Further Into Overture

 So, I'll confess that I have not gone on the sort of deep-delves into lore for Lies of P as I have on, say, Elden Ring or Bloodborne. I'm now a couple chapters into Lies of P's DLC, Overture, currently making my way through a mine full of puppet-miners.

The exact point in the timeline of Krat's crises here is not entirely clear: it is snowy outside, so we're looking at, at the very least, a different time of year.

I actually just saw an article talking about how the difficulty is overtuned for the DLC, and while I've certainly hit some frustrating parts here and there, it hasn't felt much worse than par for the course on one's first run through a Souls-like level. That being said, I'm also still on my initial playthrough, having never gone into NG+ (my tendency is to start multiple playthroughs with different builds, rather than to keep going at it in NG+ runs - I have yet to send any of my Elden Ring characters into "Journey 2," for instance). But I certainly believe it if there are significant numbers of people who are well aware of how hard this genre tends to be but still feel like it's too much.

I am playing on "Legendary Stalker" difficulty, which is the default, hardest one. (I lowered it to the medium difficulty at one point but decided that as long as I had beaten the base game in the hard mode, I may as well try to get through the DLC on it as well). And I've certainly had some encounters that have required me to go back over and over to beat some tough enemy (most recently, I found an elite non-boss enemy that was like a bulldozer with a drill-arm, and after my initial encounter with it, I noticed a hidden path off the elevator that led down to it that turned out to lead to a hidden mini-boss (actually an earlier version of one of the primary bosses in the main game). Both of these were quite tough, though I started to get the hang of them and figure out the most important tricks (for the bulldozer, dodging around and hitting the fuel tank on its back, and for the actual mini boss with a health bar, learning to read when it was going to do an attack that would drain HP off of you to heal itself - which was really devastating when it landed because it meant that much more boss to fight).

Apparent balance issues aside, I am struck by how much Lies of P does to be more player-friendly than your typical FromSoft game of this genre. When you get an item for a quest, there's a marker that tells you which is the closest Stargazer you'll need to go to. And I think just generally, the characters don't speak so cryptically, and what is actually happening in the story is somewhat straightforward, even if I'm sure there are subtle hints and clues to underlying stories going on beneath the surface.

Don't get me wrong, I love the subtlety and ambiguity of FromSoft's approach. What I've always been less of a fan of is the manner in which you can fail quests by speaking to the wrong person at the wrong time, or wander too close to a building here or there.

I wrote in my previous post about the addition of difficulty levels. And I think there's this kind of back-and-forth that the gaming community and I, myself, have about having them. But I certainly think that it's good someone is doing it in this genre.

I remain a little frustrated with the weapon upgrades: When you come into the game with a +10 weapon (or +5 special weapon) it's very tough to get any of the new weapons up to speed. This isn't unique to this game, of course, but I appreciate at least that in Elden Ring, I can pretty easily get the smithing stones to get a new weapon up to +24 (or +9 for the Somber Stone weapons). Lies of P lets you find things that will unlock unlimited Hidden and Crescent Moonstones, but unless I've missed them, I don't think you can unlock the ability to purchase unlimited Half Moonstones or the Covenant ones.

To be frank, I think this style of weapon upgrade system is actually one of the bigger flaws in the Souls-like genre, because it discourages experimenting with new weapons. You're always scrounging for your highest-level upgrade materials, and so spending them on anything other than the weapon you're already comfortable using is very risky - but then, you miss out on the opportunity to actually get comfortable with those new weapons.

As far as I can tell, Lies of P has no re-spec option, and so, given that I sank a ton of levels into Technique, to the exclusion of Motivity and Advance, I do find myself kind of limited in what I can use. That said, the game's mix-and-match weapon system means that you can actually get by using the blades of any weapon (well, any weapon you can disassemble) and just sticking it on a handle that fits your stat-spread.

Still, I think all of this has made me wonder if I should (probably after I finish the DLC) start a new save file and focus on something else (Advance seems like it could be fun, potentially - I liked playing Arcane in Bloodborne, though I remember going to a Strength character and realizing it was so much easier to do high damage with a physical build because Bloodborne's elemental gems are so rare).