Tempted back into the fold by the siren song of shiny new DLC, I found out after I recklessly hit 'purchase' that I needed to play almost the entirety of Lies of P again to access the new content. It turns out that the game is extraordinarily good, and that maybe I was a little bit wrong about it the first time around?
I added the colon to the title because it felt right visually, but I have been wrong about a lot of things in my life so maybe this is the start of a regular series.
My impressions of the game after finishing it the first time were just kind of incorrect, or at the very least severely misaligned with what I feel now.
When I finished Lies of P initially I think I had reached a level of gamer fatigue™ that was starting to genuinely eat away at me. I was tired of struggling, I was tired of hearing spiels about what a human may or may-not be, and I was especially tired of parrying.
On top of that I was starting to get a bit tired of Lies of P, specifically. I felt like I had already passed through the best gimmicks, and I was running into scenarios repeatedly that were tilting me beyond belief. More than a skill issue, the game (and maybe some elements outside of the game) had ground me down mentally to the point where I was no longer enjoying playing - which is usually a good point to stop! No one was forcing me to play it! But I persevered, to my detriment, and to the genuine disservice of the people who made it.
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| In my first playthrough I accidentally rolled off here before activating the ladder and I genuinely felt like I should be put into the rubbish and left there. |
The Souls’ games’ number one most charming, and I’d argue defining, feature is the collective journey you are roped into when you play. Some of this journey is made textual - soapstone messages telling you that there’s a secret just at the bottom of this cliff, seeing the blood-red shadow of a player get smashed to death by an upcoming trap, finger but hole etc. Some of it is meta-textual - git gud is one of the most enduring examples, but people helping write guides and share strats to get the Drake Sword, or how to even begin to try and kill the Tower Knight or the Demons Souls boss with the stupid wizard perverts you need to murder in the rafters are just as much a part of the games as the annoying parts of the community. Stumbling through the dark with strangers both in-game and on-messageboards is important to enjoying these games, they were clearly designed around the feeling of us all coming together to figure shit out and talk about it.
I had been playing Lies of P like a puzzle that I was supposed to solve alone, that I felt like I understood completely from previous Souls' context and experiences, and in doing so I turned it from a neat little communal jigsaw into my own little lament configuration*.
The opportunity for mechanical exploration and build variations in this game is staggering. Reading about one part of Lies of P leads you down a rabbit hole of experiences with different weapons and weapon combos, almost none of them in the pursuit of making the game easier to beat! Beating the game is simple, that’s like the main thing you’re supposed to do when you play it, but you dip your toe into the community and you can get carried away following people pushing at the boundaries of a million systems you didn’t know were there, all to have more fun inside this puppet-murder sandbox.
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| Look at these rabbit statues! Wow! Bnuy! |
A small, repeated mea culpa here - my bafflement at finding an incredible game inside of a pretty good one is a result of my actions and attitudes. There are thousands who immediately went “oh fuck Lies of P got the sauce”, and a likely shared theme amongst those people is that they didn’t self-sabotage their experience either through complete mental exhaustion or mechanical cynicism. It is an absolute delight to play, and I think NG+ only enhances it.
The more you explore, the more you find yourself in an enviable position of having a game that relentlessly argues for itself and what it can offer. I was less open to those arguments than I was to simply jumping in and doing some good ol’ fashioned pattern recognition until all the bad thoughts went away, and that's upsetting because I feel like I missed out somehow on discovering the magic the first time round.
Lies of P genuinely stands alone amongst its souls-like peers in how masterfully it weaves its mechanical challenges into a unique journey for the player, where your style of play feels rewarded more than your ability to do one thing good. Dodge, run away, or parry; use your weapon abilities to pump damage, create buffs, or make an entirely separate parry window that does some cool shit; throw a million shot-puts or hot swap your entire arm mid-fight. You’re really encouraged to let loose in a way that was certainly available in Souls' titles, but rarely emphasised, and embracing this joyous core of almost DMC-esque combat experimentation is what breaks it free from its parryable chrysalis and turns the game into a beautiful butterf-lie.
It isn’t all roses though - the atmosphere of the game starts to wear a bit thin as you head towards the PSYCHE WE’RE IN THE DLC NOW. I’ve basically just started and it is dripping with the kind of mood that I wanted more of from the main game - just soaked in a deeply unsettling horror that had me quietly and nervously singing “tie me kangaroo down sport” as I encountered some of the early challenges. These initial enemies are diabolical as well, it has been so much fun switching between the base game - where they clearly had some caution and a sense of propriety - to the DLC and its incredibly annoying patterns, layouts, etc. It is like the game is no longer afraid of being liked, like it's comfortable in its surroundings (and with us!) and is showing its true colours by going apeshit - such a satisfying, shockingly tangible attitude shift.
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| More like the PAINforest, am I right folks? Alright, tough crowd. |
If you bounced off this game or limped weakly through the end sections like I did, I would encourage you to give it another go and free yourself from any preconceptions you had about what is the correct or incorrect way to play it. This is a joyful game that is deserving of a second shot, or a first shot because hey wouldn’t you know it they also added difficulty modes you can change between on the fly because you’re supposed to have fun here. Go forth, do (puppet) combos**, have a blast, the game will quietly reward you for having a good time no matter how weird it looks when you eventually stumble your way to victory.
Also I would be remiss if I didn’t add that Lies of P has one of the most jaw-droppingly bonkers post-credits scenes I have ever experienced. Legitimately so funny, I won’t link it in case it spoils it for anyone but I loved it, right up there with the Kingsmen one or whichever film had the dark universe of monsters post credits stinger. The Mummy, maybe?
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