Not all that long ago, I played Lies of P, which I think is among the best, if not the best regarded non-FromSoft Souls-like game. It had been out for a couple years, but I picked it up recently. Recently, a DLC expansion to the game was announced, Overture, which became available not long after its announcement. I decided to check it out. I had enjoyed the game, though I hadn't spent a ton of time digesting it, as I got Expedition 33 right as I was hitting Lies of P's final boss.
With that game pretty thoroughly completed, though, I've returned to the city of Krat.
Lies of P's similarities to FromSoft's games is not a secret, and thus it's not really much of a surprise that its DLC has us traveling back in time to the past, prior to or perhaps right at the start of the Puppet Frenzy that threw the Belle Epoque metropolis into utter chaos. Much as Artorias of the Abyss, The Old Hunters, and Shadow of the Erdtree all find ways to illuminate past chapters of their stories, Overture promises to give us some new revelations about a shadowed past.
I've only scratched the surface of Overture, having only just gotten to the first proper boss (and only making one attempt on it). But I think what's really interesting to me is not so much the content as the new UX systems.
And the most exciting and thought-provoking one? A difficulty setting.
Now, difficulty settings have been a thing for probably all of gaming's history, and while many of the games I grew up on had no such thing, it's not exactly unprecedented.
However, the Souls-like genre of action RPGs is (in)famous for its crushing difficulty. Lies of P was probably not quite as hard as the games of FromSoft (judging only by the fact that I was able to beat it pretty quickly and didn't really get super-stuck on any boss, except maybe the Nameless Puppet). Still, there are ways in which I think the folks at Round8 Studio tried to make the game a little more player-friendly and straightforward. Lies of P has a much more linear layout, which makes progression somewhat obvious. The story, also, while still containing some subtle secrets, is also a bit more straightforward than FromSoft's (or perhaps more specifically, Hidetaka Miyazaki's) stuff. One of the small but really appreciated things about it is that you drop your Ergo outside of a boss room, meaning that you don't need to worry about grabbing it while also trying to start off a boss fight well.
The DLC (I think regardless of whether you actually buy it to unlock the new area) brings three difficulties - with the highest being the default difficulty, the one that was the only option before. However, there's a medium difficulty and an easy difficulty.
And boy: I've gone back and forth on the purpose of high difficulty in games. I think that you generally want your games to have some degree of challenge, both to make it satisfying to succeed but also to ensure that players engage with as many of the gameplay systems as they can. But I also think that this actually transforms Lies of P into something kind of remarkable as far as Souls-likes go: potentially the easy game for people to try out the genre.
I played a bit on the medium difficulty after dying over and over to regular enemies in the Krat zoo, and it's still a challenge, but certainly more manageable. That said, whether it's pride or just the desire to ensure that I don't get complacent with my skill and use of the game's mechanics, I'm intending to stick to the "Legendary Stalker" difficulty while I can stand to.
Another addition is the ability to have rematches with bosses. While I'd like to have the option to fight them with exactly the stats they initially had, it seems that they do scale them up a bit, because I actually struggled a bit on the Parade Master Puppet on the 3 difficulty, despite having beaten the main game and this guy being the first boss. In this boss rematch mode, you can actually unlock higher difficulties beyond "3," though I don't know what kind of reward you get for it.
Having gotten my video game start with games like Donkey Kong Country or Yoshi's Island, I prefer it when you can revisit any bosses you've already beaten, and feel a bit sad that most of my favorite games really favor this "you don't get to see this again until New Game Plus," auto-saving style. This isn't precisely that (and despite having unlocked the ability to understand the puppet language, that appears to truly only activate in NG+).
There are still some points of frustration: I really wish there were a means to unlock the ability to purchase half-moonstones so that you could, with enough Ergo, get any weapon you wanted to try at least one step shy of fully upgraded (frankly I'd be happy if you could purchase full moonstones). I want to try out the new weapons I've found in the DLC (and even some from the base game) but I'm always hesitant to commit to upgrading something if I have a finite number of upgrade materials. I guess DSIII and Elden Ring have spoiled me in eventually allowing you to purchase as many Titanite Chunks or Smithing Stones (8) and Somber Smithing Stones (9). I'll be very happy if a vendor item like that is available in the DLC, which I am, again, only in the first stage of.
Despite their similarities, the rhythm of Lies of P is very different from FromSoft's Soulsborne games - having been playing a bit of Bloodborne and Elden Ring in the wake of COE33 and finishing Final Fantasy XVI, it's definitely an adjustment that I need to make.
Hopefully I can get "gud" in this idiosyncratic way and update this blog with my progress.
And if I can't, I can always put it to Story Mode difficulty, I guess.
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