Lies of P Review: Neowiz’s Soulslike Puts an Interesting Spin on Pinocchio

It’s nothing new to say a game takes inspiration from Dark Souls. But Lies of P isn’t just a Soulslike. Even down to details like UI design and boss cutscenes, it’s practically a Dark Souls game with the serial numbers filed off and a coat of grimdark Pinocchio paint slapped on. The comparison is inevitable, and, in many ways, Lies of P does its predecessor justice.

The game’s bosses are massive and intimidating, and wrapping your head around their attack patterns is a reliably satisfying test. Levels fold back on themselves with a series of unlockable doors and lowerable ladders that elegantly save your progress. RPG elements are oblique and knotty, with each attribute point allocated and each item equipped making a chunky, noticeable difference to how your character feels to play. The formula is executed solidly by the developers of Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio, who’ve all clearly done their homework. And it pays off in the sense that Lies of P is really fun, which makes sense given that Dark Souls is, well, really fun.

There are even a few nifty changes to the established blueprint. The most obvious of these is the aforementioned Pinocchio theme, which comes on strongest in the game’s early hours. Here, Lies of P leans heaviest into the silliness of the premise, with herky-jerk mechanical bosses and timed dialogue choices that offer the option to tell the truth or to lie. But as the game wears on, it often stumbles on the kind of tropes (poison swamps, mysterious diseases, and twisted religions) that dozens of games, not just FROM’s, have implemented better.

Most weapons can be split into two halves—a handle and a blade, each of which has different qualities—that can then be recombined to produce a wide range of weapons that are more customized to particular builds and playstyles. Successfully parrying attacks inflicts damage on an enemy’s weapon, to the point that it will eventually break, sending the blade flying off and greatly reducing the damage it deals. These changes, both stylistic and mechanical, ultimately feel minor—more like doodling in the margins of a book than editing the actual text—but Lies of P does deviate from FROM Software’s games in two major ways.

First, it has none of those games’ eerie, obtuse, striking atmosphere. The mood here is all over the place. An abundance of flat, over-explanatory writing never arouses a sense of curiosity, and voice performances that vacillate wildly in tone are no help. Often, the dull seriousness of the exposition is wedged awkwardly between moments of overblown melodrama and cartoonish caricature. As such, the game doesn’t really function as engaging storytelling or worldbuilding, but it’s at least good for a few laughs, even if the comedy isn’t entirely intentional.

Second, Lies of P is a more inviting game than Dark Souls. This isn’t simply because it’s less difficult (though it is). More than that, there’s an overarching smoothness to Lies of P that has as much to do with convenience as anything. To wit, levels loop back on themselves so frequently (making use of the unlockable doors and lowerable ladders that function as checkpoints) that it’s nearly impossible to lose much progress, let alone get lost in them. Boss arenas often link directly to stargazers (the stand in for bonfires in this game), with little or no combat required to travel back between attempts. And any ergo (the stand in for souls) that you drop upon dying to a boss is conveniently placed just outside the boss arena for easy retrieval.

This relatively gentle, unobtrusive approach yields mixed results. On one hand, the gleeful antagonism that Soulslikes generally direct at players is what drives many away from the genre altogether, making Lies of P a useful entry point for beginners. It’s even a worthy substitute for weathered veterans in moments when the hard stuff is just a bit too stiff.

On the other hand, Lies of P’s refusal to dish out any significant discomfort lowers the stakes considerably, so that you’re never pushed to engage with the game’s mechanical limits. As a result, everything from its level layouts to its boss fights to its jump scares don’t get seared into your brain out of repetition or necessity. It’s why, unlike Dark Souls, Lies of P is so easy to stick with. But it’s also why, unlike Dark Souls, you might forget it in a year.

This game was reviewed with code provided by One PR Studio.