I've now gotten a pretty decent chunk of the way into Lies of P, the Souls-like belle-epoch Pinnochio game that came out a couple years ago.
This is the first time I've played a souls-like game that didn't come out of the studio that created the genre, FromSoft. My "pedigree" so to speak in that genre is having played Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, and certainly more than any other of those games, Elden Ring, the latter of which is something of a departure in its open world, but is fundamentally the same game (indeed, you could say that they're all "open world" games, but that the non-Elden-Ring ones are just much narrower in physical scope).
Lies of P doesn't hide its debts to FromSoft's works - the game mechanics are very similar, and its dark "city in chaos" setting of Krat is certainly reminiscent of Bloodborne's Yharnam. Aesthetically, while Yharnam leans into an archly gothic feel (more late 18th century than 19th century - feeling like it's more "first industrial revolution" than the larger one we associate with the 19th) Krat feels like you're meant to imagine that this is something akin to Paris in 1900.
On a cosmetic level, I must say that I think this game looks better than what FromSoft tends to put out - don't get me wrong, the design of FromSoft's visuals is fantastic, and the degree of care and precision they put into making every detail meaningful is really mind-blowing. But there's a smoothness and cleanness to the graphics in this game that you don't tend to get in the somewhat rougher FromSoft games.
The game seems to be most similar to Bloodborne, not only in its aesthetic, but also in its gameplay. Your options for how you want to equip yourself are somewhat limited - as far as I can tell, there's no build you can make where you're casting spells. Much like Bloodborne, it seems that the three primary paths for your character are to go for Motivity, Technique, and Advance, which kind of feel like Strength, Skill, and Arcane from the antecedent. You can build a hybrid character, especially mixing Motivity and Technique (as there are some weapons that scale decently with both).
Where this similarity creates a kind of negative muscle memory is how health can be regained in combat. In Bloodborne, after you take damage, you have a brief window in which you can regain that HP by hitting enemies, as long as you don't take more damage. There's a very similar idea here in Lies of P, but in this case, it's when you block an attack that you get this opportunity to earn back the HP.
Because blocking is such a common way to deal with incoming damage, my mind sometimes thinks I'm playing Dark Souls or Elden Ring and thinks that I didn't take damage because I blocked attacks. There is a mechanic where, if you block right as the attack connects, you won't take any damage, and furthermore, this can damage enemies' weapons, eventually breaking them (and I assume making them deal less damage).
The weapons have an interesting mechanic to them, though I'll confess that I kind of just looked up what people recommended for a new player and have been sticking with the Booster Glaive since picking it up (which has served me now for I think more of the game than I played before I could get it). But: here's the thing: most weapons come in two pieces, a "blade" and a handle. Upgrades go to the blade, which could be anything from a rapier blade to a police baton to a giant wrench, but you can swap out the handles, and these handles actually determine the stat scaling of the weapon. I believe that this means that you should have broad access to the many different weapons, with their different damage types, regardless of you build.
But there are a lot of mechanics that I haven't entirely wrapped my head around - while the game actually tutorializes more than most FromSoft games, there are a lot of things to keep track of: for example, you can adjust the stat values on your handles. I... I really don't know if this is just to tweak their scaling or if it's an expected upgrade you should be getting for your weapon.
In terms of world design, the game is certainly more linear than others in the genre I've played - major bosses' arenas have a back door that leads into the next area. And while this isn't unheard of in FromSoft's games (thinking of, for example, Father Gascoigne) it does mean that it's pretty obvious where to go next, and the areas of the game feel quite clearly-delineated and distinct. Vagnini's factory feels very different from the grand cathedral that you go to after it, which in turn feels very different from the Malum District slums that follow.
And you know what? It's not the worst thing in the world. Especially after playing over a hundred hours of Elden Ring (if only that,) having a little more clarity isn't so bad. Back when I was a kid, games were divided into discrete levels!
Anyway, I'm currently I think about to fight a boss in a big opera house (I had unlocked the shortcut to the boss room only to realize that there was what looked like a trap but was actually a path down to more stuff in the building) and, looking at online guides, I think this puts me roughly near the halfway point of the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment