Hey,

just finished the game and I am really in love. It was such a great experience. I wonder how long you guys needed to play through? I have been doing every side quest, opened every chest and tried to find everything hidden like riddles, dialogues and ofc I also did the cat. My save file says, it took me 23 hours.

How long did it take for you?

I’m 32 hours in and only on chapter 8. HowLongToBeat says the main + extra generally takes around 37 hours. Damn I suck at this game! Cus ain’t no way I’m 5 hours away from completion. Wondering if anyone else took awhile.

Did you like the story of Lies of P? What features did you enjoy the most or didn't you like at all?

Also, in your opinion, does the game live up to the soulsbourne-like titles that Japanese developer FromSoftware has become infamously known for?

Lies of P - Official Launch Trailer

Full disclosure: I did not finish the game. I made it to I think Chapter 9 just after fighting that roided-out Bane guy at the world fair. The next area was kind of barren, had robot giants and some dudes shooting at you from high towers. It's been awhile, but that's about where I remember just deciding to quit playing and play something else (Bloodborne, again, for the probably 20th time).

Games under my belt in case anyone wonders what else I've played: LotF2014, Bloodborne, Surge 1 and 2, DS1 and 3, ER, Nioh 1 and 2, Wo Long, Stellar Blade, RotR. Many of these I've clocked hundreds of hours. Nioh 2 close to 2 thousand. This is not meant as a brag, but just to make it clear that I've seen a lot of other similair(ish) titles and quite enjoyed them. I love this genre, but I can't stand playing Lies of P.

So, on with the opinon.

Just about everything in this game didn't mechanically feel right to me.

The weapon customization system was a brilliant concept, but its execution fell flat to me. Too many enemies in this game have hyper armor where your attacks will not interrupt them. As much as I enjoy slow, weighty weapons in other souls or action games, they didn't feel rewarding to use in LoP. Their strikes were too slow and too often you'd take a hit in exchange even if you landed your hit first. So there were a lot of interesting weapon combinations I tried, almost nothing could compete with the effectiveness of a basic and safe stabby rapier. I tried a lot of combinations, struggled through annoying encounters using weapons that were too slow but couldn't stagger effectively enough. If they had just added better hit response and made slow weapons actually make enemies recoil like in other games, it'd have been a much better experience and made other setups more interesting to use.

The way that you get combat arts from weapon customizations was also cool. The problem? The energy regain is so painfully slow as to make these nearly useless. Just a bit of extra damage to use very sparingly. If memory serves right, you can go into a boss fight, use your whole ability bar, and you might fill it up once or twice more before the fight is over. Many other enemies in the game would die before you get a recharge. Compare this to Stellar Blade, DS3, or ER. In any of these games you can optimize your setup to use weapon arts generously. Perhaps you sacrifice some damage stats to do so, but you can decide to build around use of arts if you know what you're doing with gear and stat allocations or estus balance.

The next gripe I have comes from the parry mechanic. I should mention that I played this before there were any balance changes. I've heard the parry was made more forgiving since after I quit. But while I was playing it, it was pretty difficult to reliably parry. I have no trouble gun parrying in Bloodborne, no trouble parrying in DS3, no trouble in Wo Long, etc. LoP just felt way off. You get punished pretty bad for a mis-timed parry, too. It's also clear that the developers intended it to be a necessary mechanic (much like its required in Wo Long). I can intuitively parry without a whole lot of trouble in most games, but it was grating in LoP.

My next complaint has to do with the overuse of delay attacks by enemies. Some enemies and bosses have a moveset that is just littered with delay attacks. More delay attacks than not. Coming from other games where it's basically the opposite-- straightforward fast and mid speed attacks, an occasional delay attack or different combo string with a surprise delay swing-- this just felt off. The combat with bosses and elite enemies never felt fluid or rhythmic. It just felt like a guessing game that only more playtime could improve (and I wasn't liking the time spent much as it was). The way some enemies just wind up, pause for seconds, then unleash a basically un-reactable move (unless you already knew the amount of delay from experience) does not make for satisfying gameplay for me.

The combat otherwise is about as basic as it gets. Very plain attack strings. Not every game needs to be like Nioh with staggering amounts of configurable movesets, but for a game as new as LoP, I had higher hopes. Basic swings, charge attack. Yawn. Were it not for other problems, I could let this one pass.

World exploration. Too many uses tropes. Gee, yet another collapsing bridge. Gee, I hope this rope bridge doesn't give out. Oh, wow. It did. Never saw it coming. How many roofs are we going to fall through in this village? Oh, most of them. Neat. Cool, there's bear traps in the puddles that I can't see. An enemy lurking within almost every blind book and cranny.

Nothing clicked with me in this game. It felt like the designers had a checklist of other souls game tropes, and just threw them all at the drawing board in a haphazard way. Parries, but they're jank. Delay attacks, but that's basically all the movesets. Surprise enemies behind corners, but they're so frequent as to not even be a proper jump scare. Collapsing walkways, boy howdy are they everywhere. Break enemy posture for critical/visceral, but it's jank to cause this. Choice between fast and slow melee weapons, but the slow ones come with the drawback of slowness but not the usual expected trade off of causing staggers reliably.

To put this another way, this studio had all the right ingredients to make an incredible dish, but they burned it, and added spices in the wrong quantities, and wtf it's already cold? There's a hair in it! Gah!

This was the first souls(ish) game I've bought that I so thoroughly lost interest in that I uninstalled without finishing. I think I clocked about 40 hours on it, and it just never felt fun to play. A few things caught my interest like the weapon customizations, but the novelty wore off really fast after playing around with it and seeing what the effects were.

For everybody else on this planet that enjoyed the game, I'm glad! We could use more studios putting out good games. I can accept that a lot of people really enjoyed this one.

Roast away! Tell me how wrong I am :)

Edit to add: this critique comes from a place of love. I love the genre and this could've been a great game for me. Just enough was off to make it a bad one for me.

2nd edit: I appreciate the engagement from all of you. It's been a great discussion and I hope it carries on. Also, huge thanks for the award!

Am i the only one that was expecting a 20 hour long gameplay and found a 5 hour long gameplay instead? The dlc was solid dont get me wrong but i guess my expectations was much higher and it should be.

I haven't seen much discussion around this game so I figured Id make a post in case anyone is interested or curious about the game. Its amazing. Soulslikes are a hard category to mimic. Alot of them just don't seem to nail that special factor that fromsoft puts into them. Closest would probably be the nioh games, until now at least in my opinion. Lies of P handles and plays extremely well.

The combat, areas, and bosses dont feel artificially difficult, instead it's able to capture that rythem and balance that fromsoft puts into their games. As a soulslike it does alot of what the souls/borne do very well but it also adds alot of its own charm and ideas.

The weapon and handle system are creative and the options for builds is extremely varied.The different weapons all feel distinct enough to cater to different play styles. Mixing it up and seeing which crazy combinations work is alot fun, but it doesnt just end there. The legion arms also add a whole lot is diversity. The effects they have arent just genertic fire or electric attacks. I mean sure they're exactly these types but a bunch of the others add creative twists. The mine drill one and explosive shield probably best encapsulate that.

The weapon arts also add a lot to the build creation. The cube with affects, throwables, and grinders, they're are alot of options to mess around with. The stuff in this post is just the surface. The game so far has exceeded my expectations and i feel like I've finally gotten Bloodborne 2. If you like souls game, i highly recommend this one.

The music is gorgeous, having to find the reocrds makes it extremely worth it just for the songs alone.I constantly find myself just messing around at the hotel just to hear the songs as they go by. Combined with the beautiful environment of the hotel, its an absolute pleasure to be there in-between stages. Slight polish might be needed to just refine some actions but overall the game has alot to offer for souls fans and i put this one right up there with the best of fromsoft. A huge suprise in the best way possible. Its nice to see other studios succeed in the genre and make enough changes to become their own games. Not just fromsoft knockoffs. Lets hope lords of the fallen continues on this path.

EDIT: i added paragraphs, as some pointed out it was a bit difficult to read. I hope this fixes that

I've just finished my first playthrough but while playing I looked up how to get the Rise of P ending and saw so many people saying how hard the game was, but I thought the game was easy and started to wonder if I missed the difficulty settings and accidently set the difficulty to easy, but I figured out what it was... My weapon. I went for a tech build and the Booster Glaive leveling it to +3 then mixed the handle with the Bone-Cutting Sawblade eventually maxing it to +10 and throughout the entire game I was 1-2 shotting everything and bosses would break within 3 hits for a fatal attack. I then got the Two Dragons Sword maxed it to +5 and after using it idk why people say it's the best Tech weapon. No other weapon I've used compares to the Glaive/Bone Saw combo.

Edit: It seems like some think I'm bragging but I wasn't trying to. I was genuinely wondering if they made it easier with recent updates or if the weapon I got was OP.

Lies of P was supposed to be the game that kept me busy while waiting for Lords of the Fallen.

Welp, after playing around 2 hours of it, I decided to refund and replay Lies of P on NG+ instead.

Lords of the Fallen just doesn't feel good play. Hits feel off, the parry is terrible, the game is needlessly clunky and the game's controls are unintuitive. I realize how much Lies of P nails it in just about every aspect. The lack of polish felt immediate in Lords of the Fallen, and I made the difficult decision to set it aside and get my money back, effectively killing all excitement I had. I think Lies of P spoiled me, but I'm not complaining.

Despite it's faults, LoP has a sheen most soulslikes lack. It just feels good top to bottom. Returning to it after my brief experience with the other game was a breath of fresh air.

We've got a very special game here, my friends. Savor what the devs have accomplished, they just don't em make em like this.

The highest compliment I can pay this game is that if FromSoftware were emblazoned on the cover I wouldn't question it. It's as if Round 8 Studios studied the FromSoft Souls games and created a perfectly distilled experience based on them. The world is wonderfully crafted and combat, music, art design, tone and atmosphere are all stellar; I still adore the FromSoft Souls games but Lies of P is special. Something in particular that I absolutely adored is how it embodies the spirit of Bloodborne with a hint of Sekiro, engaging with the Perfect Guard mechanic makes combat significantly easier but you can also play less aggressively and still enjoy the experience. I actually have the urge to start New Game+ already but there are too many other games which I'm currently anxious to play.

I've played through all seven FromSoft Souls titles and the Demon's Souls remake so relative to my familiarity with the genre this is how I fared:

-I was on King of Puppets and Green Monster longest (around 1hr each).

-Laxasia had the most challenging moveset of the rogues gallery that I faced despite not being stuck on her for long.

-Both Simon and Nameless Puppet were satisfyingly easy and fun. I nearly eliminated them on my first attempts but Simon took three and NP two; NP's narrative purpose and design are really cool (his sword being a scissors that can split is clever), I love that Phase 1 has him on strings that become severed in Phase 2.

*I got the Rise of P ending.*

As an aside, if the studio's intention for a sequel is to use The Wizard of Oz source material then that could be a really good setting for this genre especially with how terrifically they reimagined Pinocchio.

So far to me it just seems like more of the base game. Sure the enemies in the DLC can 2-3 shot my level 287 character but since I can 1 shot them back & use my items it hasn't been that bad. I still haven't fought the first boes in the DLC yet. How’s everyone else’s run going? Also, I'm in NG+3 for the DLC. Hoping to play more tonight.