A Good Parry Is All You Need: Lies of P Impressions

I’m going to be honest – I feel like a bit of a fake Dark Souls fan. I wrote an article gushing about the original Dark Souls last year, but when it comes to FromSoft’s other games I’m not as taken. I really liked Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for its non-linear world design, expansive roaster of foes, and incredibly focused core gameplay loop. However, my praise for FromSoft really ends with those 2 titles.

So you may be wondering why exactly I would subject myself to the demo for Lies of P. It has been compared to FromSoft’s games repeatedly, and that similarity seems to be the main selling point. Well…I don’t really know. I saw it had a demo, thought it looked neat, and decided to try it. That’s it. I really am a simple minded creature. Besides, going through a demo is far cheaper than buying a game, and finding out I don’t actually like it. Better to spend an hour now, then 100 dollars in the future.

Well, I finished the demo for Lies of P, and I gotta say I was really impressed. It’s funny – when I was about halfway through the demo I read Ian’s impressions over on Adventure Rules, and realized we’d had polar opposite experiences. I do 100% agree with him that the weapon animations lack the kind of weighty impact of something like Dark Souls, or Monster Hunter. However, I had a lot of fun with the core combat loop – more so than I had with most of FromSoft’s other games, and a lot of that comes down to how parrying is implemented in Lies of P.

For the first hour, or so of my time with Lies of P, I was playing it like it was Dark Souls. You approach something, goad it into attacking, dodge out of the way, and hit it. It sounds simple, and it is, but healing items are limited which adds an extra wrinkle to the whole affair. You can’t afford to make many mistakes otherwise you’ll die, and be sent back to the last checkpoint.

This all came crashing to a halt when I encountered the first of the demo’s 2 bosses. I was trying to dodge his attacks, you know – like Dark Souls, but your dodge in Lies of P isn’t anywhere near as powerful as Dark Souls. The player character doesn’t move particularly far when performing it, though it does have a hefty amount of invulnerability. Regardless, I kept getting slapped around while trying to dodge away from the boss’ attacks. It eventually dawned on me that I could try dodging through each strike, which worked okay, but wasn’t as consistent as I’d have liked.

I was about ready to give up on the demo, but then I was reminded of something from a tip in the loading screen: you can parry attacks. Now, if you’ve played a Dark Souls before you’ll know that parrying almost never works against bosses. That always makes it super weird when FromSoft arbitrarily decides to make a given boss susceptible to it. Especially with how powerful parries are, but I’m not complaining because it made Gwyn Lord of Cinder, the final boss in Dark Souls, extraordinarily easy to beat.

Anyway, with the refound knowledge that parrying existed, I decided to try the boss again, but I would parry his strikes this time. My god. I have never had such a black and white experience while playing a game. The fight went from being a complete shitshow to being a ballet of push-forward combat where I was constantly fighting back until I eventually emerged victorious. Granted, it took me a few attempts to nail down the parry timing, but during that final fight I almost looked like I knew what I was doing. It was glorious.

During this whole fiasco I also learned about another of Lies of P’s mechanics: staggering. I can’t remember what the in-game name for it was, but if you parry enough attacks, and counter attack with your own heavy strikes, you’ll eventually stagger whatever you’re attacking. This causes it to drop to the ground for a couple seconds, and lets you score a critical attack for massive damage. To make 2 FromSoft comparisons simultaneously: it’s like the visceral attacks from Bloodborne mixed with the parrying of Sekiro. It’s incredibly satisfying as a reward for playing well.

Parrying also has an additional benefit – it can break your foe’s weapon. During the second phase of the first demo boss, it transitions from using claw swipes to swinging a stick around. If you parry strikes from the weapon enough times, it’ll snap in half. This reduces the boss’ attacking range, and, frankly, turns the remainder of the fight into a bit of a joke.

It should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: I love how the parry is implemented in Lies of P. Parrying always carries more risk than simply blocking, or trying to dodge, and Lies of P feels like it appropriately rewards the player for taking that risk. You’re always positioned to counter-attack after you successfully parry, and doing it enough times leads to a chunky high damage critical attack. It just feels good to parry in this game.

Now, with parrying being so strong I bet some of you are wondering: why would you ever block? Two reasons. The first is that blocking an attack means that you’ll only take chip damage from it, instead of the full hit. This is obviously preferable when you’re still working out the parry timing on certain attacks, so you don’t get obliterated by a mistimed parry.

The second reason you’d want to block is that it will actually teach you the parry timing. Whenever you block an attack you’ll hear a ting as it collides with your weapon. That’s when you’re meant to parry the strike. Once you hear this a few times, you can go for that juicy parry, and really stick it to whatever you’re fighting.

You also can’t completely abandon your dodge. The second, and final boss in the Lies of P demo does a great job of showing the limitations parrying. It has a high damage grab which you obviously can’t parry because you’re being scooped up, and tossed around. It also shoots lightning which…I mean you’re not a space wizard, or the Avatar, so you’re not parrying lightning anytime soon.

The culmination of these three elements is a well-rounded defensive toolset, and I love how each tool fits into Lies of P’s combat puzzle. Parrying is the star of the show, having the highest reward, but also carrying the highest risk. Blocking is low risk, and can help to teach the player when to parry, while also giving them a safety net to fallback on. Finally, dodging is used to avoid attacks that the player can neither block, nor parry. Choosing when, and where you’d like to use each of these elements makes the process of chipping a boss down far more interesting than it’d be were you to simply spam dodge rolls consecutively whenever you’re attacked.

Lies of P certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I had a ton of fun playing through the demo. The constantly tug of war I felt while dueling both bosses reminded me of why I found the bulk of Sekiro so damn compelling. If I’m going to be forced to play defensively, I’d like to have tools that allow me to actively fight back against my oppressor. Lies of P really nails that, and I can’t wait to continue playing as an unbreakable bulwark in the full version of the game later this year.

---

Did you enjoy what you read? Consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee over on Ko-fi.