Summary
Lies of Pputs players through some particularly grueling obstacles as they journey through Krat at the behest of Geppetto and Sophia, even if many of these obstacles are placed in their path as optional encounters. Indeed, players can make their adventure much more difficult if they were unbeknownst to certain items they needed to collect or dialogue choices they could have selected, and yetLies of Pmakes it fairly plain who is meant to be painted as a villain in the player’s perspective. Then, as for scripted encounters, players can’t always fall back on what they learned frompreviousLies of Pbosses.
Moreover, fans who decided to playLies of P’s betawill have thanked themselves for doing so because it gave them ample time to practice challenging combat against regular enemies as well as two early bosses, the Parade Master and the Scrapped Watchman. This would’ve given them a terrific foundation for combat mechanics such as dodging, guarding, perfect guarding, and using items such as Pulse Cells or throwables. However, while this knowledge might be a boon throughout a lot of the game,Lies of Pis still able to toss in unprecedented twists in boss fights to upend the player’s strategies, at least on a first playthrough.
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Lies of P is Great at Subverting Expectations in Combat
Like in any Soulslike,Lies of Pplayers will spend quite some time learning enemy attack patterns to find opportune openings where they themselves can strike back.Lies of Pleaves few moments where enemies are vulnerable, however, and teaches players that they won’t want to waste any singular chance to deal damage if they can.
Nearly every enemy is unbelievably quick, which players could think is an advantage fortechnique-oriented builds inLies of P, but these attacks are so quick in fact that even with fast piercing weapons it is still difficult to land more than a couple hits before the enemy is following up with another of their own. Staggering enemies is paramount since it gives players one of their only truly free openings in an otherwise blurring scuffle, and even when players see the enemy’s health bar gain a white border around it, it is still vital that players don’t rush in and get greedy with attacks unless they know they can safely land a charged strike to stagger them.
If successful, the enemy enters a stun state for a predetermined amount of time and is open to a fatal attack, which FromSoftware fans will recognize as a riposte or visceral attack. So when that health bar is broken and the enemy staggers, players will be taught that they can then rush in and secure that free hit as it is also prompted with an icon bearing three red slashes—all untilLies of P’s third act, whenbosses like Champion Victor or Laxasia the Completewill begin baiting players with a stagger only to lash out with sudden attacks before actually staggering and leaving themselves open to attack.
This can be difficult to adapt to after players had spent ~20 hours sprinting in to get that fatal attack, whereas now they need to be on their toes in case the enemy’s stagger is a bait mechanic that can easily punish any eager or greedy players. Likewise,another element of boss fights inLies of Pfor players to wrap their heads aroundis the fact that almost all bosses will have an entirely new health bar and an evolved form as their second phase.
That becomes a tiring pattern fans soon come to predict after it occurs a couple of times in succession. Predicting that a boss has more than one health bar or phase is advisable for the player’s sheer mental dexterity, and also when it comes to managing their inventory so as to not nonchalantly waste precious resources only to then meet a harder second phase of the fight.
Lies of Pis available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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