Media in Review: Lies of P
As I write this, I'm standing right outside the fog door for the final boss. I still haven't beaten it - I spent a couple hours over the last few days, and Phase 2 is just really fucking hard, plus you can't summon for god only knows what reason. The game has, for better or worse, completed its transformation from Bloodborne into Sekiro, and that's the point at which I feel comfortable checking out. The rest of the game has been much less punishing. It's still hard, mind you, but I would say that in the grand scheme of things, Pinocchio Souls is definitely on the easier side of the genre. Parrying is absurdly powerful, and when married with how silly fire and electric damage are against 90% of the enemies, you can go a long way with decent armor, a fire grindstone, and the electric bat in your back pocket.
The game isn't shy about what its influences are, and that's a whole lot of Bloodborne with Sekiro's combat engine. The weapon-building mechanic is really cool, and if FromSoft steals anything from this for their next game, I hope it's that. Separating what kind of (and how much) damage you do from the scaling and moveset allows you to mix and match whichever attributes work best for you, and it's a lot of fun to play around with until you find the perfect weapon for your playstyle. The combat arms are less interesting, but they do give you a decent variety of tools to work with, including a grenade launcher, grappling hook, an exploding shield, a flamethrower, and more. I experimented with the Aegis and Falcon Eyes throughout the playthrough, but pretty much stuck to the grapple hook after a while, even though it was mostly useless against bosses.
The one thing I don't understand is logic on when you can and can't summon. Lies of P is a strictly single-player game, but against most of the bosses, there's a chalice right outside the fog gate that you can use a consumable to get an NPC summon for the boss. The exceptions mostly make sense - the first boss is before you have access to any of the upgrades aside from levelling up, and you want to set the tone for the game. There's also a handful of enemies that have the boss health bar, but are clearly minibosses for the area (the clown, the door guardian, etc). But then you have stuff like the boss of Chapter 9, who is a full-fat boss complete with a trophy (that I one-shot lmao) and...the final boss, where it drops the pretense entirely and tells you to learn the parries or get fucked. And I hate it! I hate walking away from a game at the last possible second because it went up its own ass, especially because I was really enjoying it.
It's a shame that it ended this way. This doesn't take away from the rest of the game, which is an excellent addition to the soulslike genre and certainly the first one I've really loved since Bloodborne itself. Maybe I'll go back and try Sekiro again now, but I suspect that it'll end the same way - frustration at how brutally difficult it is without the aid of a levelling system to smooth over the bumps.