What I've always hated about soulsgames is that I have to spend 40 minutes reading the lore to get the plot.
Lies of P is not like that.
Lies of P has a great story and easy to pick up lore.
Lies of P released a DLC that further explains her, just as I started going through the Fandom wiki and looking for every possible detail.
Lies of P is good. Very good. Check the review.
Story overture
Overture takes us back a few months before the famous Puppet Frenzy. Well, kinda.
We still play as P, but we get a bigger picture of the events leading up to the whole plot.
Krat is still alive, but already infected with Petrification Disease; in that turning point, we follow the younger version of P and witness the first cracks in the relationship between Geppetto and Simon Manus.
The narrative follows the same approach so that we learn the story by discovering small hints + memories of Carl, the boy after whom P is modeled. We will visit a zoo turned into a quarantine zone, a circus whose cloth domes hide alchemy laboratories, and the Rose Estate, a ruined mansion where we will learn more about the Legendary Stalker.
There will also be Romeo, a name that all players of the base game will immediately recognize. No bum spoilal, although I would really like to.
New weapons, old combat perfection
The expansion introduces ten weapons and two new Legions, and I got a flamethrower which made my day. Dexterity builds will be happy to be able to transform into Wolverine, and there will be other surprises that, again, I can't spoil.
In addition to the arsenal, the patch that came with the DLC offers two novelties, Battle Memories (re-match boss rush) and Death March for masochists, which makes NG+ more interesting.
The overture lasts about 12-20 hours, and the biggest bite is the bosses, but not the band, but the bosses who will make your life miserable.
Each zone has its own visual hook, a zoological aquarium whose glass panels are half-crushed by disease crystals, a coastal reef littered with shipwrecks, and the roofs of the Rose Estate reminiscent of the Gothic hills of Bloodborne. Shortcuts are more meaningful than in later chapters of the base game, and spectral records brutally deepen the lore.
When I draw the line, Overture is exactly what I was looking for: more Lies of P, but with a deeper lore of a few new toys to break up the routine of NG. It adds context to the story instead of stretching it out, and it raises the ceiling on the difficulty of the combat without the pointless HP shock. If you have played the base game, you know that after Swamp Monster, the difficulty of all boss fights increases.
Maybe 12 to 20 hours is not a marathon portion (but let's not lie, most DLCs last a couple of hours), but every minute is full of atmosphere, good music and a story from a studio that now seems as confident as FromSoft in its best days.
If, like me, you hated digging through wiki pages to figure out why some mumbling ruin wanted to kill you, Lies of P remains a pleasant surprise: the story is there, on the screen, and Overture is serving it up piping hot. I've been matching the dolls' eyes again, knowingly and with gusto, and can't wait to see where the trail of green crystals takes us next.
It's rare that a DLC manages to both round out the old and open the door to a sequel while also making me jump right into NG+3 just to see how the new weapons take down the old bosses. See you in Oz!
A copy of the DLC was provided by publisher Neowiz for review purposes
