It’s easy to make a hard game. Bump up the enemy damage output, shrink a player’s health; makes resources finite, healing items scarce and routes to success scarcer still. While you’re at it, through countless threats one’s way at any given time – making viable space or safe areas to cling to, just one more short-term objective to attain. Point is: for every one game that identifies why From Software garnered such eternal admiration with the masses more than a decade ago, there are usually five more at least that don’t. That completely miss the point. Call it what you will – Soulslike, Action RPG, something else entirely – but these kinds of games were and still are more than just making something hard for hard’s sake. As broadly subjective the very topic of difficulty may be.
But while some will hold that From simply can not be beaten so far as quality goes in a sub-genre/style of game they helped popularize – and to an extent, cultivate to more compelling heights – take a moment and you’ll find that an entire sub-genre isn’t quite dictated by a single studio. Not simply because there’s more of this type of game to divulge over, a lot more as it turns out, but within a select few, lies some genuine originality and means to find nuance amid the tones and the mechanics we’ve become used to. Be that something like The Surge, with its limb-targeting system. Or even a game like Code Vein, with an actual emphasis on a plot and characters to follow. See, the argument isn’t that these are by far the best examples (there’s a reason I picked two games of, shall we say, flawed execution), but rather they’re proof that this kind of game doesn’t have to feel conformed. And more so for a sub-genre like this: even the less successful efforts still end up the ones one’s mind automatically recalls. That much like Metroidvanias, in both art-style and gameplay alike, there remains room for an alternate view. A different vision from that of the folks over in Tokyo.
And having played through the introductory parts of Lies of P, it’s a struggle to determine which side of that divide developer Neowiz may be landing in. Simply imitating what’s preceded or otherwise. For every strong reminder of 2015’s Bloodborne around every abandoned, nightly, gothic street, there’s a neat twist on what one would expect. For every incidental exchanging of the game’s own terminology (the equivalent to Estus Flasks, Souls, the Hunter’s Dream etc.), a word such as “Groggy” becomes more integral to one’s focus than initially expected. In this case, Groggy being the term for when an enemy’s poise is broken enough – made possible through last-second “perfect” guards – successfully staggering them allows one to initiate a hefty amount of critical damage.
But as splendidly detailed and a clear knack for fine details in its environments clearly flaunt, Lies of P still can not shake off the feeling that it’s not only living in a game like Bloodborne’s shadow…but that it wants to remain there, willingly and avidly so. “You love Bloodborne? Well, our game is exactly that?” Comparisons to Bloodborne may well end up rather shallow given the reality of its main combat loop, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that Lies of P is more interested in drawing people in at the surface level in environment and level design, rather than the confidence of its own deeper mechanics. regardless of the fact that the source material isn’t entirely the developer’s own making. And yes, you could go on and on about the ways – like so many games prior – Neowiz maintains the standard flair and formula that any fan of From’s catalog would immediately recognize. Stamina meters, weapon degradation, useful tie-in Arts to perform providing one has the currency to trigger them. And of course: that general tone that something isn’t quite right with the world in its current state.
To the game’s credit, there’s enough variety in both design and level of risk that each one of its gameplay components serves. The health-recovery system (another Bloodborne comparison) is not only tied to your health, but to the enemy’s too this time. What’s more, spend too long cautiously backing off and even bosses end up recovering a decent chunk, without ever flailing a robotic limb or weapon alike. So too, something as frustrating as weapon degradation is given a bit more of an active survival-esque tinge. Allowing you to refine your weapon on the fly so that its quality returns, but doing so at the risk that you leave yourself wide open to attack. Lies of P does throw one or two interesting ideas into the mix and it would be a lie to say this is nothing more than a carbon-copy. The issue is just what specific direction of engagement is it heading in?
Which again, raises the big question. Only here, rather than simply asking whether or not Lies of P is simply imitating what’s come before, instead we ask: if it is…who is it imitating exactly? Does it want to be more akin to Bloodborne with its more aggressive, sans-shield style of play, or is in fact taking notes from something like Sekiro? A game more focused on blocking, parrying and breaking an enemy’s poise? What you may say about Lies of P from a combat standpoint, is that a good defense can very much become a good offense. That is, when the game doesn’t feel like it’s funneling you into how it wants you to play. To go back to Sekiro again, while that game did provide its perilous moments of unavoidable/unblockable attacks to out-smart, rarely did the game force you into these scenarios. Make up enough distance and the problem solved itself.
In Lies of P, the red-glow symbolizing some fatal attack, is mandatory. And while this can be construed as an inevitability to learn and master the tools at hand, so too an argument can be made that for all the ways one can strike at an opponent, Lies of P does an odd job at suddenly taking all those choices away. In the pursuit of, again, the illusion of challenge. And the less said about the restrictive nature of the dodge ability – coupled with the way this comes into conflict with attack animations – the better. Controls that don’t feel as swift or as fluid as they should.
And yet, Lies of P is an eager one to see through. Not just on the basis of its main boss fights – succeeding as they do in getting you into that “banging one’s head against a brick wall” mentality until countless deaths later you finally triumph. Certainly there’s meat to these bones beyond the novelty of such an IP envisioned in such a fashion, aesthetically and specifically in its sub-genre alike. Not least when said meat is granted some commendable technical performance and respectable artistic detail on top. For the moment, Lies of P just feels a tad too lost on what it specifically wants to be. How confident it truly feels in being marked down by its own merits, rather than the merits of other developers' past work it’s clearly reminiscing over. The production and the clever little twists to former conventions are here to be commended. The question now is just how reliant on said conventions Neowiz end up being with the full release.
