Lies of P

[Timothy]

Soulslike in Pinocchio World. Demo is out now, game will be out on Gamepass.

Dodge and parry is a bit clumsy, but really liking it so far.

[madhair60]

Maerrhoids of H

[oggyraiding]

It reminds me a lot of SteelRising in terms of aesthetics, setting, gameplay, clunkiness. Not a criticism, I loved SteelRising.

[Chairman Yang]

Arise now, ye Varnished

[RetroRobot]

This feels like the most Xbox 360 game idea ever and that isn't a compliment. Pinocchio... but brown and edgy. This ain't your mommas pinocchio! Fuck off.

[C_Larence]

Yeah, with this and the Gollum game it really does feel like we've regressed to 2006 somehow

[bgmnts]

The thought of controlling Pinocchio seems perverse to me.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The thought of controlling Pinocchio seems perverse to me.

its a puppet

[madhair60]

This feels like the most Xbox 360 game idea ever and that isn't a compliment. Pinocchio... but brown and edgy. This ain't your mommas pinocchio! Fuck off.

pinocchio is pretty dark tbf

[RetroRobot]

pinocchio is pretty dark tbf

Dark yes but not 90s comic book edgy, if that makes any sense

[Roxy Robinson]

Looks cool, feels pretty janky (which I don't generally mind), just far far too derivative to respect or enjoy.

[AngryGazelle]

I played the demo and thought it was pretty good.

It's wholly unoriginal but I don't really care in this instance. Admittedly I'm holding it to a lower standard than usual but it's solid and combat is quite good and that's all I want from this one.

[C_Larence]

Chuckled when I saw the loading screen says "Now Lying". Didn't complete the demo because as has been said already it's lazy derivative shit, do you get to kill anyone with your nose?

[oggyraiding]

This is out now, on Game Pass too. Played up to the first boss. It is very Bloodborney, but kind of stilted in terms of animations. Not as fluid as Bloodborne. The thing it has going for it is the creepy living puppets as enemies. The starting "classes" are a bit shit - balanced with a saber, dexterity based with a rapier, strength based with a greatsword. Choose between sword or sword or sword.

[DocDaneeka]

Pies of L.

[chutnut]

Yeah I didn't really enjoy this either (from the demo). I think the surge 2 is the only actually decent souls-like I've played.
Still might 'obtain' it if it ever becomes 'available' though

[Mobius]

Lords Of The Fallen is coming out soon which looks like a better Souls Clone than this

[oggyraiding]

Lords Of The Fallen is coming out soon which looks like a better Souls Clone than this

It does look good, but Lords Of The Fallen 2014 was painfully mediocre, so I would advise caution.

[AngryGazelle]

Glad I bought this; it's really quite good! 

[Mecha Rodney]

It does look good, but Lords Of The Fallen 2014 was painfully mediocre, so I would advise caution.

It's supposed to be actually good from various Souls YTers.

Lies of P, on the other hand. Brrrr. It looks the part - as in, it's a very aesthetically faithful rip-off - but it feels awful to me. Zero weight or impact or touch at all. It's like Bloodborne but the guy has cramp and he's using a styrofoam sword. It's the ultimate 'mom: we have Bloodborne at home'.

[AngryGazelle]

Still enjoying this quite a bit. I'm not blown away - I wasn't expecting to be, to be honest - but I'm still having a good time. Combat is challenging but not too tough; I've been using the summoned ally for bosses and feel like a cheating bastard.

I'm hoping that there are some nice endgame surprises, but not really banking on it. The most frustrating part is the way Gemini is pronounced.

[AngryGazelle]

Geppetto keeps telling me to be a good boy - grooming cunt.

It lacks the wonder of the first 30 or so hours of Elden Ring but the linearity means it's more focussed and lacking the bloat and fatigue of it's late game .

[Barry Admin]

Gonna give this a go as I bought another month of Game Pass, and I find myself wanting to get back into Dark Souls, but just a bit burned out on it for now.

It's funny how blatant a ripoff it is, even down to the way he opens the door to the next area.

[AngryGazelle]

Gonna give this a go as I bought another month of Game Pass, and I find myself wanting to get back into Dark Souls, but just a bit burned out on it for now.

It's funny how blatant a ripoff it is, even down to the way he opens the door to the next area.

I completed it last week, and though it was a decent game overall, I was getting a bit bored towards the end, though. I'd give it a 7/10 - definitely a one and done playthrough.

[Noodle Lizard]

I've just finished with the Scrapped Watchman and am enjoying it overall. It's difficult to respect it holistically since it owes almost everything to Bloodborne/Sekiro, but it feels different enough and seems to have acknowledged and done away with a lot of the minor annoyances in those games.

I was a bit concerned to learn that Scrapped Watchman doesn't appear to make the top 10 of anyone's difficult bosses since I found him quite demanding, but perhaps he's a Lady Butterfly sort of thing and learning him will make the more objectively difficult bosses to come more manageable.

I do think the "perfect guard" window is far too small to be reasonable, and the stagger window is a bit unforgiving as well given you're supposed to charge a slow attack against a constantly flailing enemy in order to execute it. Trying to pull that off would get me smashed more often than not, so it was better to just ignore that mechanic a lot of the time.

Still, like it.

[The Crumb]

I am also playing and enjoying it. A chunk further along, I've just beaten a boss which triggered a Significant Cutscene.

It is definitely shameless about its influences, but that also makes it an interesting window into which of From's signature elements can be easily replicated and which are missing a certain something.

Combat is fun, the combine your own weapon is a neat touch. The defensive options do feel a little muddled though, it isn't clear to me when it's best to do what. The perfect parry does feel a bit too stingy, especially as it doesn't interrupt an enemy's combo so you can end up getting smacked straight afterwards.

[Noodle Lizard]

Played a bit more tonight, just got the Archbishop thing down. Things really opened up in terms of abilities and weapons after the Watchman.

I like that it seems pretty generous with upgrade materials - not to the point where you can get overleveled, but plenty to encourage trying out different things with little risk or penalty. Similarly, I like the fact that your defenses are customisable independently of your clothing; I'm going for a Dog build, and it's nice not to have to worry about your outfit's stats. Little things where I think they've actually improved on the Souls formula somewhat.

It's definitely tough, but it all feels very fair. I haven't had much trouble with these last few bosses; the Watchman seems to have prepared me well. I'm actually quite enjoying the linearity of the levels as well, you find everything you need to in a way which still feels organic enough.

The writing and voice acting is certainly several cuts below Souls, though. The cutscene after Archbishop was like something out of House of the Dead! And the less said about Gemini Cricket the better. I like the people in animal masks, though.

Good game.

[Noodle Lizard]

I had to put it down for the night after getting repeatedly blammed by the King of Puppets (more specifically, the little fellow inside). I got the first phase down easily enough first try, but I've barely had a chance to look at the second phase since I get obliterated within seconds. It's such a different style! Outside of Radagon/Elden Beast, I can't think of a From boss which has two distinct boss fights in one, not sure if I like it.

[Noodle Lizard]

Alrighty. I had to look up tips for Romeo, and it turns out you can just ... dodge. All this time spent thinking "This isn't a Souls game! All must be parried, dodging is not a viable strategy!" and it turns out one of the trickiest bosses is near trivialised by doing just that. Good thing I learned now, as it made a few subsequent enemies much easier too.

The Swamp Monster/Scrapped Watchman Redux was fucking HARD. Truly felt like I got lucky when I finally beat it. It feels as though I'm heading into endgame, and it's gone full Bloodborne now. Still having fun with it, the quality has been pretty consistent.

[Noodle Lizard]

Alright then, I've beaten the main game, only the "secret" optional final boss to go.

I think it shat the bed a little towards the end, as many of these games tend to do. They made the strange decision of plonking a very long Sen's Fortress/Blighttown hybrid into the final area, except it's just full of random "elite" enemies. It's not particularly difficult at this point, just incredibly tedious to turn another corner and see a whole load more of them.

Then you get to Laxasia, clearly their idea of a Malenia, except she's not optional and if you can't beat her there's nothing else you can do. She's incredibly hard, but not always in a fun way. I managed to beat her after about 10-15 tries, and I think I got lucky as I didn't fully learn that second phase. The Ganondorf lightning reversal mechanic was a nice touch, but I don't think it was very well implemented - it's very difficult to see properly, and her immediate, devastating follow-up is (I think) unfairly timed since it punishes you for learning to counter that part of the fight as intended. I'll have to fight her more to get a better perspective, but I think at the very least her health bars should've been halved to make it more enjoyable whilst retaining the difficulty.

I assumed we were in an endgame boss run here, but no. The area immediately following Laxasia is just a gauntlet of those same enemies again. "Bollocks", I said, and just ran past. Nothing to be gained from fighting any of these cunts again.

Simon Manus (Manus, seriously) was very demanding. It's the "final" boss of a game which has taught you the Perfect Guard as a vital mechanic, and yet it's barely even a viable strategy here. It's far too high risk/low reward since you'll be lucky to even get one stagger per round, and this fight became significantly easier when I started playing it like Bloodborne, dashing around him and smacking his arse. The Big Hand in the second phase, combined with the arena design, reminded me of the final boss in Super Smash Bros, which I don't think is a very good thing. Just a bit daft, not a very good fight, but it took me a while and in the end I started using the summons just to get the first phase down quicker. Again, could've been drastically improved by halving the HP; very few boss fights are made better because they take a long time, and arbitrarily increasing the duration of the fight just encourages using lazy tactics to get through it.

Compare and contrast with Isshin, the final boss of Sekiro, also a long fight but it tests everything you've had to learn throughout the game. Simon Manus, on the other hand, seems to demand you abandon most of the instincts you've built up and play it like a different game entirely. I think this was done in the interest of "challenge", but it doesn't really work.

And now I'm onto Nameless Puppet (Nameless, seriously). I won't be able to give him a full appraisal until I've beaten the cunt, but I spent about 5 attempts getting to the second phase and then ... fucking hell. I haven't really been using special items or even the Legion Arm up until this point, I much prefer doing "basic combat" on my first runs of these games, but I suppose this fight is here to insist on it since it seems unreasonably difficult to counter this shit in the normal ways. Hopefully I'll get him tonight, we'll see.

I know that all sounds a bit negative, probably just game fatigue after spending all this time going through the Souls games and ending with (arguably) one of the hardest Soulslikes. I look forward to a nice break once I'm done. Maybe I'll spend some time with my family, who knows.