So I’m in the homestretch of Lies of P (Neowiz Games/Round8 Studio). I’m in chapter 11 and it’s massive. It’s also bullshit. And it encapsulates all my gripes about this game. Needless to say:
*SPOILERS*
You first arrive in a shark submarine on a deserted beach. It’s ethereal, and you go from figures to figures to get snippets of the story. Which I liked! And you get consumable souls, er, ergo, which, ok? I don’t know why, but I’ll always take crushable souls. Sophia, the level-up lady (blue fairy/firekeeper/etc.) is there and she tells you she’s from there. Her father was the head of alchemists, I think, but something something Simon something something righthand man. He split up her soul and something something something. This is the way to explain how she can be in several different places at once.
By the way. The nonsense in the game started, well, right from the beginning, but it was chapter four when it got ridiculous. So, yes, very early on. That’s when it first got up its own ass and wanted to out-Dark Souls FromSoft. This is one of my biggest issues with soulslikes. They don’t know when to stop. They take elements of From games and mash them together in a way that is untenable.
In this case, every area reminded me of three or four areas in a From game blended into one, and it’s not great. There’s a section in the…ah…seventh chapter I think that is in the rafters (again) with shielded robots (what I think of as mini-mini-bosses, but more like black knights–just extra-hard enemies) and these whirly robots/puppets who throw bombs at you. Somone in the RKG Discord said he expected me to say something about it. I said, honestly, at that point, I was just done with it. Yes, it’s like the rafters in Dark Souls III ramped up to a hundo. The way I dealt with it was to bait the two-shields asshole to one side and then run by him and the whirly robots to the shortcut.
That’s right. I did not fight that asshole in the rafters. Why? One, I had fought them before. I had no need to fight them again. Two, I just couldn’t be fucked. That’s really it, mostly. Starting in the seventh or so chapter, I just started running by enemies I didn’t want to fight. I haven’t leveled up much at all in the last three or four chapters, preferring to use my souls for throwables. My one saving grace in the game.
Which is another reason I’m hating the end game so much. At a certain point, you cannot use the Stargazers. And you have to defeat a boss in order to get back to Hotel Krat. The corrupted version of the puppet master, er, parade master, who was the first boss I fought. And up until the end boss of chapter four, the hardest boss in the game.
And you cannot summon your specter. So to recap. You have to fight a souped-up version of one of the hardest bosses in the game by yourself without any throwables except what you have on hand. Which wasn’t much. I had some because I always overbuy when I can, but I didn’t have much.
Also, here’s a funny(ish) story. You start with 3 pulse cells–healing items. You get one more when you, ah, reach Hotel Krat? Meat Geppetto for the first time? Then you can get one in the skill tree, phase one, and two in phase two (that’s one ‘skill’). That puts me at seven, which is what I ran with for several hours. I thought that wasn’t much, but I didn’t see any more when I unlocked Phase 3 or Phase 4.
Last night, I was looking for the cheese for the boss I’m on. I noticed that they had 10 pulse cells. What? Oh, by the way, there’s a pulse cell recovery skill, too, which I mistook for more pulse cells. WRONG. It’s amount you recover per pulse cell. I think? I’m still not sure, and I’m mad that I wasted quartz on that. Theoretically, it probably is as good as more pulse cells because you’ll have to use less pulse cells. Unless you’re o compulsive healer the way I am. Plus, I have shitty reflexes as I’ve said many times. So I can’t react with how quickly the enemies act.
Also, there is no poise in this game. At all. Enemies can endlessly hit you with four or five combos that can stunlock you and there is not a damn thing you can do about it. You can only watch helplessly as they hammer your full health bar into nothing. The balance is so off in this game. Scrub enemies can kill you in three hits. Mini-bosses can wipe you out with ease.
Also, the enemy variety is nil. And the enemy placement is puzzling to say the least. I would actually say it’s haphazard at best. Like, they were just thrown around willy-nilly. There was no rhyme or reason why certain enemies were the way they were. In the last few chapters, I felt they just didn’t care about theme any longer. they just put whatever wherever (as many as possible). Which, fine, but it makes for a pretty disjointed experience.
I have included a video by Rurikhan that captures a lot of what I feel about the game. I don’t agree with all his points, but I do agree with a lot of them. Espceially about how shit the combat mechanics are. In a game that is supposed to be about the parry, it sure makes the parry extra-hard to do. Plus, as he said, you don’t really feel rewarded for it. Parrying, I mean. There is no riposte to it. There is no free bonus to it. Same as with the groggy state. The enemies/bosses never actually get staggered so you can’t punish them when they are in the groggy state if you’re as terrible as I am at reacting.
I started hating the game in the fourth chapter. And it just got worse with each. Why am I still playing it at this point? I have no idea. Probably because I know I’m at the end of the game and my pride is demanding that I finish it. But the boss I’m on now might be the one that permanently broke me. I’m only assuming they get harder from here on out. And I don’t want to beat this one. Can I? Yeah, probably. After a zillion tries, even with the cheese I’ve seen. I just don’t want to.
When you play a game, there’s an unspoken trust that the devs aren’t out to completely screw you over. Even FromSoft. But in this game, I don’t have that trust. And with this boss, I just…feel completely spent. When the second phase kicked in (and I knew there would be a second phase), I was done. In the video I included, Rurikhan said he thinks it’s harder than Sekiro. I don’t know if I would go that far, but I wouldn’t also say categorically that he’s wrong. I (barely) finished Sekiro; I may not finish this game.