Lies of P is Worthy of Adoration

But only if you like bad games *nose grows*.

When I initially heard about Lies of P I was intrigued and interested in how different it sounded as a story. The idea of playing as Pinocchio in a world that’s falling apart and is filled with Puppets that have gone on a Frenzy was really interesting! But then I found out it was a Souls-like and with a parry mechanic so I decided that I wasn’t interested.

But then I discovered that earlier this year, when the Overture DLC was released, they added difficulty modes. So I instantly added it to my wishlist, grabbed it during the Steam Fall Sale, and started playing it right after Nine Sols (review here). I haven’t been a huge souls-like person but when I find out about one with difficulty modes I will absolutely jump in because the only thing keeping me from enjoying those games is the difficulty. Anyway, was I able to do it? Did I complete it without getting too frustrated? Was the introduction of a difficulty mode actually beneficial to the game so it could bring in someone like me who was really interested in the game aside from the difficulty? Did the easy mode still retain difficulty instead of it being a “press x to win” mode? Welp. I gotta say, it was much much much much better than I had thought and I had a splendid time with it. So let’s get into more details about what I loved, and my issues with it.

The Premise

In the city of Krat, you are Pinocchio and have awoken on a train at the station with the city having fallen into complete destruction because of the massive amount of Puppets who have decided that they wanted to go on an absolute murder spree. You must try to find out why this happened, you must try to stop what’s causing it, you must save or help the few people you can, you must gather as much Ergo as you can so you can get stronger and not die to the ever increasingly weird and brutal puppets. Just remember that if you lie, your nose will grow.

The Good

Let’s start off with the single most influential amazing thing in this game, the difficulty settings. Two weeks ago I talked about how accessibility for difficulty is incredibly important for videogames to have (see here) and now I get to talk about how Lies of P does it incredibly well while adhering to difficulty modes as opposed to difficulty accessibility sliders (which I personally prefer). I played on the “very easy” difficulty which is actually called Butterfly’s Guidance and I must say, it was not fucking easy peasy. Now it was much easier than it would have been on the standard difficulty, but the developers managed to implement a difficulty setting that allows you to still have some moments of struggle without it being too punishing. The main changes, as far as I can tell, is just enemies do less damage. This means you won’t be dying super quickly to everything around you and can be able to learn the mechanics better and, just overall, have a more interesting time going around the world. It doesn’t, however, change how difficult the bosses inherently are because of their attacks. You still have to be able to learn when to attack, learn how many attacks you can get in before they go again, learn how to parry (to an extent), but now it’s just easier to survive. This also allows you to experiment with weapons much more. I used several weapons during my playthrough just messing around and upgrading them and when I found something new I’d always try it out. While it would be possible to do this in the standard mode too, doing it here in the very easy mode allows you to be able to learn the speed of your swing faster, learn how many attacks you can get in during a short period of time, learn what your heavy attack does, all that kind of stuff. This was incredibly helpful for me to be able to enjoy the game and I can’t imagine enjoying it as much if I hadn’t been given the opportunity to be able to play it on easy. This mode didn’t take the challenge or friction out of the game, it just made it more manageable for me.

Also note that the normal difficulty is on the bottom. This might not seem like it matters but I actually think that, psychologically, it shows that the developers don’t view those of us who played the game on easy as lesser than those who played it on normal. This is more of a psychological thing of course, likely not an actual thought process that the developers thought when deciding the order of the difficulty. But I still believe it is influential.

So with the praise for having an easy mode out of the way, we can get into the real meat of the game. The combat. One of the features about your weapons that I liked the most is that they have two parts, the blade and the handle. These are things you’re able to mix and match together to make new weird weapons. For instance, you can mix the handle of a big wrench with the short blade of a fire dagger. Or if you don’t like that the greatsword you have takes so long to swing you can take that blade from it and put it on the handle of one of your normal swords so you still get an increase in damage but are still able to move faster. There are also special weapons that you can get from a special vendor you meet and who comes to stay at the Krat Hotel, they are purchased with a unique item dropped from some of the bosses. There’s one for each boss item. Some are awesome, some are boring, some are a lot more fun than you’d expect. You can also purchase charms from this vendor, but I never did because I was enjoying the weapons too much. I think that’s something that I sorta regret not doing, I think there are some really good charms in there and you have to choose between using your boss specific unique item to buy the weapon or charm. Personally, the new weapons just always looked so interesting!

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Here’s an example of mixing and matching handles and blades. I really enjoyed this mechanic even if I eventually stopped using it because of the more fancy weapons I found that weren’t mix and match-able.

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Anyway, each weapon has special moves called Fable Arts that you can activate with charged up Ergo. The blade and the handle each have unique ones so if you mix and match them then they keep those unique actions (interestingly, the special weapons are sold as a unit and cannot be mixed and matched but their crazy powerful special moves more than make up for that...even if I did want to still mix and match them). Those abilities can be literal life savers where they’ll often do enough damage to interrupt the enemy so they stop their attack and you’re able to then take that moment to get the fuck out of there. That’s not always the case, and I didn’t try out literally every possible special move, but the ones I did try were all really interesting and fun, even when I had no idea what they were doing on first use.

Then there’s, of course, the parrying. This is something that I have some issues with that I’ll talk about below but I do just want to say, I enjoy being able to get a perfect parry where you’re able to not take damage. BUT if you do take damage, as I did almost all times, then it works on Bloodborne rules where you can go in for the attack after the enemy finished and earn back that health with the damage you do. It does go away the moment you’re hit again though so you better be quick. This though, this was one of the best parts of my shitty skills at parrying, being able to feel like I’m playing Bloodborne by going in close to get some health back. It was satisfying and just felt so damn good to play.

Of course I also must address Krat, an amazing world that is just brimming with depth. It’s not just the story, which I’ll address next, it’s the detail of the world. You can see how Krat used to be, how so much has changed because of the Puppets, even how beneficial the Puppets were before the game. The part that I love particularly is the Grand Exhibition area where you can get to see what used to be an area that showed how amazing the Puppets were...before they became bloodthirsty. Seeing the exhibits, how some of them actually come to life when you pass them, it’s fucking amazing. I loved this area so much. This is all that Krat is, an area showing the depth of the world. It’s not some place that you’re playing a game in that’s only there to be played in. It was an actual world that used to be beautiful, but became awful because of the Puppets turning murderous. Krat is one of my favorite locations to a game like this second only to Bloodborne. It’s just so amazing.

This reminds me both of Bloodborne and, especially, of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The spreading of the plague along the wall off of a person reminds me of the blight so much.

The story is also rather intriguing. Learning about Geppetto, the puppets, the events that kicked off the massacre that has befallen Krat, the history of the Puppets, it was all an amazing experience. Just about everything has so much depth and intrigue, just like the best souls-likes. I loved learning about the invention of the puppets as well. I particularly liked learning about both Antonia Cerasani. Which also leads into how the story of Lies of P isn’t just about Krat, it isn’t just about Pinocchio, it isn’t even just about the relationship between him and Geppetto. The story is about the Puppets. About how Puppets aren’t just Puppets who are supposedly just simple machines who aren’t able to break the “rules” of how they’re supposed to act, but are actually able to experience emotions and humanity. It’s amazing and I adored seeing these developments and learning about all of the Puppets I came across.

There’s also a really cool mechanic I want to call out because I loved it so much: humanity. Essentially, the more Human things you do during the entire game add to your humanity and make you change. It shows what Pinocchio is becoming. The whole schtick of the Pinocchio story is him becoming a “real boy” and the thing about Lies of P is that it allow you to slowly, over the course the game, become that real boy. Not through a wish, not through the intervention of others, but through the decisions that you make. Its fantastic and I loved it. Although I didn’t like Pinocchio’s longer hair. That looked dorky.

The Bad

First, I wish there was a map. While I got to know the streets of Krat pretty well in my time playing as P, I still often had moments where I just wanted to know more about my surrounding area and how it’s structured. This is a little difficult to manage with the verticality of the levels. For instance, there’s one called St. Frangelico Cathedral and it is primarily about going down below the main Cathedral itself, you’re often finding yourself going down, then up, then back down, then back up. It’s much more complex to manage this map in a normal top down perspective so I do understand that frustration. That said, I still wanted a map. There’s ways to do it that they could have figured out.

Oh my seems like someone has been lying.

And last (only two issues), I had multiple moments where I wished that when I got a perfect parry, it interrupted the enemies attacks and staggered them somewhat. I had multiple moments where I would get perfect parry’s during an enemies combos but not get them for all of it so would still take some damage. I think if the parry interrupted the enemy it would have been more beneficial. That said, I strangely did have moments where it seems like this did happen. It’s confusing because I’d get the same visual effect of a perfect parry and sometimes it’d interrupt and other times not. I’m not sure if I was just missing something, or if those enemies weren’t interrupted and the attacks where only a single attack so it wasn’t interrupted as much as the attacks were done. I’m not sure. It’s probably that last one. But it’s still frustrating because I wanted to rely more on the parry than I ended up being able to, over just normal dodging.

The Ending - Detailed

**Start Spoilers**

I ended up getting one of the more complicated endings, just without realizing that I had done that. So this is the details of the ending I got.

Not only was Geppetto the cause of the Puppet Frenzy, he had ulterior motives for you. I seems that the entire reason he caused the frenzy was to allow you to become more human, to act more human, so as to bring some humanity back to the P organ at your core. That P organ was actually a heart being driven by Gepettos deceased son as a way of trying to bring him back.

After defeating Simon, who was desperately trying to harvest the Ergo (the literal energy of a person that drives the very puppets you have been fighting, meaning they are essentially just as human as any other human) of the bosses you defeated in order to become a God, you go below that arena to find good old Dad, fucking Geppetto, standing there. He asks for your P organ so he can “make you a real boy” which actually means killing you and reviving his son.

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This has nothing to do with the ending but here’s an example of the different fancy mechanical arms you get access to that add another layer to the combat and are a lot of fun! Obviously I didn’t unlock all of them but I still loved using the ones I had. Back to the ending.

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I refused and had to find another puppet that he created that’s very similar to P. After that fight, as it was about to stab P in the heart, Geppetto jumps in front of the blade, sacrificing himself to keep the heart of his son alive. P quickly rips out the heart of that puppet and crushes it in his fist, then leans down over Geppetto to gain his last words. Which are calling you a “useless puppet”. Credits.

Post credits you get the scene of a man on a train talking to someone on the phone about P and how he seems to be a new version of humanity. Then how he’s coming back to town and when he gets back he’ll find her. He’ll find Dorothy.

To which, we then cut to a shot of Krat in the sunrise with a girl walking along the edge of the building we are on top of. We only see the bottom half of her legs and she’s walking with Ruby slippers along the edge. Then turns to face the city, clicks her heels twice, and then just before the third one connects we cut to black, ending the game for real.

**End Spoilers**

The Ending - Reaction

I adored it. I adored finding out the reveals, the fights were tough but fun, and seeing that little tease post-credits was perfect. Now I can’t wait for the sequel, where I hope it also comes out with difficulty modes. Basically, I felt like it was the perfect ending to my experience and how I felt about the game.

The Conclusion

Lies of P is amazing. It’s a game filled with love, with destruction, with themes about facing what it actually means to be human. It has wonderful combat, even if the parry system can be a bit confusing, a world positively dripping with lore and character, and, best of all, it has difficulty modes that allow more players to experience these wonderful, wonderful things. Lies of P is not something I would have been able to experience without those modes, I was welcomed in by the developer because they knew that they wanted more people to play the game that they made and poured so much of their lives into. They did an amazing job and I’m so glad I was able to play this truly amazing game.

Rating system info here.

You should play Lies of P. If you don’t like games that are massively challenging, then just turn on the easiest mode. It’s okay and the game doesn’t discourage this. It wants you to play at the level of comfort you find appealing. Lies of P deserves to be played and the developers deserve to be rewarded for introducing the accessibility. I want more people to play this game, I want the difficulty modes to be enjoyed, not just because it benefits me but because it benefits everyone. I desperately hope that this is how it is in the inevitable Lies of P 2, or whatever it’s called. Seriously, play it.

Meow,

Cat

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