We have a new gameplay trailer for Lies of P, courtesy of the good people at GameStop.
For 11 minutes we see Pinocchio make its way across what Neowiz has described as a Belle Epoque era city. Perhaps closest aesthetically to FromSoftware’s Bloodborne, Lies of P seems to hew very closely to FromSoftware’s formula, but there are a few notable differences.
If you’ve played FromSoftware games, you know that the Japanese studio is explicit about making a very difficult experience. Your character’s moves often have long recovery, meaning it takes some time after one or a few strikes before you can do it again.
Bloodborne’s dodges and rolls create distance between you and the enemy, so that when you want to attack the enemy again, it resets the situation where you need to find an opening again.
FromSoftware also creates hard to navigate areas, sometimes with narrow corners. And then their bosses are legendarily difficult, not just because of their health bar and the challenge of mastering their patterns, but because you can’t easily recover health if they strike you.
In short, FromSoftware games earned their reputation for difficulty with its outwardly hostile game design. But that isn’t what Neowiz did with Lies of P.
Early on in this footage you’ll see that Pinocchio has a way to refill its health bar in the middle of fighting. In fact, it’s so easy that the player can squeeze it in in the middle of Pinocchio’s strikes.
And then, you see that the enemy attack patterns are not too difficult, at least from what we see here. They’re easy to walk way from, and Pinocchio also has a parry, that enables it to then squeeze in its strikes.
For most of the footage Pinocchio uses a katana like sword called the Ocean Oath. Pinocchio can handily use the sword one-handed, and its strikes come quickly. Near the end, it switches that out for a lance-like weapon called the Last Honor.
The Last Honor moves slower, but it has a novelty in that the lance tip can spin if you strike by pushing the lance forward. This Last Honor still has faster recovery than the average weapon in a FromSoft game, and doesn’t take that much to learn to use compared to the Ocean Oath.
Neowiz seems to have chosen to co-opt the aesthetics of FromSoftware, but they didn’t copy them all the way. That may be for the best as the Korean studio tests the waters to making a AAA console game for the West. If Lies of P becomes a success, it could be the most successful such foray by a Korean game company thus far.
Lies of P will be released on August 2023, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam. You can see the eleven minutes of gameplay below.