Lies of P Copy Steelrising Korean Puppet Dark Souls

Lies of P the Korean Dark souls with elements of Carlo Lorenzini (FR link) ‘s Pinocchio Story.

The version i am reviewing today is the 1.5.0.0 (No Dlc)

LIES OF P COPY STEELRISING ?

Lies of P is a Korean Dark Souls loosely inspired by the story of Pinocchio.

Strange thing… In 2022 the French studio Spiders released their own version of a Puppet Dark Souls called Steelrising… And 1 year later, Lies of P was released.

It's always Strange when 2 games share the same similarities / inspiration in the same period of time, even if by the end of the day, both games are quite different…

Steelrising was released too fast, haven't been beta tested enough on the difficulty level, and in the end is more for casual gamers, like an entry level to dark souls challenge. As where Lies of P was more polished, far more interesting, but reserved to players seeking a REAL challenge between a Dark Souls, and a Sekiro for the QTE Parrying style.

1. Both games are Souls Like where you control a Puppet
2. Both games make you fight Puppets (Mechanical and / or Monsters)
3. Both games have Npcs behind windows you can talk to for quests

Then again, they're quite different ! Even your avatar… The Puppet ! It looks like one in Steelrising, but have been copied on the real actor Thimotée Chalamet in Lies of P.

LIES OF P COPY STEELRISING

Just to be clear… This review is not about Steelrising, it's all about Lies of P !

Still i'd like to point out that i wasn't the only player, to find it strange that both games shared the same inspiration…

I have seen a few messages of players trying to unearth the truth in that subject, and so i have seen discussions… or more i should say “arguments” on Steam. Because when someone asked questions, they were usually met with harsh comments like “Steelrising was Trash, because it was made by a Trash team of devs“.

The problem with these kind of insulting answers…

1. They try to dismiss all the qualities of the other game without real arguments…
2. And it's becoming even more suspicious, because that's the kind of behavior we do when we're guilty…

Because i have played and completed both games, and even if Steelrising is FAR from the quality of Lies of P, It's absolutely NOT TRASH ! I wouldn't have spent 50 hours (same i spent on Lies of P) on it if it was. What i liked in Steelrising was the re-exploration of the previous levels, once your avatar had found 3 tools / abilities like the Hook to access higher platforms, the Jump to access previously inaccessible paths and the Fist to blast walls and create new ways! 😎

So enough about the fight between those 2 games, as i highly recommend every players to play both 😍

Anyway as you can see below, the 2 avatars are quite different !

And also they use a very different engine, as Steelrising is using a tweaked version of PhyreEngine where Lies of P uses Unreal Engine 4. So even on this comparison, the match is Not Fair 😜 as Unreal is far more optimized and detailed.

Thimotée Chalamet (Lies of P) on the left and… A Real Puppet (Steelrising) on the right 😅

I remember when i played to Steelrising, that the pack of high definition textures required more than my 12GB of RAM on my RTX 4070 Ti 🤨 That's crazy when you know that i could display all of the high textures in Lies of P, and had twice more FPS with even Ray Tracing activated… Unfortunately the early release and poor optimization killed Steelrising.

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LIES OF P COPY STEELRISING

Now as i have said it at the beginning, Lies of P is a Mix between Dark souls and Sekiro.

• You can't stay in Parry mode all the time with a hugh stamina build, because there are simply NO 100% defense shields in Lies of P… Actually there are NO Shields at all 😆 So whenever you Parry, it's with your weapon !
• And every Dark Souls players know that when parrying with a weapon, you take a % of damage…
• That's why the game encourages you to Perfect Guard ! That means clicking on the Parry button at the exact moment you're receiving the blow, in order to cancel all damage. (A little like QTE games like the ancestor Dragon's Lair)

And that's where the difficulty lies… You really have to learn the patterns of each ennemies, particularly the boss who are going to wipe you in 3 hits if you simply stay in parry mode, or crazy dodge. You can easily Perfect guard 1 blow, but when a boss is going for a combo of 4 hits, with a final delayed blow… Trust me, the first time you're going to die ! 😅

Here is the first real Boss of Lies of P, where you'll have to rely on Perfect Guard to survive !

You know at first during the tutorial, when the game told me about the Perfect Guard… I was like “Fuck it, i will just dodge my way out“. So you can dodge to an extent… But once the Boss battle arrives, you understand very fast that you'll have to play by the rules, and learn to Time your Parry! Otherwise most Boss fights will be impossible…

And believe me… It's very rewarding to win a fight, where you managed to Perfect Guard a Combo of like 4-5 hits ! And the good thing is the “Bondfire”, or “Stargazer” in Lies of P are just near the Boss. So you won't have to do a 5-10 minutes Run if you die, like you had to do in Demon's Souls… But of course in Demon's Souls the Bosses were easier 😏

This can be compared with Steelrising… Where unfortunately only 3 Bosses were “Dark Souls difficulty“…

These above are 2 Boss in Steelrising… And most of them could be defeated on first try ! 🤨

Actually that's what i liked the most in Lies of P…

1. The Boss battles in Lies of P are in a way “interrupting your rythm“… You know, all the ennemies on the way to the Boss can be dealt with easily enough, Okay some mini-bosses are a pain in the ass, but most of the time it's Okay!
2. So it's like a peaceful ballad, and then the Boss forces you to come back to the reality of things ! That you'll have to focus once more, to learn his patterns, even use tools from your inventory, and die multiple times if needed ! 😎
3. And as the Stargazer is always very close to the boss, it's okay to die and retry, you can focus on the boss !

Lies of P Copy Steelrising

Both games have somewhat the same lifetime, as it took me 50+ hours to complete Lies of P, where it took me 55+ hours to complete Steelrising. But again, when i played to Steelrising i also had the DLC installed. The DLC of Lies of P should maybe be released by the end of March 2025, time will tell, and i have no doubts it will bring in 10+ more hours 👍

Unreal Engine is indeed a great one, and it's not even the Version 5 !

But Steelrising tweaked version of Sony's Engine is not bad either… not as good of course, but it does the job !

It looks beautiful, and far from the “Trash” some defenders of Lies of P wanted to convey 🤨

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Lies of P Copy Steelrising

Lies of P heavily emphasizes on its Bosses. Between them it's practically always the same amount of time we're going to spend exploring the zone. There are no HUGE zones like you could find in Dark Souls, like the valley of defilement, or the Stonefang Tunnels. So whenever you are exploring, you know that at some point, the Boss must be near 😏

Regarding the Bosses of Lies of P, there are several discussions on Reddit where people are frustrated about having spent so much time on them, blaming the designs of the boss patterns. And it seems everyone had a different opinion about how difficult were each boss… That's because every one of these Boss have different patterns !

And i think it's a good thing ! Because it forces us to re-adapt our style, even though we think we're Invicible and we know all of the patterns ! No… There will always be a new boss to prove you wrong, with delayed attacks… and even slower delayed attacks ! So you thought you could block it, but in the end you click too soon on the parry button.

Not that it's a bad thing… It's just a little too predictable, and would have deserved a change of pace.

Also most interesting chests or loots are guarded by a mini-Boss, and i have noticed these Mini-Boss can be put right to the next Stargazer, or shortcut to your previous one.

That means, sometimes by the end of the road you can go 2 ways… one is leading to the shortcut or next stargazer, so a good thing to replenish your health before continuing 😎 And the other will lead you right into a Mini-Boss that you could have done after a little come back to the Hotel to heal yourself. Tricky bastards ! 😜

The more i look at these Bosses and Mini-one, the more i am considering the Cthulhu Mythos inspiration !

Hmmm… In fact…

This one definitely comes out of a Cthulhu Nightmare lol ! 😆

I am a Fan of Cthulhu Mythos, so it's all good with me ! Stories where the main characters finish completely mad in an Asylum ? Yeah count me in ! That's my cup of tea when it comes to scary movies.

Lies of P Copy Steelrising

As for the Violence level… Well.. I wouldn't recommend this game to any child that's for sure ahah ! Still… I don't think there is Red Blood involved in this game… Actually i only remember about Green Blood and Mechanical Oil. So no Mortal Kombat kind of violence in this game… It's violent but not an extreme genre of violence.

After all, it's loosely based on Pinocchio… We don't want a Gory version of this fiction 😉

Speaking about the RPG elements, because what's important in these kind of games is the progression of your character, you'll have access to the very same kind of leveling you could find in other souls games… with an exception ! You can also find Quartz in your adventure, and these will unlock one of 100 available Perks !

So while you can spend your experience (ERGO in Lies of P) to boost your attributes, you can also develop your character in an unique way, fitting your playstyle, depending on these numerous Perks. Now of course if you're the kind of person to replay the game in NG+ and more, you'll max out all these Perks in just 2 playthroughs

Personally i went for the Great Sword style of play… as it could stagger even the biggest beasts 😉

All in all, i have to say Round 8 Studio (part of NEOWIZ) have done a Great Job ! I could also mention the Soundtrack which is very good as many singers were hired, to sing several of the songs you can play at the Hotel (which is the base camp). One of these singers is Seo Jayeong, now Famous for having sang Feel and Quixotic.

It's true that on this level… Steelrising can't compete at all…

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Is it me or the Boss on the right comes right from the Hellraiser series ? 😜

And just as Nostalgia, a last picture of Steelrising !

Come on ! This French game also deserves your interest 😍

I can understand the studio decided to protect it with Denuvo when you see the quality of the work… It ensured a lot of sales while the protection lasted 👍 Because one day… one of the developers accidentally (or intentionally we'll never know…) leaked the launcher of the game without the protection, and then the latest 1.5.0.0 version was cracked 😏