Not content with making something of a spiritual sequel to Bloodborne, they also went and released an expansion similar in scope to The Old Hunters.
The first boss encounter is a little rough but otherwise I think the new content is very good. I’ve even been trying out some of the new weapons, though I always eventually fall back on my old favorite (the bone-cutting sawblade on the bramble curved sword handle).
If you never got around to playing Lies of P, I recommend it. While it starts out feeling kind of like a mishmash of Bloodborne, Sekiro, and a little Bioshock, it gets better as you go along and ultimately develops its own personality. If you’re going to copy a formula, you could do worse than a faithful approximation of FromSoftware mechanics.
With this new DLC they also added two easier difficulty levels that I assume you don’t even need to buy the DLC to get for the base game. Even without the new difficulty settings (which didn’t exist when I played through the base game), I found the difficulty level manageable. There’s some kind of parry equivalent but I’ve never done it except maybe once or twice by accident. It’s not required like in Sekiro.
One thing I like about Lies of P is that it gradually turns up the horror and some of the enemies even get a little gross.
I reached the end of the DLC last night. It’s a good example of how to do an expansion right. More variety in every aspect of the game. A few of the bosses were kind of a pain but nothing insurmountable.
One of my favorite parts is where you have an NPC partner not only for a boss but the area leading up to the boss. Makes me want to do a co-op run through a Souls game. Or try that popular new Elden Ring spin-off thing if it were a different type of game.
After finishing Overture I played a little of NG+. It’s fun to be able to progress quickly despite the enemies being quite a bit more resilient. I can imagine that Overture would have been a lot tougher had I already been on the second round when I started it.
I was having fun in NG+ so I decided I might as well check the trophy list and see if I wanted to go for completionism. All I really had left were the records, so I went for it. (For the record, I think video games would be better off without trophies.)
When I reached the point where you get one of two records depending on particular choices, I received neither. I looked it up and learned that I had sped through the game a little too fast and skipped some prerequisites. So much for that, I thought.
But then I decided to pull down my cloud save from when I went for all the endings and try it again. I figured I could get there pretty quickly while also being careful to meet the requirements. And I did, but despite making the opposite choice I received a duplicate of the record I already had.
After some more research, I learned that a recent patch had modified the game so you can get all of the non-golden records in the same run. In doing so they also made the requirement for the one I was missing exactly the opposite of what it had been. Hence the duplicate.
This time, I’d uploaded a new cloud save when I was about halfway there, but I’d been confident enough that I was getting it right that I didn’t do it closer to the key point in the game.
I should have left it at that, but this morning I once again pulled down my cloud save, reached that point for the fourth time, and got the last record.
Was it worth it? Is there meaning in the universe? At least now I have the Lies of P platinum trophy that I can include in my resume next time I find myself looking for a job.
Finished! It was more Lies of P, which is good.
I appreciated the new difficulty settings, I didn’t abuse them but I had to turn it down on three bosses because I didn’t want get to stuck… And, in case of the last boss, because I wanted to complete the dlc (the second phase was too much for me).
Some of the new weapons are very cool!
(the second phase was too much for me).