Lies of P is the kind of game that makes you say, “One more attempt,” at 1:17 a.m. and then look outside to discover the sun has become involved. I went in expecting a polished Bloodborne-shaped adventure with a puppet gimmick. What I got was stranger, more deliberate, and far more emotionally sincere than that description suggests. This is a brutal action RPG about identity, grief, and the stories people tell to survive, dressed in a beautifully rotten version of Belle Époque Europe.
A familiar formula with its own pulse
At a glance, Lies of P wears its influences openly. You explore a collapsing city, recover lost currency after death, unlock shortcuts, study enemy patterns, and fight bosses that seem personally offended by your existence. The structure will feel comfortable to anyone who has spent time with FromSoftware games, but the imitation never completely swallows the game’s personality.
The setting does a lot of heavy lifting. Krat is full of clockwork machinery, bloodstained streets, ruined theaters, elegant mansions, and puppets that have stopped obeying their creators. It is not just a collection of grim corridors. The city has a theatrical identity, and nearly every district feels like a stage after the actors have gone home. The art direction understands contrast: polished brass beside blackened stone, soft lamplight against mechanical violence, a quiet piano melody after a fight that nearly flattened me.
The puppet protagonist also gives the story a useful tension. He is built to follow orders, yet the game keeps asking what it means to become a person. That question could have turned into exhausting philosophical wallpaper. Instead, Lies of P usually lets the theme emerge through choices, side stories, and small changes in how the protagonist reacts to the world.
Combat that rewards patience, not panic
The combat is fast enough to feel exciting but weighty enough to punish button mashing. Weapons have distinct reach, timing, and rhythm, while the legion arm adds specialized tools that can change how you approach a fight. I spent early hours relying on a long weapon, then switched to a faster setup when certain enemies made my preferred swings feel like mailing them an invitation.
The defining mechanic is perfect guarding. Blocking at the right moment can reduce incoming damage and eventually expose an enemy to a stagger opportunity. It sounds simple. It is not. The timing asks you to stay close to danger instead of retreating behind a roll, and larger enemies often use delayed swings designed to make your nervous system betray you.
That system creates some of the best fights in the game. A difficult enemy stops feeling like a wall and starts feeling like a rhythm puzzle with knives. The game does not always explain that rhythm gracefully, though. Some attacks have awkward timing, and a few bosses combine wide hitboxes with delayed animations in ways that feel less like a test of skill and more like the designer hiding your glasses.
Still, the combat has excellent texture. Weapons break, handles and blades can be mixed, upgrades feel meaningful, and the mechanical arm gives you reasons to experiment. Lies of P is demanding, but it rarely feels empty. Every failed attempt teaches you something about spacing, stamina, guard timing, or your own impatience.
The story surprised me by caring
I expected the narrative to be a stylish excuse for gothic violence. It certainly delivers the gothic violence, but the writing has more warmth than the trailers suggested. Characters in the hotel become a fragile little community, and their conversations give the journey a pulse between boss fights. The protagonist’s growth is not only expressed through statistics or new abilities. It appears in gestures, decisions, and the changing emotional texture of his journey.
The lie mechanic is especially effective because it is not reduced to a morality meter with a glowing label. Telling the truth can be cruel. Lying can sometimes be an act of mercy. Neither option is automatically noble, and the consequences are often more interesting when the game lets you sit with uncertainty. Lies of P understands that becoming human is not the same as becoming morally spotless.
The side content deserves attention, too. Some quests are brief, almost easy to miss, but they give the city a sense of people living through the disaster rather than waiting politely for the player to arrive. A stranger’s request, a record playing in a quiet room, or a note tucked behind a locked door can land harder than an entire cutscene.
What could have been smoother
Lies of P is not flawless, and the rough edges become more visible the deeper you go. Enemy tracking can feel aggressive, particularly when a large foe turns mid-animation to catch a dodge that looked clean. A few boss encounters lean too heavily on repeated combinations, and the visual effects sometimes make it difficult to read what is actually happening beneath the sparks and flying debris.
The game also asks you to learn several systems at once: weapon assembly, legion arms, grindstones, pulse cells, fable arts, upgrades, and defensive timing. Most of these systems are worthwhile, but the early hours can feel like being handed a toolbox during a house fire. Once everything clicks, the variety becomes a strength. Before that point, I occasionally wanted one quiet tutorial room and a sandwich.
There is also a familiar problem with soulslike storytelling: important details can be easy to miss if you do not inspect items or revisit locations. That is part of the appeal for some players, but anyone looking for a straightforward plot may find the presentation deliberately indirect. The game trusts curiosity more than convenience.
Is Lies of P worth playing on Steam?
If you want a relaxed action RPG that lets you wander without much resistance, Lies of P is probably the wrong late-night download. It is tense, occasionally aggravating, and very willing to make you fight the same enemy until you understand the assignment. The difficulty is not purely about reflexes, either. Build choices, weapon reach, defensive habits, and willingness to adapt all matter.
For players who enjoy challenging single-player games, the value is easier to see. Lies of P offers a complete-feeling campaign, strong atmosphere, memorable boss encounters, and enough build flexibility to support experimentation. It is also a particularly good choice for players who like their action games with a real narrative center instead of lore crumbs scattered beneath every chair.
I would recommend starting with a weapon that feels comfortable rather than chasing a supposedly optimal setup. Practice perfect guarding on regular enemies, spend time learning what stagger looks like, and do not hoard every consumable as if the final boss can smell your inventory. The game becomes much more enjoyable when you stop treating every death as a failure and start treating it as expensive research.
The final verdict
Lies of P is polished enough to stand beside its inspirations while remaining emotionally distinct. It borrows familiar bones, then fills them with puppets, fairy-tale dread, mechanical brutality, and a surprisingly gentle question: how much of yourself can you choose?
I thought I knew what this game was. I did not. Beneath the sharp combat and handsome misery is a story about becoming real in a world that keeps insisting you are only a tool. That idea stayed with me longer than several of the boss fights, which is saying something because one of those fights has apparently declared war on my sleep schedule.
Lies of P is not a perfect soulslike, but it is focused, stylish, generous with its atmosphere, and sincere about its themes. If you have been waiting for a dark single-player adventure with satisfying systems and a little heart under all that rust, this one earned my evening.
No notes yet — write the first.