Primarily based on my evaluate in progress, I hoped Lies of P would enhance over time. It didn’t.

Regardless of how a lot I play Lies of P, I can’t recover from how closely it borrowed from FromSoftware’s Souls collection. I get it. The online game trade is constructed on developments. Within the wake of each huge success, there are all the time various followers who attempt to capitalize on the newfound starvation. However this isn’t Cities: Skylines borrowing the zoning system from SimCity 2000. This isn’t even Last Fantasy utilizing the celebration system from Dragon Quest.

Lies of P borrows the whole lot from FromSoftware’s titles. Motion, fight, proper all the way down to the aesthetic. A short look at Lies of P, and you can simply mistake it for Bloodborne. Lies of P is Bloodborne with puppets, and that’s such a waste of Neowiz’s apparent expertise.

Lies of P (PC, PS4 [Reviewed], PS5)
Developer: Neowiz, Round8
Writer: Neowiz
Launched: September 18, 2023
MSRP: $69.99

Lies of P is impressed by The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, however darker. It’s like how American McGee’s Alice is a darkish reimagining of Alice in Wonderland or how Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a darkish reimagining of Alice in Wonderland. Taking a youngsters’s story (even when The Adventures of Pinocchio is a reasonably darkish youngsters’s story to start with) and making it nightmarishly twisted is sort of storytelling straightforward mode. What’s worse is that they darkened it by crossing it with, in fact, Bloodborne.

You’re dropped within the metropolis of Krat, the place a one-two punch of plague and puppet rampage has left it desolate. The town had risen to prominence on the again of some forbidden discovery, and it will definitely backfired. Sound acquainted?

Your aim is to observe the orders of some wealthy folks in a resort as they attempt to save what stays of their worthwhile belongings. Or, I suppose, determine what went unsuitable with the puppets and put a cease to that. It follows the minimalistic storytelling of the Souls collection, so plot factors and lore are delivered in tiny morsels. In a world of cutscenes bloated with exposition, I nonetheless desire this technique of storytelling, I simply want it wasn’t so clearly borrowed.

Then contact the puppet inside me

I stated in my in-progress evaluate that it might be simpler to listing the issues that Lies of P doesn’t carry from FromSoftware’s video games than it might be to listing the issues that it does. That continues to be true all through the sport. If something, as you progress, you begin to discover extra sides and mechanics that it makes use of.

Look, the 1979 film Alien was pitched as “Jaws in House.” Plenty of creation is iteration; it’s unavoidably a part of the method. However Lies of P isn’t an iteration. It’s a lot the identical. The second I used to be handed a sword within the recreation, I knew what to do. The motion, the animation, and the secondary mechanics really feel so acquainted you can swear they had been a part of the identical collection. Your harm scales with two separate character stats, with weapons favoring one or the opposite. The vitality, dodge rolls, and well being programs are all precise replicas.

Even the aesthetic is unmistakable. The desolate streets and murky forests. The grand structure and broad vistas. The soft-spoken individuals who communicate from lit home windows. Hell, even the music is basically the identical. It’s full silence till you enter a boss room, after which immediately, the Latin choir shouts itself to life. Now, you possibly can acquire data and play them within the resort, and they’re improbable. Absolute gold star there.

Ye’ve bought a coronary heart of brass

The contributions to the style that Neowiz truly made are simply my favourite elements of the sport. That will be the puppets. The ornate animatronics go a great distance in balancing the standard grotesque monsters. On the identical time, there’s plenty of inhumanity on this planet. You choose up snippets of lore scattered all through the environments, they usually largely lack character, as in the event that they had been written by the puppets themselves. I’m undecided that was intentional.

I’m not intimately aware of The Adventures of Pinocchio, however I really feel like they tie in its themes fairly effectively. There’s plenty of emphasis on discovering the puppet protagonist’s humanity by means of mendacity and small acts of kindness. You’re given plenty of selections, which appear to mirror on the protagonist and people round him.

I’m not fairly so scorching on being shackled to a supporting character, although. You’re given a tool with a cricket named Gemini (pronounced gem-mini to make it sound like Jiminy Cricket), and I actually don’t recognize his enter. He’s there so as to add background and context to what you’re doing, but it surely’s actually useless, and I discover it annoying.

Possibly Gemini is meant to make up for the dearth of multiplayer. You may really feel lonely with out all these messages scrawled on the ground.

Oilborne

Beneath that, yeah, Lies of P is a good recreation. It pales solely barely compared to FromSoftware’s titles, and that’s a feat in itself. Among the environments are boxier and fewer imaginative. The development is starkly linear in comparison with the Souls collection. There’s much less range within the enemies you go up towards. The story is extra rote than what you’d discover within the nebulous tales of lifeless Gods that Miyazaki favors. However these are all fairly small complaints that may add up.

Neowiz manages to land plenty of nuance right here. The boss battles have that very same depth as you attempt to acknowledge and counter its actions and patterns. It has plenty of that very same unforgiving problem that its progenitors are recognized for. These aren’t straightforward issues to duplicate. I can bang on all day about how unoriginal it’s, however no less than it’s executed effectively. It doesn’t style like Bloodborne Lite, nor does it style like Bloodborne Darkish. Lies of P is simply off-brand Bloodborne.

So, if you happen to’re the kind of one who thinks that “enjoyable” is the one related standards for what makes a very good recreation, then have at it. I sincerely suppose you’ll discover quite a bit to love, and that’s rad. Nevertheless, if you happen to’re somebody who yearns to see development and development throughout the medium, then that is going to simply befuddle you. I feel Neowiz reveals off quite a lot of expertise with Lies of P. I simply hope what they provide you with subsequent is one thing truly unique.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}