Preview: Lies of P can’t deny how much it wants to be Bloodborne

There must come a point when making a Soulsborne that a development team has to look at each other and say “I think we’ve referenced one specific game a little bit too much.” In the case of Lies of P, this conversation perhaps happened too late into development.

We’ve played two chapters of the Soulsborne in a new demo, which has just been released during Summer Game Fest. While it does contain a few smart additions to the genre, we’re not entirely convinced by how it feels to stalk around the Belle Époque world hunting for puppets.

Lies of P is loosely based on The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. Yes, that Pinocchio, the little wooden boy – however, instead of having a nose that grows as he tells lies, this P has a sword, lovely soft hair, and bloodlust. He also has a sword and invincibility frames, which is what Collodi would have wanted.

This is a Soulsborne if ever there was one. As soon as we were introduced to the game’s bonfire equivalent, we then wondered what souls would be called in this universe, how the game would gate the boss arenas, and even what the game’s UI looks like when you’re picking up items. There’s homage and then there’s Lies of P.

Combat in the game is melee based, with the demo asking you to pick between three styles of weaponry, based on your preferred flavor of attack. We went with a nimble rapier, which made mincemeat of most enemies in the demo. Aside from your primary weapon, you have a mechanical arm that can be affixed with various tools, including a Scorpion-style spear.

That’s not to say that Lies of P adds nothing to the genre conventions. On the contrary, your healing items in Lies of P can be recharged via attacking, rather than simply returning to a bonfire equivalent, which encourages the player to be far more aggressive when it comes to dealing with the myriad threats in the world.

That feeling of a run coming to an end because you have to go back to the bonfire to recharge is alleviated somewhat, encouraging further exploration through Lies of P’s labyrinthine world.

The world itself is beautiful and very inventive. It’s populated by puppets that have gone rogue and seemingly wiped out the entire city of Krat, which blends European architecture with Victorian signage and storefronts. It’s a great setting for a game like this, even if the huge carriages left in the various ditched make it feel even more like it’s trying to emulate Bloodborne.

It’s difficult not to laugh when you’re being introduced somberly to steampunk Jiminy Cricket, but there’s room for a bit of levity in a grimdark fairytale – we just hope that Lies of P sticks the landing.

Enemy design is one of Lies of P’s best elements so far. Foes are intimidating but readable, and strike the balance of being a challenge to deal with without being annoying.

They don’t seem the smartest, which we suppose is canonically fair enough, but more than once they ran past us completely and became personally acquainted with the pavement below, which we concede could simply be some demo strangeness.

Boss fights are also slightly different affairs, as they’ll regenerate some of their lost health as they attack you, somewhat similar to the rally system that the player had access to in Bloodborne.

The demo we played featured two bosses, each of which was visually impressive, but mechanically very basic, which is typical for the beginning of a game like this, but it didn’t give us many impressions of how that will evolve throughout the game. They’re certainly aesthetically unique, however, which is one of Lies of P’s biggest strengths.

If you’ve dedicated your life to collecting every Bloodborne artbook and call yourself a member of the Cathedral Ward young team, Lies of P probably won’t fulfill your unquenchable thirst for blood. From what we’ve played, though, there’s enough here that will probably give you a small hit of that feeling, even if only for a little while.