4/5 ★ – ChucklesBiscotti's review of Lies Of P.

One thing that really grinds my gears is when people criticize a game by simply calling it a knock-off of another game within a genre with no thought beyond that. It doesn't help any form of entertainment, especially video games, when folks decide one game or developer simply has domain over the entirety of a genre. I've seen some people say "why are they even making a Soulsborne?" in relation to Neowiz/Round8 and Lies of P. Well, why not? When Sam Raimi made Evil Dead and more or less created a new sub-genre of horror with the horror cartoon, it's not like everyone turned around and said no one else should ever do this since Sam did it first or whatever. And, by that same token, it's not like Sam Raimi didn't steal tons of things from Hitchcock or other greats before him. Point being, From games don't get to have domain over this sort of game even if we usually call it a "Soulsborne" a lot of the time. Now, these games do have a certain bar to clear if they choose to join the fray because the benchmark exists, but Lies of P clears that with ease. Some of the boss fights of Lies of P I would put up against any of the greats from a Sekiro or Bloodborne. Towards the end of the game, there was a fight against a character called Laxasia that was simultaneously exhilarating and infuriating. It's the sort of fight that creates a sort of resolute mindset where I will not be denied my victory. No matter how many times I die, I know I can come back to life and only need to come out on top one time to win. So even when it's at its hardest, I never felt like I couldn't do it as long as I upped my dexterity or pattern recognition. What Lies of P also does so well is if you're not an insane person like me is that it can be nearly baby mode if you want it to be. It goes the extra step by being flexible enough that you can mod weapons, accessories, and more to make the experience much easier if you want to go that route. I don't play these games to find the min-max builds to make it more of a breeze, but flexibility within this sort of game is not a negative. The other reason I wouldn't want to play the game that way is because the parry mechanic in this game is top tier. Essentially every attack can be parried, and the window to parry feels like it's fewer frames than even a Sekiro, so it's an accomplishment when you nail it down. There's major risk-reward to it, but nearly every attack is easy enough to understand (a testament to the visual style of the varied attack animations) to a degree that you can nail down the timing once you feel the rhythm of the attacks. To put it all together, when you're able to parry a 12-hit combo from Laxasia, there's not many more satisfying feelings I've had in all my history of gaming than that. I wouldn't trade that for anything even if items, consumables, or not using some shitty dagger would have made that unnecessary to do in order to win. Where Lies of P doesn't reach the highs of Sekiro or Bloodborne is in the general environmental storytelling and level design of the areas. It's a very A to B game for how you go through each level, and it all works perfectly fine, but at a certain point I mostly was just trying to rush through levels to get to the next boss. This isn't to say that the story wasn't interesting or the lore itself is bad, it's that the environments and level layouts themselves just weren't that memorable. It does have one of the better "hub areas" I've seen in this sort of game, and again, while I'm not giving a lot of credit to the leveling and equipment modification, it's still an impressive suite of options you can toy around with inside your little hub world -- on top of getting to know the various NPCs better. But I can't ignore that some of the bosses were so good everything else just didn't match up to it by comparison and thus I rushed through some other stuff at times to get to the next major boss. Even the bosses themselves had such high highs that after Laxasia the final couple bosses after her also felt slightly underwhelming by comparison. However, I would not hold that sort of thing against it because it would be hard to keep up that sort of pace for an entire string of final bosses. Plus, I'm sure some other people think a boss after Laxasia was more memorable (or maybe even before Laxasia) -- we're all going to have our favorites in these sorts of games, which is going to change how you feel about which fight was the best or the peak moment of the game. I'm not shocked by how much I enjoyed this game, but I still think it proves the point that you can't assume "no one" can do Soulsborne games like From or whoever. Everyone gets the chance to shoot their shot, and Neowiz/Round8 should absolutely take another now if this is the sort of game they'd like to make again.