the remains of a city that completely fell apart give Lies of P an identity almost immediately. The Bloodborne influence is obvious. Pretending otherwise would be silly. What matters is that Lies of P eventually becomes interesting for its own systems. Weapon Assembly is probably the smartest one. Weapons are split between blades and handles and those pieces can be mixed. You might love the damage type of one weapon but prefer the moveset attached to another handle. Experiment. The game rewards actually thinking about your equipment instead of simply replacing a sword because the next sword has a slightly larger number. Combat leans heavily on timing. Dodging works but Perfect Guard is often the difference between barely surviving a boss and finally feeling like you understand it. That learning process can be brutal. Some fights require enough attempts that casual players may hit the point where satisfaction becomes irritation. Later difficulty options and summons make it more approachable than it was originally without completely removing the challenge. The story also deserves credit for being understandable. There are still mysteries and environmental details for people who want them. You can also finish the game and have a pretty good idea of what actually happened without immediately opening YouTube. Overture turned an already strong package into a much easier recommendation. The expansion adds substantial new areas weapons bosses and story material rather than feeling like a small bonus chapter. The Complete Edition on Switch 2 now puts all of that into one package. That port makes compromises. Visual detail is lower and different graphics modes have noticeable tradeoffs. The fact that this combat-heavy Soulslike works as well as it does on portable Nintendo hardware is still impressive. Lies of P started its life being compared to FromSoftware because that was the easiest way to explain it. The better compliment now is that new Soulslikes get compared to Lies of P.