Lies of P

I tried summoning, but the summon seemed hopeless for the first phase. It was just dying within a minute or two. Plus the shield on the back of phase 1 means I can't even capitalise on her being distracted by the summon. She still has about a 2/3rds of her health by the time the summon is dead, it is having so little impact. If the summon was around for the second phase then that would be great, I expect I would do it first time, but seems no chance of them living until then.

Having said that, I've not used any of the cube buffs for the summon. Maybe I should look into those.

I'm not using the acid weapon (think I do have it though), but I'm putting acid on my blade with the grindstone and the other consumable that adds acid to your weapon.

Manus down first try. Poked my head into the final boss, first phase was fine but second phase definitely not fine!

Final few levels have been a bit meh, looking to wrap up tomorrow to get ready for dragons dogma.

Second phase of end boss down to a sliver! So annoying I couldn't get it done, but I panicked. First phase is a cakewalk, didn't even need a heal, but man, the second phase is a bit of a shit-fest. I think perfect guarding will make a huge difference, so I'm off to get the stuff I need for the perfect guard grindstone and may even re-spec my p-organ. After work, obviously.

Yeah that was my strat. If there was a summon for the final boss it'd be dead already.

Oh, you're on the last boss? Yeah, respec into electric (grindstone or whatever) and max the puppet string if you can. He is super weak to electricity and if you can get legion regen and a few legion potions, you can just spam electric puppet string on him until he dies.

And once again, you also have to perfect the first phase to save resources for the second. Two phase bosses really do need to get in the bin.

And done. Not hugely enjoyable and very clutch ending where I was waiting for the electo damage to take the last sliver of health off. I used the perfect guard grindstone for the second phase, along with lightning grindstones, and good ol shot puts. Respec'd my p-organ to make perfect guards really effective. I was getting a bit annoyed because it's one of those bosses where on one run they'll be quite passive and another they'll give you no space whatsoever! But I think I did it on the 4th attempt.

Great game overall, but it's a bit too linear, there was never a wow moment of realisation that you'd unlocked a really cool path, and none of the bosses were particularly good. I also found the last couple of stages quite bland, the game peaked around the midpoint. I also found the enemy design quite dull. But I was surprised at how well the Pinocchio story worked, very well done, and the game plays brilliantly. Quite fancy rinsing a bit of NG+ until DD2.

My weapon does a fuck ton of damage, especially with the electric abrasives, and the parry grindstone was very useful.

I think I got lucky tbh, I was down to my last set of throwables so would have had to gone to get more, I even think I spent a boss ergo on extra throwables, so I was rinsing them on every attempt.

I didn’t ever feel like I was good at this game, just kept tanking hits and throwing stuff.

Had an hour or so in ng+ but don’t really think there’s much point.

harrypalmer I agree with most of that, but I loved the story too. Some areas were great - the theatre district, arcade and a fair amount of the early and mid game areas, but I thought the abbey was quite poor. They also make you grind and struggle throughout just to stay competitive, you never really feel that powerful You almost have to grit your teeth to play it, rather than putting it in for an hour just to enjoy a wander - I dunno

I’m very much up for a sequel and any dlc. They did wonders with this on a first attempt.

I dropped the sword for the trident again for the last few sections. The R2 and side stepping mechanic were cool but, same as the actual parry, the timing was weird on the counter and couldn't do it reliably in boss battles and the damage, range and durability of the trident were pretty much unmatched so I just used that to brute force through.

I can't remember what level I was at but I was at the point where I was hitting soft caps and stopped being worried what I was dumping into. By the end it was raining exp shards down on me so much it actually felt bugged. Pretty much every enemy dropped something you could pop and it felt like I was able to level after pretty much every encounter.

Finally beat the Nameless Fucker! Must have taken me about 5 hours in total of banging my head against that particular brick wall. I was at the point where I was able to perfect block all his moves in the first phase (except the red flashing one that comes quickly after a spin attack, which would hit me every time) and quite a lot of them in the second phase. I had a couple of moves in the first phase that I was able to reliably use my Twin Dragon R2 flourish to parry as well, but never found any in the second phase, particularly as cocking up the parry basically meant death.

The perfect guard grindstone definitely came in handy to make sure on those perfect guards though. Even though I was getting quite a lot in phase two, I was always dying because of the 20% I wasn't getting. His post stagger explosion time was also the perfect opportunity to lob a load of throwables at him and was probably what tipped me over the edge into being able to actually beat him.

Very much enjoyed the game, but definitely found the latter half quite frustrating. I suspect playing as a heavier build character, with strength weapons and not worrying so much about hitting those weight limits, would have made the second half not quite so stressful. That's counter to how I normally play Souls games and the first half suggested my usual play style of a light character focused on dodging and min-maxing for dex weapons would be effective here too, but it quite abruptly became a slog against the later bosses (not outside those though, which stayed fairly straightforward all the way through).

Played this on PC Game Pass, just finishing it in time for my sub to run out in a couple of days. The post credit sequence was a nice touch, with strong hints of playing around with some other classic tales, so really interested to see what they do with that

Interest in this seems to have dropped off then

I ended up restarting and choosing the Path of the Bastard. What I have discovered from playing LotF and Lies of P is that the mechanic where your weapons glance of walls, when it actually works and is consistent, is fucking annoying. Especially as Lies of P likes to put enemies against walls and hide them around corners (it really loves its ambushes). I like the rapier a lot better

One thing I really appreciate is how it places your Ergo outside the boss arenas when you die. I've wanted From to do that for ages. Nioh does it well too, making you automatically retrieve your stuff when you enter the boss area

The games looks nice and I do quite like the setting but I don't know if it's got much of an atmosphere. It's a bit too clean and I don't really find the puppets intimidating. The writing is also too awkward and clunky to really take seriously

It's pretty good anyway and a nice change of pace to Elden Ring, being linear and comparatively quite a bit easier

Destruction damage is the damage you deal to an enemy's weapon when you parry/guard attacks that eventually causes their weapon to break. Some enemies' weapons glow a reddish-orange when you parry them, that's how you know they can break.

AFAIK though most regular enemies die too quickly to a normal offense for that to happen and on bosses (assuming their weapon can even be broken) it takes too long... So basically I wouldn't worry about it.