Life of P Demo

These are some thoughts on the demo that dropped in June 2023. I expect some important changes in the release later this year, currently planned for September 19th.

First visit to Krat

Just to get this out of the way: using the Adventures of Pinocchio as the basis for a Soulsborne in a European Steampunk City is just brilliant. Instead of fighting zombified/demonized enemies, you fight some steampunk robots (puppets) that are running amok in the city of Krat. The blue-haired fairy is your firekeeper. And good old Jiminy Cricket seems to be a damaged AI living in a lantern.

One of your very first tasks is searching for your »father« Geppetto. And just like that you got a very promising setup for your world building. A world that also looks rather good, much better than other Soulslikes. It also helps that just about everyone knows the tale of Pinocchio and/or the old Disney movie from 1940, and can e.g. place a reference to a Mad Donkey.

From the very beginning, this looks like a Bloodborne variant and – for the most part – plays like a Soulsborne game. You get: different weapons and weapon arts; builds focusing on dexterity, strength or quality (somewhere between the two); regular and strong attacks, dodges, parries, bonfires (stargazers), healing, costumes, and lots of items you may never use during your first run. And of course, if you die you lose your Ergo (this game’s Souls) and have to retrieve it.

If you have ever played a Soulslike, you just nod to yourself the first two hours, as you immediately know how everything works. But Lies of P does not just copy what works. There are a lot of features that set the game apart. For example, you can actually see how much Ergo you have lost. So you can decide if it is worth trying to get it back. If you lose Ergo in a boss fight, that Ergo is placed before the boss area. So you don’t have to trigger a new fight if you just want your Ergo back.

Weapons are divided into blades and handles, which can be combined as you like. And you still take damage when blocking, but similar to Bloodborne, you can earn some life back when you attack the enemy soon after. After you have used your last healing potion, you can fill it up again by hitting enemies. Very useful. There is also a mysterious organ shown at the end of the demo, which looks like a skill tree and will hopefully allow more play styles.

Frustrations and Revelations

There are a few smaller issues. For example, the stats. While you understand the basic concepts of Motivity (strength builds) and Technique (dexterity builds), other stats are not quite as clear. I still don’t know what Advance does. Same with Legion, Disruption, or Break. Even Dark Souls had an option to get some minor information about the stats (although you still needed a guide). But this can be easily added.

A lot of enemies use delayed attacks. That can get annoying fast. But after a while, you just accept these patterns.

What is really unfortunate is the choice of messages. Throughout the demo, there are two kinds of those. Some get bigger text in the middle of the screen. They pause the game, you read it, click a button and continue. Other messages just pop up somewhere on the screen while the game continues. One message tried to explain the rather important concept of groggy enemies – while I was fighting the first stronger enemy. The obvious result: While I was trying to read the text I died. For the rest of the demo, I noticed that enemies were groggy, but I did not know what to do with that information. I don’t understand why they didn’t pause the game for that message.

Nevertheless, I was very impressed with the game – until I met the first boss. The game looked so very much like Bloodborne that I played it like Bloodborne: I tried to dodge most attacks. That works ok with normal enemies. But it does not work with bosses. The puppet bosses are very big, very strong, and very fast. In comparison, your dodge feels like a tiny sidestep. A lot of times, the boss attack will still hit you. I got beaten to a pulp a lot. And I was not happy with it. Why implement a dodge when it is not very helpful?

This got worse when I faced the final boss of the demo. I couldn’t figure out what I had to do. Dodging didn’t work. Blocking didn’t help me much either, cause I was losing health with every block. In the end, I watched some YouTube videos. Surprise, surprise. Some people were talking about »perfect block/guard«. Turns out you have got to time your block. God, if this is so important, just tell the players about the goddamn mechanic! It was a few days later that I found out the game does mention »perfect guard«. But it’s another message that fades into nothingness. If you were exploring/fighting, there is a good chance you miss it.
As a few players pointed out, this mechanic works more like Sekiro. I can’t say much about that. I only played Sekiro till the first boss. Guess I will have to play Sekiro again before Lies of P comes out.

Final verdict

I spent around 6,5 hours with the demo. And yes, I had a few problems with the demo. But that’s what demos are for. The setting, the small details, the basic gameplay are good enough to be quite optimistic for this one. So optimistic that I went ahead and preordered the game.

Edit (21.06.23): Turns out other players had the same issues with the game. In this video, the director of the game, Jiwon Choi, addresses the feedback and talks about all the things they are working on and might change for the release. Like dodges.