We all know Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, we best know the story thanks to some heartwarming Disney adaptations and even Guillermo del Toro brought back Pinnochio like we’ve never seen before. Enter Lies of P, a dark game set in the same universe with the same Pinocchio, called P. Lies of P isn’t as heartwarming as we know, the South Korean developers turned the original story on its head and came with a dark soulslike game instead. Is it good? Time to jump in, I won’t tell lies, I promise.
Ergo
Unlike the original story, Lies of P takes place in a gloomy city called Krat, quite the opposite of sunny Florence. Krat was just one of those ordinary little towns where nothing meaningful ever happened until Ergo was discovered, a rare mineral. What happens when a small town suddenly has rare minerals? Exactly, a group called Alchemists quickly invaded the little town and started mining for Ergo immediately. The Alchemist mined the Ergo not to become rich as fast as possible, no, they believed in the power of the rare mineral, and by combining their alchemy with some clever engineering, they transformed Krat to one of the biggest and most advanced cities ever seen. A city like this demands a lot of work, to solve this problem, the Alchemists created mechanical dolls to help humankind. Those dolls were programmed to help and thanks to the special Grand Covenant protocol, they were programmed to never hurt humans.
But, something went horribly wrong of course and the dolls started turning on the humans. They killed most of Krat in a ridiculously short time and are roaming the streets looking for signs of life. The Puppet Frenzy forced Krat to transform yet again, but this time not in a positive way. Wandering the streets of Krat is highly unsafe nowadays and without some combat skills, you won’t stand a chance. To turn the tide, a mysterious blue butterfly woke up P, a mysterious puppet that was asleep on a train. As P, you’re tasked to find out why the mechanical puppets turned on the humans and more importantly, find ways to stop them. The story of Lies of P is pretty impressive and adds interesting twists on the classic. There are classic characters included but their role in the story is often a lot different. Besides the surprising story, telling a lie or the truth also impacts the way the story evolves. Throughout the game you’ll have several situations where you can tell the truth or lie instead, if you tell the truth, you’ll see a change in P, a change that isn’t noticeable at first. Telling the truth or lying does affect the game tremendously. From different locations to different items, and even different endings, it certainly changes the way of the story, which we won’t spoil of course. It’s an interesting mechanic that makes the story stand out a lot more.
Time to die
A dark story like this fits a couple of genres but is the perfect setting for a Soulslike game. Lies of P takes a lot of inspiration from the Souls games and tries to add its own twist to it. Combat-wise, you’re able to create your own build but start the game with one out of three pre-selected sets. The Bastard build is for higher-paced combat, the Cricket build will give you a balanced experience and the Sweeper build is perfect for heavy weapons. Whatever build you’re picking, P can perform several standard attacks like quick and heavy attacks, dodges, and blocks. The most important skill in combat is the successful parry, something that feels closer to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice than Dark Souls. Combat in Lies of P focuses on parrying attacks and delivering the perfect Parry. When you parry an attack the normal way, you’ll still get some damage, which isn’t good in boss fights. If you manage to perform a perfect parry, however, you won’t take any damage and you’ll damage your enemy and his weapons, a powerful technique in combat without a doubt! If you damage the weapon of your enemy a couple of times, it can even break, which will give you a nice benefit during the rest of the fight of course. Perfect Parries can also activate charge attacks and even Fatal Attacks. It’s pretty impressive to see how well-created this system is but don’t be mistaken. This game isn’t for the faint of heart.
The parrying system offers a lot of benefits in combat but timing it correctly isn’t that easy. During your first hours in the game, you’ll die, you’ll die a lot. Let me make this as clear as possible. If you don’t like Souls games, stay away from Lies of P. If you don’t like the challenge of Souls games, stay away from Lies of P. This is as pure as the Soulslike genre gets so consider yourself informed. That being said, if you do appreciate the genre, Lies of P is without a doubt one of the best Souls games not developed by FromSoftware. Lies of P really nails the flow of combat and the exploitation of the weaknesses of your enemies. Yes, they are frustratingly hard to defeat, but once you manage to do so, there simply isn’t a better feeling. What I like about Lies of P is how aggressive the game wants you to play. There’s no real long-ranged option, parrying gives you the most benefits and you even regain some of your health if you land some blows on your enemies. Not the best news for the long-ranged players but I liked it a lot to be honest.
A lot of thought went into the combat system which I can certainly appreciate. Take the weapons for example, since we’re playing in a mechanical world, all weapons are made out of different elements, which you can swap around just the way you like. You can combine certain elements and create your own weapons using the strengths of the separate builds. It’s a unique approach that opens a lot of possibilities and enables you to truly find the style you like the most. It’s innovative and a lot of fun to experiment with the different combinations. Besides the arm, P also has one mechanical arm that can deliver some crucial blows at the start of the game. The more you advance, the better this arm gets. What started with just a couple of blows quickly changes into a high-tech advantage in combat, although you’ll still struggle to destroy your enemies with all that extra power.
Conclusion:
Lies of P is a great Soulslike game but does come with some small issues. During fast movements, the game can lose track and lag just a little bit, which isn’t that great in combat. It’s the only bug I encountered that really affected my gameplay. Besides that, there are some minor visual issues but perhaps the main issue is how well it managed to deliver the Souls formula. It’s all still homage of course but some elements feel a bit too much like the original and I would have appreciated a slightly more innovative approach. That being said it’s still a very impressive game that fans of the genre will adore from start to finish.
