Lies of P

For the first ten hours this is Bloodborne with the serial numbers filed off, and it is a little embarrassing about it — the lamp, the doll, the plague-ridden city, the exact cadence of the item descriptions. Then the weapon assembly system opens up and the game stops being a tribute.

The best idea in the genre this decade

Every weapon splits into a blade and a handle, and you can bolt any blade onto any handle. The blade determines what the damage looks like; the handle determines the moveset and the scaling. This means the greatsword that suits your build but whose swing you hate can be given a rapier's handle, and the game does not stop you or balance it away.

Forty-seven hours in and I was still finding combinations. That is a level of build expression that From Software has never offered, and it turns the mid-game — usually where these games sag — into the best stretch.

Deaths

612

Worst boss, attempts

47

Weapon assemblies built

31

The perfect guard is the difficulty

Blocking is always available and always chips you; blocking on the exact frame negates everything and damages the enemy's weapon. That single rule reframes the whole combat system as a rhythm problem rather than a spacing problem, and once it clicks — for me, around hour fourteen — the game becomes something you play rather than something you survive.

It also means the difficulty curve is a cliff. There is no gradual improvement. You cannot do it, and then you can.

Where it slips

The bosses do not respect the systems the rest of the game teaches. Several late fights use extended combos with variable timing specifically designed to punish the perfect guard the game spent thirty hours training you to use, and one of them — the penultimate — is simply badly tuned. It was patched twice, which tells you the developer agreed.

The story is also a Pinocchio retelling that takes itself entirely seriously for thirty hours and then explains its own metaphor out loud in the last one.

The verdict

The weapon system alone justifies the price and the genre should have stolen it by now. The boss design keeps this from the top tier, and the opening is derivative enough that a lot of people put it down before it becomes itself.

Push past hour twelve. That is the whole recommendation.