Before I start, I want to say that the whole post will be spoilers. So.
*SPOILERS*
I beat the final boss of Lies of P (Neowiz Games/Round8 Studio). Kind of. I beat the game. Kind of. I’m done with it. Maybe?
Does this all sound cryptic? Well, it should. It’s as cryptic as the game’s systems and their refusal to explain them.
I was in the RKG Discord (we have a thread for this game) and more than one person absolutely loves the game. More than one person bounced hard off it. And there were a few like me who didn’t know what they felt about it. One guy said he loved some parts of it, but then was so frustrated by other parts. I said I felt the same. I have so many issues with it, and yet, I couldn’t stop playing.
Starting with Chapter IV, I was done with it. Especially the boss fights. That was the first two-phaser, but it certainly wasn’t the last. There are eleven chapters in total, so that was in the first third of the game.
Right around Chapter VIII, I started to feel numb as I played the game. I was grim as I went about it, not really enjoying–well, any aspect of it. I hated how haphazard the enemies were and how out of place so many seemed. They basically used the same enemies over and over again, barely bothering to switch up the design for other areas. They also did the mini-boss as a common enemy trope thing–actually, she was a real boss because you had to beat her to get to the next area. She was like Margo the Wet Nurse, but not nearly as interesting.
Also, basic enemies that can kill you in two hits in the last chapter of the game is bullshit. And one thing this game loooooooves is to put an enemy in a corner or somewhere so you can’t see them and then as you go to attack another enemy, the hidden enemy jumps out at you. In some cases, I literally could not pan the camera to where the hidden enemy was.
I really was hating the game from the eighth area on. That’s the Blighttown of this game, though that’s not saying much because almost every area starting with the eighth have some kind of status effect strewn all over. In this case, it’s corruption which…oh I don’t remember. Corrodes your weapon? Not sure. As I said in a past post (and here’s the last post I wrote about the game) , I gave up trying to remember which status effect did what. There was decay, corruption, disruption, overheat, shock, electric shock, and break. The only thing I knew for sure was that if the disruption meter filled completely, it was an insta-death. And guess which boss did disruption damage?
The one I fought today. By the way, he was nerfed in the patch. I cannot imagine fighting him before the patch bceause I barely beat him after the patch. They nerfed his health pool (both of them I think) and the damage certain attacks did. Which, my god. If that’s the case, I really hate to think what he was like before the patch.
Here’s the thing, though. There were two people in the Discord who have beaten the game. One thought the boss I was talking about yesterday was harder. The other thought this boss was harder. I agreed with both (after beating both). They are both harder for different reasons. I found Laxasia (the former) harder overall because she’s so damn fast. I don’t do well with zippy enemies because I can’t track them. And her endless combos were enraging.
But Simon Manus, the boss I beat today, is huge and lumbering. The first phase is not bad because it’s basically circle around him and smack that ass. Like any big Souls boss. Except, his weapon can go nearly 360 degrees, so you have to keep an eye out. Weirdly, this phase is actually easier without the Specter (I did it once or twice that way by accident) because I could just duck under his massive swings.
Except when he did his life-stealing move. Which, quite frankly, was bullshit. Other than that, if I hugged his body and ducked under his swinging arm, I rarely got hit. In fact, if it was just one phase, I might have fought him on my own because he really wasn’t that bad. I got to the second phase on my second try, but, of course, it was so much worse.
It’s like the video I posted yesterday. Just because you can throw in all the shit, it doesn’t mean you should. I believe he said that you could throw Godzilla in, stomping all over the place, but that wouldn’t make it legit hard. That’s just being an asshole. The last bit is my own opinion.
Anyway, the second phase of Laxasia’s fight would have been much easier if I had upgraded my cube so I could heal my specter three times. I redid my P-organ skills (look, just go with it) after beating her to get that third heal for the last fight, but I shouldn’t have bothered. See, Simon Manus–by the way. There is a boss called Manus, Father of the Abyss in the OG Dark Souls DLC. With a big left hand. This boss has the hand of god. Which is a big hand. And is literally named Manus.
Here’s the thing. The reason this boss is bullshit is because he uses disruption (the one that if it builds all the way, you’re instantly dead). I don’t think the last boss of the fucking game should be able to insta-kill you. But also, if that was the only status effect he did, it would be somewhat acceptable. It’s not. He also steals your life. If he hits you with the hand of god, then it can drain your life continuously. So I had to watch him while watching where he was zapping and try to throw shit at him at the same time.
I watched the cheese videos, but they still predicated on doing some good dogding in the second phase and not getting hit by all the shit. It made more sense to try to hit him with melee while the specter was still alive and strategically throw things at him here and there. My normal M.O. was to just chuck everything I had at the boss in the second phase without stopping and that usually did the trick.
It didn’t for either Laxasia or Simon Manus. For the former, it got her down to about a quarter health left. And then she just raced around at a dizzying speed so I could not track her. Still, that was preferable to her doing the cannonball bomb that stunned me to the point where I could not move for a full two seconds. Which is deadly in this game.
Simon Manus’s second phase was just horseshit. I’m going to say it. It really felt like they just wanted to throw everything they could into the fight to make it epic. Except, it felt really flat. Like ,I think Laxasia is hard, but fair if you can pparry and/or dodge (I can’t do either very well). Simon Manus is really hard to parry in the second phase (I heard this from a parry enthusiast) and dodging was iffy with a specter in the picture.
I beat him by following a cheese video–but with less me standing around trying to throw shit at the boss in the second phase. This was roughly 20 real tries, so less than it took to beat Laxasia. she was like 25 to 30. And I got to talk to Simon Manus after killing him, and he warned me to watch out for Geppetto. Who I hated for the whole game, anyway. I had to rescue him twice and then he sat in Hotel Krat lamenting about how he hated throwing me into the fray–but doing it, anyway.
As you probably guessed, Simon Manus is not the last boss. Or rather, he doesn’t have to be. As with Bloodborne, you can submit to him (give him your heart) and the game is over. Otherwise, you have to fight….his puppet? Wait, wasn’t I his puppet? I don’t know. I ‘m sure there’s a logical explanation for it, but in honesty, it’s just the way for the devs to throw one lass boss at you. I tried it a couple times, but I just couldn’t be assed. I knew it would have two phases, and you can’t use the specter. And it could kill me in two swipes.
Nope. Not doing it. The Stargazer gives you the option to give Geppetto the heart and get the bad ending (in my mind). Or you have to fight the Nameless Puppet to get the good ending (in my mind). Or, you could do what I did. Leave the my character outside the boss door and call it my own ending because I. Just. Can’t.
I will probably write one more post about this tomorrow.