The success of FromSoftware's Souls series, further consolidated last year by Elden Ring, led to multiple developers trying their hand at the genre. While many of these Soulslike games are well-made, such as Team NINJA's Nioh series, and Deck13's The Surge, plenty of other games failed to deliver a solid experience in the vein of the popular series by the Japanese studio. Thankfully, it feels like NEOWIZ's Lies of P will be among the most accomplished Soulslikes released recently.

　　Right from the game's reveal, it was clear how this unique and dark reimagining of Pinocchio's story was inspired by Bloodborne rather than the Souls games, with its Belle Epoque-inspired setting, unique enemy design, and more. Now that I had the chance to try out the game, I can say that the inspiration doesn't stop at the setting and character design, as the actual gameplay feels a lot like that of FromSoftware's PlayStation 4 exclusive action role-playing game.

　　The demo I tried (now available publically) features the first few sequences of the full game for around two hours of gameplay, but they do an excellent job of showcasing the game's strengths. While the lack of a proper character creation may be a bummer, Lies of P doesn't feel lacking when it comes to customization options, as it offers six different stats to improve when leveling up, which is done in the usual Soulslike fashion by spending resources gathered by defeating enemies at one of the city of Krat's many bonfire-like checkpoints, stats that determine what P will be good at, which weapons he will be able to use best, how much weight he can carry without getting encumbered and so on.

　　Lies of P wears its influences on its sleeves and doesn't make it a mystery. Controlling P as he sets out to look for Geppetto and become human while slaying the countless puppet warriors that roam Krat feels as familiar as it can get, with the ability to perform a light and heavy attack mapped to the right shoulder button and trigger with the equipped weapon, dodge out of the way, and block, actions that all consume stamina. While this gameplay mechanics are somewhat basic, stamina-based combat is difficult to get right, as the nuances are what make or break it.

　　The developer did not take any risk with Lies of P, however, and played it extremely safe, giving P the same mobility seen in Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Elden Ring, making combat feel extremely responsive, with quick stamina regeneration that keeps the pace brisk and exciting. The great feel of the game's combat system is only enhanced by its weighty feel, the excellent and varied enemy design, and the weapons, which all feel rather unique, with their basic strings that come with different uses and properties, and special attacks, which require a resource called Fable obtained by fighting enemies. An additional combat option offered by the game is also the ability to attack enemies with Pì's left arm, which is rather basic at the start of the game, but promises to spice things up with special powers later on during the adventure. Right from the limited time of the demo, it's clear how Lies of P will offer enough viable and fun options to let players tackle its many combat challenges using a variety of fighting styles.

　　The Bloodborne influence continues to remain strong even in Lies of P's healing system. While the Pulse Cells system introduces something new to the table, as it is possible to restore a single Cell once all have been depleted by attacking enemies, the ability to restore health lost while blocking by damaging enemies is yet another callback to FromSoftware's game. Having to restore any weapon's durability every once in a while using the Grinder to avoid damage penalties and even losing the weapon is another new mechanic, although I felt it to be more cumbersome than interesting.

　　What Lies of P definitely seems to get right even in this early build on PC is performance, which seems to have become a rarity lately with so many broken PC ports. The game not only pre-compiles shaders for a better experience, but it also runs great with no stuttering whatsoever, even with a lot going on, features a lot of graphics options, support for both AMD FSR 2 and NVIDIA DLSS (though not Frame Generation), framerates up to 240 FPS and more. With DLSS at the quality preset, and high settings, the game runs at an average of 100 FPS on my system (i7-10700 CPU, RTX 3070 GPU, and 16 GB RAM), so there's no doubt that the developer did some great optimization work, something that much bigger teams seem unable to do for some reason.

　　Despite being far from the most original Soulslike I have played, I have to admit I enjoyed my short time with Lies of P way more than I expected. With its unique setting, solid mechanics, good enemy variety, intricate, but not confusing, level design, and promises for bigger things to come as P gets closer to Geppetto and to becoming a real human, Lies of P is setting up to be one of the best Soulslike not developed by FromSoftware in a very long time. I can't wait to experience more of it when the game launches on September 19th on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One.

　　PC version tested. Demo early access provided by the publisher.