Well, in case I was wondering whether I was close to the end of Overture, the game gave me a big warning message saying "hey, some of the sidequests in this DLC won't be completable after you beat the final boss, so be sure you've taken care of that."
It is really interesting: I think Lies of P stands as one of the best-received non-FromSoft souls-like games, and I certainly have found it to be quite good. The DLC in particular has increased the enemy variety. While it's only taken me four days to get here (I got it 5 days ago, but I didn't play one of those days) Overture feels satisfyingly meaty. It's not Shadow of the Erdtree-level extensive (a DLC that was practically a sequel) but I definitely feel like I've gotten a real chunk of game out of this thing.
It's also interesting that Lies of P is more personal of a game than the Souls-likes I've played before. Naturally, when you have a game that allows you to create your own custom character, it limits how much the game can be built around your character's story (this is one thing I really like about homebrewing D&D campaigns).
It's a bit of a tradeoff - I don't think I'm likely to be quite as entranced in the lore and meaning of Lies of P's story, in part because it's relatively straightforward, or at least there is a relatively straightforward reading of it. Contrast this with, for example, the theory on Bloodborne that it's actually all one big metaphor for the ethically dubious development of modern medicine in the 18th and 19th Century - a theory that is both compelling and also one that I didn't see until ten years after the game had come out.
It is, certainly, possible that Lies of P has its own underlying metaphors and themes that I haven't really explored.
I'll be curious if I get the itch to play through the game again. I'm tempted to do one on one of the new lower difficulties (possibly even its lowest difficulty - though that might just be due to the residual trauma of the Lumacchio fight). I'm hoping to be a bit more experimental, and would really like to try out an Advance build, possibly leveling up weapons that do Electric, Fire, and Acid damage so that I'll have lots of options.
But I really have to sing the praises of some of the features introduced in the DLC - the Boss Rematch mode is something I'd love to see in FromSoft's games - I don't think there are any rewards attached to it, but it's just an opportunity to see old bosses without going into NG+. (Sadly, the NG+ puppet dialogue translation doesn't kick in for this, so you'll still have to squint to see what the captions actually say).
It is funny, though: I don't think Lies of P's combat is easier than what you get in FromSoft games. In fact, I might argue that it's a little harder. I know its parry mechanic was inspired by Sekiro, which is one of two of From's Souls-likes that I haven't ever played, and I believe has a reputation for being the hardest of them. While getting perfect parries feels really great to pull off, I think I probably like the Elden Ring balance of things, with various options on how to avoid damage. Dodging in Lies of P feels much less reliable than it does in FromSoft games, and getting a perfect parry forces you to risk taking the full damage because you can't just be holding up your block button.
I wonder what it would be like to have a game like this where parry timing is actually very clearly telegraphed. I suppose the best example would be old-school Assassin's Creed games. But those games were largely meant to make you feel like an unstoppable badass, the larger challenges being chasing down and taking out your foes (and ideally doing so without alerting them to your presence). I got pretty good at getting parries in Expedition 33 (though Simon... dear lord) but like these games, there's a lot of feinting that the foes do to make getting that perfect timing quite hard. (One big trick for E33 is to listen for sound cues, which are clearer than the visual ones).
I guess one other little quibble - maybe not even a quibble, but just a bit of opinion - is that I think the Carcass enemies get a little dull over the course of the game. It's really amazing when you first get to the Cathedral after spending the first three chapters facing off against only puppets, but while some variety in carcasses does emerge gradually, I don't know that they feel like they really develop, aesthetically.
One of the strong suits of the DLC is the introduction of new enemies, like the mutated/carcass animals in the zoo and the various mining robots/puppets, as well as those damned fish (though how is it that in both the main game and DLC we haven't fought a giant monstrous dogfish?)
I will also say that I think I like how straightforward Lies of P's sidequests are in comparison to the vague and easy-to-screw-up ones in FromSoft's games. Basically, while the combat is still quite difficult, the exploration aspects of Lies of P are fairly easy without being too obvious. There certainly are a number of waist-high-fences to keep you on its relatively linear path, but that doesn't mean there aren't some interesting hidden pathways to discover (you know, it now occurs to me that I never found a way up to the air vent by the ceiling in the underground lab that makes up Overture's second chapter.
I haven't totally clicked on what makes the story of Overture revelatory about the main game's story. As I wrote in a previous post, Overture does what most FromSoft DLC does in that it takes us into the past, or at least illuminates much about the past by showing us sides of things that we had never seen before. The DLC's final boss is a character whom we actually deal with in the main game, and we learn more about the people Carlo knew in life (my interpretation of the game generally being that Carlo's soul is the one that now inhabits the puppet we play as, effectively making him Carlo, albeit with lost memories). There's a personal, emotional connection, but not necessarily the kind of "this is why things went down the way they did" revelation that FromSoft's games typically have. But that's kind of ok, because I think Lies of P exists on a more personal, emotional level.
I'll most likely post if and when I beat the DLC's final boss (I expect it to be hard. I mean, Nameless Puppet was freaking hard).
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