YMMV / Lies of P

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• Accidental Innuendo:
  • The name of the internal device that lets Pinnochio upgrade his characteristics, the P-Organ, brings to mind something else.
  • On a similar note, the true ending's name is "Rise of P".
• Awesome Music: The records that you can get from sidequests and merchants throughout the game. They're all covers of songs from Neowiz's DJMAX series, usually giving them a more somber and melancholic vibe. Of particular note is "Feel", the very first record that you can obtain, which has since become a bit of a Signature Song for the game as a whole.
• Breather Boss:
  • Champion Victor is one of the only bosses in the second half of the game that doesn't have a second life bar when you beat him, instead just transitioning to his phase 2 once you hit a certain HP threshold. His second phase isn't that much different from his first, meaning a player that can handle the first phase will be comfortable with phase 2. This combined with his generally slower attacks, giving you reasonable opportunities to attack him, make him a much more manageable boss to defeat compared to those preceding him like the Puppet King, and those after like Swamp Monster.
  • Chapter IX has very easy bosses for how hard the chapter itself is.
    • Coming at the tail end of the nightmarish Collapsing Krat level is the Walker of Illusions. While not exactly an easy fight, she's not much more difficult than the Elite Mook minibosses faced thus far. Her attacks are quick, but deal pathetically low amounts of damage - even her grab attack probably won't shave off much more than a quarter of the player's lifebar. She has an AoE attack that inflicts Disruption, but she barely ever uses it, and it's massively telegraphed when she does. And, unlike most of the bosses in the game's latter half, she has only one lifebar. Her main gimmick is summoning a copy of herself, but said copy has pathetically low health and can be easily dispatched while the actual boss lingers in the background. A competent (or lucky) player who bursts her down quickly mightn't even see her use this gimmick in the first place!
    • The Chapter boss, Corrupted Parade Master, is pretty much just a rehash of the first boss. It has no second phase or even a considerable change in attack patterns like Champion Victor, it doesn't have that much health and while it hits hard and can deal decay to the player, it's still far slower than the Green Monster from the previous chapter. This difficulty is somewhat offset by the fact that the player can't summon the Specter or access other areas for grinding and buying items prior to fighting it, but provided the player has kept themselves with some items on storage and has been leveling up accordingly, that is not really a problem.
• Breather Level: Chapter VIII - Barren Swamp. Contrary to what you might expect from a Souls-Like, the poison swamp area is actually not too bad, especially compared to what comes before and after it. The main reason is that it is quite easy to avoid the poison, and even if the player does stray into it, the poison build-up is so slow that it's easy to cross over it safely. None of the minibosses are mandatory, meaning they can just be avoided if they are too hard. The only thing that increases the difficulty is the chapter boss.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Geppetto's motivations and his relationship to P. It is heavily telegraphed from the beginning of the game and all throughout that P is some type of attempt from Geppetto to recreate his lost son, and many people suspected also from his comments telling P to "always be a good boy to [him]" and his status as creator of the puppet technology that he wasn't the benevolent father figure he tried to present himself as. One or both of these plot points have been seen before in other Pinocchio adaptations as well, such as Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (which even names Geppetto's son Carlo, exactly as this game does). By the time of the Grand Covenant reveal, most people weren't terribly surprised.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • The match weapon of the Wintry Rapier's Handle and the Greatsword of Fate's Blade. This mix makes for a fast, powerful weapon with much wider range than usual for Technique-focused builds that can be accessed as soon as the player can mix and match weapons (after the Mad Donkey boss fight). It's easy to end up sticking with it for a lot of your playthrough if Technique is the stat you're focusing on, or at least up until you get the truly broken Technique weapons like the Trident of the Covenant and the Two Dragons Sword.
  • For Motivity based builds, a lot of players end up gravitating to the Krat Police Baton Handle as the basis for their build. This is for a few reasons: firstly, unlike most of the Motivity leaning handles for the heavier weapons, it actually has a reasonably quick moveset, including a fully charged heavy attack that comes out surprisingly fast, which is crucial for landing staggers on bosses. Secondly, its Fable Art, Strike Chance, increases your next attack by around 50%, meaning that said charged heavies can hit for incredible damage at the measly cost of only one Fable bar. And finally, it is obtainable very early into the game, and only requires you to defeat a mildly challenging miniboss enemy to obtain it. Popular blade options to pair it with are the Big Pipe Wrench (has terrible reach in exchange for massive base damage, especially when you combine the handle and blade Fable Arts together), Bone-Cutting Saw (which has incredible reach while still maintaining good damage, making for a very balanced and effective weapon), and the Live Puppet's Axe (even higher base damage than than the Wrench and has slightly more range).
  • By the time you get them, you're likely to start relying on the Salamander Dagger and Electric Coil Stick, or at the very least their blades. These are the elemental damage weapons of the game. The thing is almost all enemies have an elemental weakness to one of these two; organic enemies are weak to fire, while puppets are weak to electricity, so using them stacks a lot of damage against enemies, with the enhanced benefit of leaving your enemies, even bosses, with status effects. The only thing stopping them from being real game-breakers is that they're offset by a fairly small base attack, which can still be mediated by investing in improvement to the blades and changing their handles to something more appropriate to your build.
  • There are a few P-Organ upgrades that most players will always take. In particular, Link Dodge (getting an extra roll after your first one in quick succession), and any upgrades to the number of and effectiveness of Pulse Cells tend to be go-tos for every build since they are always useful. This used to be the case with Rising Dodge (the ability to quickly roll after being knocked down), until the 1.3.0.0 patch which made Rising Dodge part of P's default moveset.
  • The Carrier's Amulet is an easy amulet for the player to use for the entire game, much like its Dark Souls counterpart, Havel's Ring, it increases your maximum weight capacity without the need to invest in more of the Capacity stat. For builds that focus on speed, this is particularly a must, since it allows for more equipment or even to carry a second blade, without the need to deal with the drawbacks of increased weight like decreased speed and stamina recovery. It has become a mainstay of Technique builds.
  • If you're good at perfect blocking (which the game really wants you to be), pretty much every build out there has you equip the Conquering Amulet since it gives 20% damage on your next attack if you perfect blocked or used the Two Dragons Sword's Parry. It's effectively free damage at almost all times with its only drawback being that the amulet is fairly heavy. It's even better combined with the TDS as its damage bonus stacks with the inherent damage bonus the sword's heavy attack gains as a followup for a successful parry.
  • Many players stick to either the Puppet String or Aegis Legion Arms for most of the game. The former gains a very useful special move when fully upgraded that can stagger enemies, and the latter has a very useful exploit that essentially gives you free perfect guards for a long time (see Game-Breaker below). This means they have great utility are useful on basically every build, whereas all the other Legion Arms are underwhelming on their own merits or require specific builds to be effective. This no longer applies to Aegis as of patch 1.3.0.0, as the exploit was removed.
• Complete Monster: Arlecchino, the self-professed King of Riddles, is a puppet who views murder as an art of blood. After his Ergo is awakened, Arlecchino tortures his master into revealing the location of Arche Abbey. Driven by a bloodlust for humans, Arlecchino embarks on a horrifying spree as a Serial Killer, culminating in the chilling murder of the Venigni family—done so purely for the perverse joy of watching their happiness end. Sparing Lorenzini Venigni solely out of curiosity to how he'd react to his parents' deaths, Arlecchino's actions mentally scar Venigni to the point of implementing the Grand Covenant with Giuseppe Geppetto, which indirectly allows the latter to trigger the catastrophic Puppet Frenzy. Arlecchino's depravity only evolves when he is later imprisoned, as he taps into the city's phone networks to terrorize survivors such as Adelina with riddles that lead to lethal traps. The player will receive riddles from this remorseless puppet and may confront him if they answer all 5 of his riddles, revealing a creature that embodies humanity's most monstrous potential. Arlecchino's limited resources only highlight his innate wickedness, using cunning and malice to enact chaos and terror upon Krat.
• Cry for the Devil: Simon Manus' last moments. He talks about the pain that being able to read other people's minds caused him, and reveals that he was actually in love with Sophia because she was the only person whose true self was pure enough that it didn't cause him pain. His horrible experiments on her and his attempt to become godhood were in some sense a twisted way of keeping her close to him, even if he could never truly have her.
• Dancing Bear: Quite a few people have become interested in the game thanks to the appeal of playing as a Pretty Boy version of Pinocchio in a Souls-like RPG. Also goes with Just Here for Godzilla when it comes to the former aspect of the game if Tumblr is any indication.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The puppets wielding chimney-sweep brushes, first seen as early as Elysian Boulevard. They have one attack - charging straight at you with the brush held out - but this is easily enough to deal up to half your health if they catch you with the tip. The game also loves to put them in areas where you have less than a second to react (such as at the tops of ladders) or else take the entire attack.
  • The Shovel wielding Puppet that is introduced in Venigni Works. Despite its simple attack patterns, it has one hit that can easily One-Hit Kill players. If it smashes the player down with its shovel, it will continually hammer down the player on the ground. While it is possible to break out of this by spamming the roll, it is easy for players to not realize this is possible (especially if they don't have Rising Dodge) and get stunlocked with Overheat-inflicting attacks. By the end of the attack, if the player isn't dead from the shovel, whatever little health they have left will be gone because of the overheat. This problem was acknowledged by the developers, and they announced plans to address this by giving the player the Rising Dodge ability by default in a patch.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Specter that can be summoned as an assist before bosses. They got a lot of fanart and a warm reception despite some disputes about its effectiveness in battle (given AI issues and its unlikelihood to last to the second phase of a boss fight). This is likely due to it's cool design as an ethereal, dark being wielding a sword.
  • Arlecchino has become popular with the fanbase, thanks to his memorably unhinged personality, and a great performance by his actor Joseph Balderrama.
• Epileptic Trees: Just south of the Path of the Pilgrim Stargazer, in a graveyard, there sits what appears to be a green Stargazer, overgrown with plant life. Players have reported there's no way to get to the ledge just behind it, and those on New Game+ say even still there's no way to use it. This has lead many to believe that perhaps this is hinting at future DLC for the game, and that the Green Stargazer will play a part in it.
• Ending Fatigue: Chapter XI is one long Marathon Level. P must ascend a massive tower that stretches far into the sky, without the use of elevators or shortcuts. The entire place is chock full of tough encounters, difficult boss fights, and a huge amount of space to traverse. As well, the game loves to place random enemies inbetween major plot points — even after rescuing Gepetto, there's still about fifteen minutes of exploration and combat before you fight Simon. Even then, there's still the Nameless Puppet to put down if you reject Gepetto's request.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Timothée Chalamet" - A nickname that gained traction due to Pinocchio's....uncanny resemblence to the real-world actor, Timothée Chalamet.
  • The game is affectionally called Steampunk Bloodborne due to its aesthetics and it being a Spiritual Successor of sorts to Bloodborne.
• Fandom Rivalry: Due to close release dates, it gained one with Lords of the Fallen (2023) over which is the better Souls-like. The technical state that Lords of the Fallen released in didn't help matters, as it had severe technical issues on all platforms, such as bugs, crashes, framerate issues, etc in contrast to Lies of P which has been praised for releasing in a very polished and optimized state on basically all platforms, which is unfortunately becoming rarer as more and more high profile games release with numerous technical issues (especially on PC).
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With American McGee's Alice. Both are dark Fractured Fairy Tales action games, and since the latter franchise has been dead in the water for years now, fans happily welcomed this new attempt at a similar thing in the medium.
  • With FromSoftware's suite of games, including Dark Souls, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring and, of course, Bloodborne. Lies of P is considered one of the best Souls-like RPG games ever made, not only retaining the feel of much of Fromsoft's output but also matching it in quality (even exceeding some of it depending on who you ask). As such, some people consider it an honorary member of the series despite not being developed by Fromsoft.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Aegis Legion Arm had a strange (and possibly bugged) property on release, where holding the legion button and spamming the block button causes you to almost always get perfect guards with no real timing required, and it lasts for a reasonably long amount of time. This can trivialize many bosses' fury attacks and combo chains with little risk to yourself, both protecting you and making an enemy vulnerable to a stagger. This trick was patched out in update 1.3.0.0.
  • Non-puppet bosses like the Stalkers can arguably be more challenging than the larger bosses you encounter due to the delay in their attacks making them arguably harder to parry... until you realize that, unlike the majority of Souls-like RPG with humans with a boss health bar, the game DOESN'T block off the arena with a fog gate, and that you can dun-away from most humanoid bosses to de-aggro them and teleport them back to their starting point... without recovering ANY of the damage you've done to their health bar. For most of these bosses, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from standing at the end of their aggro range (these bosses won't attack you on sight, they'll only start to get aggressive if you get within their range), chucking a consumable at their heads/using the rope combined with a special attack, running away, and repeating until the boss is dead.
  • Consumable throwing items in this game are both plentiful (by the halfway point of the game, in the Malus District, a merchant can sell them in unlimited quantities, where as they were limited before) and FAR more effective in this game than they are in most of its compatriots. By stockpiling them, you can essentially shred the health of both tough enemies and bosses just by staying out of range and casually tossing high-damage items that can also inflict status effects, which most bosses aren't immune to, easily trivializing bosses that should otherwise be far more difficult. The Shot Put throwable also has the unique property of being able to stagger bosses from range, making it very useful to safely get staggers in situations where charging a strong attack may not be possible.
  • Pairing any greatsword-type weapon with a rapier-type handle essentially gives you a poking weapon that keeps you out of the range of any enemies you encounter that don't have ranged attacks. It might be awkward, but the ability to jab enemies to death at ranges they can't retaliate at is likely something the devs didn't account for since you can stunlock almost any enemy to death this way, and safely destroy enemies you can't stagger as easily from a distance from which they can't hit you back. While pairing a large weapon that goes off the Slash stat (which most greatswords do) with a handle that's only compatible with Stab does reduce the damage you deal, it can be worth the tradeoff.
  • The Trident of the Covenant is considered one of the best Technique weapons in the game. It has a good moveset (including an amazing running R2 and charged R2, both decent range pokes), solid fable arts, and decent stagger buildup, but what makes it truly devastating is its 30% chance to crit. This means roughly 1 in 3 of your attacks will deal roughly 50% extra damage, resulting in some incredible burst. This extra damage adds up quickly, especially if one of your Fatal Attacks or Charged R2's get crits. While it lacks the unique properties of the Two Dragons Sword that makes it an amazing weapon, this also means the Trident has a much lower skill floor to get the most out of it (as you don't need to memorize timings for unique parry animations or anything like that), and can also be obtained far earlier in the game, since you only need to defeat Archbishop Andreus (the boss of Chapter IV) and trade his Ergo with Alidoro to obtain it.
  • The Two Dragons Sword is arguably the best technique weapon in the game, for the simple fact that it is highly versatile. The basic light attack is an arcing slash with great speed and range, but P actually dodges (complete with i-frames) inbetween each slash. The charge attack functions like a parry when fully charged up, and the basic heavy attack causes P to fly backwards out of range. It's Fable attack is fast and does excellent damage, and the weapon can be given every element in the game to boost its damage even further. All of this on top of base A technique scaling (which can be boosted to S with a Technique Crank) and great ease of use make it easily one of the best weapons in the game. But really what takes the cake above all else is the aforementioned charge parry. It does not function like normal perfect blocks in Lies of P, but rather is a form of super parry that will send any enemy in the game, including every boss, reeling backwards no matter what they were doing and leaving them completely open to your counter which automatically triggers with a power boost if done via parry.
• Good Bad Bug: One of these can turn the Black Rabbit Brotherhood from That One Boss to a Zero-Effort Boss. Simply run to the other end of the arena once you start the boss fight, then quit the game and reload. Now all of the members will just stand there, ready to be beaten down by your weapon of choice without retaliating.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Previously, Anthony Howell voiced Morgott, who was born with horrific physical afflictions and generally neglected by his parents his entire life even when he tried to be The Dutiful Son, and only received heartfelt recognition after he was already dead. In this game, Anthony voices Geppetto, who admits to not having been a good father but still expresses genuine care and concern for the creation he regards as his son, P. In reality, P doesn't even qualify as a Replacement Goldfish and more just a storage vessel for the soul of Geppetto's actual son Carlo, who he was overwhelmingly negligent towards until Carlo's death.
• Ho Yay: Romeo towards Carlo. Romeo clearly deeply cherished Carlo, possibly even more than his own father, and holds with him the necklace that Carlo gave him, implied to be the only comfort he had after being turned into a puppet.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!:
  • Even for standards of Souls-like games, some have found the game to be punishingly tough, especially its reliance in the unforgivably precise defense mechanic, having a harder time dodging, the generally lower amount of Souls (in this case Ergo) you receive from enemies even later into the game, and in general, very tough bosses (a lot of which have two phases, in itself a contentious Scrappy Mechanic).
  • It's worth noting that the developers have been working on patches that address this. Version 1.2 reduces the health of some bosses and enemies, increases the stagger window, increases the Specter's HP and attack, increased the max weight gain for each capacity point, etc. Patch 1.3.0.0 went further, by expanding Polendina's inventory to have two more quartz early game, making Rising Dodge part of your default moveset, adjusting many enemy attacks to have more readable and fluid animations making it easier to react to them instead of having to learn how to Perfect Guard or dodge them through trial and error, etc.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Terms of gameplay NPC, Alidoro is nothing but helpful, letting you exchange Rare Ergo for excellent weapons and amulets to help make the game easier. But in spite of never doing anything to harm P, it doesn't take many interactions with Alidoro for him to start coming across as an absolute prick with no external excuse like the Frenzy affecting the puppets. Interacting with him through the Barren Swamp just spells it out even further when Eugénie's gift to him is summarily blown off with no shortage of disparaging words thrown her way. This contrasts heavily with his aforementioned foils, who will shameless scam you or serve as boss fights but nevertheless look out for each other even when it'd be easy to cut ties and go it alone. In Act X, he'll even go into extensive detail about how much of a backstabbing bastard he is, having killed the real Alidoro after an argument over money, all while displaying not even a hint of genuine remorse or regret. Not coincidentally, this is when the game lets you kill him. He's such a prick that killing him earns you humanity! You don't even lose access to his NPC functions, since Hugo takes over for him.
• Low-Tier Letdown: On release, the handles for many of the heavier weapons, and the heavier boss weapons such as the Frozen Feast. Their attacks come out very slowly, which makes them very difficult to use against the game's generally fast and aggressive enemies, especially because the game has no hyperarmor system (with the exception of some fable arts) making it very easy for you to get interrupted mid-swing. This leaves a lot of the Motivity leaning weapons feeling lackluster in their default state, to the point most people just take the blades from these weapons and put them on handles with faster movesets, therefore gaining the benefits of high base damage without sacrificing speed. This was eventually addressed by a patch 1.3.0.0 which made many of the heavier handles faster and easier to use.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The heavy metallic clank sound that announces the player made a perfect defense.
  • The loud chime that plays whenever manages to recharge their pulse cell once emptied, especially if this made the difference between victory or defeat.
• Narm:
  • For anyone who can read the puppet's glitchy text, the Scrapped Watchman has one line that can feel out of place. Most of the Watchman's quotes are sorrowful messages lamenting his "friends" (heavily implied to be children killed by the Petrification Disease) or anger towards Pinocchio, blaming him for their demise, and sometimes both. However, when entering his second phase, he sometimes lets out a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner that is a bit of a tonal shift from everything else he says.
    "Children... frozen... abandoned by you!"
    "Freezing... void... like my friends..."
    Electric judgement... You're guilty!"
  • During the fight against the Nameless Puppet, the cutscene before his second phase has P slash off the top of his head to reveal his brain. However, the aversion of No Cutscene Inventory Inertia means that P performs the action regardless of what he has equipped, creating the incredibly silly sight of P making an extremely clean cut with a police baton, a wrench, or a gigantic battle axe made from puppet parts.
• Narm Charm: The fact that the sinister gang running the lower levels of the city call themselves "The Black Rabbit Brotherhood" is bound to draw a snicker or two. But their amazing character designs, entertaining dynamic amongst each other, and brutal Wolfpack Boss battle make them a very memorable part of the game.
• Nintendo Hard: As expected of a Souls-like RPG. Enemies are fast and aggressive, while P is quite fragile, and therefore the game demands you master both the blocking mechanics and the dodging mechanics to succeed, which requires you to know when to switch between them in battle and have incredibly precise timing. The developers eventually felt they had played this trope a bit too straight and made the game easier in the 1.02 patch, but it's still a very challenging experience.
• Not-So-Cheap Imitation: Some of the game's detractors brushed it off as a poor man's version of Bloodborne. This has been disputed by various players of the game, who say that while Lies Of P has clearly taken inspiration from Bloodborne visually, it still stands apart as its own thing, with its more Steampunk elements, its gameplay that borrows things from Sekiro instead, especially the focus on parrying, and an almost unseen level of polish among Souls-like that didn't come from FromSoftware.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Once the demo finally released, players took issue with how the dodge is implemented. Unlike what you'd expect from a Souls game, the dodge is a sidestep rather than a roll, and doesn't cover much distance, frequently collides with enemy hitboxes rather than passing through them with invincibility frames, and overall feels clunky to use. The end of the demo reveals that there is a skill tree that makes it possible to upgrade your dodge, but you need to get a few hours into the game before it becomes available, and in the demo itself it is unlocked after you basically have done everything there is to do, so you can't make much use of it. Your only other defensive option is perfect guarding, which is more reliable, but requires strict timing and is unforgiving if you fail - the window in which the perfect guard is active lasts only 8 frames, compared to 12 for the same mechanic in Sekiro. The devs have fortunately said that the dodge isn't supposed to be this poor and it will be better on release. That being said, even with the full release, the dodge is still considered not all that good and many problems they have with it remain.
  • The game seems to lack a "poise" or equivalent stat that confers resistance to stuns and staggers. P seems to have practically zero stagger resistance, making it very easy for him to get stunlocked to death when facing multiple enemies or enemies with long combo attacks, especially if using a heavier and slower weapon. This was somewhat addressed in subsequent patches, where certain fable arts were given hyperarmor, so you at least have SOME options to poise through attacks.
  • Starting with Fallen Archbishop Andreus, nearly every main story boss with few exceptions have 2 phases in which you have to deplete a full health bar before moving on to round 2. And if you brought a specter, odds are they'll die in round 1 so you're on your own when the boss is at full power. And if you lose, there's no checkpoint, you start at round 1 again. It would be fine if this were the case for only a few bosses but again, it's for practically 3/4ths of the game. The big problem with this is that most of the bosses have radically different movesets for phase 2, often requiring you to completely switch mental gears and readjust to all their new attack timings. This was partially addressed with subsequent patches, which nerfed the HP of certain boss phases (such as Archbishop Andreus, King of Puppets, and Simon Manus) to make getting to their phase 2's faster and more consistently.
  • Fury Attacks are notoriously difficult to deal with. Not only are they unblockable, but they often come with excellent tracking to make dodging them impossible. The biggest problem though is simply learning to deflect them- until you master their individual parry timings, it is impossible to deal with them. While early bosses will clearly telegraph when they are about to swing, later bosses will fake the player out with delayed timings and ambiguous animations. It often means that many bosses are pure Trial-and-Error Gameplay until you have enough raw muscle memory to block their Fury Attacks. The only way to alleviate this is in a first playthrough to use the Ghost Walk Amulet, which allows the player to dodge Fury Attacks, but it is the heaviest amulet of the game, and only obtainable through trading the Green Monster's Rare Ergo. On New Game+, a P-Organ Upgrade can allow you to guard normally, but that's only on Phase 7.
  • In general the amount of enemies that have built-in delays even in normal attacks is a large point of contention, echoing sentiments shared by Elden Ring players. It goes hand-in-hand with Fury Attacks to make combat less about snap reflexes and more about memorization, and where other Soulslikes might start to tone back or entirely drop excessive delays in enemy attacks near the end game, it's a design choice that permeates Lies of P from start to end. This was partially addressed in patch 1.3.0.0, which made many enemy attacks smoother and easier to read, making it more feasible to intuitively figure out timings for dodges and perfect guards without as much need for trial and error.
  • The fact that your invisible "Humanity" stat resets at the start of each New Game+ run is not too frustrating on its own. Unfortuantely it noticeably handicaps the secret Infinity +1 Sword, the Golden Lie, as the weapon's strength and range are influenced by your Humanity stat and it cannot reach its full power until just before the end of the game.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Appears to be one for FromSoftware's beloved Bloodborne, drawing on the gloomy atmosphere, tight environments, quick gameplay, and minimalist HUD, along with other Soulslike staples like dropping all of your currency upon death. This is particularly the case for fans who think that Sony and FromSoftware have been negligent with such a beloved IP, as they have shown no plans for a sequel or even a port despite them being highly requested.
  • The game is centered around a fictional pseudo-European city of late 19th century, but incorporating both The Plague of medieval era and futuristic Schizo Tech powered by Applied Phlebotinum, and mixing Steampunk with eldritch horror, the setting is pretty close to Dishonored. The P-Organ even looks similar to The Heart.
  • As a nightmarish Fractured Fairy Tale with creatively reimagined public domain characters and macabre, disturbing monster design, Lies of P is basically a cousin franchise to American McGee's Alice despite being more realistic in terms of setting, visuals and story.
  • Being two of the darkest mainstream adaptations of Carlo Collodi's tale, Lies of P and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio have more than a few similarities, from a rather gruesome interpretation of the Undertaker Rabbits to Gepetto having a dead son named Carlo and making Pinocchio/P as a Replacement Goldfish.
• That One Attack:
  • The common enemies have variants that use long thrust spears kind of weapons (for example, a pitchfork and a chimney cleaning rod). These variants have a charge attack that is deceptively a combo, these charges will hit the player 3 or 4 times, each one having to be defended separately and it takes a significant amount of the player's health with it.
  • The shovel-wielding robotic enemies first seen in Venigni Works have a possible follow-up to any of their attacks when you have been knocked down to the ground. They will repeatedly pound their shovel into you before you have a chance to get back up. Rising Dodge allows you to get out of this attack quite easily... except it's impossible to have unlocked it this early in the game, so this attack is basically a One-Hit Kill with extra steps.
  • Combos in this game can be brutal. Several mini bosses and bosses will have egregiously long combo attacks, and because P has little resistance to being staggered, the player might end up stuck receiving a lot of that damage and unable to defend or parry. This is especially the case for Laxasia's combos, which are incredibly long and deal a ton of damage.
• That One Boss: It's a Soulslike; what did you expect? Even Soulsborne veterans will find Lies of P's mix between Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice to make for some challenging opponents.
  • Fallen Archbishop Andreus is when the game stops messing around and demands full mastery of its mechanics. His first phase isn't too bad, with most of his attacks coming out slowly, but his second phase causes him to flip his attack patterns depending on which side is facing you, leaving you with either the option of fighting against a foe with a mostly similar moveset as before that's easier to hit but with more aggression and the ability to inflict Decay on most attacks, or fighting against a less overwhelming foe with an entirely new moveset that is difficult to hit. He also likes to flip around with a few of his moves, forcing you to deal with the other side for a bit. He's also packing two cases of That One Attack; at half health he'll charge up a blast and a slam from both sides of his body that's very difficult to dodge properly, and below half health he'll charge around the room in a way that requires you to dodge around frantically and try to parry the final blow.
  • Shortly after that, you have to fight the Black Rabbit Brotherhood. The Eldest isn't too bad by himself, and is the only one that needs to be killed to end the fight, but his combos are deceptively long. In addition, as his health reaches low thresholds (or if you take too long) the other members of the Brotherhood will join in, with each of them attacking quickly and with a different weapon. The only saving grace is that you can break their weapons if you parry well, but even then they can overwhelm you with sheer numbers.
    • And later on, when you encounter them a second time, you are forced to fight all three of the younger Black Rabbit siblings at once, which can get very challenging. One of them will buff their weapon with an Abrasive and engage you in melee while the other two will hang back and harass you with ranged attacks (unless you get close, then they'll also start swinging), tagging out to a different sibling once their Abrasive wears off. They also each use different elemental Abrasives, so no one Converter is going to provide ideal defense for the fight. Finally, once two of the three siblings are dead, the Eldest returns for Round 2, now empowered by Simon's experiments. It's advisable that you don't burst down any of the younger siblings too quickly, or else you might have to face the Eldest with his remaining sibling still at mostly or completely full health.
  • And of course, shortly after that you have to deal with the King of Puppets. His first phase is hard enough, with him hitting hard and having a few attacks that hit twice, meaning even if you get a Perfect Deflect on one of them you'll end up taking some damage from the other. But the real fun starts when he reveals his true form as Romeo, changing from a Mighty Glacier to a Lightning Bruiser in an instant and fighting you with a flurry of quick, deadly attacks with a few deceptively slow strikes and a grab attack that's nearly impossible to avoid if you're right next to him. And when he gets to half health in 'that' phase, he immediately starts swinging nonstop with his sword, requiring master-level Perfect Deflects to even stand a chance against it or getting lucky and interrupting him out of the flurry early. Oh, and he slaps on a Fire Abrasive right before he does this, so you'll also have Overheat to deal with.
  • The Green Monster is particularly rage inducing, given how it is incredibly fast despite its large size and has a number of deceptively long range melee attacks where it will suddenly lunge forward with little to no warning and hit you before you have a chance to react. It is also rather tanky and can absorb quite a lot of damage. And once it hits its second phase it becomes even faster and harder hitting, although this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that it inherits the Scrapped Watchman's moveset somewhat, if you still have the muscle memory of that encounter.
  • Then there's Laxasia the Complete - a greatsword-wielding brute who hits like a truck and channels electricity through her weapon for additional range. Her combos are long, and deceptively fast; the only real safe place to attack her is from behind, and she's got a shield on her back that'll make your backstabs bounce right off. While the shield can be broken to open her up for greater damage, it can take a lot of blows before it finally breaks. Chances are, your specter will be dead and your Pulse Cells will be low by the time you even reach her second phase, at which point she sheds her armour like a Darknut and becomes lightning fast. The good news is that her shield is no longer defending her from backstabs. The bad news is that she's capable of crossing the arena in the blink of an eye, dealing wicked amounts of damage, and even soaring up into the air (and out of reach of most of P's attacks) to rain down homing thunderbolts. By the way, if you break her sword, she immediately enters Phase 2... without losing her shield.
  • Fittingly, the True Final Boss is a true test of everything the player can do in the game. Its first phase is a tough, but doable one on one sword fight, but its second phase is among the hardest battles in the game. It is a Lightning Bruiser that attacks the player at a breakneck speed, barely giving any openings or time for the player to heal, grind their weapon, or use items. Even guarding will still cause a lot of damage to the player or deplete their stamina because their combos are just long and brutal. Even if the player has mastered everything the game can teach them, it's still a test of skill and patience.
  • On the Mini-Boss side, the Jester Puppet has been almost unanimously considered to be tough enough that it should get its own boss health bar. It is incredibly fast, has very strange and unpredictable movements that make Perfect Guarding difficult, hits incredibly hard, and every one of those hits inflicts the nasty Break status effect, which reduces the amount your Pulse Cells heal you. Break is also unique among status effects in that it doesn't need to fill your entire resistance bar in order to affect you, it kicks in as soon as any amount of the bar is filled, and filling up more of the bar just increases the duration. You can't even effectively cheese it from range since its weapons are attached to chains, allowing it to simply fling them at you and pull them right back to do it again.
• That One Level:
  • Chapter VII - Lorenzini Arcade and the Grand Exhibition. It starts off deceptively easy, as the road to the Arcade only contains puppets who are so listless due to the King of Puppets' recent death that they barely put up a fight. Once you reach the Arcade however, the game takes a deep dive into Survival Horror, with more advanced forms of the carcasses (most of which inflict decay) being introduced, numerous ambushes, areas blocked off by toxic gas, the Arcade being a bit of a maze, plus several difficult minibosses, including the Jester Puppet who is one of the fastest and most aggressive enemies in the game, to the point where the game gives you backup in the form of several carcass monsters in order to stand half a chance against it. The Grand Exhibition isn't much better, with steampunk robots that pursue you to the ends of the earth, electric bomb throwing puppets harassing you as you try to navigate narrow beams (while a miniboss also stalks the rafters), plus a wrestler miniboss who hits hard and fast with a really nasty grab attack. The only consolation is that the chapter's boss, Champion Victor, is one of the easiest in the entire game.
  • Chapter IX - Return to Krat Grand Central Station and Collapsing Krat. Much like chapter VII, the first part is a dark slog through the carcass infested station, with even more unpleasant varieties of enemy being introduced, including carcass-infected puppets. Escaping the station leads to Collapsing Krat, which is full of bottomless pits and crystals that cause instant death if not removed quickly enough. The final part of the level introduces the Alchemists, who are all Elite Mooks. Like chapter VII, the 2 bosses are relative pushovers compared to the nightmare preceding it.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Breaking enemy weapons through perfect guards. While a very cool thing and it is always satisfying when it happens, the amount of perfect guards needed to break a boss's weapon is so high that unless you are specifically trying to do it and stretching the fight (or are very good at it and parry almost everything), it's unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, normal enemies who are subjected to it get killed so fast you won't need to break their weapons to dispatch them. This has been addressed in patches, which lowers the amount of required damage to destroy an enemy weapon.
  • Gold Coin Fruits and Wishstones. Outside of a few story uses, the fruits are mainly used to buy Wishstones and to respec P at the Goddess statue. Both of these are useful things to have on paper, but in practice are hampered by implementation. The large majority of Wishstones only affect the Specter that can be summoned for boss fights, so if you don't summon it these Wishstones are completely worthless. The few stones that are used on P are also limited further; P can only carry a single Wishstone at a time, and each one is only good for a single use until you unlock a Tier 3 P-Organ upgrade. Swapping Wishstones requires resting at a Stargazer, and beyond the initial one he gives you in Chapter 4, the only way to get more Wishstones is to buy them from Giangio after he becomes available at the hotel at the start of Chapter 6. As for respeccing P, most players will likely only use the feature once or twice in a given playthrough, making farming fruits to cover the increasing costs of respeccing largely moot. To rub salt in the wound, a patch made the option of repseccing available right from the Gold Coin Tree, making the entire purpose of finding the Goddess Statue, which is unavailable until the start of Chapter 8, completely irrelevent (as of this writing).
• Unexpected Character: Several, on account of the fact that the game was advertised as being based on Pinocchio, yet draws on the story's contemporaries as well.
  • Champion Victor's name, design, and status as a reanimated corpse all are in reference to Frankenstein.
  • Nobody predicted that the Sequel Hook in The Stinger would tease the existence of Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, let alone show her arrival in Krat.

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