Dragon’s Dogma is the best game ever made! In this article, we’ll discuss why Dragon’s Dogma is actually the Best Game of All Time, and why you should play it, based on my completely unbiased and objective opinion that I am sure 100% of readers will agree with and will generate commentary only telling me how perfectly correct I am.

Dragon’s Dogma is the Best Game Ever Made

We’ll go over how the game’s director pitched this unique idea and gamestyle long before Souls games became a thing, the game’s unique mashup of western and japanese RPG approaches, it’s delightful Monster Hunter touches. And of course we’ll go through the lukewarm initial reception and sales and how the nascent souls fanbase would make it into a cult classic, passing the test of time thanks to its interesting mechanics and charming stoicism. And in case you didn’t know, Dragon’s Dogma was also in our Best Games of the Decade choices!

This is the second in a series of articles exploring how many games have gotten impressively huge and committed fanbases, and what it’s great about each of them. If you haven’t noticed it yet, the title is not serious!

How Dragon’s Dogma came about BEFORE Souls was a thing

The story of Dragon’s Dogma is both unique and mundane. It begins with one of the most accomplished directors in gaming, Capcom’s Hideaki Itsuno. You have probably heard from him as the man behind the masterpiece that was Devil May Cry 3.

But despite his career focus in Action Games, Itsuno’s real passion was actually in the imagining of a complex RPG with a pawn system, which he had conceptualized since very young, said to be the year 2000. It wasn’t until 2008, after wrapping up production of DMC4, that Itsuno would get to propose that idea to Capcom along several other projects.

The timing of this is very interesting, as Dragon’s Dogma has conceptual overlaps with Demon’s Souls, that had not yet been revealed or released. Had Itsuno gotten to work on his idea earlier, would we all know him instead of Miyazaki, and talk about dogma-like instead of souls-like? There’s a good chance that would be the case!

The “Western” JRPG mashup & it’s glorious Monster Hunter Feels

The souls overlap is well-known to fans of both series, but for those of you who are missing the gap, let’s delve into what Dragon’s Dogma set out to be: a mainly single player RPG experience with a mild, casual online “brush” with others, something that would replicate the feeling of hanging out on a bulletin board (modern day forums or discord communities) where you share things asynchronously and only indirectly, but can still connect to others.

In addition, Dragon’s Dogma was to be a Japanese take on the open world concept of games like Oblivion, spicing it up with the addictiveness of JRPGs like Dragon Quest, but developed by a team that understood Action combat and could deliver a deeper combat experience.

We have seen a great deal of open-world action RPGs over the years, [but never] one that really put everything together in the action parts. We figured that if there hasn’t been a game made by people who understand how action works, then we ought to do it ourselves. We wanted a game where the player is thrown into the world and needs to figure out how to stay alive via nothing but his own controller

Hideaki Itsuno to Famitsu, 2011

If this is sounding just like the Demon’s Souls pitch, it’s because well, it was, and as you can expect Capcom’s reaction was the same as Sony’s original reaction: Skepticism, budget restrictions and eventual delays.

Nevertheless, the project was given the green light, and so a team of action developers became RPG developers, with unexpected results such as the accidental merge of Monster Hunter concepts into the combat. This was not intentional and the rumor that Dragon’s Dogma was a diverted Monster Hunter project is inaccurate, as it seems that it was rather the natural outcome of having Monster Hunter team members working on the project.

‘Monster Hunter’ was its own series, its own franchise, and it just so happened that we wanted to make a realistic fantasy-based action game, and because we had the staff available to make something like that, we’re able to make this game. The ideas for ‘Dragon’s Dogma’ came from a completely different place

Hideaki Itsuno

As Itsuno’s team was still developing Dragon’s Dogma, Demon’s Souls launched and had its initial struggles with poor reception. Those early negatives are likely part of what made Souls so successful, as it gave FromSoftware a push to work with the multiplatform Namco instead, but they likely influenced Capcom’s perception of the quality of their version of the concept, and thus the project was delayed and launched in 2012, 7 months after Dark Souls.

A Lukewarm Launch like Demon’s Souls

Dragons Dogma was officially launched on May 2012, and it enjoyed a good reception and high sales in Japan, where it broke some records for fast-selling IPs of the time. Western media was lot more lukewarm, with the game barely averaging an 8 out 10 from most outlets and getting criticized for lacking proper multiplayer, being too “hardcore” and missing out in character narrative depth. (Yes this sounds familiar too!)

But that poorly understood audience that would become the hardcore avalanche of souls players noticed the game and sales started to ramp up, reaching 1.5 million units one month after launch. Since Capcom had adjusted the project’s budget to target 1 million units sold, it was an immediate commercial success, and this set in motion development for an expansion, Dark Arisen, that would arrive a year later. As more and more of these players discovered the game, our community became more and more obsessed with it, eventually resulting in the creation of our Dragon’s Dogma Wiki, which is the first non-fromsoftware wiki we made for the community.

So what was it about the game that managed to eventually convert so many people to the brand? Let’s discuss!

Why Dragon’s Dogma is the Best Game Ever

Much like Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma was conceptualized by someone who wanted to have an explorative RPG experience but with good combat. This means that rather than trying to mix and match popular bits and pieces of games to create a marketing juggernaut, the developers were instead making something new and unique that they thought you’d want to play.

This sincere craving to create a new concept and give old ideas new deliveries drove a series of development decisions that resulted in what we can all agree are “quirky” choices and details, such as the fact that your character height and weight affect your carry capacity, their arm length your climbing stamina, and your overall size will determine whether you can use some specific tiny holy shortcuts around. And it’s those details that make the “secret sauce” of why Dragon’s Dogma is unmissable.

I love open world games, but it is not often they can be enjoyed without the bothersome encumbrance of obnoxious quest markers. It’s rare to be allowed to get lost in the exploration and discovery aspects, motivated by the feeling of being the person to discover it, and the rewarding nature of putting things together from context, trial and error, with uncertainty as to what is hidden behind the next corner.

Your Dragon’s Dogma experience begins like an on-rails RPG with some mild party management, followed by a simple setup for your hero to depart a fishing village and head to the big capital. The ridiculous amount of time you then spend between that first step and making it to progress the main story is entirely your fault. And you just can’t help it! What is that item over there? Wait, are the enemies changing at night? Should I help this NPC? Hold on, I’ll hire this pawn first. But oh, I like that one now, how does this work? it says I got mail how do I get it!? Oh no I put one toe into the water and I’m dead.

I have such fond memories of all my little discoveries as I took my first and completely noobish steps around Gransys. But like most games that receive high praise from me, it’s the layers of complexity that make or break a game. You can casually play Dragon’s Dogma without understanding its mechanics. But if you do spend the time on them, you can find just so much detail, nuance and extravagant coding. That carrot you picked up 3 days ago? Yes, it rotted now. Oh you worked hard on a quest for this lily that gives you extra XP? Well you better put it in some flask or it’ll rot too!

Or perhaps you thought to approach a bandit camp for a quest, only to discover if there’s a male in your party you’ll all be attacked on sight. Or did you accidentally give too many gifts to a vendor and now he’s doing googly eyes at you everytime you approach. And of course, there’s the going around falsifying items so you can hand them over for quests and also keep them… but are you sure you want to? The consequences may be dire!

On and on the small details of what can happen and the small ramifications of my every trip made the game feel more and more like a very freeform RPG where I am not in complete control of every quest progress and outcome, but rather experiencing a world and slowly unveiling its secrets.

And of course, then there’s the monster hunting. Come about almost by chance, as discussed by the director, the game features some massive monsters that can be hunted, sometimes in specific grounds or locations and at specific times. These hunts are engaging battles where your whole party has a role, and the climbing of the monsters to attack them creates an extra layer of awesome.

Learning how to hunt these monsters and target “parts” to get materials for loot ugprades made the on-foot exploration of the extensive map all the more rewarding, and it even brought me to appreciate the initial lack of fast-travel, as it forced me through paths that had hidden loot, quests, and enemies.

The more I played Dragon’s Dogma, the more I liked it, and for me the crowning moments of it would come with the Everfall, the post-game dungeon crawling that turned the game from an exploration and story adventure to an addictive lootfest of Ur-Dragon farming. It was that transition that would keep people hooked in, and eventually be fully realized in the DLC.

The Test of Time and Upcoming Sequel

So we have established that, much like Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma started off to mixed reception and a lot of doubt and skepticism from press and audience. But the game’s subtle appeal slolwly won people over by word of mouth, so by the time Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen came around one year later, the overall tone had already shifted. Take IGN for example, that had given the release a 7.5 score, and gave the expansion bundle an 8.9 instead. By 2020, 8 years after that 7.5 score, that same IGN would rank Dragon’s Dogma at N9 in the “best modern role-playing games”.

The long-term appeal of the game and its unique mechanics have slowly but surely set it apart from the rest as a must-play experience. Over time, sales just kept going up and up because the game’s style remains singular, without emulation, leaving fans to want more of it, with the total sales number surpassing a completely unexpected 7 million units sold despite low marketing investment and the supposed “niche” appeal of the genre, that has kept Capcom from investing on the international releases of the game.

So now we are looking at a 2024 release of Dragon’s Dogma 2. Much like the first game, it approaches rather humbly, with cautious marketing that seems more focused on conveying the developer’s vision than convincing you that you should buy it. And that could not make me happier. I want Dragon’s Dogma 2 to simply be more of that awesome experience. Sure, add quality of life, improve systems, surprise me with new mechanics and systems! But, please, keep it quirky, unexpected and unrelentingly committed to being just what the developers really wanted to make.

It surely worked for FromSoftware, and I’m craving to see what the sequel will bring us. We already played a bit of Dragon’s Dogma 2, so check out that video if you’re interested, or turn notifications on because there’s a developer panel coming soon and we’ll be covering all the new reveals. In the meantime, I fully recommend that you pick up the old game and give it a go. Graphics are dated, mechanics are stiff, but it’s still so much fun!

So what do you think? Is Dragon’s Dogma your favorite game ever? Or maybe it was at some point? What other titles would you like us to cover on this series and why? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Dragon’s Dogma is the Best Game Ever appeared first on Fextralife.

Elden Ring is the best game ever made! In this article, we’ll discuss why Elden Ring is indeed the Best Game of All Time, and why you should not miss out on playing it, based on my completely unbiased and objective opinion that I am sure 100% of readers will agree with and will generate commentary only telling me how perfectly correct I am.

Elden Ring is the Best Game Ever Made

We’ll go through the atypical marketing cycle that fueled relentless hype for the game, its spectacularly successful launch, and the elements that make the game feel like Magic: Player Agency, Freedom, redefining Immersion and infinite build variety. If you want even more of this, check out our video that explains why Elden Ring Succeeds where other games fail.

This is the first on a series of videos exploring how many games have gotten impressively huge and committed fanbases, and what it’s great about each of them. If you haven’t noticed it yet, the title is not serious!

The Atypical Marketing of Elden Ring

Elden Ring is a rather unique title as it went through a very interesting development process and it created a few wrinkles on their marketing plans due to unexpected but massive delays. This would normally cause the hype for a game to die down, but it had the contrary effect of fueling a rabid obsession among fans of souls, leading to an incredible amount of hype at launch.

Initially announced at E3 2019, Elden Ring was originally supposed to release in 2020 or 2021. Yet after the initial announcement, there was no Elden Ring at the game awards 2019, then silence for most of 2020 except for some tweets confirming the game was still in development, and no Elden Ring News at the Game Awards 2020. By this point it had been a year and a half since the game’s announcement and the fanbase was losing touch with reality, to the point the subreddit has declared that period as “The Great Hollowing“. Fan desperation and memes about “ohhhhhh” and no news of Elden Ring became daily gags throughout May 2021, until finally there was a June 2021 Summer Game Fest trailer.

But it would still be over 7 months before Elden Ring was finally released, at which point it had gone an unimaginable (tee-hee) 992 days from announcement to release. That’s over 32 months, or over 2 and a half years of fans just “waiting”. This may be seen as normal for some long standing series like The Elder Scrolls or Final Fantasy, but it’s something that FromSoftware and Namco don’t typically do: Start the hype marketing only to completely stop and drip breadcrumbs of non-news until finally restarting the campaign 6 months before launch.

By any previous standard, this campaign should have failed, yet it did not. Why? Obviously, the eagerness of dedicated Souls fans contributed immensely to sustaining interest, but in a strange way the buildup of mystery and expectation in the absence of any proper information became enticing for non-souls fans too. Articles began popping up about how the fanbase invented lore, theorycrafted non-existing builds, and laid out more and more hype built on dreams and hopes from very suspicious and sometimes obviously fake leaks and rumors. These articles attracted more views, which created more fake leakers, more hype memes, which created more articles… and it could all have come crashing down spectacularly had the launch not delivered. But, as it’s now the norm for FromSoftware, it did.

The Spectacular Launch of Elden Ring

Once Marketing was re-started, FromSoftware went to their typical pattern of closed-door previews, gameplay reveal, network test, and pre-launch reviews. This is a very consumer-friendly method of advertisement, as it gives plenty of information and even access to press, influencers and players so that everyone can get a taste for the upcoming product. With this transparency as a backing, I whole-heartedly recommended preorders of Elden Ring, and I’m happy to look back and say I wasn’t wrong.

Elden Ring went on to sell 13 Million Copies by the end of March 2022, almost doubling that by March 2023 with 20 million copies, and is Bandai Namco’s fastest selling game of all time, and of course smashing records for FromSoftware itself.

The fact the game has kept selling and is sustaining high concurrent players late into 2023, almost two years after launch and with little additional content, demonstrates the game’s value, appeal and longevity. But what is it that makes it so good? Let’s discuss.

Why Elden Ring is The Best Game Ever

Many have attempted to downplay the brilliance of Elden Ring by saying it’s simple Dark Souls with a horse and more space. And while the core of that argument is true, the implication that this is a bad thing is completely off-base. After all, the “Dark Souls Formula” isn’t really a formula, but rather the same artist using similar components to create thematic but clearly different experiences for the user.

As I said in my review of the game:

When I first heard of Elden Ring and saw the few screenshots and early footage, I thought it would be Dark Souls 4. When I first saw official Elden Ring gameplay last year, I thought it would be a take on open world like Dragons Dogma, but still be Dark Souls.

When I first played Elden Ring during the network test, I thought it would be less souls and more about traversing large landscapes and popping into dungeons. 50 hours into the demo I thought I knew the game’s tempo and knew how the whole game would turn out.

My first hours with the full game have taught me otherwise: this is a game that will shatter your expectations and you can’t even imagine the actual scale and depth of it. Every time you think you have it figured out some new thing pops around the corner to surprise you.

What made Elden Ring so successful is that FromSoftware correctly identified the best aspects of Souls, and masterfully weaved them into a seamless open world, integrating innovation and new tricks in subtle but impactful ways. The melding of elements is so well done that it is indeed difficult to list out “new features” of Elden Ring versus the souls series beyond the obvious like a jump button. Everything that was added to the game was done with a precise touch and a careful measuring spoon, to meld new and old concepts into one completely unique flavor.

Dark Souls was an action RPG focused on combat and challenge, and the perseverance and dedication needed to overcoming those challenges made your eventual success feel very rewarding. So FromSoftware was faced with the challenge of alluring a fanbase that loves to say “git gud’ to instead try a game that pretty much anyone can play and focuses instead on exploration and discovery.

Of course the first success in this was to create clever “traps” so that people may get an initial impression of difficulty that may not necessarily be so, such as the Tree Sentinel that roams your path right after the tutorial, the casual Dragon that will melt you just a short ride from the start point, or the Night Cavalry and Deathbird minibosses in Limgrave. These are nothing but “Illusory Walls” as they are avoidable encounters that can be done later when you’re more powerful, but they helped set the tone that the game had that “challenge” approach early on.

From here, FromSoftware had to then also convert the non-souls fans who may have been intimidated by the difficult enemies. So they added Guidance, that points you away from danger, and many, many options for exploration that would quickly distract anyone without putting them in danger, allowing them to gather gear and level up, which makes all encounters a lot easier.

Thus, with a good foundation that allowed more casual players to continue while keeping the self-titled “elite” engaged, the next step was to fill out a world that would truly compel you to explore, so that you would seek out the challenging encounters because you want the loot hidden behind them.

It is here where I feel FromSoftware truly created something unique. I am a huge fan of builds, tinkering and character optimization. Many times I make builds just to see how they do against bosses and feel powerful, then restart my game or respec the character to try something else, without ever progressing. It’s how we ended up with over 100 unique builds created by me that have been published to our wiki and channel.

The Infinite Builds of Elden Ring

Being the kind of person that tries to make many builds in many games and play it many ways, I can say with confidence that Elden Ring delivers the most satisfying build experience in Gaming. Yes, CRPG games like Pathfinder have a lot of classes and nuance, MMOs like Lost Ark or Elder Scrolls Online have huge amounts of customization via loot, and ARPGs like Path of Exile or Diablo have deep and ongoing metas that everyone loves.

But Elden Ring gives an incredible amount of variety and uniqueness per build, without needing to be “Meta” or farmed, and it does it without the frequent bugs and issues of things not working correctly that are commonplace in other complex RPGs. The excellent balance of the game drove me to create a mock series where I explained how every weapon is the “best weapon in Elden Ring“, something that is only possible because the game is that well thought-out, that you can truly make it through and feel powerful using almost anything.

Builds, of course, aren’t just about weapons. In many games they are about classes, but since Elden Ring classes are simple attribute and gear starting points, their classless system moves “skills” to a freeform choice where you can select the skill you like that matches your weapon’s moveset and own playstyle. Then you add in talismans, spells, buffs and consumables to end up with thousands of unique combinations. And the important thing is that they work – you can play the game with them, you’re not hopelessly gimping yourself if you want to stick to A or B.

Of course, some builds are more powerful than others, and there are certain “metas” for PvP that are quickly found and abused. But given FromSoftware has now deployed separate balancing for pvp and pve, solo players can really devote themselves to creativity and enjoy the combat in multiple unique styles.

Player Agency, Freedom & What Immersion Truly Means

The build variety is the most appealing to me, but the reality is that Elden Ring’s interpretation of Player Agency and Freedom redefine what “immersive” means and it’s a huge factor in its success.

Many games approach immersion as a need for high-end graphics, a minimalist UI, realistic physics and events. Many fall into the trap of becoming an interactive movie, where you are “immersed” into the events but have little control over them.

Elden Ring gifted us instead with a world as a playground, where rather than feeling that you’re playing a game, you feel like you’re playing a world. Like if you had wondered into a book, each corner hides unique vistas, secret lore, hidden valuables and unexpected enemies. It successfully delivers the excitement and intrigue that Tabletop RPGs have always been lauded for, giving a feeling of freedom to explore, interact, attack or retreat.

This approach is reinforced by the “multiple protagonist” narrative, where you as the player character aren’t the “Main Protagonist” and will find the NPCs don’t exist for your purposes, and will act and move of their own accord based on their own actions and objectives, regardless of whether you stopped to talk to them. This of course leads to the player missing out on steps for multiple questlines, which can be a frequent complaint, but it is a powerful tool when it comes to making you aware that this world does not revolve around you.

The Magic of Elden Ring

Taking all the individual components of the game, one could easily think that there’s little new or innovative in the mix. Yet somehow the combination resulted in a magical experience. The reason for this is, as I said earlier, the careful consideration and use of each aspect. The nuanced layering of mechanics so that players would not be overwhelmed, but rather thrilled to discover something new. The scale of the map, exploration and hidden spaces that aren’t locked behind tools or events, but rather your own observation and creativity.

It has been almost two years since the launch of the game and I still lose myself in the quiet tunes of Limgrave, and I still see people discovering small things here and there, tying up lore notes, or perfecting our understanding of how specific effects work or even charting every boss moveset into complex graphs.

The passion the game has generated among the fanbase has not dampened. And now, with the announcement of Shadow of the Erdtree Expansion, we have arrived at yet another cycle of waiting for more news. First revealed in February 28th, 2023, most don’t expect it to be out until February 2024, which is a year after its official introduction. But the lack of news and updates has many thinking the expansion may be even further down into 2024, meaning yet many months of expectation buildups.

Will the Elden Ring DLC deliver this magic once again? Can FromSoftware surprise us again, in this same world? I have complete confidence that yes, they can. For the past 15 years, release after release of FromSoftware games have successfully delivered a unique and compelling gaming experience. I fell in love with Demon’s Souls, I was seduced again with Dark Souls, I was completely blown away by Bloodborne and then again by the tempo pace of Sekiro, and finally I was left in awe at Elden Ring. For that, I’m happy to say that it’s the Best Game Ever Made.

So what do you think? Is Elden Ring your favorite game ever? Or maybe just right now? What other titles would you like us to cover on this series and why? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Elden Ring is the Best Game of All Time appeared first on Fextralife.

Lords of the Fallen Roadmap has been revealed, and it’s impressive! The game has been out for less than a month, but the developer team have already demonstrated refreshing commitment to their craft by not only releasing over 10 incremental patches that focused on community feedback over the past few weeks, but they have now also announced a fantastic amount of free content that they have planned for the game.

Lords of the Fallen Roadmap Free Content 2023

The Free Content Plan for Lords of the Fallen divides the upcoming goodies into “weekly enhancement” and “development work”. It is clear from the announcement post, which you can find on Steam, that the Hexworks team is very passionate about the game and wants to continue to improve the experience for all players.

The development work focus on adding new stuff like the Halloween event, new weapons, new game modes. I’ll go into those after we see what you can expect in the “weekly” version.

Weekly enhancements promise to focus on

• Stability – The game is not necessarily prone to crashing, and a patch in Mid-October addressed the most egregious ones, but ongoing stability is a point that any player can appreciate.
• Performance – The game’s performance had issues on consoles and some PCs at launch, and it has already been greatly improved, but the developers will continue to fine-tune this aspect. This is excellent news for fans as one of the most frustrating aspects of modern gaming is subpar performance holding back otherwise excellent games.
• Save Game Fixes – This means they will continue to address issues associated with save game corruption. These are not overly prominent, and some workarounds have been found online, but it’s certainly a priority as losing your progress is an awful experience. If you have ran into such issues, make sure to reach out to the developers via their official contact and report it so they can work on it!
• Co-Op & PvP Improvements – Multiplayer is the lifeblood of soulslike longevity, so addressing Netcode, connectivity issues and the overall multiplayer experience is a must. I really hope they can focus on this aspect as I very much enjoy the coop of the game and it does need further fine-tuning.
• Balancing – The developers will prioritize PvE to tweak balancing and address some overpowered and underpowered elements, which has already been in the works as of the most recent patch, that rebalanced some spells and also made boss weapons upgrade to +10 instead of +5. I am working to get all these changes into the wiki, but if you find anything that’s missing or has been tweaked please feel free to edit.
• Increased Boss Difficulty – Some players feel the bosses should be tougher, and it sounds like the Hexworks team plans to improve this aspect as well. I personally didn’t feel the bosses were too much of a pushover, but more challenging encounters could lead to more nuance in Builds and approaches, and also more multiplayer.
• QoL Tweaks – There are many small things that can be improved for overall quality of life, and the developers are listening to player feedback to get these into the game. Make sure to share your feedback often!

Lords of the Fallen Free DLC 2023

Other milestones of the roadmap focus on actual free extra content that spices up the game, extends its longevity, and improves your overall experience. These are planned for November – December but will extend into 2024, with developers stating they don’t plan on slowing down:

Halloween Event – Already launched, this special event allowed players to do a special in-game treasure hunt and quest to obtain a unique and limited Helm.

Mob Density Reduction – This is also already launched. Being overwhelmed by hordes of monsters was a common complaint for many players, so the number of spawns and the “leashes” of monsters have been adjusted. This was done in Patch 1.1.224 by reducing the number of enemies present in areas where players most struggle. These enemies are removed in your initial playthrough, but remain in NG+, in keeping with the more challenging experience players are seeking.

Inventory & Stash Expansions – Plans to increase inventory are now formally announced. Whether this means the NPC shops will have more goodies remains to be seen, but given its separating “inventory” and “stash” I certainly hope so! I would very much like to get to buy more things from vendors after a certain point in the game to facilitate experimentation with builds. There’s also the added desire to carry more of everything, but we’ll see how it pans out as developers make their plans clear.

New Spells – Divided into two packs, the roadmap promises to bring new spells. This would be an excellent addition as there are currently 59 spells between Umbral, Radiant and Inferno and it would be amazing to increase that and improve build variety. It would also impact the depth of your commitment to a specific line, and perhaps give more incentive to increase your Spell Slots. I assume that the new spells will likely be associated with new questlines for thematic consistency, but they may also be added as treasure or boss exchanges.

New Armor Sets & Questlines – Special new questlines and rewards of an armor set for each Radiant, Rhogar and Umbral has been announced. This is something I’m actually quite excited for as I love collecting armor sets, and the previews of the armor look amazing. The fact they will be quest-related also means added exploration and complexity to my playthrough, so a big plus for existing and new players. These new quests may also include new mini-bosses, and perhaps impact the rest of the game in some form.

New Grievous Strikes – These are the “critical” moves of the game, so I assume this means there’ll be new movesets to be performed when executing them. Considering there are 12 different weapon types, I hope they each get their own unique new flair.

Additional Secret Boss Weapon Abilities – Some specific boss weapons gain unique abilities after performing a certain amount of steps, and when used in a certain way. Discovering these is fun for explorers and can really change your gameplay, so adding more is certainly a plus, but there were very few boss weapons with this mechanic so the hype around it died quickly. It’s great to see the developers plan to expand on this aspect.

Split PvE & PvP Balancing – This is something that took FromSoftware over 10 years to figure out, so I’m very happy to hear that Hexworks is already working on it. There’s nothing worse as a player than having your PvE build nerfed because someone is abusing it on PvP encounters that you never do! It should also help optimize PvP encounters so there’s more fairness around fights and to create more creative approaches that skip the cookie cutter “OP” flavor of the week.

Gamepad Rebinding – This is a commonly asked feature and I’m very pleased to learn it’s in development, as being able to rework bindings can really improve your overall experience with any game.

New Game + Modifiers – This specific update had been announced as in the works earlier on, when developers tweaked the way Vestiges work in New Game Plus with Patch v.1.1.224. The NG+ modifiers will allow players to fully customize their NG+ experience, whether that’s retaining all vestiges, keeping just a few, or removing them completely. It will also include other fun modifiers like a “hardcore” mode (1 death = permadeath), item randomizers, enemy randomizers, etc. The feature set is yet to be fully defined, but the developer announced intention is to release the modifier system before the end of the year.

What else to expect for DLC or Expansions

Right now, the Hexworks team is working on optimizing the game and improving its stability, performance, and player experience. With new free content announced, it’s inevitable to wonder whether the game will also get paid DLC and Expansions.

Given Lords of the Fallen sold over 1 Million copies in 10 days, I think it’s enough of a commercial success to warrant paid content in the future. With the ongoing performance improvements and the inevitable winter sales that will add new users in December and January, the player base will increase and be significant enough that it could support paid content.

I personally would very much like to see some tweaks done to the game’s existing NPCs and questlines to facilitate progression and understanding of what gets locked out as you do what. I would also like to see a revision to the game’s endings, as they could feel quite underwhelming and even rushed after doing significant work to unlock them.

But besides those wishes for free tweaks, I think I would happily pay for more extensive content that allows me to explore new mid-game areas and unlock new spell types, new weapons and armor, or hopefully a contained small story that picks up after the game events.

So what would you like to see? Are there any specific tweaks and changes you are wanting or looking forward to? Will you be buying any paid DLC if it’s ever made? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Lords of the Fallen Gets Colossal Roadmap for 2023 appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Lords of the Fallen Review, we take a deep look at the Lords of the Fallen 2023 release, that resets the stage for the IP and aims to put Hexworks and CI Games on the radar of souls fans. How does the game compare to Lies of P? How long is LOTF? What can you expect from story, performance and gameplay? Read on to find out.

Lords of the Fallen 2023 Review

Genre: RPG
Developed by: Hexworks
Published by: CI Games
Release date: October 13th, 2023
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5
Price at time of review: $59.99-69.99

LOTF Review – Story and Setting

The story of Lords of the Fallen is set in the same universe as the original game, and takes place about 1000 years after the events of the 2014 release. Adyr, the God of the Rhogar, or “demons” by human perception, has been imprisoned and sealed away to protect humanity by the followers of the God Orius. But no prison can hold off a God forever, and the wards are weakening.

Preaching their righteous ways, the Hallowed Sentinels aim to restore the corrupted beacons that lock away the demon god. As a lampbearer, gifted with the unique capacity to step into the world of the dead and return, you are called to assist them in this task.

A setting like this is not unusual for RPGs, however, I found the overall world-building to be extremely interesting and well thought-out. In Lords of the Fallen, there is a massive, complex and intriguing world to discover, which appealed to the fantasy reader in me. Additionally, I appreciate that the Hexworks committed to the Dark Fantasy theme and crafted their world and stories to create a consistent atmosphere that carries throughout the game and motivates you to explore and investigate.

The story is told by means of some short cutscenes, dialogue with NPCs, item descriptions and the player-activated “Stigmas” that let the player relive moments in time. Combining all these elements, you will find a convoluted but interesting story with some exposition flaws. It is not difficult to piece together what has happened, and the events that have led to the situation of each NPC can be quite moving, but there are some unfortunately clumsy moments that take away from the intrigue and make it feel more “like a video game”.

There are choices to be made in how to approach some NPC questlines, and ultimately several endings to discover, each with its own roleplay consequence. This element brings the story on par with other souls-likes and ties the exploration and gameplay into a meaningful experience, though the endings of the game leave a lot to be desired.

Gameplay in Lords of the Fallen

Gameplay is the most important part of any souls-like, and Lords of the Fallen brings a good amount of genre-fitting innovations that help it deliver a great experience.

Lords of the Fallen Exploration

Exploration is one of my favorite parts of most games, as I really enjoy discovering what is around each corner, gathering all equipment and items, figuring out NPC progression Quests and ultimately uncovering how the developers tie everything together in their game world.

In this regard, Lords of the Fallen delivered, for me, a truly phenomenal experience. The world inter-connectivity is amazing, and the use of verticality is so exceptional that it puts similar non-Fromsoftware titles that have attempted it to shame. Not only can you find multiple shortcuts, turnabouts and surprise secret pathways in almost every corner, but the size of the world is quite mind-boggling. For comparison’s sake, I loved the world design of Dark Souls. This game has a similar flow, but it is probably two or three times the map size of Dark Souls. And you can see this entire world as you explore, which adds a wonderful feeling of immersion.

On top of this, the whole world was designed twice, as there’s the Umbral realm that can also be explored, has its own set of enemies, its own set of unique pathways, and is layered on top of everything. You spend less time in Umbral, as there are too many enemies and you only need Umbral for specific portions of progress, but the fact that it’s always there and ready for your visit is impressive.

Tying up the size and exploration are of course the NPC questlines and treasure pickups. In this regard, I felt that there was a very good progression of unlockable trainers, storylines and loot to reward me for actually checking every edge of the screen.

LotF Combat

The combat of Lords of the Fallen is unfortunately somewhere the game should have shined, but does not. This is not to say the combat is bad, but it lacks a degree of polish that other developers have mastered, and Lords of the Fallen lags behind a bit in this regard.

There are intriguing ideas like Wither Damage when you block, which is similar to Bloodborne’s Rally mechanic, or dodges in and out of range of enemies replacing a roll. The damage mechanics are simple and easy to understand, and the weapon movesets have good combinations with their R2 attacks into the combos.

However, for the entire game I could not shake the feeling of “floatyness” that you get when you overstep forward as you’re swinging, which eventually puts you behind an enemy and forces an awkward 180 turn to continue attacking. There’s also a horrible issue with the lock-on camera, that will prioritize things that are in the middle of the screen rather than your closest enemy. This means that if you’re fighting several enemies in melee range, your aim may suddenly switch to a distant archer, and you’ll start swinging at nothing and become wide open to attacks from the mobs surrounding you.

Another disappointing aspect of combat was the lack of enemy variety. This is something that may not be a deal-breaker for most people, but it does eat into the long-term enjoyment of the game. There are somewhere around 40 enemy types, which is a bit above what Demon’s Souls had at launch. The difference is that you meet most of these early on, and then they are used in most areas of the game, whereas in the FromSoft game you only encountered each type in a certain area, giving you distance from them as you teleport back and forth. Lords of the Fallen is also a much larger game than Demon’s Souls, so you really feel the lack of enemy variety by the end.

There are things that the combat does well, however, and they should be noted. Magic and throwable item management is actually well implemented, with powerful spells and items that give buffs to yourself and allies or deal damage, etc. The treasure distribution means you can use these frequently and almost with abandon, but still have to keep an eye on your usage in order to replenish between fights. Additionally, the combat style with different weapon types does change how you approach the game, so you can look forward to changing your character’s focus and redoing your builds.

Classes, Builds & Itemization

Lords of the Fallen launches with 9 default Classes, and players are rewarded with an extra 4 classes for completing game objectives. The extra classes can only be used in a new playthrough, but their equipment can be found in-game as well. Classes work like they do in the Souls games, in that their only role is starting equipment and initial stat distribution, but players will find that the game is rather big and their wanted loot may be many hours from the start, so the choice can be important to match your gameplay and not have you wasting all your Vigor buying armor.

Itemization for Lords of the Fallen follows a simplified Souls formula, with stat requirements and scaling that apply to weapon categories, armor weight classes and items to deal with damage types and buildup status effects. The game has 15 Weapon categories featuring 180 unique weapons, 3 different Spell types with 60 unique spells, and I think I have counted 90 Armor sets with really awesome fashion opportunities. This is without including the multitude of throwable Items and Consumables that can be used to enhance your combat experience.

All of this together means that the game gives a decent amount of options to create unique and interesting Builds, however there may be some shallowness to these due to Enemy weaknesses and resistances, which are sort of a rock, paper, scissors format.

Coupled with this is the absence of infusions or skills on weapons, as upgrades are a linear progression that simply improves the attack power and scaling of your weapon. Thus, you’ll find yourself using consumable items to buff into different damage types to compensate, which may get in the way of your dedicated cosplay, as your paladin may have to use Fire rather than holy to take on many enemies.

To balance the above, weapons and shields do have Runes that can be slotted and change several aspects from scaling to grievous strike damage or even mana or health regen on kills. These effects play into a build by doubling down with other effects you gain from Rings, Amulets and consumables, but it may take players a while to get into them as runes are slottable only with upgrades and players must find them in game.

Lords of the Fallen Review – Design, Audio and Visual

Lords of the Fallen is an absolutely gorgeous game that makes excellent use of Unreal Engine 5 and a very talented design team that has given the world a unique and appropriately grim look and feel. This is probably the best-looking souls game to date in terms of fidelity, if you don’t include the Demon’s Souls remake, and it is infused with distinct personality. As I climbed to high peaks and towers, I truly enjoyed taking a moment to look back and see the entire world I had explored in beautiful detail.

LOTF Bugs & Performance Review

Unfortunately though, Lords of the Fallen suffers from a couple of performance issues and several bugs that might detract from the experience of players. While the start of the game was rather smooth and I could sustain over 60 FPS at 1440p on a 2080ti, late game zones had some drops into the 40 FPS realm that were quite annoying in combat. Devastatingly, the issues in these areas were doubled in multiplayer, and I had to face many challenging fights against groups of mobs with a blighttown-level 20 FPS.

However, there have been continuous patches during the review period, and these things have only gotten better since then. A patch pushed just yesterday addressed many performance issues, and these later zones now perform much better, though still have some FPS dips here and there, though not to the same degree.

There are also some minor but annoying bugs that popped up during the preview period, including menu clicks not working, an item popping in and out of existence at the hub, umbral enemies becoming invisible but able to attack, and a random teleport back to a lamp while in the middle of a level. None of these were game-breaking, but they did give the feel that the game was not as polished as it should be, and perhaps could have used a bit more time in development.

Audio & Soundtrack

Lords of the Fallen has a fitting and impactful music score that I very much enjoyed. Idling in areas did not live up to the magic of some other RPG tunes, but the boss themes were powerful and delivered that intense crescendo that I crave during these difficult fights.

I have seen a lot of commentary regarding the sound effects and sound cues of the game, but I personally found them good enough, with nothing out of place and nothing outstanding. There was, however, one thing that I did find annoying and that was the “buzz” of Umbral, a high-pitched sound that made me want to get out of there as soon as I could every time. I do know the devs have announced they will be working on this aspect, so we’ll see what they do with it.

Voice acting is truly a mixed bag, with some incredibly good deliveries by several outstanding actors, and some truly bad miscastings that unfortunately ruined some NPCs for me. There’s not really much more to say about it.

Pricepoint, Game Length & Replayability

My first Lords of the Fallen playthrough took about 50 hours, and I didn’t find or do everything that was available in game. There are still zones I haven’t visited, Bosses I haven’t fought and NPC questlines I need to further explore. This is before you factor in NG+, that lets you continue playing with your existing character.

Replayability

The replayability of these games comes in several forms: different Builds, continuation into new game plus to unlock different endings, and multiplayer. There’s a serviceable variety of builds to work with and those who like to tinker and re-roll will probably find a happy space here. New Game plus will also give completionists a progression path to keep challenging themselves.

Multiplayer is something that I actually love, and it is something I extremely enjoyed, even through performance and technical issues that were being worked on daily. The implementation of coop play in Lords of the Fallen is absolutely fantastic. You can summon random players, use passwords, or simply use your friends list, and you will find very few barriers and can pair a starting character with an endgame one.

Your summoned companion will stay in your world until they choose to leave or you kick them, meaning you can actually continuously play the entire game with your friends without the need to keep resummoning them. They will get enemy drops and Vigor, they can use all your services including the blacksmith and upgrades for the lamp and healing. But they won’t get any treasures or boss remembrances and thus will be locked out of some gear progression, unless you opt to drop them items they may wish to use.

Something I particularly liked about coop is that, while enemies are harder and can become more challenging, if your summoned partner dies you can simply bring them back from a ghost right where they fell, or from the checkpoint without resetting the level. I very much appreciated this as it felt like we were in it together. Of course, if the host dies…well that’s that.

All in all, I’m not sure how multiplayer performance will pan out. We had good days and bad days with no FPS issues sometimes, and other days where we had terrible FPS drops and rubberbanding. With the recent patch I can say performance is much better, but because we have not had as much time to test it, it’s really hard to say what sort of multiplayer experience each player will get…

Pricing

And this brings us to the ever-contentious pricing. When considering a game’s pricepoint, we take into account the amount of content available, the experience impact, and the value of purchasing a game right away versus waiting for patches or a sale. Lords of the Fallen is a content-complete game with some very well-done aspects, and a mild lack of polish in others.

For me, even with its issues, I had a great time with the game, and even though I have completed the game on PC, I have purchased a Playstation 5 copy for myself and intend to play again with the community. This is because LOTF delivered in exploration and atmosphere, and because I have seen the developers patch the game quickly and effectively based on feedback, so I think they will continue along that line and end up with an excellent product.

Final Thoughts

Lords of the Fallen is the first soulslike to deliver a truly enormous and intricately interconnected world with addicting exploration and a significant variety of discoverable loot that makes you want to find every secret the game has to offer.

While lacking in combat polish and struggling with framerate and netcode in a couple of areas, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game, I’m ready to play again, and I feel like any Souls fan looking for their fix is going to get something out of the game.

Whether you buy it now or wait for further patches, if you enjoy the Souls genre, Lords of the Fallen is a game that I would fully recommend. No other Souls-like to date has so thoroughly mimicked the Souls formula, and I mean that in the best possible way.

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In this Lies of P Build Guide, I’m going to be covering my Lethal Gambit Build, a build that uses quick attacks with a dagger to deal huge amounts of damage in a short period of time, finishing fights quickly and with finesse.

Lethal Gambit – Lies of P Build Guide

The Lethal Gambit Lies of P Build focuses on attacking quickly and overwhelming the enemy with huge DPS, as well as unexpected staggers that are unusual coming from a dagger weapon.

Our reasoning behind the combination of the Tyrant Murderers Dagger Blade with the Wintry Rapier’s Handle is purely because of the matching attack types of stabbing, and the good moveset that the handle provides to the weapon. The main weakness of daggers is that they have an extremely short range, making the weapon type feel difficult to use and frustrating. A good example of this is the Master Chef’s Knife, a dagger where the heavy and normal attacks are of a short range and don’t move the character much closer to the target, making it easy to miss unless you are completely point blank. The Rapier Handle combats this disadvantage by offering the range that most daggers lack, making you step forward with every attack as you would expect from a Rapier weapon.

The Tyrant Murderers Dagger Blade has been chosen as the dagger blade because of its unique 30% Critical Strike property. This dagger is probably the strongest in the game simply for this attack type, so we use it alongside the Rapier Handle to make a deadly combo. 

We will be using a Fable Art very often in this build called the “Grind” Fable Art on the Tyrant Murderers Dagger Blade. This Fable Art increases our Critical Chance for 1 Fable Slot, boosting DPS to insane levels for very cheap. This allows us to build around constantly keeping this effect up by choosing specific P-Organ upgrades, while adding a Grindstone Effect to the weapon in order to further boost its damage, on top of an amulet which increases damage done for every attack you do for up to 4 attacks, overall giving explosive DPS for short periods of time which can be repeated easily thanks to the low cost of Grind.

Note that this build will have some super end-game components that will boost its damage considerably, but there are alternatives to what we use for the majority of the game that work very well regardless.

Lethal Gambit Starting Class

The best starter class for this build will be the Path of the Bastard: Dexterity, as the Wintry Rapier’s Handle favours Technique scaling, and is acquired as your starting weapon by choosing this class. However, if you choose one of the other classes, you can purchase it from a merchant. You will deal less damage if you choose the other classes, so if you want to get the absolute maximum damage output be sure to choose the Dexterity path.

Keep in mind that you CANNOT respec the starting class stats, so if you want to min-max this build, you must choose the recommended build path.

What to use before Area 6

For Areas 1 and 2, the beginner weapon will be fine as you don’t get many other options early on. Once you get into Area 3, I recommend using the Salamander Dagger if you are looking for a similar playstyle to use until you reach the Tyrants blade. You could even put the Rapier Handle on it like we do to the Tyrant blade if you want to get a feel for the moveset.

The Salamander Dagger can be found in Area 3, Workshop Union Entrance Stargazer by taking an immediate right, up to the stairs, and going into the first room on your left, which will have a trapdoor that leads to a few puppets and a safe containing the Salamander Dagger Blade and Handle.

How to Obtain the Tyrant Murderers Dagger Blade

To obtain the Tyrant Murderers Dagger, you will need to buy it from Pulcinella after acquiring the item “Incredible Venigni Collection”. This item can be located in the Opera House in Area 6. From the Estella Opera House Entrance Stargazer, run in a directly straight line through the door leading to the burning chandelier. From here, fall into the hole in the ground under the chandelier, and run through the corridor on the right. Take another right after reaching another corridor, and continue straight into a room with a legless puppet inside. In here will be a safe containing the Incredible Venigni Collection.

You can take this back to Hotel Krat and give it to Pulcinella to expand his inventory of merchandise, which will include the Tyrant Murderers Dagger that goes for 2000 Ergo.

The room where you can find the safe which has the Incredible Venigni Collection

How to Obtain the Wintry Rapier’s Handle

This weapon is easily obtained at the start of the game. You can either choose the starting class Path of the Bastard: Dexterity to get the Wintry Rapier for free, or purchase it from the Wandering Merchant you meet at the Cerasani Alley Stargazer for 300 Ergo.

Lethal Gambit Stats

As this weapon uses the Wintry Rapier’s Handle, it will be a Technique based build with scalings of D in Motivity and B in Technique. You can further enhance the damage by using a Technique Crank on the handle to put the scalings as 0 for Motivity and A for Technique, or you could change it to a balanced scaling using a Motivity Crank to make it a C scaling for both stats.

Besides Technique, you need high Vitality for survivability, and high Vigor to be able to relentlessly attack after casting Grind. Lastly, get a bit of Capacity to hold more puppet parts. However, this stat will be quite low at the endgame as we are only equipping a dagger, giving us lots of weight to spare. Advance and Motivity are not needed at all in this build.

As for the order in which you level, invest into Vitality for the first 10 levels, as extra HP allows you to make more mistakes without dying. Then for the next 20 or so levels you should focus on Technique for weapon damage and Vigor. At this point in the game, you will get puppet parts that start to weigh you down, so start leveling Capacity a tiny bit to increase the amount of weight you can hold so P stays under 80% load in his weight stat. This is important because your normal roll becomes much slower when you pass the 80% threshold, so if you want to equip those heavy puppet parts to be tanky, level Capacity once you start getting them.

From this point, you should level all of the Default Abilities equally, following these end-game stat distributions as a goal:

Level 90 Path of the Bastard: Dexterity

• Vitality: 37
• Vigor: 26
• Capacity: 18
• Motivity: 5
• Technique: 37
• Advance: 6

37 Vitality gives you about 700 Health which allows you to tank tons of hits, and 26 Vigor feels like the sweet spot for how long you can spam this weapon. 18 Capacity allows you to get the bare minimum weight to equip the heaviest puppet parts along with the rest of the build, giving you an overall of 77% capacity. 37 Technique gives tons of damage, but you could allocate points elsewhere after reaching 35 since you barely increase weapon damage after that point.

Amulets

For this build there will only be 1 Special Amulet that is extremely important to the damage of this build, so make sure you don’t spend the Boss Ergo on the weapon counterpart.

In the first Amulet Slot will be the Assassin’s Amulet. This is a super late-game Amulet found in the Arche Abbey Upper Part – Internal Bridge in the final Area. This is amazing for our overall DPS as we get to boost our Crit DMG. An earlier alternative to this amulet can be swapping between any of the three extra damage to enemy type amulets: the Carcass Butcher’s Amulet, Murderer Puppet’s Amulet or the Puppet Destroyer’s Amulet. This will give a general damage buff which is probably on par to the damage increase you would get from the Assassin’s Amulet, but only to specific enemy types.

In the second Amulet Slot, I put the Arm of God Amulet. This amulet will increase your damage every time you attack for up to 4 stacks, for 5 seconds after attacking. The Wintry Rapier’s Handle has an extremely fast moveset so you can very quickly stack this damage buff and pair it with the Grind Fable Art to deliver really good DPS.

In the third Amulet Slot, the Carriers Amulet +1. This or the normal Carriers Amulet is great for saving us some levels that we would have to spend on Capacity in order to naturally hold all of our gear and high tier puppet parts. An alternative amulet for if you wish to use a squishy build with less heavy puppet parts would be the Patience Amulet to get you back in combat quickly with enhanced stamina regeneration.

In the last Amulet Slot, I decided on the Red Fox Amulet. This amulet will increase Technique and Motivity by +3, but unfortunately it is also in the final area of the game. The early alternative would simply be the Technique Amulet for an easy +4 Technique. The reason why the Red Fox Amulet is better than the Technique Amulet is because each point counts as a level to your character, which gives you extra resistances against physical damage, fire damage etc. The Red Fox Amulet will give a very slightly lower damage bonus but give 2 more levels of resistance, making it the better amulet.

Grindstones

In the early game I found that the Flame Grindstone was great for increasing the DPS of this build further, as targets who are overheated will take increased damage from Fire Damage. However, this is not the best grindstone to use; the best grindstone will be the Satisfaction Grindstone which will increase the Critical Rate of your weapon. Using this paired with the Grind Fable Art will give you close to 100% Critical Chance on the dagger, making it do Greatsword levels of damage in its Normal and Heavy attacks, which is ridiculous for its attack speed. Stack this with the Assassin’s Amulet, and you will be wielding the Holy Sword of the Ark shrunk to dagger form. 

P-Organs

The best P-Organ Synergy Effects for the Lethal Gambit are the following:

• Increase Pulse Cells
  • Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Link Dodge
  • Be able to dodge farther away from wide AOE attacks
• Add Amulet Slots
  • Equip more Powerful Amulets which can increase damage, improve survivability and provide special effects.
• Enhance Pulse Cell Recovery
  • Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Add Fable Slots
  • Be able to use the Grind Fable Art as often as possible
• Retain Guard Regain 1
  • Some extra survivability to add to the kit
• Perfect Guard Cause Stiffness
  • You will be Perfect Guarding in order to generate fable quickly, so this pairs well
• Increase Special Grindstone Uses
  • The Grindstone becomes a core part of the build later and is good early too, so increasing its uses will be useful.

For the individual effects you get from spending 1 Quartz:

Attack Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Enhance Charge Stagger ATK
  • Charge attack is quick and you will be able to use it a lot, but it doesn’t do much stagger as it is a dagger so this will help speed things up
• Enhance Fatal ATK
  • Do more damage with staggers
• Increase Fable Art Effect Duration
  • We will keep the Grind Fable Art up for longer, so we can maintain our big DPS boost
• Lower Weapon Durability Consumption
  • I often found myself losing durability quickly, maybe because of how many times the weapon strikes compared to other weapons.
• Enhance Stagger Attack from Behind
  • You want to get at least 1 stagger in every Boss Fight, so any extra stagger we can get is useful

Survival Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Enhance Guard Regain Recovery
  • Get more health back after damaging enemies right after blocking their attacks
• Lower Damage While Dodging
  • If you fail a dodge, you are forgiven with slight damage reduction
• Lower Guard Regain Reduction
  • Gives you more time to attack the enemy before the temporary health from blocking depletes 
• Perfect Guard Guard Regain Recovery (NOT A TYPO)
  • When you are being pushed back by relentless attacks, Perfect Guard will be able to heal any damage that you take making you less prone to burst deaths

Ability Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Lower Charge Attack Stamina Consumption
  • Lower the stamina consumption of the counterattack and the normal heavy attack
• Perfect Guard Fable Charge Enhance
  • Make the Perfect Guard from the counterattack generate Fable to use the Grind Fable Art more often
• Reduce Stamina Consumption from Dash
  • When you need to disengage from a boss, or get behind it, use less stamina so that you can fit in more attacks
• Fatal Attack Fable Charger
  • Generate Fable after staggering an enemy and Fatal Attacking so we can pop the Grind Fable Art right after
• Special Grindstone Weapon Durability Recovery
  • If you run out of durability mid combat, use the Grindstone to not only get a special effect on your weapon, but completely replenish the durability instantly

Item Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Special Grindstone Increase Effect Duration
  • The Grindstone is a core part of the build for enhanced DPS, so increasing its effect duration will be useful

Legion Arm

The Legion Arm that felt best with this build is Puppet String to close the distance between you and an enemy since your range is still a little short despite using the Wintry Rapier’s Handle. You can’t get crits from the Attack Link upgrade, but it’s nevertheless good damage and stagger.

Other Legion Arms can work, so don’t feel limited to these options and experiment with what you enjoy the most!

Puppet Parts

In this build, I always used the highest-weight puppet part I found, which made me extremely tanky by the end of the game. I kept my equipment weight down using the Carrier’s Amulet when needed and leveling capacity, allowing me to equip these heavy parts without passing the weight threshold.

Final Tips

While an aggressive playstyle is intended with this build, it’s easy to go overboard and forget about perfect parrying and dodging attacks while completely immersed in the big red crits that you deal. Make sure you balance aggression with a reasonable defence, as if you can’t make the most out of your Grind Fable Art while it’s active because you got knocked down, you will find yourself out of fable slots and thus down DPS until you charge up more Fable.

Next, try to ignore your Arm of God passive that you can see while playing. You may feel anxiety and try to get an attack in before the buff runs out, but trying to play around the 5 seconds of uptime the damage boost has will just make you misplay by attacking when you aren’t supposed to. This weapon attacks stupidly fast, so you can get all your stacks back from just 1 quick heavy attack and 1 light attack.

Lastly, don’t use the Grind Fable Art against normal enemies. The weapon already has a built in Critical Rate that will deal some extra damage, and using a Fable Slot for a bonus on trash mobs is a waste. I recommend using it constantly against minibosses and any tanky mobs that you find in the game.

Look out for more Lies of P guides and our Beginner Guide. Head to our Lies of P wiki for all the latest on Weapons, Fable Arts, Accessories, Crafting and more.

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In this Lies of P Build Guide, I’m going to be covering my Stormsteel Templar Build, a build that can be almost fully completed by Area 4, and one that wields a ginormous Special Greatsword and pairs it with Electric Blitz to deliver colossal damage in only a few swings.

Stormsteel Templar – Lies of P Build Guide

The Stormsteel Templar is a heavy-hitting build that utilises the heavy stagger damage of the colossal Holy Sword of The Ark by applying Electric Shock on enemies. Applying Electric Shock will not do any damage over time, but instead increases the amount of Physical damage and Electric Blitz damage they take. It also makes enemies experience increased Stagger Damage, which makes it a fantastic pair with the Holy Sword of the Ark (HSA).

The Holy Sword of the Ark has the Fable Arts “Patient Smash” and “Alter”. Patient Smash will charge up a great overhead attack that deals good damage. Alter is more interesting as it extends the range of the Holy Sword of the Ark and decreases its stamina cost. This form is not temporary and only returns to its original shape if Alter is used again. Once used again, the sword will glow red, indicating that the next attack will be empowered.

In order to apply Electric Shock in this build, we need to have a source of Electric Blitz, of which we have a few. Our main source will be from the Legion Arm Fulminis; a Legion Arm which charges up a big electric shock that does decent damage and applies a ton of Electric Blitz. Our next source will be from the Electric Blitz Grindstone, which simply imbues Electric Blitz to the Holy Sword of the Ark. The last possible source of Electric Blitz is a consumable, the Throwing Cell. Using this consumable will throw the item, do a bit of damage, and apply Electric Blitz. This will usually apply Electric Shock within 2 uses. 

The basic rotation of this Builds playstyle is to enter the battle with Alter activated, apply Electric Shock with any of the previous sources, slash away with that extra damage buff until the enemy is staggered, then after using a Fatal Attack alter back to normal in order to execute a charged heavy attack that will be empowered from Alter, and deal extra physical damage from Electric Shock. Then, repeat from the start whenever Electric Shock is not on the enemy.

Stormsteel Templar Starting Class

The best class to start for this build will be the Path of the Sweeper: Strength as the Holy Sword of the Ark is a Greatsword with B Motivity Scaling and C Technique Scaling. Using a Motivity Crank can increase this to an A in Motivity and a C in technique, giving a slight damage boost. If you chose Path of the Bastard: Dexterity, then it may be better to stick to the Technique scaling by using a Technique Crank to make the weapon have a B Scaling, though you wont get as much damage as if you were to use Motivity and have an A Scaling on the weapon.

Keep in mind that you CANNOT respec the starting class stats, so if you want to min-max this build, you must choose the recommended build path.

What to use before Area 4

For Areas 1 and 2, the beginner weapon will be fine as you don’t get many other options early on. For Area 3 and its Boss, as well as a chunk of Area 4, the easiest weapons to pick up are the Booster Glaive Blade and the Electric Coil Stick Handle (Does not scale great with motivity, but shouldn’t matter in the early game and it gives a good moveset.). 

The Booster Glaive can be found in Area 3, Workshop Union Entrance Stargazer by taking an immediate left and going down the ladder towards the Puppet of the Future, and then going to the opposite end, where there will be a chest with the Booster Glaive Blade and Booster Glaive Handle. 

The Electric Coil Stick can be found in area 2, Inside the House on Elysion Boulevard Stargazer where there is a merchant located in the same house as the Stargazer. This Merchant will sell the Electric Coil Stick for 1200 Ergo.

How to Obtain the Holy Sword of the Ark

The Holy Sword of the Ark is a Special Weapon, which means it can only be obtained by purchasing it from Alidoro for a specific Boss Ergo. Luckily, the boss you need to defeat for this weapon is in Area 3; King’s Flame, Fuoco. This means as soon as you meet Alidoro in Area 4, you can purchase the Holy Sword of the Ark.

Stormsteel Templar Stats

This build will only be building Motivity as the main weapon damage stat. Leveling Advance secondarily could work as we do rely on Electric Shock a lot, which scales with Advance, but the Fulminis has the same scaling on Motivity and Advance, so it will be more efficient to just level Motivity.

For the rest of the stats, you want high Vitality to survive tanking a lot of hits and high Vigor to be able to use multiple charged attacks. High Capacity is necessary in order to equip this very heavy weapon with any special amulets and heavy duty puppet parts, and we will not  be leveling Technique or Advance.

As for the order in which you level, invest into Vitality for the first 10 levels, as that extra HP makes the game much more forgiving of your mistakes. Then the next 20 or so levels should be focused on Motivity for weapon damage and Vigor. After this point in the game, you will get puppet parts that start to weigh you down as well as your Holy Sword of the Ark, so start pumping Capacity to increase the amount of weight you can hold. It is necessary to keep under 80% load in your weight stat as the normal roll becomes much slower when you pass the 80% threshold.

From this point, you should level all of the Default Abilities equally, following these end-game stat distributions as a goal:

Level 90 Path of the Sweeper: Strength

• Vitality: 36
• Vigor: 25
• Capacity: 22
• Motivity: 35
• Technique: 5
• Advance: 6

Amulets

There are only 1 or 2 Special Amulets recommended for this build, which can be acquired from trading the Boss Soul of the Area 1 boss and the Area 2 Boss, so make sure you don’t use this ergo beforehand.

In the first Amulet Slot, I recommend switching between the three extra damage to enemy type amulets; these would be the Carcass Butcher’s Amulet, the Murderer Puppet’s Amulet and the Puppet Destroyer’s Amulet. Switch the amulet based on the type of boss or enemy you are predominantly fighting in your area for a very noticeable extra damage buff.

In the second Amulet Slot, the Patience Amulet is good for getting back your stamina after using it all up on charged attacks. An alternative Special Amulet that can also work is the Dancing One’s Amulet, which will let you roll without having any stamina. This means you can fully commit to charged attacks, spending your whole stamina bar, and still get out of danger safely. The only downside is the weight of this amulet, which is almost as high as the main weapon of the build.

In the third Amulet Slot, the Carrier’s Amulet will increase the weight threshold so that you can equip heavy parts and amulets without having to spend levels into capacity that could be spent on Motivity. Alternatively, if you don’t use heavy puppet parts, you can use the Strength Amulet to get a slight edge in damage.

In the last Amulet Slot, the Extreme Modification Amulet is a good fit for this build. As the main Fable Art used in this build is Alter, which only takes 1 Fable Slot, you will often have 3 Fable Slots to spare. This amulet will increase basic weapon damage depending on how many Fable Slots are charged, providing an easy damage boost to the build.

P-Organ

The best P-Organ Synergy Effects for this build are the following:

• Increase Pulse Cells
  • Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Link Dodge
  • Be able to dodge farther away from wide AOE attacks
• Add Amulet Slots
  • Equip more Powerful Amulets which can increase damage, improve survivability and provide special effects.
• Enhance Pulse Cell Recovery
  • Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Increase Staggerable Window 1
  • Increase the stagger time to pull of the full combo against bosses who have a very short Stagger time
• Add Fable Slots
  • Use Alter more often
• Increase Special Grindstone Uses
  • Use Electric Blitz more often
• Perfect Guard Cause Stiffness
  • Break the stance of minibosses to buy time in order to do a heavy attack

For the individual effects you get from spending 1 Quartz:

Attack Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Enhance Charge Stagger ATK
  • Get more stagger damage to use your Fable Art more frequently
• Enhance Fatal ATK
  • We stagger a lot with this build, so boost the damage of the Fatal Attack that comes with it
• Enhance Ambus Stagger ATK
  • Dash attacking is quick with this weapon, so increasing the stagger for dodge and dash attacks is great.

Survival Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Enhance Guard Regain Recovery
  • You are more likely to block than dodge with this build, so enhancing Guard Regain Recovery will help you get back the HP you lose from blocking
• Lowers Damage of Charge Attack / Fable Arts
  • If you mistime a perfect parry, you wont take as much damage from the Red Attacks.
• Perfect Guard Guard Regain Recovery (NOT A TYPO)
  • When you are being pushed back by relentless attacks, Perfect Guard will be able to heal any damage that you take making you less prone to burst deaths

Ability Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Lower Charge Attack Stamina Consumption
  • Lower the stamina consumption so it can be used more often and thus stagger more often
• Reduce Stamina Consumption from Dash
  • When you need to disengage from a boss, or get behind it, use less stamina so that you can fit in more attacks
• Fatal Attack Fable Charger
  • Get more Fable Generation to increase our weapon damage through the Extreme Modification Amulet
• Special Grindstone Weapon Durability Recovery
  • The Special Grindstone will be used often to generate Electric Shock, this upgrade will make it even more useful.
• Auto Charge Legion
  • Auto Charge so that we don’t need to expend Legion Magazines as often, which would leave us vulnerable
• Perfect Guard Fable Charge Enhance
  • Make Perfect Guards charge Fable Slots faster and increase our weapon damage through the Extreme Modification Amulet

Item Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Legion Magazine Effect Enhance
  • Fulminis is a big source of Electric Shock, so we will be using Legion Magazines to make sure we always have charge
• Special Grindstone Increase Effect Duration
  • The Special Grindstone will be used often to generate Electric Shock, increasing the duration will let us apply it for longer
• Charge Fable upon Pulse Cell Use
  • Increase weapon damage with Pulse Cells through the Extreme Modification Amulet

Legion Arm

The only Legion Arm which can generate Electric Blitz which leads to Electric Shock is the Fulminis, which is unlocked in Area 2. Once the Fulminis is fully upgraded, it will deal devastating damage and stagger after its 3 charge ups, and will apply a good amount of Electric Blitz to apply Electric Shock.

To use this Legion Arm without getting hit, you need to find downtime between enemy attacks where they stay still and allow you to charge the Fulminis. This is ideally the first thing you do in a boss fight as Electric Shock lasts a long time and will get the best value if applied as early as possible. If you ever run out of charge, feel free to use Legion Magazines to recharge it, as these are very easily acquired from Polendina for very cheap.

Special Grindstone

The Electric Blitz Grindstone is fantastic for generating Electric Shock onto enemies, and will also give the Holy Sword of the Ark a damage boost against any enemies who are afflicted with Electric Shock. If you want, you can try using the Destruction Grindstone as an alternative in the late game to get more Stagger Damage, but with the Electric Blitz Grindstone you can get extra damage on top of Stagger Damage, so it may not be as good.

Puppet Parts

In this build, I always used the highest-weight puppet part I found, which made me extremely tanky by the end of the game. I kept my equipment weight down using the Carrier’s Amulet when needed and leveling Capacity, allowing me to equip these heavy parts without passing the weight threshold.

Final Tips

When using this build outside of Boss Fights, don’t always use Alter; The form has its downsides as well as its upsides. In small corridors, the weapon is basically unusable as the length and the moveset of the sword will cause the sword to constantly bounce off the wall. Alter is great otherwise with its large AOE slash attacks and reduced stamina costs, but this one disadvantage can easily get you killed, so be sure to remember this!

Next, don’t forget to use the Throwing Cell against bosses for an easy Electric Blitz build up. These are especially helpful when you have to play safe but need to apply Electric Shock, as this is the only way to apply the effect from a range. Be careful on how many you use however, as these items are not easily acquired like Legion Magazines or Fable Catalysts.

Lastly, there is difficulty to pull off massive damage boost to this build using the Fable Art, Patient Smash. As aforementioned, after we Fatal Attack the enemy, we can unalter our weapon to make our next attack deal extra damage. Usually, you won’t have enough Fable Slots to use Patient Smash, but in the endgame when you have 5 Fable Slots and get extra Fable charge from many sources, you can start using Patient Smash instead of a normal Heavy Attack for absolutely colossal damage against bosses.

Look out for more Lies of P guides and our Beginner Guide. Head to our Lies of P wiki for all the latest on Weapons, Fable Arts, Accessories, Crafting and more.

The post Stormsteel Templar – Lies of P Build Guide appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Lies of P Build Guide, I’m going to be covering my Dragonblade Dancer Build, which is a build that uses and exceptionally dextrous mid-game Special Weapon. 

Weapon: Two Dragons Sword, a Special Weapon bought from Alidoro. Available after defeating the Area 8 boss.

Lies of P Build Guide – Dragonblade Dancer

The Dragonblade Dancer Lies of P Build focuses on attacking quickly while elegantly dodging and parrying enemy attacks at the same time, which is done by correctly utilizing the different attack movesets of the Two Dragons Sword.

This Sword has a very mobile and unique play style thanks to the special basic attacks. Your Light Attack without directional input will stab and slash your enemy as expected, but moving left or right while attacking will rotate you around your target, allowing you to dodge some attacks and even get behind enemies while still dealing damage.

The Two Dragons Sword also has a special Heavy Attack. When tapped, you will gracefully slash at your enemy while dodging backwards, and away from their possible attack. Tapping again will lunge you back at the enemy, slashing them again. When you hold down the Heavy Attack, P spins the blade around him before a flicker animation appears. When released, it delivers a heavy downwards slice. Holding Heavy Attack again will charge another powerful attack slashing the enemy twice. 

For Fable Arts, the Handle has Wind of Swords: a ranged AOE blue wave of damage, and the Blade has Link Emergency Dodge: a 3 step Fable Art starting with a dash, followed by a lunging stab, and ending with a powerful slash.

What many people will miss about this weapon is its hidden mechanic; the flash you see when charging the Heavy Attack is actually the timing for a perfect parry! When correctly timed, you will break the enemy’s stance and deliver a powerful counterattack. This will be one of the core aspects of the Dragonblade Dancer Build.

When you meld all of these different movesets together and learn how to execute them without getting hit, this Lies of P Build will look flashy, stylish and elegant, like a dancer. 

Dragonblade Dancer Starting Class

The best starter class for this Lies of P Build will be the Path of the Bastard: Dexterity, as the Two Dragons Sword is one of the only weapons that has an A scaling in Technique, which can go up to S after using a Crank. Of course, you can still use this Lies of P Build if you chose a different starter Class, but you will miss out on a bit of damage, especially if you go Path of the Sweeper: Strength as with the Crank this weapon will have 0 Motivity scaling, making those 11 points useless.

Keep in mind that you CANNOT respec the starting class stats, so if you want to min-max this build, you must choose the recommended build path.

What to use Before the Two Dragons Sword

For Areas 1 and 2, the beginner weapon will be fine as you don’t get many other options early on. Once you get into Area 3, you will have 2 options between the Salamander Dagger or the Booster Glaive.

The Salamander Dagger can be found in Area 3, Workshop Union Entrance Stargazer by taking an immediate right, up to the stairs, and going into the first room on your left, which will have a trapdoor that leads to a few puppets and a safe containing the Salamander Dagger Blade and Handle.

The Booster Glaive can be found in Area 3, Workshop Union Entrance Stargazer by taking an immediate left and going down the ladder towards the Puppet of the Future, and then going to the opposite end, where there will be a chest with the Booster Glaive Blade and Booster Glaive Handle. 

Once you get to Area 6, another solid weapon to use is the Dancers Curved Sword. This weapon can be found from the Rosa Isabelle Street Entrance. Go down the street and take the first right, over a bridge into a building. From there, go down the ladder and fight your way through the Musketeer Puppets and the Bomb puppets on the street until you reach a chest, which will contain the Dancers Curved Sword Blade and Handle.

How to Obtain the Two Dragons Sword

The Two Dragons Sword is a Special Weapon that can only be obtained from Alidoro once you have a specific Boss Ergo. For this weapon, you will need to defeat the Green Monster of the Swamp in Area 8. After defeating this Boss, you will acquire the Puppet-Devouring Green Hunter’s Ergo which you can use to buy the weapon in Hotel Krat from Alidoro.

Dragonblade Dancer Stats

The Two Dragons Sword is a very rare weapon in that it has a scaling of A on Technique. Using a crank pushes this to S, meaning this weapon will scale fantastically for the rest of the game as you level up. 

Obviously, the main stat of this build will be Technique, but you will also want high Vitality for basic survivability, and high Vigor to be able to attack ceaselessly, as this weapon adopts an extremely aggressive playstyle. Lastly, Capacity is also necessary for survivability in order to hold more puppet parts. Advance and Motivity are not needed at all in this build.

As for the order in which you level, invest into Vitality for the first 10 levels, as that extra HP makes the game much more forgiving of your mistakes. Then the next 20 or so levels should be focused on Technique for weapon damage and Vigor. After this point in the game, you will get puppet parts that start to weigh you down, so start pumping Capacity, to increase the amount of weight you can hold in order to keep P under 80% load in his weight stat. This is important because your normal roll becomes much slower when you pass the 80% threshold, so if you want to equip those heavy puppet parts to be tanky, level Capacity once you start getting them.

From this point, you should level all of the Default Abilities equally, following these end-game stat distributions as a goal:

Level 90 Path of the Bastard: Dexterity

• Vitality: 35
• Vigor: 26
• Capacity: 22
• Motivity: 5
• Technique: 35
• Advance: 6

35 Vitality gives you about 650 Health which allows you to tank a lot of hits from Bosses, and 26 Vigor feels like enough for this weapon. 22 Capacity allows you to get the bare minimum weight to equip the heaviest puppet parts along with the rest of the build, giving you an overall of 79% load. 35 Technique is a good place to stop levelling because from there on, you start only getting +2 to weapon damage per level which is not a great investment.

Dragonblade Dancer Build – Amulets

The Amulets for this build are quite important and require 2 Special Amulets, so make sure you don’t spend Boss Ergo on Weapons, other than the Two Dragons Sword.

In the first Amulet Slot, I would usually put one of the three extra damage to enemy-type amulets, but this is not the case for the Dragonblade Dancer. When using the Two Dragons Sword, you already deal insane amounts of damage, but what you lack is sustained fights with Stamina. You are constantly spinning around and spamming movesets which deplete Stamina very quickly, so instead of a damage amulet I decided to put the Patience Amulet in this slot to mitigate this issue by making Stamina regenerate quickly.

Arm of God Amulet

In the second Amulet Slot, I put the Arm of God Amulet. This amulet will increase your damage every time you attack for up to 4 stacks, for 5 seconds after attacking. As this weapon shines with an aggressive playstyle, and has a relatively fast attack speed, so it makes sense to equip this amulet to further increase your damage while you relentlessly attack.

In the third Amulet Slot, the Conquering Amulet is equipped. This Amulet will increase the damage of your next attack after triggering a Perfect Parry. This works well because the Heavy Attack parry mentioned earlier actually works with this amulet, and the counterattack gets a big damage boost. It feels like this amulet was made for this weapon, but don’t forget that you will only fully see the potential of this combo once you master the Perfect Parry with the Two Dragons Sword’s Heavy Attack.

In the last Amulet Slot, the Carriers Amulet +1. This or the normal Carrier’s Amulet are absolutely necessary if we want to equip 2 Special Amulets on top of high-tier puppet parts. But if you want to go for a squishy glass cannon build, you can put one of the three extra damage to enemy-type amulets which are the Carcass Butcher’s Amulet, Murderer Puppet’s Amulet and Puppet Destroyer’s Amulet. If you do this, you will likely have to downgrade your Puppet Frame to the Workshop Union Strengthening Frame, and decrease the weight on your other puppet parts too.

Dragonblade Dancer Build – P-Organs

The best P-Organ Synergy Effects for the Dragonblade Dancer are the following:

• Increase Pulse Cells – Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Link Dodge – Be able to dodge farther away from wide AOE attacks
• Add Amulet Slots – Equip more Powerful Amulets which can increase damage, improve survivability and provide special effects.
• Enhance Pulse Cell Recovery – Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Add Fable Slots
• Perfect Guard Cause Stiffness – Useful for the heavy attack parry counterattack as well as any other perfect parries you do
• Increase Special Grindstone Uses – Light your blade on fire more often not only for extra damage, but style points

For the individual effects you get from spending 1 Quartz:

Attack Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Enhance Charge Stagger ATK – Get at least 1 or 2 staggers in per boss fight as this weapons stagger damage is low
• Enhance Fatal ATK – Do more damage with staggers
• Enhance Fable Arts ATK – Increase the burst damage of Link Emergency Dodge and Wind of Swords
• Increase Staggered Duration – Hit enemies with Fable Arts or Heavy Attacks while they are down before Fatal Attacking them
• Lower Weapon Durability Consumption – Against enemies that are more rocky in physique, the Two Dragons Sword loses durability too fast
• Enhance Stagger Attack from Behind – With all the dodging and mobility, it’s easy to get behind enemies and bosses so this will allow you to make the most of that

Survival Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Lower Damage While Dodging – If you fail a dodge, you are forgiven with a slight damage reduction
• Lower Guard Regain Reduction – Gives you more time to attack the enemy before the temporary health from blocking depletes 
• Perfect Guard Guard Regain Recovery (NOT A TYPO) – When you are being pushed back by relentless attacks, Perfect Guard will be able to heal any damage that you take making you less prone to burst deaths

Ability Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Lower Charge Attack Stamina Consumption – Lower the stamina consumption of the counterattack and the normal heavy attack
• Perfect Guard Fable Charge Enhance – Make the Perfect Guard from the counterattack generate Fable on top of damage which also gives Fable
• Reduce Stamina Consumption from Dash – When you need to disengage from a boss, or get behind it, use less stamina so that you can fit in more attacks
• Charge Fable when Reviving – Whenever you respawn from dying to a boss, you have Fable to use Furious Slash
• Fatal Attack Fable Charger – Generate Fable after staggering an enemy and Fatal Attacking to dodge away with Link Emergency Dodge
• Special Grindstone Weapon Durability Recovery – If you run out of durability mid-combat, use the Grindstone to not only get a special effect on your weapon, but completely replenish the durability instantly
• Auto Charge Legion – Auto Charge so that we don’t need to expend Legion Magazines as often, which would leave us vulnerable

Item Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Charge Fable upon Pulse Cell Use – Use Link Emergency Dodge and Wind of Swords more often

You can feel free to swap out the Grindstone Effect with one of the other Synergy Effects, as some players may prefer to make improvements to their Legion Arms or Wishstones instead, but the Grindstone gives a lot of aesthetic and style to the build on top of some good damage.

Dragonblade Dancer Build – Legion Arm

The Legion Arm that felt best with this build is Falcon-Eyes, as it has an A in scaling with Technique, and it allows you to damage the enemy from far away when you are backed off regenerating stamina. Other Legion Arms can work, so don’t feel limited to this option and experiment with what you enjoy the most!

Falcon-Eyes

Dragonblade Dancer Build – Puppet Parts

In this Lies of P Build, I always used the highest-weight puppet part I found, which made me extremely tanky by the end of the game. I kept my equipment weight down using the Carrier’s Amulet when needed and leveling Capacity, allowing me to equip these heavy parts without passing the weight threshold of 80%.

Final Tips

Spend a bit of time learning the moveset and combos of this high-skill-ceiling weapon against the Training Dummies that you can find in Hotel Krat. It’s not as easy as it looks to control, and you will often find yourself making mistakes and learning through combat. Additionally, you can learn the timing for the Heavy Attack parry against the boxing Training Dummy so you don’t end up dying to a trash mob practicing. 

Remember that you don’t need to use the Heavy Attack parry against everything. It is a high-risk high reward type of ability which will reduce in risk the more confident you are, but don’t feel pressured to constantly use it. Your normal and charged attacks can deal tons of damage on their own, they just lack the stagger damage which the counterattack provides.

Lastly, I found that Link Emergency Dodge was best used to dodge powerful red attacks of enemies, and then continue the Fable Art by lunging back into them and delivering the full combo. Wind of Swords feels great to use against groups of enemies in areas, but also deals good enough damage to be useful against bosses when you aren’t close enough to do melee attacks.

Look out for more Lies of P guides and our Beginner Guide. Head to our Lies of P wiki for all the latest on Weapons, Fable Arts, Accessories, Crafting and more.

The post Lies of P Build Guide – Dragonblade Dancer appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Lies of P Build Guide, I’m going to be covering my Sawblade Slicer Build, which is a build that boasts huge range with a good attack speed while maintaining the massive damage that you can get from greatswords. 

Lies of P Build Guide – Sawblade Slicer

The Sawblade Slicer focuses on dealing steady stagger damage by charging a Heavy Attack from far away, and leaping towards the enemy to deal full stagger damage without the risk of getting hit during the charge up. Naturally, the charge attack itself does big damage and can be effectively used against normal enemies, and the Bone-Cutting Sawblade’s normal attack has a wide range that will kill normal enemies within your level in 2-3 hits.

The main source of damage for this build will come from the Fable Art, which the build gets its name from, Furious Slash. This Fable Art will rapidly slash and slice all enemies in an AOE in front of you 8 times, then deal a strong finishing blow that deals extra damage and stagger. This attack has massive potential damage, but it can be easily interrupted, leaving you with less Fable and not much damage dealt to the enemy. Thus, this Lies of P Build focuses on staggering the enemy and then instead of using a Fatal Attack, using this Fable Art to its maximum potential.

Sawblade Slicer Starting Class

The easiest Class to start this build with is the Path of the Cricket: Balance, as this is a balanced build. However, if you want to use the quick and agile Technique weapons or the strong and heavy Motivity weapons in the early game before you get this weapon, feel free to do so as you can put a Technique/Motivity Crank on the handle to skew it in favour of whatever you are building. You get very slight, inconsequential extra damage by sticking to one stat and using a crank rather than going balanced.

Keep in mind that you CANNOT respec the starting class stats, so if you want to min-max this build, make sure to stick with your decision.

What to use Before the Bone-Cutting Sawblade

The Booster Glaive is similar to the Sawblade in that it is a large greatsword, albeit with less range. Using this and combining it with the Puppet’s Saber Handle will make a similar, though weaker, weapon. If you didn’t choose the Balanced class, I suggest using the handle you got from your starter class instead of the Puppet’s Saber handle.

The Booster Glaive can be found in Area 3 by heading to the Workshop Union Entrance Stargazer and taking an immediate left and going down the ladder towards the Puppet of the Future, and then going to the opposite end, where there will be a chest with the Booster Glaive Blade and Booster Glaive Handle. 

How to Obtain the Bone-Cutting Sawblade

You can get the Bone-Cutting Sawblade and Handle from Area 5 of the game, in the Malum District. From this Stargazer go to the staircase leading to an alleyway. Follow the natural path until you reach a Plaza with a bonfire in the center with the Black Rabbit Brotherhood Logo.

Go straight down the path on the right, and climb the ladder to reach the rooftops. From the ladder, take the left path towards the chest which contains the Sawblade.

In the image above, the Sawblade can be found in the chest on the very right, next to the burning barrel.

How to Obtain the Bramble Curved Sword Handle

You can also get the Bramble Curved Sword Handle in the same Area, in the Malum District. However, if you have not defeated the Area 5 boss before this, you must go to the Path of the Pilgrim Stargazer first in order to acquire the Smiling Bunny Mark.

From behind the Path of the Pilgrim Stargazer, there will be a few graves and a statue that will have this key item. Go there and investigate the second grave to acquire the Smiling Bunny Mark.

After you acquire this item, go back to the Malum District waypoint and enter the Red Lobster (you will need the shortcut unlocked). From the doorway, you will see an easy-to-miss ladder on your right which will lead to a Merchant.

This Merchant will only sell items to you if you have the mark or defeated the boss in this area. Once you can buy items from him, you will be able to purchase both the Bramble Curved Sword Handle for 2000 Ergo.

Sawblade Slicer Build – Stats

As with all weapons, the handle determines the scaling of the weapon. In this case the handle is that of a Sword, so it will be balanced with Scaling: Technique: C & Motivity: C. This means that it is best to level both Motivity and Technique simultaneously, unless you choose to put a Handle Crank to make it a Motivity weapon or a Technique weapon.

For other stats, you want high Vitality to stay healthy even when you are punished for mistiming attacks, a decent amount of Vigor and Capacity, and the rest spent on the offensive stat of your choice. Put no points into Advance, as it cannot work with this build.

As for the order in which you level, invest into Vitality for the first 10 levels, as the extra HP makes the game much more forgiving, and you will make mistakes while you learn the game.

Then the next 10 or so levels focused on increasing weapon damage, which will either be Motivity or Technique or both.

For the next 10 levels, level Vigor to get extra Stamina that is necessary for this Stamina hungry build.

At point in the game, you will get puppet parts that start to really weigh you down, so start pumping Capacity, to increase the amount of weight you can hold in order to keep P under 80% load in his weight stat. This is important because your normal roll becomes much slower when you pass the 80% threshold, so if you want to equip those heavy puppet parts to be tanky, level Capacity as necessary throughout your playthrough; when you can’t use the heaviest puppet parts.

From this point, you should level all of the Default Abilities equally, following these end-game stat distributions as a goal:

Sawblade Slicer – Amulets

For Amulets, I will first go over the basic amulets that don’t require Rare Ergo to purchase, and then get into the recommended Rare Ergo Amulets.

Basic Amulets

In the first Amulet Slot, I recommend switching between the three extra damage to enemy type amulets; these would be the Carcass Butcher’s Amulet, the Murderer Puppet’s Amulet and the Puppet Destroyer’s Amulet. Switch the amulet based on the type of boss or enemy you are predominantly fighting in your area for a very noticeable extra damage buff.

In the second Amulet Slot, a boost to your primary stat is good. So either the Strength Amulet for the Motivity Build, Technique Amulet for the Technique Build, or the Red Fox’s Amulet for the Balanced Build.

In the third Amulet Slot, the Patience Amulet is very nice, increasing Stamina Recovery speed. It allows you to engage the enemy more often as you will spend less time waiting for your Stamina to recharge, which is especially noticeable with this stamina-hungry weapon. Alternatively, later in the game I swapped this Amulet out with the Blue Guardianship Amulet.

In the last Amulet Slot, the Iron Wall amulet increases your tankiness by increasing Physical Resistance, thus making your life easier should you make mistakes. Alternatively, the Life Amulet is also OK at increasing the survivability of this build.

Special Amulets

Now, the special Amulets that work best with this build are: the Arm of God Amulet, Awakened Gods Amulet, and the Extreme Modification Amulet.

Arm of God will increase weapon damage after landing any successful hit, which pairs fantastically with the rapidly slashing Furious Slash.

The Awakened God’s Amulet is quite late into the game, but also increases damage a lot by improving the damage of Fable Arts while an enemy is staggered. The whole strategy of this build is to stagger and use Furious Slash, so this pairs perfectly.

Lastly, the Extreme Modification Amulet will increase your damage based on how many Fable Slots you have charged. This is useful as you wont really be using your Furious Slash until you stagger, so you can put that unused Fable Charge to use with this amulet.

Keep in mind that if you equip the heaviest puppet parts in the game, you will need to use the Carriers Amulet which increases weight in order to use any of the special amulets without moving into the heavy status which will make your rolls very slow.

P-Organs

The best P-Organ Synergy Effects for this build are the following:

• Increase Pulse Cells – Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Link Dodge – Be able to dodge farther away from wide AOE attacks
• Add Amulet Slots – Equip more Powerful Amulets which can increase damage, improve survivability and provide special effects.
• Enhance Pulse Cell Recovery – Survivability and sustain against Bosses/Areas
• Increase Staggerable Window – Increase the stagger time to pull of the full Furious Slash combo against bosses who have a very short Stagger time
• Add Fable Slots – Use Furious Slash more often

For the individual effects you get from spending 1 Quartz:

Attack Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Enhance Charge Stagger ATK – Get more stagger damage to use your Fable Art more frequently
• Enhance Fable Arts ATK – Make Furious Slash deal even more damage

Survival Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Lower Damage While Dodging – If you fail a dodge, you are forgiven with slight damage reduction
• Perfect Guard Guard Regain Recovery (NOT A TYPO) – When you are being pushed back by relentless attacks, Perfect Guard will be able to heal any damage that you take making you less prone to burst deaths

Ability Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Lower Charge Attack Stamina Consumption – Lower the stamina consumption so it can be used more often and thus stagger more often
• Perfect Guard Fable Charge Enhance – Make Perfect Guards charge Furious Slash faster so that we are more likely to have it up when we stagger
• Reduce Stamina Consumption from Dash – When you need to disengage from a boss, or get behind it, use less stamina so that you can fit in more attacks
• Charge Fable when Reviving – Whenever you respawn from dying to a boss, you have Fable to use Furious Slash
• Auto Charge Legion – Auto Charge so that we don’t need to expend Legion Magazines as often, which would leave us vulnerable
• Special Grindstone Weapon Durability Recovery – If you run out of durability mid-combat, use the Grindstone to not only get a special effect on your weapon, but completely replenish the durability instantly

Item Type

• Any of the Synergy Effects
• Charge Fable upon Pulse Cell Use – Use Furious Slash more often

You will have extra Quartz even after getting all of this, but I don’t feel as if any of the other synergy effects will be as impactful. As such, I suggest getting the Synergy Effects that best fit your playstyle, such as whether you use consumables on your belt a lot or rely on your Wishstone, in which case you would get the corresponding P-Organ upgrades. I personally went for the upgrade Special Grindstone Uses.

Sawblade Slicer Build – Legion Arm

Legion Arms that I found work best with this build are the max-upgraded Puppet String to get a free charged attack and stagger and Falcon-Eyes to get damage while you back off and regenerate Stamina.

Other Legion Arms can work, so don’t feel limited to these options and experiment with what you enjoy the most!

Sawblade Slicer Build – Puppet Parts

In this build, I always used the highest-weight puppet part I found, which made me extremely tanky by the end of the game. I kept my equipment weight down using the Carrier’s Amulet when needed and leveling Capacity, allowing me to equip these heavy parts without passing the weight threshold.

Final Tips

The Special Grindstone felt amazing to use in this build, dealing great damage when I used the Flame Grindstone to add Fire Damage to my attacks. Later on, when you can get the Destruction Grindstone, it really helps against Bosses by speeding up the Stagger Damage. Whenever I was in a tough spot against a Miniboss, the Special Grindstone always helped me out tons!

Sometimes, there will actually be opportunities for you to use Furious Slash without having to stagger the Boss. It’s hard to notice these moments, and they are a gamble, but when you do succeed you usually stagger the boss with the stagger damage from the final attack of the combo, meaning you get a free Fatal Attack on top of the damage already inflicted from Furious Slash.

Lastly, if you use Specters, I recommend prioritising Wishstones that extend its life rather than damage so that you have more opportunities to use Furious Slash and charge attack stagger the Boss while it targets the Spectre instead of you.

Look out for more Lies of P guides and our Beginner Guide. Head to our Lies of P wiki for all the latest on Weapons, Fable Arts, Accessories, Crafting and more.

The post Lies of P Build Guide – Sawblade Slicer appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Lies of P Beginner Guide, we will be sharing with you our best tips and tricks to start your journey against the crazed puppets of Krat. Be assured that anything that you may miss out on will be included in this guide, so read on!

Class selection

At the start of the game you will be asked to choose between 3 different classes called “Combat Memories”, and this will determine your initial Default Abilities (Stats). Don’t feel threatened by this choice, as this is not the end-all of your build, however keep in mind you will not be able to respec your default class stats. The three selections you get are the Path of the Cricket: Balance, Path of the Bastard: Dexterity, and Path of the Sweeper: Strength. 

If you want to wield regular Swords and some relatively large Weapons, the Balanced path is the way for you. If you are looking to use Daggers, Spears or fancy Rapiers then you will want to go for the Dexterity path. Lastly, if you prefer to attack with massive weapons such as Cleavers, Hacksaws or Hammers, the Strength path will be your best choice. If you are new to Souls-Like games, I would just recommend going for the Balanced Path and using regular swords to learn the game. Once you feel comfortable, you can experiment in the practice area of the game to find what really suits you.

Leveling Up

Let’s begin this section by highlighting that there is a respec system and it can be found about halfway through the game. Respec allows you to reallocate Levels, P-Organs and Legion Arms, so don’t feel too pressured about these early game decisions. Be mindful respec does not allow you to change your original class stats.

Your Default Abilities can be leveled up by spending Ergo that you can gain from killing Enemies, or picking up fragments of it on the ground. As you level up, the cost of Ergo will exponentially increase and make leveling feel slow, so the first 50 levels will be important.

For point allocation, my recommendation would be to invest into Vitality for the first 5-10 levels, as that extra HP makes the game much more forgiving of your mistakes. I then spent my next 5 or so levels focused on the stat which increases my weapon damage the most, which will either be Motivity or Technique depending on what type of weapon you want to use. If you are running the Balanced build, then I would recommend leveling these two simultaneously.

For the next 10 levels I pumped Vigor a lot to get extra stamina which is incredibly helpful against bosses and large groups of enemies. At this point, I started to get a lot of Capacity, which increases the amount of weight P can hold. I leveled this in order to start equipping high level Puppet Parts that would reduce damage taken drastically, while keeping P under 80% load in his weight stat. This is important because his normal roll becomes much slower when you pass the 80% threshold, so if you want to equip those heavy puppet parts to be tanky, make sure you invest in Capacity. 

After level 30, I suggest you try to meet these goals in whatever order you please: Vitality – 30, Vigor – 20, Capacity – 20, Motivity/Technique – 30, Advance – Minimum Possible. If you are using a Balanced build, 20 and 20 for Motivity and Technique. Note that if you feel as if you don’t need the extra tankiness from puppet parts, you won’t need to level capacity much.

At this point you may be wondering about the Advance Default Ability. This stat is very rarely used, and is only effective on some specific weapons and legion arms. I recommend avoiding this entirely unless you have a specific weapon in mind that uses it.

DON’T USE BOSS ERGO:

An important thing when leveling up is to not be tempted to use Boss Ergo. If you read the description of any Rare Ergo you get from defeating bosses, it mentions that “A treasure hunter may want this rare Ergo”. This Treasure Hunter will exchange powerful items in exchange for your Rare Ergo, but you won’t meet him for some time, so until then hang onto them and don’t use them for leveling up. It will be worth it.

Discharging Pulse Cells

A small but important tip going forward is understanding what the Discharged status means. When you use up all of your Pulse Cells (the game’s healing flask), you enter the Discharged state which allows you to regenerate 1 Pulse Cell by damaging enemies. When you do enough damage, you will regenerate the Pulse Cell and can use it normally. You will enter the Discharged state again after using it. So, whenever you use up all of your Pulse Cells against a Boss, it may be better to start getting more offensive than defensive so that you can regenerate that Pulse Cell and keep healing. There are also upgrades you can make to your P-Organs which will make you stronger in the Discharged state.

P-Organ Upgrades

As with Leveling, don’t feel too pressured by the choices in P-Organ as you will be able to respec it later.

You will be able to upgrade P using Quartz that you find throughout the game. You can acquire Quartz from not just Bosses, but chests and minibosses as well, so keep on the lookout for those.

In the P-Organ menu, you will see large nodes and small nodes next to them. The large nodes all have an upgrade effect that can only be activated by filling all of the small nodes next to it using Quartz. In those small nodes, you can select a small upgrade for P. There are 5 different types of small upgrades; Attack, Survival, Ability and Item types. You may only select 1 type per large node. For example, you can only have 1 Attack Upgrade in a large node, and then you need to choose from the 3 other types to fill in the other small nodes.

Now, what P-Organ upgrades are good? To start, I suggest going for as many Pulse Cell upgrades as possible. So the Large node, “Increase Pulse Cells” and the Survival Upgrade “Increase Pulse Cells”. Any Pulse Cell upgrade you find will be useful, as they are a core element of your gameplay.

Large nodes that will be very helpful are Link Dodge, Add Amulet Slots, Add Fable Slots and Retain Guard Regain. You will get large node upgrades later on for other combat systems; I recommend just going for upgrades on things that you find yourself using often.

For the small node upgrades, you want any Pulse Cell, Guard Regain and Fable Art nodes. Besides those upgrades, anything Stagger-related should be good, especially on heavy weapons that inflict lots of stagger damage. Paired with that, Fatal Attack damage will give you good damage from staggering. Any stamina-reducing upgrade is great too, for your dashes, dodges and attacks. 

Weapon Upgrades

As with most souls-likes, you can upgrade your weapon using Moonstones that you can find from Enemies, on the ground, in shops, or in questlines. Using Moonstones and Ergo will allow you to upgrade the blade of any weapon you find, except Special Weapons which require Full Moonstone of the Covenant. Moonstones of the Covenant are limited in the world, but every normal Moonstone besides Full Moonstones will be infinitely purchasable, so you don’t need to worry about spending them to upgrade the weapons you are currently using.

Handle Altering Materials

You will get Cranks in the game which can change the scaling of handles so it can better suit your build. There are 4 types: Motivity, Technique, Advance and Balance. These are limited, so don’t use these on just any weapon. They allow great flexibility in builds by making some scalings skew from technique-supported to Motivity supported. 

How to make your own Weapon

When making your own Weapon, it’s really easy to get lost and sink a couple hours into messing with all of the possible combinations. The best way to make a weapon you will like is by trying out all of the initial weapons, finding which blade you like the most and then finding which handle has your favourite attack pattern.

When I made my weapon, I wanted something with range, while still keeping good attack speed. I started by finding my favourite blade, the Bone-Cutting Sawblade which had great physical damage and huge range, then tried to find the handle. Handles that came from heavy weapons usually had very slow attack patterns, so instead I went with a balanced Sword handle, the Bramble Curved Sword Handle which gave me good attack speed as well as a very powerful fable art.

When you make your own weapon, try to start by finding a weapon you really like, then experiment by using the handle of that weapon with different blades, or the blade of that weapon with a different handle. It’s a fun process that allows you to make your weapon work well for your playstyle!

Wishstones & Specters:

Specters are AI allies that join you in combat. When you get your Wishstone, you will be able to empower your Spectre. In my experience, the Specter was best used as a distraction rather than a source of damage, so I like to use the Friendship Wishstone and the Indomitable Wishstone to keep it alive for longer.

To summon a Specter, you will need a consumable called Star Fragment. This item is easily purchased later on and is a common drop from enemies so don’t worry if you use them all up. If you find yourself struggling on a boss a lot even with a specter and you don’t have a lot of this material, then I suggest farming some Ergo and leveling up before you use it all so that you don’t have to do a boss solo if you don’t want to.

Consumable Tips

When you play, you may worry that your Consumables may be valuable or have other purposes for later. Fortunately, Legion Magazines and Fable Catalysts are very common in the game, as well as Attribute Purification Ampoules, Attribute Resistance Ampoules and Sawtoothed Wheels. All other consumables that you get have at most 20 copies, with some only appearing 4 times such as Cat Dust. As such, I suggest using the rarer consumables against Minibosses and Bosses.

Status Effects:

There are 4 Attribute Status Ailments in the game and 3 Special Status Ailments. The ailments that might catch you off guard are Decay, Break and Disruption. Decay will slowly reduce your weapon durability, so don’t be in the middle of a fight while afflicted with this. Break will heavily reduce the HP you regain from using Pulse Cells, so make sure to wait it out before healing. Lastly, Disruption will instantly kill you if the bar fills, so be very careful with how much Disruption damage you take. Break and Disruption can be cured with the “Special Purification Ampoule” consumable and mitigated with “Special Resistance Ampoule“. Decay can be cured with the “Attribute Purification Ampoule” and mitigated with “Attribute Resistance Ampoule”. All of these can be found in the world as treasure or purchased from Polendina in Hotel Krat.

Exploration & NPCs

Exploration is an important part of Lies of P and checking around nooks and corners can yield valuable Quartz, Weapons and questline objectives. It’s worth looking around carefully and paying attention to the text items you pick up to get context on what is going on.

Additionally, you should make sure you talk to NPCs often. They have new dialogue frequently, usually after you complete an area, and may give you important exposition or items. Always thoroughly explore areas to find NPCs that appear outside of Hotel Krat in order for them to provide you with their services.

That wraps up our Lies of P Beginner Tips & Tricks Guide. There’s a lot more to the game than what I mentioned here, you can find a lot of more in-depth information by visiting our Lies of P Wiki. If you have your own tips to share, please do so in the comments below!

If you want to know what we thought of the game check out our Lies of P Review.

The post Lies of P Beginner Guide – Tips & Tricks to Get Started appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Lies of P Review, we will share our impressions of the game after playing a complete playthrough. This soulslike has been highly anticipated by the souls community and managed to get the spotlight in Gamescom 2022, winning the “Most Wanted Sony PS Game” award. Does it live up to the intense hype? Read on to find out!

Lies of P Review – Pinoccio Souls

Genre: RPG
Developed by: NEOWIZ Games, Round8 Studio
Published by: NEOWIZ Games
Release date: September 19th, 2023
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation®5, and PlayStation®4
Price at time of review: $59.99

Lies of P Review – Story & Setting

In Lies of P, you play the role of the puppet “P” in the Belle Époque-inspired city of Krat; a once prosperous capital that has collapsed into ruin as a result of the Puppet Frenzy, leaving Krat with bloodsoaked streets, murderous puppets and a mysterious plague. In this dark and bloody re-imagining of the 1883 children’s tale, P must fight through in order to find his creator and become human. 

In order for you to fully understand the world that you play in and the characters that you meet throughout your journey, you will have to seek and read letters, notes, newspapers, posters and books scattered throughout the game. Similar to the Dark Souls Series, item descriptions and dialogue with NPCs will give more exposition behind the lore of the land. However, unlike the Souls Series, the story can be experienced and understood without having to put in the effort of reading into every description that you find. 

Krat perfectly depicts a once prosperous city that has fallen into ruin with its beautiful architecture and complete chaos layering the exterior. Debris coats every surface on the city, empty carriages and corpses litter the streets, and all kinds of bloodthirsty puppets roam around, using anything from Candelabras to Rapiers as weapons. Locations that you visit outside of Krat are not quite as memorable as the time you spend there, but all areas are connected by a sense of isolation and a desolate atmosphere, making every encounter with an NPC feel special. 

Overall, the story of Lies of P successfully engages players with a fresh take on a classic theme, but it unfortunately does not deliver completely and stumbles over the finish line, so it’s not the strongest point of the game.

Lies of P Review: Gameplay

As expected from a souls-like, Lies of P excels in its gameplay, meshing the now-familiar mechanics with different combat systems that give the gameplay further depth. But does it differ from other Souls-Likes enough to be interesting?

Level Design

Lies of P is divided into different areas with multiple checkpoints. You finish the area by killing a boss, then go back to Hotel Krat, and continue on to the next area. There are no instances where you go back to an area you already completed after unlocking something in the main quest, so the game is quite linear in this regard. However there are many times when the player will be able to choose between multiple paths. Some optional paths will lead to Items or NPCs, and other times it leads to unlocking a shortcut. I was never lost in this game, and always had a clear direction of where to go or what to do. There is also a surprising amount of verticality in this game, which is paired with Dark Souls levels of fall damage, meaning gravity will yet again be the nemesis of most players.

Combat

The basic gameplay loop inside of an area is what you would expect from any Souls-Like. You find a Stargazer checkpoint, go through the area killing Enemies and using Pulse Cells (healing potions), unlock a shortcut/find another Stargazer, go rest to get back pulse cells and repeat. Once you get to a boss, you unlock a shortcut or a Stargazer and can spam attempts as long as you like. 

Combat is meant to be aggressive and agile, with iframes on dodge, perfect parry mechanics, magic spells that enhance your attacks or actions, and health recovery from offensive actions. Your dodges are tied to your character carry weight, so you can expect to manage your equipment to avoid “fat rolling”. The controls are responsive and I felt like I had a good handle on the character, and whenever I died I felt I had made a mistake rather than it feeling cheap.

The game features Weapon swapping, but it felt somewhat clunky as it was a slow swap that didn’t make much sense during combat, and each weapon added to your total weight so it made more sense to just equip one.

Enemies

In terms of enemies, there is a decent range of enemies for you to discover and learn as you play the game, but it will sometimes feel like you face the same 3-4 “easy” enemies when you aren’t fighting minibosses or bosses. Enemies do have unique movesets and weaknesses so you can test your skills versus different kinds of foes that will attack you in different ways.

A sore point for some hardcore fans may be the encouragement of utilising Spectres in the game, which are AI that help in a Boss fight. You are never forced to use them, but 1 boss fight in particular feels impossible to beat without it. 

Overall, the combat of this game goes past what is expected of the standard souls-like formula, and gives players a huge amount of freedom to build whatever they want.

Build Customization

Lies of P has made excellent use of multiple combat systems to add spice to the soulslike combat formula. You start the game off by choosing one of three combat styles between Balanced, Strength and Dexterity, then go on to R1 spam a bit, level a bit and make the weapon stronger. This is where Lies of P applies its own twist. Not only are there 30+ weapons in the game, but most of them have “Blade” and “Handle” components, and each has a unique Fable Art (special ability) bound to them. You can disassemble these 2 parts and assemble different weapon parts together to create any weapon you want.

Weapons

The weapon’s Blade will determine its overall damage and will be upgradable, and the Handle will influence the combat pattern and stat scaling. You can make any kind of ridiculous combination, like a giant Hacksaw Blade on a tiny Rapier Handle or a Chef’s Knife on a massive Pipe Wrench. I found myself spending hours testing all different kinds of combinations to find the perfect weapon for my playstyle, which I was able to carry over for my entire playthrough. This mix-and match system is truly a lot of fun, and opens up an abundance of possibilities for builds that may feel overwhelming at first, but you will open up once you begin to understand the things you want in your weapon.

Another important but not as successful system that adds to the combat is Legion Arms. This is like Sekiro‘s prosthetic arm and it allows you to swap your arm out and gain specific combat abilities. I was honestly a bit disappointed with the options of Legion Arms, and never really found myself relying on them for anything. I tried every single one but the one that felt the most powerful ended up being the beginning arm, Puppet String, which felt anticlimactic. However, I can definitely see some players being able to master this system and utilise it much more efficiently than I did.

Lastly, build customization is wrapped up with the P-Organ System. The build depth when you combine this feature with the weapon assembling feature is amazing. The amount of upgrades P can get to his combat through this system makes you feel in full control of what kind of playstyle you want to have. You will genuinely feel a sense of progression and empowerment as you progress through the story and this system.

Design, Visual & Audio

Graphically, Lies of P delivers a polished product with solid visual fidelity, and that is pleasing to the eye. The game runs on UE4 and it had good performance on my 3090 (AMD Ryzen 9 5950X) with a solid 200 FPS at 1440P on the “Best” quality setting, that never dropped below about 150 FPS. I did have a few crashes here and there during important boss fights or cutscenes (around 5 times in the 35 hour playthrough). I also encountered no bugs.

The game’s art style is satisfying, and the design of enemies felt well-suited for the world and atmosphere. Weapons have a wide range of interesting attack patterns and animations, and the Perfect Guard mechanic feels amazing to pull off. There’s also good environmental variety and the levels take you to different biomes including, of course, a poison swamp.

The voice acting is mostly good. I really very much enjoyed most of the cast, but there was one NPC that got on my nerves and it felt off-putting. Thankfully that character has a limited a role and it won’t be disruptive to your experience.

One point I did not expect this game to excel at was music. There are some points in the game where I caught myself stopping near music sources to hear it out. Records are also available as collectibles which can change the lobby music of Hotel Krat, which was already memorable and fantastic.

Replayability & Pricepoint

In my playthrough, I combed through almost every single waypoint in the game to try and find everything, but I still managed to miss some stuff simply from the choices that you make in the game. This took about 35 hours of skilled gameplay, and I certainly can see things I have yet to discover, so of course your mileage may vary.

There is a heavy emphasis on the importance of your actions and I could definitely see myself trying out new options I hadn’t tried before in a new playthrough, but maybe only 1 or 2 more times before I exhausted all the possibilities.

The real replayability would come from the innumerable amount of builds you can make and the fun weapons you can try out. I could easily see myself sinking maybe 50 more hours into this game before I exhaust the most interesting possibilities in the story and the builds.

Given these numbers I would debate that the price point of 60 dollars is fair, but not exactly incredible value like for Elden Ring or Monster Hunter given the amount of hours the average player will play for. 

Final Thoughts 

It is unfortunate that the first impression that most people will have of this game may be tinted by the perception that it’s simply a “Dark Souls Copycat” due to its heavily inspired UI and gameplay. As a result, many will gloss over this game as just another Souls Like, when in reality Lies of P takes that inspiration and adds many layers of unique aspects that deliver a fresh and unique experience.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time running around the intriguing setting, fighting different puppet monsters and unveiling the mystery behind all the events that lead to this point. Exploring to find interesting things was great, and the surprisingly catchy music was a treat. NPCs were likeable and I formed some attachments to them, Bosses gave a huge adrenaline rush whenever I got close to beating them, and there were some hard choices to make in the game that pushed my brain to the limits. 

Overall, the experience is extremely solid and not just “another soulslike”, with some real passion put into it by Neowiz which makes me excited for what we will see from them in the future.

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