Lies of P is a Soulslike, which means it’s a game that wants to challenge you in various ways. But that’s a bit of a vague description, to be honest. Soulslikes typically vary hugely in difficulty based on how tough the game actually is. Then when you add your own skill level to the mix, it blurs the lines even more. So, let’s try and figure out how hard Lies of P really is.
How hard is Lies of P?
Out of every big Soulslike that’s ever been released, Lies of P sits somewhere in the middle. It’s not quite as tricky as a game like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and it’s not as easy as something like the original Lords of the Fallen. While Lies of P certainly has a handful of challenging moments, the vast majority of the playtime isn’t too threatening.
Related: Lies of P review – A puppet’s playground
Screenshot: PC Invasion
When I talk about difficulty in a Soulslike, it’s usually a multifaceted conversation. It’s easy to just judge a Soulslike by the bosses it has and gauge the difficulty based entirely on that. But in reality, we need to look at the bigger picture and see what’s going on around the boss fights. Mechanically, Lies of P has two systems that make it a little tricky. With one being a tricky mechanic to learn in battle, and the other having to do with leveling your character.
Screenshot: PC Invasion
Perfect blocking in Lies of P is hard, there’s just no way to get around that. The window that you need to hit to pull it off is tricky, and some enemies do their best to throw you off. And it’s made even harder since you can’t see an enemy’s stagger meter, so you won’t even know how much your perfect block is really helping matters. Then there’s leveling up with the P-Organ system, which might not seem tricky at first. But making the wrong choices here can seriously affect the game’s difficulty. And Quartz, the currency used to level up here, is pretty rare. If you decide to not invest any points in getting more Pulse Cells, for example, you’ll really be hurting when you start running out of heals frequently.
Lies of P isn’t too hard once you get its fundamentals down, though. It’s a difficult process, but once you follow through with it, the toughness starts to ramp down fairly quickly. Thankfully for some, this game is nowhere near the heights of difficulty that this genre has seen.
