This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to the Lies of P: Overture DLC on the So Videogames Podcast, Episode 443. For further coverage leading up to this review, please listen to Episode 442 and Episode 441.

Starting off with the DLC I mentioned last week, and I believe the week before — Lies of P: Overture. This is the expansion to Lies of P, the souls like featuring a theme that is kind of based around a fantastical version of Pinocchio coming to us from Korean developer, I believe their name is Neowiz. I think, the main game. Incredible stuff. I think it’s one of the, one of the only developers, I think, that really can hold their own with from when it comes to like, level design and just general gameplay flow. They’re not reinventing the Dark Souls wheel as other people have done, and which I think is a fine idea.

I certainly don’t think every game in the souls like genre has to be like Dark Souls. but neo is are clearly fans and lies of P. The base game is a pretty fantastic experience. It can be difficult, although I will say that this new DLC has included difficulty levels so it can be done. It can be done in souls like everybody pay attention. There’s easy, medium and hard and they work. They do not break the game. They do not, make things terrible. It takes the experience away from no one. the hard level is fucking hard. The medium level still pretty challenging. The easy level. It’s not a cakewalk, folks. It’s still difficult, but it is significantly easier than the hard level. So hats off, number one. Just right out of the gate. Hats off to neo is for adding goddamn difficulty levels. I know that all the get goods like whine and moan and kick and scream and no one wants the difficulty level and the souls like, but neo is proves you can do it and do it properly and successfully. It is great. I love, love, love that there are difficulty levels in this. It’s still a fucking great game. It doesn’t matter what difficulty, it’s still a great game. The mark of a great game, still a great game. Here it is. Okay. That said, okay, so the DLC is a I feel like it’s 15 or 20 hours at least, and it takes the main character P back in time.

So it acts as a prequel of sorts. And I, you know, it’s been a while since I played the base game of Lesa P. I didn’t remember the story beats, I didn’t remember the details. So as I was going through Lies of P: Overture, I was like, I kind of remember this, and I kind of sort of remember this. But when we got to the end of the DLC, it really brought things together and I was really quite impressed. But I’m watching my wife go back through Lesa P now. Quick throwback. If anybody was listening back then or if you know me or I’ve, I’ve talked about this a couple times. My wife was playing the base game of lies and P a while ago when it dropped. And there’s one portion of Lies of P, there’s only one, only one time in the entire game where they take away your bonfires, where you cannot leave the level, you cannot go and level up. You cannot go back and resupply. You just have to make it through the next battle. You have to, otherwise you cannot progress. And my wife got stuck. She was playing the game. She was low on supplies. She was in a bad way. She was actually going back to the hotel, which acts as your hub to respec as she got caught in this trap and she got so frustrated that she quit the game, but she saw me playing it.

She’s like, oh man, I wish I had finished that game. And I’m like, yeah, you had a good time, you should come back to it. So she did. Had to talk her into it a little bit, but I sold her when she knew that there were difficulty levels. And plus we knew where that catch point was. Right. So we knew it was coming. It wasn’t a surprise anymore. So she was well prepared this time. Went into it, blew through that boss like on the second attempt, no problem. And she got past it. Huge weight off her shoulders. I was so proud of her for coming back. And now she’s pushing on into the main game doing the DLC. But I bring this up because as I’m watching the wife go through the story, I’m kind of watching her play the main game again. I was like, oh, right. Like I remember all the characters and I remember all the narrative ties and all of the things. And so it’s making me really appreciate Lies of P much more. I, you know, I, I don’t necessarily advocate for replaying games unless you swing that way. I very rarely replay games, but if you are, or if you haven’t played lines up for a while, or if you’ve never played it it the DLC will make so much more sense and will be so much more meaningful.

If you have recently played through the base game of lies and and your memory is fresh on all the characters and all the plot beats, because the developers really go overboard and in a good way, in a good way. Not a bad way, a good way. On the story in Lies of P: Overture, the story beats are great, and in general I really celebrate lies. because not only do they break the mold by adding a difficulty level, they break the the from soft mold by telling a story that is very easy to follow and easy to understand, and they don’t make it cryptic. I mean, there’s item descriptions to read if you want to, but basically there’s tons of characters all around and they’re like, hey man, here’s what’s happening. And they just fucking tell you. And it works. It works well, the lies of PR world is amazing. It’s really well fleshed out and believable and full of atmosphere. It just proves you do not need to hold back all the information in order to make a compelling experience. Neowise proves you can just straight up tell people what the fuck is going on, and even give them a difficulty setting to, and it’s still a fucking great game. So I love them for breaking the mold that way as well. The story stuff in overture is amazing, especially when you get to the end. I thought it was quite touching and quite sad, and I very rarely feel that way about games in general, and certainly not much about souls likes, but they really lean into the narrative and the characterization, and I really appreciate what they did there.

I’m not going to spoil anything, but it was really well told. There were lots of callbacks to stuff in the main campaign. Lots of characters made a reappearance, lots of like lots of those moments where you’re like, oh, that’s where that dude came from. Or oh, I remember that guy. So that’s how that happened. And you get like a lot of those moments which stitched up together really well, which I think is great. I love it a lot. So the DLC gives you an easy mode, which is great or, you know, difficulty levels. let’s see, what else do they give you? I don’t know, there’s like a lot of stuff. I think that just lines up does really well. Like for example, there’s lots of quality of life touches. They change little things. Like when you have enough experience to gain a level, it changes the display. So you know right away if you can. So you’re not wasting your time going back to your bonfire. They also tell you how many levels you have saved up, in case you don’t want to risk going to the next section, which I think is great. you could find that out already, but having it right there, on the screen just makes it so much easier.

They go above and beyond to make sure you can finish the side quests. Every time you get a new item or a side quest item, an icon appears on the fast travel menu. So let’s say, for example, you’re in whatever level and you get a new item and you’re like, oh, right, this goes to so-and-so back wherever they were. If you go back to the bonfire like you’re about to fast travel, they’ll tell. They straight up tell you they’re like, this is the guy. They show you a little icon of the character, and all the characters in the game have little face icons and you recognize them. So you’re like, oh, it’s the shopkeeper, and he’s over on this street. They tell you literally where to go Exactly. And it just saves you so much fucking time. You don’t have to like YouTube it all the time or look it up. They just are like, here, this is where we want you to go, and you go and fucking do it. And I will say that in terms of level design, they are very conscientious about making these side quests easy to finish, because most of the time the guy or girl or robot or whoever that you need to talk to is very close to the bonfire that you go to. So like, it’s not like you got to like, dig deep in the hinterlands and keep going and like, you’re gonna get on.

It’s like most of the time it’s like, just go to the hotel or go to the street and there’s a guy standing right there. Or like, you go to this room, there’s a guy right there. And I fucking love that. Like, it’s like it doesn’t take away from the game at all. It makes it very easy to fix these, fix these things you need to fix. Solve these problems, help these people out, get these side quests done. It’s great. It’s like a quality of life thing that I think is amazing. I will say that.. What else? They also are really nice about giving you warnings to, like, if you’re about to get into a not in the main game. I think they’ve added this after that happened, I think they probably got some pushback on that. The thing that trapped my wife, I think a lot of people were kind of mad about that. but like now, when I was about to go into the final leg of the game, like, big warning comes up, hey, man, you’re about to go into the final leg. This is the end of the game. Are you sure you want to do this? I appreciate that, don’t trick me. Don’t let me. Don’t let me make a mistake I don’t want to make. So I like that a lot.

so that’s good stuff. They add a bunch of new weapons. The bow, which is the first truly ranged weapon of Liza P, which is amazing. I love the bow. It does not break the game, but it is just so useful and helps out so much. It’s probably why there’s always a ranged weapon in every fucking souls game ever, because sometimes you just need it. They add a boss rush and a boss replay mode. I didn’t mess around with those very much, but they’re there if you want to. overall, I mean, so it’s the same base game of Dark Souls third person combat, really tuned, really tight. I think it works well. Great atmosphere, great story, great character. lots of quality light stuff. It’s really, really good stuff. I’m not perfect, though. It’s not perfect. So I will say a couple of things. really quickly that could be improved. I feel like, For whatever reason, I got backed into corners more often here than I ever did before. Like, I would be rolling around and, you know, dodging, fighting some guy and I would find myself backed into a corner and then the enemies would close in, and then I couldn’t leave the corner and I would just get, like, trapped, you know, corner trapped. And I was stuck. That happened like a notable amount of times. And I don’t know if that’s like level design or it might have something to do with how many of the enemies in Lies of P, especially Overture, are extremely, like, overly aggressive.

I found that to be quite true. And it’s not just my imagination. As I was watching my wife play the game, she was rolling around and dodging guys and getting back stabs pretty easily. And that was all going fine. And then when she got to the DLC, she was not able to do that anymore. Like the dodges weren’t working. She couldn’t get the backstab in. I think they have really reduced the ability for me to move around. They want you to parry more often, which is a bad idea. so I think that, I got trapped in corners more often than I would have liked. That was not fun. I’ll say also that some of the bosses are just like so fucking super aggressive. Like, it’s really it’s really annoying. I did complete the DLC and I can think of like 2 or 3 bosses that just like they’re in your face constantly, like you barely have room to breathe. You barely have room to, like, use a health potion. And in lines of pee, you have to juggle a couple things, like you have to sharpen your weapon during a battle. You have to take like life potions. If you have any other supporting items, you have to kind of like mess around with the D-pad to kind of navigate those. And when you’ve got a guy stabbing you in the face with a sword 17,000 times and he never backs off, it’s really hard to do it.

So I feel like the bosses were a little bit too aggressive. a couple in particular, but overall I think they just turned up the aggression too much and they don’t give the player enough time to breathe. And that kind of goes hand in hand with the paring and the dodging. I think both these things need to be fixed. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but like, when you try to dodge Eliza, it’s, like, impossible. I feel like you can’t dodge anything anymore. you have to be, like. Like pixel perfect with your dodge to get that tiny ass little window of iframe invincibility frames. But like I was, was not dodging anything. And in fact, I was failing to dodge so often I had to change my play style. And P, his left arm is,mechanical and you can swap it out for different things. And there’s a shield arm, which I barely ever used in the main game. I only used it for like, I think two bosses and I never touched it otherwise. But in this I actually equipped it and left it on the whole time because I was having such a tough time dodging that I needed like an extra shield to kind of get through some of these sections, which to me feels wrong.

I feel like that you should be able to dodge out of the way. That should be a viable, tactic. I mean, that’s pretty viable for most souls games. It’s kind of a basic fundamental principle. So I feel like the dodging needs to be tweaked. You need more iframes or to make the animation quicker or something. It needs to be tweaked because dodging just does not feel viable. And I will also say the parrying Is tough. The timing on it is really tight and it’s also very unimpressive when you do it now. We have recently talked about Expedition 33 on the show. It’s definitely going to be one of my games of the year for sure. It’s a wonderful experience, but they take pairing to a whole new level where you just parry everything, and when you do, you get these awesome animations. Feels amazing and I feel like they have just raised the bar on parrying every game from this point forward from now until the end of time. If you’re going to do a parrying, it’s got to be a badass parry. Otherwise, why do it? And in P they don’t do badass parries. It’s like you. You parry, and if you do it correctly, you get like this tiny little flash of like red light. And honestly, it’s kind of tough to tell that you even parried. Like the enemies often don’t rock back, they don’t get stunned. There’s not much that happens other than the fact that P does not take damage, so it’s kind of like a survival tactic, but it’s not cool.

It’s not impressive, it doesn’t feel flashy when you do it, and it’s just not good enough anymore. They you need to parry, and when you parry, it’s got to be fucking like, stylish and flamboyant and badass. It’s got to be on the par of, like, expedition 33. They have just they have changed pairing forever. So props to Sandoval Interactive for that. And coming back to to doing pairing and PM like am I even pairing? Is this even happening? What’s even going on? I don’t understand anymore. It’s not enough. So they need to like fix that for sure. What else? Anything else? the only other thing that I kind of want to complain about, just to just to get it off my chest is. It’s like a, it’s like a, it’s a hit and a miss. It’s a hit in that like, developers let you respect so many things you can respect, you can disassemble your weapons, you can mix and match your weapons to make weapons that fit you. You can respec your own skill tree. You can respect the items that go into your mechanical arm. And if you want to rearrange those things, you can, which I think is great. You can basically respec anything in the game except weapon upgrade materials, which drives me fucking crazy.

I don’t know why they would let you respect basically everything, but not this because you find so many weapons and sometimes you just want to, like, experiment with them, right? So like, for example, my wife started out with the strength based weapons and she spect for that. And then after a while she’s like, oh, you know, I really like this. I like the agility weapons better. And I’m like, yeah, I like agility as well. So she respect. But she had sunk a lot of materials into strength based weapons by this point already. And you can alter them a little bit, but you can’t just fully respect them. I’m talking about get all your fucking materials back and just put those materials into something else. Why not? You went all the way on all these other systems, which is great and I love it and I respect you for that. Why would you not go all the way on the final system? I don’t see the logic here. And what I think it is, is adherence to the formula that FromSoftware laid out. I think they’re following it for whatever reason. They were willing to break the mold on so many things, but on this one, they were not willing to break the mold. And I just have to I have to say it’s a bad call, because you find so many weapons that you want to experiment with them all. You want to try them all, find favorites.

They’re great weapons, and especially in the DLC, there’s so many cool weapons to use that I wanted to try every one of them, but I didn’t have enough materials for all of them. And so I feel like just give me the materials back. Like let’s say for example, you can only maximum upgrade, maybe like three weapons. Okay, that’s fine, I can leave the other ones on upgraded, but if I want to switch, I will take my mats back and I will still only have three upgraded weapons. And honestly, what does it matter anyway? What? Does he even fucking care? I mean, you made these weapons. Do you want me to use them? Do you not like why did you create them if you don’t want me to use them? What is the value of locking me into weapons? When you let me change basically everything else in the game, it doesn’t make sense. I think it’s a mistake. I think it’s a genuine mistake. And I think, neo needs to fix that for next time. If you could take your weapon material upgrades back, that would be the fucking perfect thing, because then you could really mix and match and change your build and explore how the game plays and find something that really works. Why don’t you want to do that? I think you should do that. They’ve gone three quarters of the way. You might as well go all the way.

So that’s one of my other complaints. Other than that, I mean, so all that stuff said, all the stuff I’ve just ranted about, I think Lies of P: Overture is a pretty amazing DLC. It’s chunky. It took me, I believe, 15 to 20 hours, which felt like just the right length. It had story ties that were absolutely strongly tied to the main campaign. This wasn’t just like a tossed off, like one off. It was like it really called back to like, central characters to things that happened. Like it made sense. It explained a lot of plot holes that people thought were plot holes before. It plays well, it adds great weapons. I mean, the bow itself makes the DLC worth it, but like the Wolverine claws or the exploding sword, or the gun blade and stuff, or the arm that shoots blades, like there’s all sorts of stuff that I think are amazing you can take back to the main campaign. Overall, Lies of P: Overture delivers a lot of value. Great story, great gameplay, lots of new weapons to play with and it was a good length, too. Ultimately, I felt very satisfied by the time I finished it. It was a little bit on the difficult side. A little bit. Enemies that are too aggressive. And I got backed into corners a little bit too often. Could have polished up some of the spots, but you know those are those are small things.

Lies of P: Overture is pretty outstanding stuff, and this is a great way to do DLC. Other developers who make soulslikes should pay attention to how it was done here.

And the score for this content is 8.5 out of ten. Excellent stuff.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This content was developed by Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio, and published by Neowiz Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, and XBO/S/X. This copy of the DLC was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 18 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the content was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has received an M rating from the ESRB and contains Blood and Violence. The official summary reads: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of the puppet Pinocchio in his search to become human. From a third-person perspective, players explore environments, collect items, and battle various enemies (e.g., puppets, mechanoid creatures) in melee-style combat. Players use swords and mechanical arms with ranged attacks (e.g., Puppet String, Flamberge) to kill enemies. Boss battles depict more prolonged combat against larger enemies. Battles are highlighted by slashing sounds, cries of pain, and large blood-splatter effects. Some environments depict bloody corpses and large blood stains on the ground.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Every line of dialogue is accompanied by written text, and I personally found the font size to be easily readable. Sound is completely unimportant for playing and enjoying this game since there are no audio-only cues for incoming attacks. I played it for some time with the volume turned fully off and had no problems. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game offers a controller diagram and the controls are remappable. The default scheme is similar to other soulslikes, meaning we use the circle button to run/roll/dodge, the shoulder buttons are for light and strong attacks, the square button is for using items, the left stick is for movement and the right stick handles the camera.

The post SVG REVIEW Lies Of P: Overture appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH An excellent concept that brings new flavor to soulslikes.

LOW Some cheap-shot ambushes. A few of the bosses are rough going.

WTF So ultimately, professional sports are to blame?

While its success was far from guaranteed when the genre launched, there’s no question that soulslikes are here to stay.

This style of play built around third-person combat, stamina management, environmental exploration and generally ‘difficult’ combat was a breath of fresh air when Demon’s Souls burst onto the scene, and it’s now a force in the industry. However, not only is it a tough formula to nail, there are too many who follow in FromSoft’s footsteps without bringing much to the table besides mimicry. While it’s generally a bad idea to try and out-Souls the Souls people, there’s plenty of room in the genre for others to experiment, expand and grow.

For me, the most successful entries have been those that struck out in a new direction. For example, Nioh added a bit of loot drop and complexity to its weapon systems, and Hollow Knight moved things to the 2D plane. While it’s a bit rough around the edges, I’d say Deathbound from Trialforge Studio is another one who’s carved out a space for themselves.

Deathbound starts by putting the player in the shoes of Therone Guillaumen, a sword-and-shield officer in the Church of Death — and surprisingly, he is one of the bad guys.

The opening cinematic shows Therone and his troops laying waste to a city populated by refugees, senior citizens and children — and no one is spared. It’s a shocking start. Another surprise is that despite vague medieval vibes, Deathbound takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting. Every area the player journeys through is based on the ruins of modern-day sports stadiums, parking garages, city streets and more. The mysterious ”first men” are gone, and we’re fighting through what’s survived in their wake.

These elements are already a strong start, but things only get better when the main mechanic of Deathbound is revealed — Therone won’t be the only person living in his body, nor the only person that the player will control.

After pressing on through the ruins, it’s not long before Therone encounters a dead body that stands out from the rest, this one harboring a glow. Upon getting closer, the glow integrates itself into him and transplants a new consciousness, now taking residence inside his skull.

After this second personality (an assassin named Anna) is on board, the player is free to switch between the two at will, and with the push of a button, Therone’s entire body transforms into Anna’s slender, shadowy shape. However, this isn’t just a simple stat and weapon change — no, the two have wildly different movesets. Where one can parry and strike tactically, the other walks silently and can backstab for great damage. Anna’s also equipped with a crossbow to shoot enemies at a distance, but Therone can block and tank hits — something fragile Anna must avoid at all costs.

It takes very little time to realize how different the characters are, and it only gets more diverse from there. As the campaign goes on, the player will accumulate a total of seven characters to learn and experiment with, each one offering something unique. I don’t want to spoil the surprise so I won’t list them all here, but players can look forward to things like casting spells from a great distance, using a spear to get the upper hand on close-up fighters, and more.

Each new tenant in Therone’s head has their own history, background, thoughts and feelings. Each is introduced with a brief cutscene explaining the story of their life, and as Deathbound goes on, it becomes clear that many of the characters knew each other in one way or another. So, when all of these entities end up sharing space in one skull, they bicker and fight or agree and support according to who they were in life.

Apart from being narratively interesting, there are mechanical implications and how they’re arranged in the UI matters. If two who hate each other are placed adjacent in the menu, they’ll have a ‘conflict’ which can either debuff, or give a hate-fueled buff. If two who support each other are side by side, it’s often a strong buff. Adding even more strategy, it quickly becomes a matter of which character works best in each level, and of those potential choices, which characters complement the other ones currently active, both in terms of team composition and amicability.

The end result is that the player will frequently switch between characters, moment-to-moment, as each situation demands. Keeping a shield up and creeping through and unexplored hallway is always a good strategy, and when a nearby guard is seen to have his back to the player, to get the drop on him is a great feeling. When combat breaks out, it’s easy to select one of the other characters and leverage their individual strengths.

It’s also worth noting that attacking while switching between characters in a key aspect in Deathbound, and one that’s not emphasized it as much as it should be. Many games have tried something similar — a player might start an attack with weapon A and then switch to weapon B for bonus damage or to continue a combo, but I rarely find it worth the hassle of doing. However, it’s crucial here as the act of switching gives players brief invincibility and the attack following a switch is supercharged, so not only will the player avoid hits, they’ll also be doing more damage than usual. Many bosses are practically unbeatable without leveraging this trick, so the devs certainly lean into the system they’ve created.

Another aspect where Deathbound breaks away from the soulslike formula is in storytelling. Not only are there multiple characters within (and without) Therone’s head, the script is unrolled in a straightforward, clear manner. Puzzling together bits from item descriptions or watching Vaati’s latest lore video are not necessary to understand what’s going on here — motivations are clear, the story is not a half-told conundrum, and there’s no problem following the dialogue, all of which I found to be quite welcome. Perhaps some people feel like obfuscated storytelling is core to a soulslike, but I sure don’t.

I’ve spent much time talking about the virtues of Deathbound so far, and it’s certainly one of the games I’ve enjoyed most this year, but it’s not a perfect experience. A common criticism is that it’s a bit weak, visually, with simple character models and a lo-fi world. There are also rough edges elsewhere, such as a few places where it’s not clear how to advance forward, and there are a handful of enemy encounters and ambushes that could stand some ironing out. And, as was said earlier, a few bosses are basically impossible until the player realizes character switching is key. The experience can come across as unusually rough for 2024, but I’m the kind of person who prioritizes interesting concepts and heart above polish, so none of these things dampened my enjoyment much.

While I’m definitely a soulslike fan, I don’t need every game in the genre to follow the formula that FromSoft has laid out, and I’m glad that there are studios like Trialforge who are willing to do something different. The foundations are familiar enough to appeal to anyone who enjoys these kinds of experiences, but those looking for a little different will be pleasantly surprised. I appreciate what Deathbound brought to the table, and I look forward to whatever Trialforge does next.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Trialforge Studios and published by Tate Multimedia. It is currently available on PC/XB/PS5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Strong Language, and Violence. The combat here is pretty standard soulslike fare — swords, spears and such. However, there are a few scenes of people being tortured and put to death, and there are bodies who seem to have undergone some ‘difficult times’ before death sprinkled throughout. I don’t recall any particular instances of language but I’m sure it was in there.

Colorblind Modes: There no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is accompanied by subtitles that cannot be resized or altered. As with many soulslikes, there are some audio cues which reveal the presence of hidden enemies or incoming attacks, and these cues do not have visual components. As such, the player will almost certainly receive some surprise strikes or be ambushed occasionally. Therefore, it is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable but there are several presets to choose from.

The post Deathbound Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Visual variety and fresh gameplay breathe new life into an oversaturated genre.

LOW Lack of multiplayer. Some original ideas are underutilized.

WTF You call that a final boss?

Over the past decade, countless titles inspired by FromSoftware’s Souls have come and gone, but few have managed to stand out from the crowd or even meet the bar that’s been set, especially now that it’s been raised once again by the wildly successful Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree.

Enter Enotria — a new and soon-to-be classic third-person soulslike from Italian studio Jyamma Games that dares to be different by drawing inspiration not only from FromSoftware, but also the rich cultural traditions and aesthetic appeal of Italy.

Enotria is a world populated by people trapped in a never-ending play, doomed to perform their roles according to a script they didn’t write. This fate is interrupted by the player in the role of the Maskless One — he enters the scene as a mere puppet, but will ultimately go on to liberate the unwilling actors.

This theatrical concept works well as a device to explain the reason why NPCs are stuck in a loop of performing scenes on the shoreline or dancing in the street to a melody that can be heard in various forms throughout the city of Quinta.

According to Jyamma Games, the city of Quinta and its surrounding area were inspired by Tuscany, and this can be observed in small details like traditional Italian dishes found on tables, and imposing structures like the Church of Maja where the player must face their first boss. The virtual tour of Italy continues with later areas that are reminiscent of Venice (Litumnia) and Sicily (Falesia Magna).

The combat is fast-paced and requires not just skill, but patience.

The third-person perspective allows the player to see a broad view of their enemies and surrounding environment which allows them to telegraph enemy move patterns, tactfully dodging or parrying their attacks before going in for a strike, but they must also know when to step back and conserve stamina.

Landing an attack charges (at varying speeds) up to four “mask lines” which are special attacks that deal different kinds of damage known as Ardore, which can be especially effective against certain enemies.

A crucial piece of the gameplay for players to understand and take advantage of is that they get up to three loadouts which allow them to equip separate sets of weapons, quick items, mask lines and masks. Unlocking certain branches on Enotria‘s skill tree allows the player to select abilities to suit their style, like staggering weaker enemies whenever they successfully dodge an attack. Although the player can only alter the equipment, skills and abilities for each loadout at a checkpoint, they can switch between their loadouts on the fly, which is helpful when facing different types of enemies in a given area.

There are many masks that can be acquired throughout the adventure. Some will be received upon defeating a boss, but the majority can only be crafted after collecting a certain amount of mask shards. It was satisfying to piece them all together and make my first mask — the Gardener. I automatically received it after farming gardeners (an enemy type that appears in the first area) and one of its effects is that it makes a certain healing item more effective. Later in the adventure, players can gather enough boss mask shards to make their corresponding masks which allows the player to use some of their abilities as mask lines.

Apart from the masks, one of the most important mechanics is the elemental system which functions much like rock-paper-scissors. Certain mask lines or weapons infused with an element will be especially effective against an enemy aligned with another.

For example, Vis, a status effect that inflicts dizzying damage, is super effective against enemies aligned with the poison effect, Malanno. Midway through the campaign I fought a god named Veltha, God of Strife who was aligned with Gratia (holy damage) but weak to Malanno, so I maxed out my favorite Malanno weapon and took pleasure as I watched her stagger and suffer from poison damage every time one of my attacks landed. Leveraging this vulnerability didn’t mean the fight was quick work, but it was significantly easier to wear her down than by using the other weapons in my arsenal.

The level of difficulty presented by bosses like Veltha (both a powerful ranged fighter and relentless swordswoman) was on par with other soulslikes, which is to say, very high. Thus, players who are new to the genre will need to learn the basics quickly if they are to progress. When it starts to feel impossible, they can always farm currency from enemies and use it to upgrade their equipment or level up before taking another stab at whatever boss they’re stuck on.

Speaking of bosses, most of Enotria‘s were guilty of one cardinal sin or another, and for some, their vices manifest physically, such as the gluttonous cannibal Zanni who had feasted on fellow actors and turned into a balloon of a man with multiple mouths and an insatiable appetite. It was a delightfully horrifying and imaginative monster design. However, one of my favorite battles was the duo boss fight starring Balanzone and Pantalone. Rather than strong and silent types as many soulslike bosses are, they were a comically dysfunctional pair, often damaging each other when trying to attack me while bickering throughout the fight, voicing their self-interest and avarice.

Shockingly, the final boss proved to be the most underwhelming boss fight of the whole campaign. His attacks were fairly predictable and not much changed during his multiple phases, except that a few ranged attacks were added. At no point did I have to significantly change my approach — it was mostly just a matter of pulling it off. While the majority of Enotria is excellent, this mediocre final encounter was just one of a few things that left me feeling underwhelmed when all was said and done.

Even though I didn’t need any help on the final boss, there were a few that made me wish I did. Summoning friends and strangers alike is one of the things I enjoy most about soulslikes, as it adds to the feeling of “jolly cooperation” — a big part of what makes these titles so special to me. Unfortunately, there’s no online or multiplayer of any kind to be found here.

There were also a few underutilized mechanics that are unique to Enotria, like the Ardore Burst — a stomp that staggers enemies and materializes platforms and ladders when the player stomps on a gold seal, allowing them to reach previously unreachable areas. Whenever I saw one, I’d be filled with the spirit of adventure and feel excited to see where it would take me. Sadly, they’re all too rare.

It’s also worth mentioning that during my time with Enotria, I encountered some sudden difficulty spikes and observed some enemies with odd AI pathing getting stuck in certain places. The devs have since released a patch to address these issues and they plan to release more fixes in the near future.

Ultimately, my time with Enotria: The Last Song was fantastic. The unconventional Italian theming swept me off my feet, and the gameplay was pleasantly familiar, yet offered enough differences and new ideas to let it stand on its own. If any Souls fans are looking for something to lighten up the dark autumn days that lie ahead, they should consider this summery theatrical adventure their remedy.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed and published by Jyamma Games. It is currently available on PC, XBO/X/S and PS5. Code obtained from the publisher and reviewed for PC. Approximately 28 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was finished. There is no multiplayer mode.

Parents: This game is rated T by the ESRB for Alcohol Reference, Blood and Gore, Mild Language and Violence. In regards to alcohol reference, there are some bottles of wine scattered throughout the city of Quinta and possibly drunken revelers in the street; there is also wine present at Zanni’s feast. In place of blood and gore, splashes of black and white burst out of enemies when struck by the player and vice versa. The game has the player fight their way from grunts and minibosses all the way up to Arecchino so there is a considerable amount of violence. There are some moments with mild language but they are few and minor enough to be forgettable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features voiced NPC dialogue that is also presented in text format. However, there is no forewarning of a crossbow bolt coming from off-screen or a far-off cannon being fired at the player which makes it not fully accessible.

Remappable controls: The controls cannot be remapped.

The post Enotria: The Last Song Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Stepping into [redacted location] for the first time.

LOW A pretty obnoxious summoner boss in one of the sub-dungeons.

WTF Count Ymir’s whole deal.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review covers the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC only. For a more complete description of Elden Ring systems and general information, please see our main review.

*

We have officially reached the point where mainstream videogames are so massive in scale that their DLC is the size of an ideal standalone release. Featuring an entirely new open-world map that’s maybe a third the size of the main campaign, and hosting a self-contained story quest that took me over 30 hours to complete, Shadow of the Erdtree — the first and only expansion for Elden Ring — feels unusually ceremonious, even by FromSoft standards. That it improves an already fantastic experience should come as no surprise given the developer’s track record with DLC, but what’s most impressive is that it feels almost like a miniature Elden Ring in and of itself.

The expansion (accessed from Mohg’s boss arena after defeating both he and Starscourge Radahn) concerns Miquella, one of the most enigmatic figures from the main quest. Supposedly one of the more benevolent of Marika’s children, all we know going into SotE is that he has discarded his corporeal flesh and retreated to another realm called the Land of Shadow. Much like the Lands Between, it resides under a massive tree and has already been ravaged by war before we arrive. We don’t immediately know where Miquella is, but others have come seeking him as well. Naturally, their stories often unfold whether we’re around to experience them or not.

SotE is large enough that it requires its own difficulty curve, and immediately there’s a problem. This is explicitly endgame content, meaning that by the time players are even able to access this expansion, they’re likely at the point where their build is beginning to plateau and leveling up has less impact. To counteract this, the devs added collectible items that can be used to boost player stats, but they’re only effective in the Land of Shadow. They’re typically found near major landmarks and after defeating bosses, so the player’s power level in SotE will depend in part on how thorough they are. It feels less organic than earning experience and fine-tuning a build, though I’m hard-pressed to think of a better way to do it.

There are all manner of new weapons and spells to play around with, but SotE feels mostly familiar, perhaps overly so at first. One of the most common complaints I’ve seen about the base game is that it felt emptier than previous FromSoft releases — that the open world added dead space between places of interest. Those folks will likely feel the same way about SotE, and I’ll admit that for the opening hours, I worried that the spell was breaking for me. I was seeing plenty of the usual suspects — oh look, another Ulcerated Tree Spirit — and the rewards for careful exploration were often crafting materials, smithing stones, or nothing at all. Even some of the early dungeons read like Elden Ring leftovers, such as a small castle on the initial horizon that feels a bit like a warmed-over Caria Manor.

As I delved deeper into the Land of Shadow, however, I came to realize that FromSoft had found new ways of hiding their light under a bushel. They can no longer surprise us with scale — not after the core campaign disguised the size of its map and hit us with a Z-axis expansion — so instead they rely upon our existing understanding of Elden Ring to wow us with some of their wildest, most colorful and varied landscapes yet, and with them some extraordinary additions to the mythos. Miquella may be the focus of the expansion, but other factions that were previously under-represented are elaborated upon here.

FromSoft is often criticized for a relatively hands-off storytelling approach that relegates most of the relevant details to item descriptions, but I see it from a different angle. The lore enriches the experience for those with the drive to seek it out, but FromSoft stories tend to be simple in nature and more about the personal journey. The unique amount of information that each player absorbs is part of that. We’ve been wanting to know more about Miquella for more than two years, and now that I’ve played SotE, I believe I have a decent understanding of him. However, that’s only based on the incomplete picture that I have, drawn using whatever details I happened to pick up. I have zero doubt that my understanding will continue to evolve when the community gets its hands on the expansion.

There are few things I value more in videogames than a sense of discovery, and FromSoft can scratch that itch better than nearly anyone. They know how to tempt us with a tantalizing silhouette on the horizon. My character’s voyage through the Land of Shadow was dictated almost entirely by me seeing something cool in the distance, wondering how to get to it, figuring it out, and being rewarded. Sometimes that reward was just a gorgeous view, but that can be enough. Anyone able to even reach this DLC certainly understands by now the value of slowly opening a massive door to reveal a beautiful vista on the other side.

I wrote in my initial impressions of Elden Ring that its free-roaming nature and almost total plotlessness made it feel closer in spirit to early Zelda than nearly any other modern title. That’s doubly true for SotE, partly because it’s more compact, and partly because FromSoft hasn’t leaned this hard into abstract space in a while. SotE‘s centerpiece legacy dungeon, for example, never once feels like a practical dwelling, but its gimmick is something we never saw in the main content — it’s a castle with numerous entrances and exits that requires multiple passes to complete and acts as a conduit between other parts of the map. That’s worth the trade-off, and it’s part of what makes SotE unique from even the base game, where the regions were largely arranged in a line.

Of course SotE isn’t a metroidvania, but it shares some common DNA in how vertically aligned it is and how often it dips, overlaps and doubles back on itself. While it’s not as impressive a feat as the original Dark Souls perfectly positioning its levels and skyboxes in such a way as to create the illusion of an open world, it’s not far behind. There’s something satisfying about skipping a seemingly non-optional dungeon by finding an obscure side route that spits me out at the back end.

The new bosses (of which there are many) are also almost uniformly great, which should come as good news to those who found Elden Ring‘s original rogues’ gallery a bit lacking. I can’t elaborate much, but there are delightfully few gimmicks to be found here — these are simply well-tuned battles in visually stunning arenas. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there is a higher number of great boss fights in SotE than in the entire base game.

There’s a caveat, though. A new FromSoft release always comes with the advent of a new Ultimate Opponent, and SotE‘s main quest culminates in a final boss that I suspect will break a lot of people. I haven’t decided whether it’s tougher than Malenia, but the fact that I’m even considering the possibility should be all the information that anyone needs. The encounter itself is an awe-inspiring story moment, so to a degree it’s earned — this isn’t so much a criticism as me issuing a “buyer beware.” Miyazaki’s stated goal with Elden Ring was to make it their most accessible game ever, and I do wonder if their ongoing quest to find every player’s pain threshold is at odds with that.

FromSoft frequently quotes its own work, and in the spirit of Elden Ring being something of a victory lap for them, SotE unambiguously references pretty much all of their recent output. Even fans of Bloodborne and Sekiro will spot some familiar imagery, all remixed to feel fresh and of a piece with the universe of Elden Ring. It’s a nice way to cap off a tremendous winning streak and reaffirms that the modern FromSoft catalogue is something we still so rarely see in this medium — an actual body of work defined by a unifying vision.

Given that Shadow of the Erdtree is roughly the size of what a standalone FromSoft game used to be — it took me longer to finish this than, say, Bloodborne or Dark Souls III — I imagine that it will be received like one. While it took some time to find its footing, it emerged not just as a great expansion, but as a great entry in the studio’s catalogue, period. It’s a shame that the barrier for entry is so high, because I’m already looking forward to revisiting it.

8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on XBO/X/S, PS4/5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 35 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The entirety of play was spent with multiplayer features enabled.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes and Violence. There are a couple of suggestive character designs throughout and a bit of mild profanity, but the violence is where Elden Ring earns its rating. This is arguably FromSoft’s most gruesome game to date, with severed parts and mutilated corpses littering the landscape. While it’s fitting with the tone of the world and tastefully portrayed, it’s not for children.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Audio cues are frequently used to notify players of either points of interest or approaching enemies, and the game doesn’t offer any sort of visual representation of these cues. The lack of visual cues renders an already-obtuse game even more difficult, and forces players to be even more alert. As such, this game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Lots of ways to kill!

LOW The painful lack of innovation.

WTF Are the devs familiar with the concept of a difficulty curve?!?

The Last Faith is a gothic, Bloodborne-inspired 2D metroidvania that follows Erik, a man suffering from a mysterious sickness that plagues the world and turns people into monsters. Set on finding a cure, Erik sets out on a journey to find the cause of the plague and those responsible for it.

The theme and premise of the story are heavily inspired by Blasphemous without much narrative innovation — the focus is on a deadly pandemic and how religious fanatics and politicians exploit people and society for their goals. This is well-trodden territory.

The Last Faith’s gameplay is a blend of soulslike and metroidvania. Erik uses melee weapons to fight off enemies and gathers “Nycrux”, which is used to buy items from NPCs, upgrade weapons, and level up his stats. Upon death, all the Nycrux is lost and must be retrieved just like all the other soulslike
games. Upgrading weapons is pretty straightforward. Erik should bring upgrade materials found across the land to a specific NPC and improve his weapons.

The combat is mostly focused on using a variety of melee weapons including whips, swords, and axes in combination with pistols or ranged spells. Players can also use items in their surroundings such as chairs and rocks as throwable weapons, which is useful as since Erik’s ranged weapons and spells consume ammo and mana that are limited and refilled at bonfire-like checkpoints.

As you might imagine by the number of references and comparisons I’ve already made up to this point, a big issue with The Last Faith is its lack of originality. It is impossible to play it without mentally comparing it to any number of similar titles. While the enemy variety and boss designs are impressive, there’s nothing special about them, and certainly none of them will be remembered a moment after credits rolling.

There are collectibles and sidequests for NPCs, but doing them is usually rewarded with new items or spells and doesn’t have any impact on the narrative or ending.

There is no skill tree, and unlocking new abilities is story-related and happens when the player advances enough in the campaign. In too many ways, The Last Faith sticks to predictable, expected gameplay design choices… except when it comes to difficulty.

A significant issue here is the unbalanced difficulty. Due to its metroidvania design semi-gating progress, many areas in The Last Faith are at least partly accessible in the beginning, and there’s no way to know if a chosen area is the right path to follow. I would imagine that most players will immediately begin the usual cycle of dying, grinding for better gear, and leveling up the character when facing the too-challenging areas early on, which then leads to an overpowered Erik in the late game who ends up blowing past any resistance.

The Last Faith is an experience big enough to keep fans of the material occupied for 15 hours or so — the story is straightforward and the combat is… fine? Unfortunately for it, 2023 has been one of the busiest, richest years for quality game releases, and in light of such competition, The Last Faith doesn’t have much to offer.

Score: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed by Kumi Souls Games and published by Playstack. It is currently available on XBO/X/S, PS4/5, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game has been rated M by the ESRB for Blood and Gore, Violence and Nudity. The main character fights humans and monsters, depicted with instances of combat and dismemberment. The nudity is not a major element.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can’t be altered and/or resized. There are no necessary audio cues in the game. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Controls can be remapped.

The post The Last Faith Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Superb aesthetics, tons of quality-of-life features, flexible systems.

LOW The true final boss is an OP nightmare.

WTF Trapping players by disabling fast-travel before a boss fight.

Konstantin did a great job of singing this game’s praises in his main review and I agree with almost everything he said, so this second opinion will focus on how Lies of P is a great response to the groundbreaking formula that FromSoft pioneered.

It’s no secret that the popularity of soulslikes has exploded in recent years. However, while many developers want to hitch a ride on those coattails, the majority simply recreate (to a lesser degree) what has been done before without fully understanding what the original decisions mean, why they were made, or how they can be improved and polished. Even FromSoft — the creator of the genre — is itself guilty of this at times, persisting with certain choices while resisting innovation.

In this regard, I see Lies of P as a true next-generation soulslike — not in a more polygons, faster hardware sense, but as something that takes the traditional formula and creates a noteworthy experience by taking a hard look at what’s been established and then making several significant changes, though they might not be immediately apparent.

For example, FromSoft is notorious for fragmented storytelling. Players who want to fully grasp what’s going on have to read every item description, infer relationships and events from suggestions, find secrets — and sometimes even with all that achieved, they still have to go to YouTube and hope that loremasters have created an explainer that strings it all together. While I can understand the rationale behind it, too many others follow in the same esoteric footsteps with even less success. In contrast, Lies of P proves that soulslikes don’t need obfuscated stories in order to work.

In this Pinocchio-inspired tale, the developers are clear about who’s doing what and why, and it’s a breath of fresh air. Though there is a bit of intrigue and there are certainly lore notes to be read, P‘s world is populated with characters who have much to say in plain, straightforward language. The constant company of Gemini (cricket) supports this — while he’s not a chatterbox, he does pipe up with important information when appropriate, filling gaps in knowledge from the perspective of someone who knows more than the player. Lonely, decaying worlds have been done to death. Crafting something different by offering conversational NPCs and clearly communicated plot beats doesn’t take away from the experience — it just creates a different, equally viable one.

That brings me to my next bit of praise for Lies of P — most of the sidequests are easily discoverable from reasonable play and don’t require an FAQ or wiki to figure out. In fact, P goes out of its way to help with this by offering voiceovers, text and cues in the menu that tell the player when they’ve triggered something that requires further investigation. These assists don’t reveal every secret, of course, but they go a long way towards getting the player involved and feeling empowered, rather than stymying them with increasingly-arcane secrets.

In terms of gameplay itself, it hews closely to traditional Souls lines, but with improvements that retain the core qualities. For example, there’s a generous respec option which lets players experiment with different builds at-will, once they’ve unlocked it through campaign progress. Even better, the majority of weapons in P can be disassembled to mix and match both blades and handles. This means that players are almost guaranteed to be able to find or build a weapon that suits them, and then they can spec to effectively support that playstyle, even if they don’t discover what style they prefer until late in the game. Upgrade materials are plentiful, and there are items that can further modify weapons to suit a player’s taste. Lies of P wants players to become comfortable with the combat, not punish them for committing to the wrong weapon too early.

Something that has been a point of contention in the genre is that a segment of the soulslike audience feels the only good world is one that is dense and interconnected, looping back upon itself and linked with shortcuts. Basically, they only want something that mimics the original Dark Souls.

Interestingly, that multi-layered Dark Souls design wasn’t the original concept put forth by FromSoft, and they have diverged from it themselves — see Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls II and Elden Ring to name a few. Lies of P decides to eschew the fan favorite and instead goes with largely linear environments, and it’s a fine choice. Rather than leaning into the kind of exploration where a player might get lost by frequently circling back and trying to figure out which way is the right one, it’s always easy to ascertain the main path and advance, although there are small divergences and pockets for those who like to poke around. Personally, I enjoyed the greater focus on forward momentum and didn’t feel as though the experience was lesser for it.

Overall, Lies of P is the first soulslike in quite some time that intentionally stays within the classic parameters set by FromSoft, while offering enough noteworthy changes and flexible quality-of-life options to make it feel like it’s built on the material that came before it, rather than being just a copy of it.

I’m a fan of what P‘s developers have done, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that every inch is absolutely dripping with style. The combat has flair, the graphics are gorgeous, the soundtrack is amazing, and the aesthetics are unerringly on point. This cool-as-hell Belle Époque automaton with dreams of becoming a real boy is a protagonist that I enjoyed adventuring with from start to finish. If I had to critique something, I’d say that I wouldn’t mind less emphasis on parrying, but it’s hard to be too upset about it, as there are accommodations available there, as well.

As someone who witnessed the birth of soulslikes and has spent time with every significant entry since then, Lies of P is earns my praise for being a smartly-designed, sharply observant piece that is both a commentary on and an advancement of a genre that is here to stay.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio, and published by Neowiz Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, and XBO/S/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 35 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has received an M rating from the ESRB and contains Blood and Violence. The official summary reads: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of the puppet Pinocchio in his search to become human. From a third-person perspective, players explore environments, collect items, and battle various enemies (e.g., puppets, mechanoid creatures) in melee-style combat. Players use swords and mechanical arms with ranged attacks (e.g., Puppet String, Flamberge) to kill enemies. Boss battles depict more prolonged combat against larger enemies. Battles are highlighted by slashing sounds, cries of pain, and large blood-splatter effects. Some environments depict bloody corpses and large blood stains on the ground.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Every line of dialogue is accompanied by written text, and I personally found the font size to be easily readable. Sound is completely unimportant for playing and enjoying this game since there are no audio-only cues for incoming attacks. I played it for some time with the volume turned fully off and had no problems. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game offers a controller diagram and the controls are remappable. The default scheme is similar to other soulslikes, meaning we use the circle button to run/roll/dodge, the shoulder buttons are for light and strong attacks, the square button is for using items, the left stick is for movement and the right stick handles the camera.

The post Lies Of P Second Opinion appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The many bosses and mini-bosses!

LOW The world is far too linear for a soulslike.

WTF Why can’t I attack that obvious traitor before it’s too late?!

I believe a certain percentage of the world’s gaming audience will take even a moderately good soulslike over anything from another genre, any day of the week. Aside from the difficulty and bleak tones, soulslikes offer an underlying level of intensity that many action titles struggle to maintain for the length of a campaign. At the same time, they effortlessly establish a ‘beat this, if you can!’ relationship with the player – a unique kind of psychological trick, both alluring and treacherous, making them hard to quit for the right sort of person. However, there are many ways a new soulslike can go wrong, and the scrutiny from fans of the genre can be intense. With all that said, I’m happy to report that Lies of P is the latest noteworthy entry in its ever-expanding genre.

Lies of P’s moment-to-moment mechanics combine several aspects from popular soulslikes that came before — for instance, much success relies on how well we can manage the genre-standard always-dwindling stamina reserves. Attacking, dodging, running, jumping — all of these actions drain a portion of the character’s lung capacity, and if it was to deplete, we’d be open to severe punishment from any opposing force lingering nearby. However, we can block incoming attacks. It won’t completely negate the force of the impact, but striking soon after will restore a portion of lost health back.

Aside from blocking, we can also parry if we block at the particular instant when the enemy’s weapon is about to connect. Unfortunately, there’s a hidden difficulty regarding perfect parries – the English localization of Lies of P isn’t as accurate as it needs to be.

For example, the game ‘explains’ that I can nullify any enemy attack if I tap the block button at just the right time to land a perfect parry, but that’s not exactly how it works. In actuality, to perform a ‘perfect parry’ nullification (followed by a satisfying metal-against-metal clunking noise and the possible breaking of an adversary’s blade) we must not only press the block button at the right moment but also proceed to hold it for the next few milliseconds. Without those extra frames of blocking, the parry won’t happen and the player will simply take damage.

Needless to say, that is not a harmless ‘misunderstanding’ given how Lies of P practically insists that we master parrying via its generous selection of bosses with entertaining rhythm-based attack patterns. Plus, even regular foes have access to special “fury” attacks that can only be repelled by a perfect parry. Therefore, it’s unfortunate that Lies of P doesn’t spend enough time (in its translation or otherwise) to ensure that players understand how this core mechanic works, but I’m inclined to write that off as an oversight, and not an intentional misrepresentation of the ‘proper’ way to play.

However, once we’ve figured out how parrying works, it’s easy to find tons of enjoyment with it! Lies of P offers a voice different from the average soulslike – it sets a peculiar tempo and everything about it works better and better as the campaign progresses! So yes, this game takes a good while to truly get going. Admittedly, the timing to land a parry gets trickier when more dexterous enemies start popping up, but exploiting the system is well worth it in the end, even if Lies of P enjoys racking up the difficulty up to 11.

As for the early areas, they are reminiscent of common soulslike scenarios – corners hiding two or three enemies in ambush positions when only one is easily visible, suspiciously barren uphill sections where a rolling ball suddenly makes an appearance with the intent of squashing the player, and so forth. Still, even if I correctly deciphered these challenges on time, dealing with them in Lies of P feels a bit ‘off’ at first.

Part of this, I think, is that the developers opted to lock some basic moves genre fans expect behind a skill tree. As a result, we cannot pull off intuitive things like rolling after an enemy forces us to the ground or being able to string two dodges in a row. That seems like an arbitrary hurdle that might discourage newcomers to the genre far earlier than intended — in a soulslike, such moves should be completely available from the start, and the gameplay in P suffers due to that imposed sluggishness. Luckily, Lies of P manages to outgrow those shortcomings before it’s too late.

The game’s many weapons come in two categories – regular (found as item pick-ups across the world) and special (armaments that require interacting with a merchant and parting with a specific boss soul to obtain). We can utilize them with the usual assortment of light, strong, charged, running, or jumping attacks, but can also perform special attacks that cost no stamina, yet drain the energy bar instead. Filling the energy bar back up is possible by landing hits on an enemy or by using consumables (which are quite effective in Lies of P, especially those of the explosive kind).  

Furthermore, we can break all non-boss weapons apart and produce entirely new weapons by combining whichever handle with whichever blade. By tinkering with this system, I was able to give longer reach to a fire-infused dagger or transfer a defensive weapon art from an axe to a rapier. It’s a neat inclusion that allows for some player agency, though I found the weapons to be effective enough in their original states. We can also change a weapon’s scaling, which actually mitigates the issue of there not being enough dexterity-based weapons prior to the mid-game. Regardless, P has a lot of decisions to make when it comes to his weapon of choice, and many are worth exploring to the fullest. 

But what about P’s left arm? It’s obvious from the trailers and promo art that he looks like a normal human, with the exception of a mechanical left arm. This limb is the biggest tell that we’re playing as a puppet that’s turned against its frenzied brethren and a slew of more ‘organic’ enemy types to save humanity. To combat those odds, P can equip his left arm with choices like a flamethrower, a string that pulls enemies, a shield, and other contraptions that I won’t spoil here. Thus, P‘s left arm becomes a pivotal part of the character build and greatly complements any given offense.

On that note, having the means to dish out damage within a small window of opportunity is important in Lies of P. The enemies are often more resilient than initially anticipated, and the wide selection of bosses and mini-bosses offer truly epic encounters that warrant an analytical approach. The designs of these baddies lie somewhere between the wacky and the grotesque, but I was pleased with both. If there’s any nitpick to be raised, it’s that most of the bosses have a second stage that’s wildly different from the first, despite retaining a reasonable difficulty. These fights are a definite highlight!

Story-wise, P follows beats similar to the classic 19th-century tale of Pinocchio, but also takes inspiration from a myriad of other sources, such as transhumanism, morality, cabaret art, and more. The plot is easy to keep up with due to a plethora of written collectibles and NPC dialogue to engage with, but I found it to be a bit lackluster despite the effort. Without spoilers, the script spreads itself too thin, yet many times when an enemy or an NPC would initiate monologues, I wished that they would cut them short. A part of what makes Dark Souls‘ storytelling such a success is that it evades revealing everything. Lies of P heads boldly in the opposite direction, but I found myself caring less and less as the conclusion drew nearer…   

Another complaint might be that while Lies of P looks pretty at all times and is populated with supremely animated character models, the levels are actually linear and “blocky”, for lack of a better term. While it’s impossible to get lost in them, the game’s levels are not all that memorable either. After revisiting a few of the early areas before facing the (real) end boss, I was surprised at how few of those layouts I remembered. The final gauntlet drags a bit too long as well – in my opinion, an entire third of it could’ve been cut and the experience wouldn’t have suffered one bit.  

Despite those complaints, Lies of P remains a resounding two thumbs up. While not perfect, there are no serious arguments to be made about this ambitious attempt’s quality. In my view, it most definitely is the strongest contender for best soulslike of the year in 2023!

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio, and published by Neowiz Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, and XBO/S/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 40 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has received an M rating from the ESRB and contains Blood and Violence. The official summary reads: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of the puppet Pinocchio in his search to become human. From a third-person perspective, players explore environments, collect items, and battle various enemies (e.g., puppets, mechanoid creatures) in melee-style combat. Players use swords and mechanical arms with ranged attacks (e.g., Puppet String, Flamberge) to kill enemies. Boss battles depict more prolonged combat against larger enemies. Battles are highlighted by slashing sounds, cries of pain, and large blood-splatter effects. Some environments depict bloody corpses and large blood stains on the ground.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Every line of dialogue is accompanied by written text, and I personally found the font size to be easily readable. Sound is completely unimportant for playing and enjoying this game since there are no audio-only cues for incoming attacks. I played it for some time with the volume turned fully off and had no problems. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game offers a controller diagram and the controls are remappable. The default scheme is similar to other soulslikes, meaning we use the circle button to run/roll/dodge, the shoulder buttons are for light and strong attacks, the square button is for using items, the left stick is for movement and the right stick handles the camera.

The post Lies Of P Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH It’s one of the richest open worlds ever created.

LOW Endless invasions.

WTF Seriously, how is anyone supposed to figure these sidequests out?

Mike Suskie’s main review of Elden Ring is a great one and it celebrates many of the same things that I would. Seeing that we were of like mind, I was content to take my time and be as thorough as possible, combing every area and trying to see as much of FromSoft’s latest work as I could in a single playthrough — it’s unlikely I’ll be replaying a game of such immense size anytime soon.

Now that I’ve finally rolled credits after 210 hours, I’m ready to weigh in on this magnum opus and I still agree with Mike’s verdict. He captured what was good and right about it, and since he already did such a great job of singing its praises, I’ll instead offer a bit of contrast by offering some criticism on areas where Elden Ring stumbles a bit — it’s a marvelous experience, but it’s not perfect.

Let’s start with the storytelling.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of From’s patented ‘cryptic’ approach, but it’s now a concept that’s thoroughly worn out its welcome — and it’s a shame! The writers have done a great job in crafting a host of NPCs that each have a sidequest to unravel, and when all of the bits are laid bare, they’re largely interesting and compelling. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to progress the sidequests (or even find them!) without following a walkthrough.    

For example, one of the characters I cared most about was Millicent, the amputee swordswoman suffering from Rot. Her quest started off just fine, with the beginning portion set in a place that would be likely unmissable, and the next few steps were located nearby. At that point, From absolutely lost me as her next events were in places that I had already been to and had no reason to revisit, or they were in places that I wouldn’t see for another 20, 50, or 100 hours. With a world so huge and the possibility of doing so much of it in random order, trying to locate Millicent’s next narrative trigger (or anyone else’s, for that matter) is like searching for a needle in a haystack hidden inside an invisible barn… on another planet.

Complicating things, it’s often necessary to revisit the same location several times in order to get the whole story.

In any other game, a character would give their exposition and impart whatever item or reward was due, and that would be the end of it. In Elden Ring, it’s common to find a character and then have to leave and come back to get the next chunk of the tale, and then to leave and return again to finally get the item that’s needed. In one late-game quest, I had to leave and revisit the same location four times to finish things off, and I only came back so often because a wiki told me to. Because of this absurd requirement I missed out on several things that would have been obvious in any other game — it’s just a layer of annoyance that doesn’t serve any purpose.

Another bizarre decision? There are at least two separate characters who have enriching exposition or key quest steps hidden as menu options that never call attention to themselves. It’s far too easy to overlook one extra option on a page full of them — why not have these characters simply show up and address the player? They sometimes do, so the inconsistency is not only a disservice to the player, I struggle to imagine how anyone felt like burying them in a menu was a reasonable, effective choice. I went more than 100 hours without realizing that I had been missing sporadic messages and in doing so, had inadvertently avoided a key relationship. When the time came for that story beat to unfold, it fell flat because none of the groundwork had been laid.

None of these choices are intuitive or logical — especially with the now-vast and wide-open nature of the world — and these interesting, compelling stories are going to waste thanks to a storytelling system that is critically broken.

My other major frustration has to do with something that is otherwise brilliant — the Ash Summons.

During Elden Ring, players will come across many items which allow them to summon AI characters to assist them in battle, everything ranging from a giant jellyfish to stealthy dagger-wielding assassins. These helpers are key since they draw aggro away from the player and give them a chance to heal, or they provide distractions while lining up a killer arrow or spell. Considering how relentless some enemies are, it’s safe to say that the developers absolutely intended that players use them. Unfortunately, their implementation feels arbitrary in a way that undercuts their utility.

Rather than being able to summon them at any time, players can only summon them when From (apparently) thinks they’re necessary. They’re available in almost every boss encounter, and in some areas which, I assume, the developers think are tough enough to warrant some backup. However, there were many times when I wanted to summon some aid and just couldn’t… because reasons? If there’s any logic to where and when these Ash creatures can be used in the world, I can’t figure it out.

In a similar vein, it’s high time that From stops being so precious with the co-op/player summoning system and just gets with the program. To be fair, it’s easier and better in Elden Ring than basically every other From game, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. I spent the vast majority of my 200+ hours partnering up with my wife, and we were constantly wishing that we could just join each other in a party instead of summoning each other in specific places. Worse, once the boss of a specific zone is beaten, players can’t be summoned in to help there again. Why not? Who cares if someone wants to explore or just grind for souls with a friend?

But the absolute worst thing about playing in co-op? Non-stop invasions.

I’ve spoken to several Elden players who got through the entire game without ever being invaded by another real player, but when adventuring with my wife, we were invaded constantly. During certain times of the day it was as frequent as every five minutes, and being attacked multiple times between graces was common.

I understand that the idea is to funnel invaders towards people who already have some backup, but this is in dire need of tuning. After being invaded, it would be nice if there was a ‘cooldown’ timer that prevented another invasion for a certain period, or perhaps a limit on the total number of times someone could be invaded during a session would help. We got attacked so often it was a joke, and having boss runs or exploratory jaunts busted up by people who were geared for one-hit PVP kills was maddening.

There are a few other irritations that could be mentioned. Certain areas feel like they could be trimmed back to promote a leaner runtime or adjustments could be made to how so many of the late-game rewards are Faith-based — it’s a huge bummer for non-Faith players to get an item they can’t use after besting a tough foe.

At this point I’m sure readers are getting ready to send some angry comments my way, so let me just restate that this is a contrasting piece meant to shed a little light on places where the experience could use a tweak or two. Criticisms aside, let me be clear in saying that Elden Ring is an extraordinary achievement that is unquestionably at the top of the open-world genre. The vistas are incredible, the sense of exploration is constant and surprising, and the feeling of finally achieving mastery over this immense challenge is second to none — but like I mentioned at the start of this review, Mike said all of that already.

Disclosures: This game is developed by From Software and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4/5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 210 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The entirety of play was spent with multiplayer features enabled and the majority of playtime was spent with an active co-op partner.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes and Violence. There are a couple of suggestive character designs throughout and a bit of mild profanity, but the violence is where Elden Ring earns its rating. This is arguably FromSoft’s most gruesome game to date, with severed parts and mutilated corpses littering the landscape. While it’s fitting with the tone of the world and tastefully portrayed, it’s not for children.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Audio cues are frequently used to notify players of either points of interest or approaching enemies, and the game doesn’t offer any sort of visual representation of these cues. The lack of visual cues renders an already-obtuse game even more difficult, and forces players to be even more alert. As such, this game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. (PS controls shown.)

The post Elden Ring Second Opinion appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH When the highest location on the map is also a climactic story beat.

LOW Scarlet Rot, this game’s version of the “toxic” ailment.

WTF That thing under Stormveil Castle.

When the embargo for Elden Ring dropped a few weeks ago, the number-one thing we were all echoing was how unfathomably massive the game is. I correctly estimated at the time that with 40-50 hours clocked, I was only about a third of the way through it. However, From Software are masters of hiding their light under a bushel, and despite our warnings people are still being caught off guard by the sheer enormity of what this team has produced.

What’s more interesting, though, is that every time Elden Ring presents an Anor Londo-esque reveal — a moment when FromSoft raises the curtain just as players think they’re getting a handle on the game’s scale — it’s welcomed as a good thing. In an entertainment industry that’s grown increasingly focused on prolonged engagement where the average new triple-A release looks more like a list of chores than a relaxing way to unwind after a tough workday, it’s refreshing to see something that actually earns its status as the only videogame we’re expected to play for months at a time. It’s a game so good that it makes other games difficult to go back to.

I wrote up some impressions of Elden Ring back when the embargo dropped. I’ve since tripled my playtime and finished the game, and I’m pleased to report that nothing I’ve seen has dampened my initial enthusiasm. My opinion hasn’t changed — it’s a masterpiece. What has changed is that Elden Ring has since become a massive mainstream success. This may seem to be coming from out of nowhere to anyone who’s been scared off by the studio’s ‘hardcore’ label and dismissed their past work as niche. But to those who have been following FromSoft’s work since they launched Dark Souls, this particular entry feels like the natural conclusion to a years-long journey on the studio’s part.

While the term “soulslike” has been heavily misused in recent years — usually to simply describe any action-RPG that happens to be tough — it’s undeniable that director Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team have essentially created an entire subgenre with its own cadence and vocabulary (souls, bonfires, flasks, etc.). We’re increasingly seeing other developers attempt to emulate the formula, and while there have been scattered successes, playing Elden Ring is like sipping my favorite craft beer again after years of nothing but domestic swill.

In fact, part of the reason that Elden Ring works so well is that FromSoft has the basics down for a while now. Most crucially, the combat is more-or-less perfect. The rapidly-recharging stamina meter has always been a particular stroke of genius in the way that it lends an element of decision-making to every offensive or defensive maneuver. Victory hinges not just on reflexes, but on the player’s understanding of the fundamental rules by which everything in this world abides. Downing a tough adversary under such conditions makes me feel both powerful and smart.

The most immediate upside of moving the FromSoft formula to a truly open world, then, is having a seemingly endless number of ways to engage with that satisfying combat loop. While there are some repeated fixtures throughout the Lands Between — the catacombs with their environmental puzzles, or the mines that yield upgrade materials — everything is individually authored and houses unique rewards. I can boot up Elden Ring, microdose on some of that Souls gameplay I know and love, and always end my session feeling productive.

Although Breath of the Wild isn’t a one-to-one comparison — players cannot literally go straight from the tutorial to the final boss, for example — the spirit of Nintendo’s benchmark is in full force here since the overwhelming majority of Elden Ring is optional. A player’s specific route to the endgame rests entirely on how much of the world they want to see and how easy they want to make future battles via doing more prep work. The game is almost like a FromSoft buffet table, allowing us to pick and choose the components of our perfect meal.

Bolstering that flexibility is a returning emphasis on character builds. While there’s an undeniable joy in games like Bloodborne and Sekiro forcing us to master new tricks, bringing shields and magic back into the fold goes a long way in making this hundred-plus-hour behemoth palatable. Those who like to study boss patterns and minimize the number of hits they take can do so, but tanking is viable again, as is slinging projectiles from across the room. Whatever type of action-RPG we want Elden Ring to be, it can be.

The wealth of options expands beyond how we build our protagonist. The ability to simply bypass entire groups of enemies has never been easier, thanks to both the openness of the world and the presence of a surprisingly reliable stealth system. Is it the silly variety of stealth that mainly involves crouching in bushes? Sure, but it’s amazing how much that doesn’t matter when developers stop striving for cinematic realism and treat these spaces as the abstractions that they are.

Elden Ring becomes more linear in its final hours, as objectives decrease in number and all paths begin funneling toward a conclusion. That’s where I finally started hitting walls, but by that point I’d collected so many tools and learned so much about the systems that I needed only switch up my strategy. I could experiment with new weapons or even respec if necessary. I could summon a Burger King cosplayer to fire lasers at it, or unleash an AI-controlled familiar as a distraction to buy some breathing room. Or, as ever, I could just find something else to do and come back once I had a bit more confidence.

The free-flowing structure of Elden Ring is made possible by a story that is, as always, happy to stay in the periphery. The lore is extensive and fascinating, with new details constantly being pieced together by the community, including further work on at least one genuinely unsolved mystery. However, it’s only there for people who care enough to go looking for it. Everyone else will be focused on the real story, which is the same story that all FromSoft games have — the epic tale of a shriveled-up little weirdo who slowly and steadily works up the power to topple gods, for no other reason than they wanted to.

The overwhelming mainstream success of Elden Ring has resurrected old questions about the approachability and user friendliness of FromSoft’s work that diehards have long stopped caring about. All I can say is that it never occurred to me not to jump down the deep, perilous hole in which the game hides its tutorial, nor does it strike me as bad design that Elden Ring is full of obscure secrets that no one player could ever hope to find on their own. These games simply have their own language. The darkly humorous trolls are part of that language, as is the steep learning curve and the communal experience of sharing notes.

That may sound like an excuse, but it’s hard to argue with the results — FromSoft has stuck rigidly to this formula, and their fanbase has exponentially grown. More and more people are learning the language.

Elden Ring has already become too big for rival developers to ignore, and I worry that many of them will seek to emulate its surface-level qualities while ignoring the real lesson here — that some of us want games made by artists, not algorithms. Chasing trends may lead to short-term gains, but it’s no substitute for a developer spending more than a decade fine-tuning a creative vision so singular that it defies our usual metrics for what can be considered “good” or “bad” design. Whether Elden Ring is perfect is beside the point. What matters is that it’s the ultimate expression of a blueprint first laid out in Dark Souls. It’s made my favorite game of all time feel like a practice run.

Disclosures: This game is developed by From Software and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4/5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 160 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The entirety of play was spent with multiplayer features enabled.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes and Violence. There are a couple of suggestive character designs throughout and a bit of mild profanity, but the violence is where Elden Ring earns its rating. This is arguably FromSoft’s most gruesome game to date, with severed parts and mutilated corpses littering the landscape. While it’s fitting with the tone of the world and tastefully portrayed, it’s not for children.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Audio cues are frequently used to notify players of either points of interest or approaching enemies, and the game doesn’t offer any sort of visual representation of these cues. The lack of visual cues renders an already-obtuse game even more difficult, and forces players to be even more alert. As such, this game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Elden Ring Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this episode, Carlos & Brad discuss Time Loader and Aztech: Forgotten Gods before deep-diving into the world of Elden Ring.

Elden is the first Souls game that Carlos has sunk time into, and Brad has been a FromSoft fan for 27 years. The two of us are bringing hugely different perspectives on what is sure to be one of the biggest games of the year, and we spend the majority of the show chatting about the bad, and the Tarnished.

SPOILER WARNING – we don’t hold anything back in the Elden Ring segment, so heads up that there may be spoilers of all kinds during the chat. We do give warnings during the show before we start to spill. = )

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So Videogames Ep. 275: The Eldencast appeared first on Gamecritics.com.