Lies of P - Catch All

Nine or ten acts if I remember right. The king of puppets was basically the middle of the game.

That was the first fight I used summons for because of how tanky the first phase is. An ally plus electricity melts stage one.

The gnashing of teeth in the steam forum over the patch is impressive. Not sure how big a difference it is but seems like any change makes them mad.

I know two things that add a bit of cheesy help. First off if you are using a summon healing them via the cube is huge. Second the aegis shield has a trick/glitch? If you hold the shield up (L2) then rapidly press block (L1) you can guarantee perfect parries.

Also that boss is surprisingly weak to just chucking stuff at it. Pretty sure I panicked threw a nad in it's face to win.

I'm doing an advanced build so I have the acidic spear head on the salamander dagger handle, and the salamander dagger head on the acidic spear handle. Excited to play around with some more interesting options when they open up later. I hear I can recreate the dreaded Pizza Cutter Of Doom from Bloodborne

I am torn between multiple possible combos.

I started off balanced and was luke warm on the saber, but switched to the great sword early. That came into its own when I slapped the blade onto the police baton. It carried me in the early chapters, with the occasional sub in from the electric mace.

Then I put the wrench head on the baton, which is also terrific for damage but the range left something to be desired.

Once I unlocked boss weapons, I fell head over heels for the holy sword. It took me through the Malum district, but I've just put the bone-cutting saw tooth on the bramble sword hilt and slapped a motivity crank on it and that seems OP in my test runs on the dummy. Basically, strong attack has bonkers reach because the bramble hilt features a jump forward when you hold down R2, and then the L1 Fable of rapid slashes just dumps damage on enemies. The speed is bananas for the size and damage output too.

Really digging the creativity at work in all of these combos. Part of me wishes I had dumped more points into advance because those status effects seem extremely potent.

In most souls games I tend to find something I like and stick to it early. I never put the threaded cane down in Bloodborne. Various katanas have carried me through the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring. Meanwhile, in Lies of P, I feel like I'm now a healthy chunk through the game (on my way to the King of Puppets) and I still haven't settled on a weapon.

And done! I came into this with reasonably high expectations after being surprised by the demo, but the full game turned out even better than I hoped. This is the first souls-like game to hook me as strongly as a From game. I was always itching to to keep pushing forward to see what was next. I loved the atmosphere and the combat, and I ended up enjoying the story much more than I expected.

My good boy bonked with reckless abandon with a motivity build. I invested heavily in vitality and motivity early on, but it didn't take me long to figure out that capacity is the best stat in Lies of P. I think I ended the game at 30 vitality, 30 motivity, and 45 capacity by the time I finished.

I really can't stress enough how big of a difference the better defensive gear and amulets you're able to wear from investing in capacity makes. You can get very tanky. It's especially strong combined with a motivity build with a high guard weapon. If you're looking for an easy mode in this game, I think this might be it. I think the most attempts I spent on a boss was around 15. There were a few others that took me close to 10, but most bosses were 2-4 attempts, and I one-shot both of the last two bosses. I didn't summon any specters.

P was armed with the giant wrench for almost the whole game. It doesn't have as much range as some of the strong boss ergo motivity weapons, but the fable art on the wrench handle is amazing. It's a quick attack that gets major bonus damage after blocking an attack. It only costs 2 bars and consistently hit for nearly 2k damage with major stagger. I speed ran through the second phases of a few of the tougher bosses because of this attack. I messed around with some other blade + handle combos, but I never found anything I liked better than the wrench head + wrench handle.

I paired that with the mine layer legion arm, which was also incredibly strong. I tried the shield, the electric arm, and the flamethrower, but I always came back to the mines. They're incredible for dealing with trash mobs and bosses alike, except for a few bosses that were too relentless to use it reliably. I think were only 2 or 3 bosses that were too fast to use it. I would often stack 3 mines on top of each other before luring an elite monster to me. The 2nd or 3rd mine would usually knock them off balance enough for me to get a full charged attack on them, knocking them down to half health or lower before they even had a chance to attack, or just outright staggering them for a fatal attack.

I really enjoyed the way the P-organ system was structured, with important choices to be made in both the micro-nodes and the main ones. Some of the upgrades are complete game changers, like the one that restores fable charge on a perfect guard. Once I stacked up enough legion upgrades, I was able to spam my mines non-stop and trivialize most trash mob encounters. I also very much appreciated how many weapon materials they provided. I had enough full moonstones by the end of the game to max 6 different standard weapons.

One other thing that really puts this over the top for me is the attention to small details in the world. Things like the way the cat responds to you as you make choices in game, the wonderful records that you can collect and play in Hotel Krat, the way they incorporate Pinocchio's nose, or the way that the title screen changes as you progress further in the game. There are so many endearing touches like these.

Overall, I am just astounded that this game is from a small studio that has only made one other game, Bless Unleashed, an MMORPG that is mediocre at best from most accounts. This does not feel like a game from a small team, or one with so little experience. It makes me incredibly excited to see how they follow this up. I would be thrilled if it's related to what's hinted in the teaser at the end:

Playing up through the Puppet King on a new run with an arcane build has confirmed my suspicions about how strong my first build was. I am having a much tougher time with these light, fast arcane weapons. They don't build stagger nearly as quickly. They take way more chip damage from blocking, and they give back far less of the guard regain damage on hit. I think Fuoco (the early fire furnace boss) took me more attempts than anything on my first run.

I also don't like any of my legion arm options nearly as much as the mine layer. The flamethrower can do good damage, but it has really short range, and I have not found the acid thrower to be much better. I should mess around with the electric arm to see how that fares with upgrades.

I'm glad I'm trying this as my second run, where I already know most of the enemy timing for perfect guards. I just picked up a heavier arcane weapon with a block value around 65, so that should help quite a bit.

I did also briefly respec to get as many P-organ upgrades focused on dodging as possible. It seemed like I could realistically pull off a dodge-centric build if I hadn't internalized parrying so deeply by now. Almost all of the dodge upgrades are front loaded in the upgrade tree. In just the first two levels, you can get a double dodge, dodge on the ground, increased stagger damage from dodge attacks, lower damage received while dodging, and lower weapon durability used in dodge attacks. Combine these with the amulet that lets you dodge with zero stamina, and you can be really mobile in combat. I'm not sure it will work as well as focusing primarily on parrying, but it should be viable if you really don't want to parry.

I had an unexpected two week hiatus and came back in the got the King of Puppets in one. This game continues to rule.

This is a fun little update:

DLC and an eventual sequel are confirmed. They are also making some weapon balance changes, as well as adding rising dodge to the default move set and putting 2 more Quartz in Polendia's shop near the start of the game. Good stuff.

I feel the same way. I recently played through Sekiro for the first time and never raged more playing a game in my life. The boss difficulty is insane and there were a few battles where I nearly snapped my controller in half and was another failed attempt away from uninstalling. At one point I spent 6 hours over two nights on one of the mid game bosses and must have made 50+attempts. I eventually did beat him with a sliver of health left and walked away from the game.

I love everything about the souls genre expect for the boss difficulty. Its too brutal. I'm playing Elden Ring right now and it's by far the most balanced of all the souls games I've played. The boss battles usually have the option for summoning spirit or NPC help, which is clutch for me and equivalent to having a lower difficulty. I love it and I'm having a blast with this one and minimal raging along the way.

God souls games just need to add difficulty levels, or just an easy mode. The fact there is one in the background and not turned on is so silly. Hell it's free advertising to add one. Blah.

I spent 6 hours on the last boss in sekiro and basically had to cheese it. Never did the extra bosses cause I didn't want that pain. It is the hardest souls game imo. Elden Ring is the best in comparison. It is technically the easiest of the souls games. But it can be just as hard as the originals if you want it to be. And is definitely one of the reasons is sold so well.

Other than having a really stupid title, this game was a straight 10/10 the whole way through. Off-the-charts fantastic combat, awesome world feel, definitely the best Soulsthing I have played since Bloodborne, and I have to say I prefer the combat system here.

The mixed system of guard/parry/dodge is just immaculate, letting you perfectly target the risk/reward you want to chase for any given opponent. And man do I ever love the "special grindstone" system, giving you a consumable-which-is-not-consumable which perfectly fits my "let's not use consumables" mindset. And the blade/handle combo system and the cranks to let you tilt things a bit to your build...all top shelf stuff.

Went straight Motivity the whole way, with wrench head + baton handle for most of the game. After much experimentation about 3/4ths through I switched to bone saw blade + bramble handle, as the range was just too good to pass up. For whatever reason, I didn't give any of the boss weapons a try until getting The Beatstick from the penultimate boss, which I then demolished the entirety of NG+ with, grinning the whole time.

The legion arm just missed me completely. In the endgame I started using the fully upgraded puppet string as a gap closer, but it never really felt like part of my flow. Didn't miss it, but probably should start a fresh playthrough one day that actually incorporates it.

World-wise, I really enjoyed how linear it was. I played almost the entire game in very short sessions, sometimes broken up by big time gaps, and it was wonderful to not have to keep a big mental map in my head as to what I had to be doing and remembering to return to later. Load up, unlock a shortcut or get to the next stargazer, and call it for the day. The story unfolding was mildly interesting, the lie/truth stuff was incomprehensible (why did they put such a focus on this? Who cares?), but the important thing was that the world just felt cool to walk around in, and nicely coherent.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the bosses, with the notable exception of the swamp thing, were straightforward to learn and didn't demand a whole evening of dedicated study in order to get by them. I think the only ones that took more than a handful of tries were the fire guy (I couldn't figure out how to reliably identify what was coming next), the swamp monster (seriously, screw this boss. Finally just did the spectre and moved on, even in NG+), and the 4 brothers redux (Took me way too long to figure out "the trick" because I was so focused on killing the stupid decay brother first). The last two bosses were weirdly trivial with super easy patterns and parry timings.

NG+ was just an unmitigated delight, due to the availability of an amulet that prevents all "tier 1" status effects from occuring at all and your P-organ collection getting positively silly, plus a "perfect guard restores durability" ability so you don't ever have to worry about grinding your weapon again. It's just a nonstop dopamine feed to absolutely tear through every zone and boss without breaking a sweat, while ergo rains from the sky like water.

This game proved to me that I'm officially past the point of thinking "the difficulty and the sense of accomplishment after overcoming it is the point" for Souls games. I liked that the levels were liberal with the shortcuts so I wasn't "stretching" to complete sections and didn't have to worry about ergo loss. I liked that the game let me tailor my amulets to get an edge in the zone I was in. I liked that the crank system let me tweak a handle to my stat preference. I liked that the bosses didn't have super strong attacks that just wrecked you until you learned them. And I loved that boss rooms dropped your ergo outside them so you never had to race to reclaim it, or worry about losing it. I'm no longer elite.

Absolutely top tier execution of iterating on someone else's formula, GOTY for sure, can't wait for the DLC.

I need to return to this for the final push. I got pretty far through and then distracted by Alan Wake 2, which I am nearly finished!

Have a few more weapons now. Due to weight issues, I'm mainly using an upgraded fencing sword and a dagger that does fire damage. Seems to be a good combo.

Have also picked up a few larger weapons, including a fire axe most recently. But have to stick with these two since the weight on those other weapons is a bit too much right now. I've pretty much dropped trying to block most attacks and now dodge and move in and out. Seems to be working better.

I don't quite understand the weapon assembly thing and what might be good or not. So, skipping that for now.

But the game combat is clicking for me more. Had a few mini-boss battles that were not too bad. There's this huge optional boss wandering some corrosive water that I skipped - but did grab all the goodies in that area. I'm guessing I would need to come back later to fight him once I have some corrosive protection.

I do wish the level design was a bit more complex. While there are little nooks and short alleyways to explore everything is just very square. That's the one downside of the game taking place in a modernized city.