Lies of P demo impressions
- Thread starter FakeSympathy
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Maybe…maybe I’ll check it out someday on a steep sale. It’s just that I’ve also heard/read some pretty big criticisms like the shitty parry, cheap one-shot deaths at the end of long drawn out bossfights, no poise system (at least not for the player), artificial difficulty, etc. I really hate it that the primary thing so many Soulslike devs seem to think about when making these games (most recently Lords of the Fallen) is just *DIFFICULLLLLTTT*.
Main thing I"ve noticed watching a friend or two play it is the absolutely insane sponginess of bosses.
Like even if you do the 9 consecutive parries to stagger them or whatever and spam (whatever they're called) special/heavy attacks into them, the health bar will take like.... 10% tops. And not just on bosses, on anything beyond fodder mooks.
Beyond that, the fights have very little dynamics to them. Which is a FROM problem too. A bare smittering of them will have a single phase change but otherwise a lot of that sponginess is just dull repetitions of a limited moveset. And while I mock FROM's silly paper mache crunch impacts, at least the enemies have some kind of mild flinch or reponse in those. Lies of P only seems to do so if you get an absolute stagger/poise break. (Even your character parrying just kind of stands there and clinks)
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I played it up to the Romeo fight. It's a good game but I feel like I sort of hit my personal skill ceiling there. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. There's just a point when the time I need to get past an encounter isn't really proportional to the satisfaction I feel of doing so. What keeps me playing a game is to a large part wanting to see what's next, and being stuck in place for an eternity just takes away from that at a certain point.
Mind, this is purely on me, and not at all a point against the game. I'm sure people who are better or more patient than me will find it perfectly fine the way it is. But at this point I reckon I'll be better off just watching a playthrough.
Mind, this is purely on me, and not at all a point against the game. I'm sure people who are better or more patient than me will find it perfectly fine the way it is. But at this point I reckon I'll be better off just watching a playthrough.
I’m glad Max liked it but even not having played it myself it’s tough to take his recommendation based off of all the flaws I’ve heard/read about. It’s just really frustrating and off-putting when the primary goal of Soulslikes is *DIFFICULLLLTYYYY* and even then they usually get it wrong. This becomes a huge problem with the attrition based boss fights where they are almost dead but can one shot you for any mistake, often attributed to the parry basically being a delayed QTE.
Comments like this are telling -
@poorlyproducedcontent2230
1 month ago
I play on xbox and defeating the Arch Bishop gave me a rare achievement. Only 7% of players beat him, which is a very bad thing. People are giving up fast. Ive been pushing through Lies of P because the story and world/art direction is really drawing me in. However I have been finding myself not enjoying it at all, when I defeat a boss i dont feel accomplished, I never feel like I figured the boss out, got the timing down, I only ever feel exhausted and like I got lucky. I've never played a game where every boss I fight I end up looking online to check if everyone else has the same complaints. I want to love this game, but it’s making it hard.
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Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible | VGC
The game will offer 3 levels of difficulty for the base game…
www.videogameschronicle.com
Cue the gatekeepers crying in 3, 2, 1....Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible | VGC
The game will offer 3 levels of difficulty for the base game…
Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible | VGC
The game will offer 3 levels of difficulty for the base game…
If the developers think their game would be better with difficulty options making it more accessible to more people, more power to 'em. I'll just stick with the base difficulty, but considering just how good the game's world and lore is, more people being able to enjoy that without being scared off by Scrapped Watchman is only a good thing IMO.
I'll be more curious to see how the difficulty options actually are implemented. Will they just be that enemies do less damage and have less health? Will the parry windows be more generous? Will the enemies be less aggressive?
One of the arguments for difficulty options is that since it's so common, it's not hard to implement. Which is true. But it is hard to implement in an interesting and engaging manner. The challenge to make it actually good design is if it still feels tense and engaging and yes even challenging on the easier modes.
The argument for the souls genre of not having difficulty modes is that everything is finely tuned to be a specific experience. And I used to buy that argument until Elden Ring and the many clones including Lies of P came out and I felt like- no, delays and twitchy movements don't all have to be this. The line between challenge and bullshit in action games is very thin.
One of the arguments for difficulty options is that since it's so common, it's not hard to implement. Which is true. But it is hard to implement in an interesting and engaging manner. The challenge to make it actually good design is if it still feels tense and engaging and yes even challenging on the easier modes.
The argument for the souls genre of not having difficulty modes is that everything is finely tuned to be a specific experience. And I used to buy that argument until Elden Ring and the many clones including Lies of P came out and I felt like- no, delays and twitchy movements don't all have to be this. The line between challenge and bullshit in action games is very thin.
Well, the expansion is here! And after putting a few hours into it, here are my thoughts
The premise is that, after being guided by a white butterfly, you activate a strange-looking stargazer. You arrive in a winter wonderland, a tone that is a big contrast from How it's like in Krat, only to come across corpses and monsters within first few min. Nice.
Turns out you are at the Krat Zoo, or just after the Puppet Frenzy. You have essentially traveled back in time, to find the mysterious legendary stalker. You will encounter past versions of familiar areas and characters.
New costumes are also introduced, and they all look so fucking good!
The expansion also introduces a new set of weapons, one of them being a bow. It's a bow inspired by the ones used by Koreans throughout history. The design is nice, but it's kinda terrible weapon. It's great for dealing with stationary ranged enemies, and smaller ones that gangs up on you, but there is a damage fall-off based on the distance; The further you are away, the less damage it does.
Thankfully the bow isn't the only new weapon, and some of the boss weapons are fucking badass. THERE IS A WOLVERINE CLAW WEAPON! And the movesets feels straight out of wolverine comics!
Monsters are fucking horrifying. Never realized how scary T-virus infected zoo animals would've been in Resident Evil, because holy shit this game takes it to the next level. You know how almost every wild animals at the zoo can kill you with relative ease? Now add the disgusting mutation disease and you get the idea.
There's also an area with carnival theme, which is something that you get the glimpse of it at the beginning of the main game with the parade master boss. Now you get to experience what it actually was like. This area also features minigames you can participate in, and the bow actually came in really handy in these minigames.
It also has bosses that are harder than the ones in main game. And holy shit, these boss fights left me exhausted. For whatever boss that lies ahead of me, I am REALLY tempted to turn down the difficulty, or just use cheats.
Even some of the regular enemies can easily kill you if you aren't careful. They have these weird attack patterns which you have to time perfectly with the parry.
Gonna update after I finish the expansion, but so far it has been great. Aside from annoying enemies and disappointing bow, it's the same bust-your-balls experience that you love
The premise is that, after being guided by a white butterfly, you activate a strange-looking stargazer. You arrive in a winter wonderland, a tone that is a big contrast from How it's like in Krat, only to come across corpses and monsters within first few min. Nice.
Turns out you are at the Krat Zoo, or just after the Puppet Frenzy. You have essentially traveled back in time, to find the mysterious legendary stalker. You will encounter past versions of familiar areas and characters.
New costumes are also introduced, and they all look so fucking good!
The expansion also introduces a new set of weapons, one of them being a bow. It's a bow inspired by the ones used by Koreans throughout history. The design is nice, but it's kinda terrible weapon. It's great for dealing with stationary ranged enemies, and smaller ones that gangs up on you, but there is a damage fall-off based on the distance; The further you are away, the less damage it does.
Thankfully the bow isn't the only new weapon, and some of the boss weapons are fucking badass. THERE IS A WOLVERINE CLAW WEAPON! And the movesets feels straight out of wolverine comics!
Monsters are fucking horrifying. Never realized how scary T-virus infected zoo animals would've been in Resident Evil, because holy shit this game takes it to the next level. You know how almost every wild animals at the zoo can kill you with relative ease? Now add the disgusting mutation disease and you get the idea.
There's also an area with carnival theme, which is something that you get the glimpse of it at the beginning of the main game with the parade master boss. Now you get to experience what it actually was like. This area also features minigames you can participate in, and the bow actually came in really handy in these minigames.
It also has bosses that are harder than the ones in main game. And holy shit, these boss fights left me exhausted. For whatever boss that lies ahead of me, I am REALLY tempted to turn down the difficulty, or just use cheats.
Even some of the regular enemies can easily kill you if you aren't careful. They have these weird attack patterns which you have to time perfectly with the parry.
Gonna update after I finish the expansion, but so far it has been great. Aside from annoying enemies and disappointing bow, it's the same bust-your-balls experience that you love
But the existence of the difficulty options! I'm assuming they destroyed the core experience??
(Sorry, wrong thread for that nonsense. Just refreshing to hear a positive review in lieu of the whole apocalypse this was to be the harbinger of.)
The core experience was already destroyed when they never bothered to balance the game in the first place. Slapping difficulty modes on it doesn’t seem like it changed much.
What are you currently playing?
I don't think I had that achievement on my Xbox 360 copy. It was added in an update at some point not long before Portal 2 came out; if you have the original Orange Box disc, it wouldn't have been on that. I'm not sure you could add more achievements in updates in those days, even if they did...
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