Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Lies of P Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Blessing and Andy have played Lies of P and give their full review impressions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey there, gamers. Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast where each and every week we get together to talk about video games and all the things we love about them. And yes, I had Tim send me a little synopsis of all the stuff he has on these shows because during these parts, I'm just blank. I'm just, I got nothing going on by my way. Yeah, totally, totally gone. You can get this show ad free. Watch live as we recorded and get a whole bevy of exclusive bonus shows over on Patreon.com slash kind of funny. just like our Patreon producers, Brave Athos, Jedi Master Deadpool,

Delaney twining. Thank you, everybody. Great sound effects by blessing. Or you can watch at YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games and Roosterteeth.com or you can listen on your favorite podcast services. Just search for Kind of Funny Gamescasts. Use Creator Code.

Kind of funny on the Epic store to get epic in-game purchases, just like Rocket League and Fortnite, to help support us here at Kind of Funny. It's totally free to do so. So you got your little eight-year-old nephew, just getting a whole bunch of V-bucks, trying to buy Thanos and trying to buy, who else they got in there? Christina Ricci. Is she in a...

The Fendaya. They got Tom Holland up in there. What kind of celebs they got it up in? Olivia Rodriguez. Yeah. I don't think Olivia's in there. I know. I mean, she's due.

Yeah. Once they put Olivia in there, it's over. She's about three months away. It's over for what? What is that mean? I'm going to Fortnite's one. Okay. Housekeeping, there is none.

I don't have to read any housekeeping, which is pretty cool. Our ads are Jaff King's Sportsbook and Rocket Money, but we'll talk about that later. For now, this is a very, very long-awaited episode. Oh, yeah. Amongst a gigantic season blessing of just games, because we had review season earlier in the year. We've had review season upon review. review season. Right now, the whole equinox is thrown off. The equator's off kilter. The planet is dying right now because all the seasons are melding with one another. The global warming. Global

warming. It's just there's so many reviews out there. By the way, I'm Andy Cortez and that's blessing out of a junior. What's up that's been? It's a two-person show. It's just two gamers. It's like a rare Andy Cortez hosted games cast. Yeah. Have you ever hosted games cast? Never. Holy cow. But I knew that this was going to be special. I knew that right now, let's bring on the two actual gamers of the company. Talk video game. What's throw me off is like our like equilibrium or our cemetery is off because like I'm on the corner but like you're kind of like face.

I think that's because I got I got out of the chair a little bit. Does this work? I can scoot in. I think this works a little bit better now. This looks a bit better now. This is a big show. Oh yeah. There's a big show because this is a review on a game that we've been looking forward to for

quite some time. Ever since the first got debuted, Lies of P, which is one of these Souls games that you go, wow, that looks promising. Probably not going to live up to a lot of the promises, right? It looks good. It's dazzling

and it's glittery and it looks gorgeous and the visuals are cool. But with a lot of Souls like games that come and go. Yeah. Mortal shells. There are a lot of titles out there that kind of promise a little bit, hey, we're going to give you a bit of that taste of what Frumsoff offers,

and they never can quite deliver. Blessing. Andy. You have beat Lies of P. I have. Awful name, by the way. I kind of like it. It's grown on you?

It's grown on me for sure. It's just hard to say fast. Liza P. Liza P. It's that thing, too, whenever we say people in chat span with, like, Life of Pie or whatever. I always think Liza Minnelli, Liza P. Like, it's hard to, when you tell somebody, I'm playing a game called Lies of Pee, P. They think you're saying Liza.

Yeah. Like that just doesn't, it doesn't really sound like any real words or whatever. Anyway, you've played Liza P. You've beaten Liza P. I have played many hours of it. What are your thoughts on Liza of P? A from soft style game, a Soulslike game from a South Korean developer. Round 8.

Round 8. It's been in development for about four years now. We can finally freaking talk about it. After a lot of demos that have been released, Blessie, what are your thoughts? I really love this game. On the kind of funny scale, I'm giving it a five out of five,

which is the highest score we can give. The best compliment I can give this game, it starts from where you were just talking about just now, right? The fact that this is a game that has taken a lot of inspiration from Souls-like games from software titles, namely the big one being Blood-Born. You hop into this game and you blur your eyes a little bit

and you're like, oh, I'm playing Blood-Born right now. This feels like a game that is taking so much out of that. But at the same time, time, once you get further into and once you get your hands on the controller, you start to notice and feel a lot of other influences as well, right? Like, it feels almost more like a greatest hits of from software titles as opposed to just a blood-borne clone. And that was my biggest fear is that I was going to start playing this game. And with every turn, go, okay, this is cool, but it's not as good as blood-borne. That's what I thought I was going to be saying throughout my time playing this game. There are

parts where I do have that feeling, but for the most part, right, it is sort of the, I guess, vibe and tone of blood-borne, mixed with more of like the pari-based combat of a Sekro Shadows Die Twice, mixed with some of the mechanics I imagine you get out of a Dark Souls or an Eldon Ring

when I talk about the amulet system. There's like a lot of different stuff in here and then a lot of originality as well because one of the things that this game does that is unique is its weapon assembly system where most weapons have a handle and a blade apart and you can mix and match different handles and blades from different weapons

to essentially create your own weapons that feel and control the way you want them to feel, that is very novel, that is really unique. And that system, I'd say, is, like, one of the shining takeaway features from this game that I hope other people look at and go, how do we get more creative with our weapon systems? That there's-

The blade adds a certain secondary attack, or the handle adds a secondary attack, but the blade is maybe good for blunt damage. And right now, if for audio lists, we're doing the weed smoking sort of blunt, symbol that's what we're doing right now for audio listeners um if for those y'all who aren't very familiar with a lot of souls games uh you usually have like a slash damage you have a pierce damage you have a blunt object type damage where hey here's a big ass club that's going to work good against these

enemies not so great against some sort of you know furry being or a beast or whatever where a blade might work better in those situations and if you get into it right like you have the fable arts as well which are these special abilities, and the handle has a fable art attached to it, and then the blade has another fable art attached to it, and so you can mix and match those abilities there. You might have a blade that is plus level six or whatever because you upgraded a certain amount,

and so you have those individual qualities there, and then you have handles that scales with certain stats. And so, like, for your strength stats, right, you have motivity, you have technique, and you have advance, that each scale differently with certain weapons, or certain handles, I should say. So you have like a lot of,

You have a lot to take into account there. And that's just one of the systems. You have that. On top of that, you have the Legion arm, which is your, I believe, left arm has, like, almost think like a Seamus type, like, ability attached to it. Like, it's its own weapon in itself, right? And the one you start off with is this scorpion-style rope-type attack where, like, you can kind of get over here with somebody and close the distance with them.

Another one that there is is, like, a cannon. Are you able to fly to the enemies? I wasn't sure. if I was able to figure that out. If you upgrade it, yeah. Okay. So that's the other thing is that with each of the Legion arms, you can upgrade them three times based on material that you collect during your play-through.

And yeah, like, once you upgrade your, that like get over here, rope, that's what I'm going to call it now. Once you upgrade that to a certain point, you can then basically attach to your enemies and then pull your way toward the enemy as opposed to pulling them towards you. And then if you did what I did and upgrade it all the way, you get like a cool attack that's attached to that where you pull yourself to your enemy, fly up in the air and come down with an attack.

Those are the ones I saw in the trailer. I was like, I want to do that. I want to figure that out. And each of those abilities, like, again, like adds a level of depth and adds another layer to combat that, you know, really opens things up and makes combat feel really dynamic. I think that's the thing that this game does really well, is that it gives you so many different avenues to customize and tailor the way you play. There's that. There's the P. Organ, which is essentially a skill tree type system, and the list goes on.

So. Again, gross. Sounds gross. Disgusting, right? It's the letter P-orgon. It's not like, it's not your P organ. But like you can see why somebody would. Yeah, no, you know. I understand why that might sound disgusting. Yeah, I'm using this, this mechanic called the P organ in a video game called Liza P.

You know, like you just say that stuff real fast. It's like it's, I wish it was just like, you know, do puppets lie or do, you know, like, Yeah. Like if it was just something a little bit more similar or, you know, simple like that. Yeah. Yeah. Just go real on the new. Yeah, because this is just a quick synopsis here.

It's inspired by Carlo Colades novel or Colodis. I got to assume that's how you pronounce it. The Adventures of Pinocchio, Liza P tells the story of a humanoid puppet Pinocchio who wakes up in an abandoned train station in the city of Crock engulfed in chaos and madness. Pinocchio must find his creator, the master of Petto, and overcome the calamity that has befallen the city trying to. become a man. It's basically what you, like, imagine when you're scrolling TikTok and you see, like, here's what you hear that weird AI voice and it's like, here's what Sleeping Beauty

would look like if it was a horror movie. And they're using like AI art generation to kind of make these things. It's, it, this game, like Blessie was mentioning, looks very much like Bloodborn in tone, in lighting the sort of Gothic Victorian vibes. Even when you slash an enemy, those sound it makes in that like blood slash that happens. Very blood pressure. And kind of in the area that I'm in, you know, this game's always kind of meant to give off creepy vibes. I'm a bit further in.

I've only put in, by the way, how long did it take you to beat this game? It took me 40 hours and 30 minutes. 40 hours and way longer than I thought this game is going to take. And I with that all coffee at that, I think knowledge is going to vary based on how much time you put into it because after beating the game, in talking to other reviewers. So to give a peek to my playthrough, I min-maxed technique as a stat early on, right?

Techniques, one of your strength stats, right, against technique, motivity, advance. Motivity is more of like a, you know, heavier kind of weapons. Motivity is strength. Yeah, motivity is strength. Technique is like more of like the, like, almost like swifter weapons, right? Like smaller weapons and then advance is like, I don't even know how to describe it.

It's like just another type of weapon is what it is. Yeah, think of motivity of strength. technique is I'm already I'm already freaking blanking on the term that every from softs that would be like oh I don't I can look it up yeah yeah you could see it you could see the word I can visualize it

but the other one is basically like kind of arcane magic using using a lot more of your techniques and your abilities dexterity dexterity would be technique yeah dexterity would be technique where you're kind of specializing in smaller quicker type weapons. I've always been the big old, let me just lug around a sword,

you know, the size of a fucking Uber car picking up. And that's my thing is like I like the dexterity stuff because I'm like, I want to move quicker. I want to be able to be a bit more agile. Turns out in talking to other reviewers, they're basically like, hey, technique might be the hard mode of this game. Like I was talking to a couple of people who were like, yeah, we switched off of technique and started putting more points in motivity. and the game was way easier that way. I didn't know that.

And so I was going all in on technique. And when I tell you, I was struggling in the last couple of boss fights. Like the last two boss fights alone took me maybe six to seven hours in total just to get through. And like, for me, that loops around to the things that I really like about the game, which is, you know, talk about the combat system and the weapon system, how cool that stuff is. The enemy design is fucking great, right? Like, you're fighting a lot of automated puppets type. type enemies,

right? Stuff that fits within the world of Pinocchio. The puppets have gone crazy, everybody. Yeah. Everybody's like, well,

maybe there's like an actual master puppet controlling these puppets. Because we don't know who's controlling these puppets. They've gone mad. Yeah. They were basically made,

uh, think of it as like any old AI story where AI goes rogue and goes buck wild. And the robots take over. Think of, uh, think of Will Smith and I robot, you know?

That's what this, you know, don't base, they should have just made Will Smith, I robot, the from software. off-war style game, you know. But yeah, like, you're fighting a lot of puppets.

You're fighting, and then you start finding more enemies that aren't puppets that are a bit more, like, organic, fucked up creatures that you would expect out of a blood-borne game. And that stuff surprised me, and I didn't expect that. And once I got there, I was like, oh, okay, this game has a bit more dimension to it, right? Like, this game is reaching into areas that I didn't even think I'd see here. Once it started opening up like that, I was like, oh, snap, okay, a lot of the enemy design, in the moment-to-moment, like, new enemies that you meet in every chapter. that stuff blew me away.

And there are some points where I'm like, okay, this is getting a bit long in the tooth. I feel like I'm seeing this enemy quite a bit. But then as soon as I think that, there's another enemy that gets introduced. And I'm like, damn, all right, cool. Like, y'all keep coming correct with it. That and then the boss fights for me

are really the shining star here where, man, did they nail it? Like, I think for me the biggest compliment I can pay to round eight, the studio, this publisher, is that they really get it. Like, they really understand what makes a, from Soft Souls-like style game special. And when I get into the boss fights and it is like that level,

like that extra frame of hold on the animation before they hit you, that always fucks you up. The hezzy. When it is that I'm gonna- The hesitant attacks, man. Those hezies when it is me downloading a boss over a period of time and going, I'm not leaving this spot

until I take out this boss, right? Like it has that feel. I think a lot of the theme and I think character modeling and like visual design of a lot of the bosses, I think for me are right up right up there with FromSoft stuff, right? Like I think the actual mechanics and movesets itself, I might still edge over to Fromsoft, but the theming and like how cool some of these bosses are and some of like the transformations and stuff off the chain. Like they really nailed it in that aspect. But yeah, like I absolutely like I fell in love with this.

game in 40 hours like I rarely got bored again there were places here and there where it felt a bit along the tooth but whatever the pacing felt a bit slower right like in the next moment somehow like things would pick up and so yeah I absolutely dug it I am about 10 hours in a little bit under 10 hours I'd say um this is a game that I've been looking forward to ever since I previewed it during DDC I believe and that's not very And then we, and then the demo came out right as we were leaving to Summer Game Fest. And unfortunately didn't get to play it a whole lot, but was able to come back and really dive deeper into the demo. And immediately knew this is going to be probably the best non-from software Soulslike game.

Yeah. Like, this is the, like, imitation is a sincerest form of flattery sort of thing. Like, that's happening here tenfold with what round eight studios did. This is the most from software game that I felt that isn't developed by from software. It is so authentically them, in terms of the mood that they're presenting, in terms of what NPCs do, right? I feel like the only thing that is different is that these NPCs aren't all just British actors.

I feel like the voice acting has kind of let me down in some moments where some voice actors are awesome and some pretty weak in some moments. I feel that. And there's like a pretty wide gap amongst the quality where like some of the NPCs I'm just legitimately blown away by and really impressed by. But some of the voice acting can get kind of odd at times. I think the game is incredibly gorgeous. It's running on Unreal Engine 4.

It reminds me a lot of what we saw with something like Callisto Protocol where we're seeing the last remnants of what an Unreal Engine 4 game looks like. We're seeing it kind of at max full potential. I think the lighting in this game is gorgeous. Animations are awesome. There's a lot of cast shadows. I'm playing on PC. And let's just a round of applause, everybody.

Kevin, I know you're over there listening. Round of applause. This game runs well on PC. Oh, hell yeah. Let's go. It is like, it shouldn't be surprising, but it is in this day and age. I'm not sure how performance is on console, but on PC, I am maxing out at, you know, of course, I have a very, very beefy machine, but that doesn't always matter with a lot of new releases. I will say on console, right, in 40 and a half, 40 hours and 30 minutes, not one crash. there were moments of like pop in like very quick pop in where I like I would enter a new location or I turn around real quick and like see a little bit pop in

but never any slow down I'm playing on performance mode as well nothing that's too noticeable or anything that I would say is like getting in the way of my experience yeah I have a pretty damn good PC but as I mentioned earlier that sometimes doesn't matter

with new releases much like what a lot of people and myself experience with Jedi Survivor when that first release which I know that Jedi Survivors gotten a lot better since then, but I was very very pleasantly surprised that this game runs awesome on PC.

One thing I'll shout out to you. You mentioned this game looks beautiful and like I think, yeah, the environments of this game look absolutely gorgeous. The one thing that I was a little bit let down by was like when I would get to an area where I can like see a vista. Like I can go and like I can like look around and see what like the long distance looks like and

those moments were a bit disappointing. And I think it might be just coming off of the Eldon Ring where Eldering open world game, right? Like at every moment it felt like they're thinking of, all right, if you got up on this hill and you looked out into the distance, like how can we make everything look beautiful? Uh, coming off of the Elder Ring, coming into this game and getting to a point where there's a view, it felt almost like, I was going to say Taraki, that's putting it too far. Underwhelming. It's not that, but a little bit underwhelming where it's like, all right, like clouds are covering this area because they didn't want to like,

you know, do all that, which fair, right, because that's a lot of work to make those, uh, Like those big vistas look beautiful. Those big skyscates and everything like. Yeah, like make that stuff look beautiful in every moment. But that was like the one part visually where like I was like, okay, yeah, I'm coming off of the Eldon Ring here. Aside from that, oh yeah, the environments look fantastic. And there's a lot of variety in the kind of environments that you're getting to that I thought was really cool. Right.

Like again, unexpected stuff where, you know, the game takes place in Krot, right? That Kroft is basically this game's Yarnum. And the places they take you that aren't just, all right, so at a second street. or whatever, right? Yeah. Like, you get out and you go to places where it's like, oh, here's a cathedral. And you get there and it's like, oh, shoot, okay, this is actually really cool. You get somewhere else and it's like, whoa, all right, cool.

Like, I think they do such a good job in trying to paint different types of environments. And a lot of them are just very stunning. You already get kind of the bloodborne effect where you just think you're going to be fighting wereoles the whole time. And suddenly there's a blue alien, like, Mr. Meeseek's type dude. And you're like, what the fuck is happening in this video? video game. You know what I've already kind of gotten that feeling from this game.

I don't know if this game is going to hit on the level of substance or storytelling or like trying to go seek out those stories like the way from software does so masterfully. It doesn't. That's my

again, that's where I come back on when I get to those moments that are one for one okay I can compare this to BloodBorn because this game is taking so much inspiration from Bluntbourne. That's one of those things where I'm like, Armenia from Software got you here in terms of like taking the offbeaten path and that's the sauce like that's like a lot of the sauce that's in blood that's the Miyazaki sauce. There's a little bit of that where like you'll be, you know, going down a path in this game.

There's like a window with like a silhouette of a person and he talked to them and they're like, oh, I could really use an apple and you like find an apple and you bring it back to them. Lucky for you. I got an apple right here. I already got one about Baki. Here you go. Wipe this off. Like there's stuff like that, but it's not to that level that you see in Blood War. And Bloodbore and also has like big optional areas that you go down where it's like I'm going to fight the blood star beast or whatever yeah was that the one where like the area had like the dude that was like firing um bullets at you from far away yeah that's the bloods stuff yeah and then you could

take the all all to the route and come back up behind him and he's like oh shit what's up i didn't know you're here but like you know that was when i played bloodborne right that was one of those ones where i thought that was mainland i couldn't believe when i realized that that was an optional thing And in Liza P, pretty much every path feels mainline. Like there's not a bit, at least from what I found in my play through, right? I could not find a big optional opening area, which is fine, right? Like that, not every game needs to have that. But I also just found way less offbeaten, like, oh, here's this little secret over here that's going to lead to this thing.

Usually the ones that I found are a bit more pointed to. And like, I don't know, that was one of those things that I noticed where I'm like, okay, yeah, This is like a one for one thing I can compare. That said, like the places in which they try to imbue, like, fun exploration stuff, I think they do a good job. Like, there are moments where you'll collect a thing, like a thing that has to be translated by a character that you meet. And you bring it by and, like, he'll translate it for you. It'll be like a picture of a place that you've been to before, but like a thing will be circled.

And it's like, hey, if you go back here, then like interact with this thing, you might get a fun collectible. And you do that. And it's like, oh, okay, cool. That was pretty neat. So those moments are cool. The other thing, though, I'll say about story is that this game is a bit more up front with this narrative than a lot of what from software style is. Because from soft, it's like, you got to work for it. Like, we're going to give you narrative, but you got to work for the narrative.

You aren't a random puppet in this world. You are the titular character. You are the titular character. And it feels like there's a lot more dialogue in this game than you'd expect out of a like a Bloodbourne style thing. And it is just way more upfront. like more cut scenes more like moment to moment like you have a you basically you basically have jimony cricket in your pocket and like he's talking i'm like there's a lot of talking in this video game um and i like it's a thing that makes it different and it's a thing that i think works for it um

and to what i to its benefit what i will say is that because there's a lot more up front story with it there are moments that hit me in a way that i did not expect like there's a character moment later in the game that had me like kind of emotional just based off of interactions that remind me of things like near automata for example because near automata is a game about like sentience and what makes a human and sexy robots and all these things right there's like similar subject matter that's touched upon in this game that kind of surprised me with how uh how they went about like depicting some of this stuff surprised me in a good way right like I just wasn't expecting it and so when we got there I was like oh snap okay that's kind of hitting me my fuels a little bit like

You guys are actually doing this thing. But yeah, it's like it's a different vibe of a story than what you'd expect out of a from software type thing, which I think works to its benefit. I think it works really well. Well, I can't wait to dive deeper into the world of crot after a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and it helps lower your bills all in one place.

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I've been writing down a whole bunch of random notes. I kind of also want to go old school with this, kind of like category by category. We've already kind of gotten over our broad thoughts here, but I did want to just point out, once again, Unreal Engine 4, I think the game looks insanely gorgeous. I think this game does,

this game has made a lot of advancements in terms of approachability, but nowhere near what you would want or expect from a game to allow, anybody to play it right um i you know there's no difficulty there there's there's no options like like like no magic stat that that's like almost feels like you're cheating right or not even cheating like i i know the dark souls games as far as i understand it like there's usually like okay if you want the easy mode like just spec toward magic and that'll get you through there's not

really that it starts off that way and then that slowly gets a little bit tougher later on but yeah the whenever people say i want to it's my first souls game what should i go i Everybody always recommends go as a, be a sorcerer, be a magician, you know, because shooting spells and stuff like that as a little easier to deal with. There are the spectres, which are basically when you go into the boss fight, at every boss fight door, there is a pot, and if you have a star fragment, now I'm going to sound like a crazy person. Yeah.

If you have a star fragment and you use it over the pot, when you start the boss battle, you'll have a little companion named his name is Specter. No, he's called a Specter. And so, like, that's kind of how they try to put like an easier assist in there. it's essentially it's essentially just summoning a helper like in any Souls game or an error in any Blood-Born game

I just don't know if they are it's still hard I don't know if they're if they have anything to do with the story though I think that's my bigger question whenever you are doing this in Souls games whenever that happens you're either bringing in an NPC who is another player character or another player somewhere around the world

or it has very it has like story implications Yeah. You know, like Horilu is, when you show up to fight Horo Lou, who's there, it's, you know, so-and-so for Melden Ring. Or if you're going to fight this character, that character is going to show up and they're going to, they got, oh man, they got business to tend to, you know what I mean? And like, and those are the moments where I'm like, you know what?

I normally don't bring in, you know, cooperative help like that. But I kind of want to see what this means to the story. or anything like that? What was the big boss in Eldon Ring that came down like a meteor and he has like a bunch of people that would fight him? Radon. A little horse.

Yeah, like Radon. You'd summon a much of people for that. And that's very much like, oh, there's story here. Like there was basically a war that's going down. Yeah. I wasn't sure if the specter that you summoned because I know the spectre was available in the demo. I didn't use the spectre.

And I saw Snowmike Mike using the spectre, which is, again, just this little thing that you summoned right before a boss fight. And I wasn't sure like, oh, is that a character in the story that we get to learn later? It's like, it's just a ghost. No, it's just like a little helper. A couple of nicings that I think this game does to make the journey not as much of a pain in the ass. Because a lot of, from software games are super tough and they're difficult.

And you're going to baster your head up against the wall for hours and hours and hours. But that's part of the journey because you're just like, oh, I feel myself getting back. better. I know I'm getting closer and closer to beating this. There's, I think, several quality of life things that even someone like Chrome Software can learn from around eight studios. For example, I love that before a boss fight, if you die, the room before you enter, your souls are. Your souls are no longer in the boss room. And you call them souls here. They're called ergo in the game, but I'll just keep on calling them souls like I, even for all the other types of, uh,

you know, currencies throughout all the other sort of souls like. I would just call them souls. But that is really, really nice. Because if you decide, you know what, I'm going to use what I can. I want to go at least get that grand back to go maybe level up and grind a little bit to get more health or get more. I never lost my ergo in this game. Like in a way, like I never like I never died. Had to go retrieve my ergo then died again.

Yeah. Right? Like it was very easy to go and like beeline and pick them back up and then maybe go grind or do something else. Yeah. So that was really convenient. Super convenient. Um, NPCs, uh, the game lets you know where NPCs are. Whenever you have some sort of story moment, uh, if you find an NPC, it's always really nice to kind of walk around and directionally hear their audio and they're somewhere around you. And maybe they're on the top floor and you go up and there's an NPC there. Uh, just do want to fight? No, this dude just wants

to talk. Let's have a little conversation. And then the next time you go to your trashdial, you'll see an icon. You'll see many different icons, depending on whether it's an NPC wanting to talk to you or depending on whether it's an item you're trying to turn in. You'll see all sorts of icons around, similar to what Eldon Ring did with one of its sort of initial updates where it told you where NPCs were. Instead of just like, I hope I come across that dude because that, you know, who knows where the hell they are. Well, one of the things I'll mention, right, and this is kind of the opposite thing. One of the that I wish this game did that, you know, would have taken inspiration from something like

Eldon Ring to level up. You have to go back to Hotel Crot, which is your hub area. And man, oh man, like, I, on one hand, I understand they really want you to go back to that hub because there's a lot of people there and there's a lot of things to do. And like, it's worthwhile to keep going back to the hub. But on the other hand, after playing Eldon Ring, going back to the hub. Let's go back. I love going back to the hub. I do it after work. But like, after playing Eldon Ring, right? Eldering had any one of those points of light? What did that?

I forgot all already. The whatever the checkpoint is called. Graces, yeah. Whenever you'd go back to one of those, you can just level up right at the checkpoint. I was pretty surprised by that. When this game's demo first came out, the developer then released a video,

I think several weeks later, kind of addressing all the feedback and said, hey, we know you all don't like the Dodge. We're going to make the Dodge a little bit better and a little bit more forgiving in some cases. And I really thought they were going to walk back the whole, like, having to go back to Hotel Crot. Yeah, level up.

I was pretty surprised that that did not get fixed or get changed or whatever. Let's see. Bad guys in this game, holy shit. Every one of these bad guys is a, you know, 108, throw in mile an hour pitcher for, you know, the fucking Yankees. they throw so well and so far

they throw little grenades at you from across the goddamn map with perfect accuracy and it's just a pain in the ass that's not really like a complaint it's just more of an observation like holy shit keep your finger on that sprint button these dudes are insane with how accurate they are you think that like you're out of the line of side no that guy's gonna find a way to curve that bullet

into that area you're in the wrong game yeah we need to put you in madden uh i want to shout out the level design. I think this game does a really damn good job with shortcuts and giving me as close to a from soft experience as I thought

I'd get. Yeah. I think that there weren't ever any moments like I always mentioned my first time playing Dark Souls 1 and having my brain blown out of my head many, many times. But there are several like oh, this is a clever little shortcut right here. This is really convenient.

I like the way that you are including this lift or having this gate suddenly be an openable gate when I just thought it was there for set dressing. It's the thing where I'm like,

have I just played enough of these games now where I'm noticing a lot of like of these shortcuts? Because when I get to a new checkpoint in a lot of these levels, right? I'm like, all right?

Like this door here, I can't open it. So obviously I'm about to loop around this way and then come back and drop this ladder here or do whatever. I feel like in this game is a lot more noticeable

than the Frumsoft games that I've played. That and then also, if I had a one gripe with level design, it would be that I wish some of these levels were a bit more like open space or like a bit more surprising when you turn a corner because like a lot of them, a lot of them do feel fundamental from software, right? Hey, you're going to go down this path. We're going to place two dudes here. We're going to place a stronger dude right here.

And then like, you know, let's put a guy here that. Let's have a dude drop from the ceiling. Let's have a guy dropped from the ceiling. Like, it's the type of level design in enemy placement that you'd expect. But very few times was I surprised or like, oh, shit, this is really cool. Like, it felt a bit standard. And I wish, I wish this game surprised me a bit more with that stuff in terms of, like, entering a room and being like, whoa. Like, I guess the example I pull, right?

Early on in Bloodborn, you have what I call the skill check street where it's like one of the first checkpoints. you go, you take the stairs down, and there's a street with like a fucking, it feels like 100 enemies are there. It's like, whoa, like what's going on here? And it feels like, it almost feels like a living, breathing location as opposed to, okay, yeah,

like, you know, you've got enemies placement right here, right here, right here, right here. And so you have to go through that street and go, all right, I really just got to run past all these guys because there's no way in hell that I'm fighting all these people this early in the game. I think that type of like, amazing, explorable level design

that you get out of a blanchee. Bloodborne, some moments of that in this game, I think could have pushed some of the level design further. But that said, like, that's such a nitpick for me, right? Like, that's one of those ones where it's like, if I'm really going to go mono-e-mono place these two games against each other, then that's the stuff I get into. But yeah, like, I think on the surface, the level design is great. Like, I really, I really do like how intricate it is. I do like how interconnected it is. And it comes back to the thing of, oh, these guys get it. They understand that feeling of putting down a ladder and going, oh, thank you.

God. Thank God I put a ladder here. Now this is my checkpoint. I can come back this way and I don't have to freak out if I die here. Like, oh, this lift takes me back over here. I guess I was definitely missing those moments of holy shit. I did not expect to be back right here. I wasn't, I'm shocked that out of the hour and a half of me sort of adventuring in this really gross area, holy shit, light at the end of the tunnel, I'm back and there's the site of grace. There's the bonfire that I first started at, thank God, this has all been one gigantic sort of way to help me find the checkpoint. Yeah. I didn't have any moments like that, but I did have several moments of just, damn, that's a nice little clever, you know, a little checkpoint right there. That's a nice

little clever way to sort of, you know, not have to deal with all the mobs anymore. The game is very much structured like a Demon Souls, a Dark Souls game or Bloodborn pretty much. It's not open world, you are kind of fast traveling to zones. You will have your gigantic big, like several stages, right? But then within those stages, there are going to be several different of these, what do they call them? Stargazers. Stargazers is where you would, those are the bonfires in this game. And that's where you would be fast traveling to. And I think it's serviceable. Again, I think you, it seems like these developers went to, you know how to build a game

101 taught by from software like that's the thing is yeah it does feel like they went to a GDC talk yeah it was being led by Miyazaki and they took all the notes and they're like all right cool yeah they in some ways I wish it did feel a bit more natural but you also

you can't have it both ways like you know a lot of times we play these from soft game these uh souls like games by other developers and go man it's just not quite from soft this one is like so much front soft that I think it's sometimes to their to a fault yeah it gets so trumps off where it's like oh well now I have to compare it like now I have to like look at this other thing and go all right like you made it this far but yeah but then that's

my thing though is that in other ways it's like oh but you really innovated here and I that's where I come down on no it's a five out of five because again like the weapon system and like the combining weapons and the fucking legion arm yeah let's talk let's talk about the feel This is the section called the feel, which sort of encompasses mechanics and controls and combat. This game fucking kicks ass combat-wise. Holy shit, the game rocks ass. And it's one of those that, like, when I played the demo, I didn't really, I didn't need to play more. I was like, I'll wait until this game comes out.

I can tell this game's going to be a fucking banger, right? like if you can bring me this quality of boss fight interaction with different phases knowing what I'm going to be knowing what I'm going to be capable of combat wise essentially like Blessing was mentioning it's a it's a soul's game through and through I think it plays a lot like Securo you could still dodge through attacks you could you still have your invincibility frames you see that big old swipe coming and if you time that correctly. Now be careful because that swipe, that dude loads up

his swipe attack for at least a minute. Yeah, no, there's like, like 10 extra frames that you just don't account for in there. These dudes take forever. My favorite is like when an enemy loads up like a swipe attack and I'm like, oh, I'm about to parry the shit out of this. And I hit the parry like two seconds

to early and then I'm like, oh, I have enough time here that I can just dodge or I can just try to parry. I check Instagram. Like I get on my phone. I'm looking at my notifications. Like, oh man, when are you going to swipe my guy? It's wild. But the, yeah, essentially the way this game works is it kind of melds a lot of the best parts of a lot of different Frumsoft games. And it melts like a lot of my favorite parts too.

Absolutely. Like the Perry system from Sekiro is maybe makes Sekiro my favorite combat system in a From Soft game. And like it may be ever honestly. Don't don't. Just by us saying, Sekiro, don't expect that type of speed. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. When we talk about Sekiro, we're talking about that this game allows you to block attacks, and you could just hold that block button, and you'll take chip damage,

but if you perfectly time the block, you're going to take no chip damage. Yeah. And you're also kind of stagger. You're building up their stagger, which will then allow for those big critical kind of attacks. This game also implements the Bloodbourne rally system. When Bloodbourne came out, a lot of people were like, holy shit, what's this? a souls game. They're making a dark souls game without a shield. And I'm encouraged to be aggressive. If you take a hit, you can get right back in there and keep swiping away and get

that health back, which is awesome to kind of be encouraged to get back into the fight quickly. This game kind of like marries a lot of the best elements from a lot of different from software combat. And I think it was like kind of perfectly done and not overdone in it. anyway. It's still simple enough. Yep. It keeps the complex. It's like, hey, let's leave the complexity to all the different currencies and upgrade trees.

Let's leave that the complexities over there. They find a good handful of different systems and mechanics and then expand on those like crazy. Right. Again, it is that the Perry stuff and like, yeah, the rally mechanic where you can hit back and get some of your health back, right? And then like, you know, the Legion arm stuff. And then it's like, okay, how do we build on that?

And then you get to the skill tree. And it is, again, I'm going talking about the pee organ. I forgot the pee organ existed until like three hours ago. Oh, dude, the pee organ is so clutch. I was like, what happens if I sit down in this chair? And I was like, oh my God, I forgot this was a whole. Dude, the pee organ is so clutch. Because, yeah, as you play through the game, there's a collectible called quartz.

And quartz are dropped by like bigger enemies or more dangerous enemies or sometimes they'll find them in a chest. They're rare. But once we find one, you can then take them back to this chair that, Chepetto has in his office. And then you sit down on the chair and then each court... Sit down, my dear boy. Sit down on my dear boy.

Each court lets you get like one upgrade. The way the skill tree works, it's kind of confusing when you look at it first. But basically, it's done in phases. So in phase one, you have four different things that you might be able to upgrade. Maybe you want to get an extra health pack. They're all essentially passive abilities. Yeah, like you get an extra health pack or you can get maybe another bar for your fable abilities.

or maybe you want to get like another thing. You can then, oh man, Kevin's clutch. Kevin's clutch right now. This person has 34 quarts. Absolutely not. It's insane. I think this is from them. I think this is a video from.

Yeah, but like even putting that on the trailer, that's false advertisement. I had two at most at one given point. But basically you like you go and you put in like one core. Like sometimes an upgrade will take like two quarts to get the full upgrade. But if you go in and put one court, you can then maybe upgrade your attack ability or upgrade your staggered damage or upgrade. Like there's a long list of things that you might be able to add to try and build your character the way you want to build them. And it's just like an extra level added, extra added level of depth that like they keep doing. Because it's the P-Orden stuff, it's the Legion Arm, it's the weapon upgrades, the weapon assembly.

It's like, Andy, for where you're at in the game, there's still like big systems that have yet to be introduced that like really changes the way you play. right like there's so much stuff in there and it's all built around expanding this handful of things that you're doing and like working towards in combat and it's balanced so well and like I'm so excited to see online soon enough once people

get their hands on the game the different builds that they have you know it's not to like it won't be to Eldon Ring level here are the best builds to run in Lies of P yeah like you're gonna get those videos right of like oh yeah for my arm I got a fucking big old shield that like when I parry it explodes

but then I got like a fucking big ass great sword that I use, but also like if I press triangle, I do a backflip and then kick them in the face. Like, is that kind of cool shit that you can do and that kind of customability that you have with your character that makes this game feel very excited to engage with in that level? Because another thing that I'll shout out too

is that like, I changed my weapon every, maybe every five hours. And it always felt satisfying of, all right, oh man, this is my weapon. Because it scales well with technique. I got a handle that, that I've upgraded so that's like it scales S rank with technique.

Oh man, all right, this is what I'm using for the rest of the game. And then five hours later, I find a weapon where I'm like, let me upgrade this. Like, let me upgrade this and see where, oh, yeah,

it's higher attack. I'm going to stick with this one, right? And I like the way the animation on this heavy attack looks like. Yeah. Or like, I like this fable art ability, right? One of the things I'll mention with the stats is that the stats all,

like looking at the stat menu and trying to figure out how I want to level up this character, that should have me sweating. Because like I mentioned, I min-maxed technique. One of the things early on where I was like, I ain't got a waste point on this was capacity. Capacity is your ability to carry more equipment. It affects the weight of what you can carry.

Early on, I was like, I ain't got to worry about this shit. When I tell you that by the time I got to the end of the game, that was my most upgraded stat because you really could just min-max capacity and carry a bunch of shit that really will get you to where you need to go because, like, there's so much stuff you're picking up, everything you equip obviously like you know contributes to the amount of weight you're carrying and you have the the amulets which are basically this game's talismans from from elden ring you have get equipped multiple weapons you're uh you have like defensive part like kind of

yeah you have like yeah like your internal core stuff that affects uh your defensive stuff or like the linen of like what your i guess what your skin is made out of i never look too deeply into what the fuck that means. But like, that's, if you did, I'd be concerned. It's another defensive thing of like, you're defended against this much slash damage, this much blunt damage,

this much Pierce damage. A lot of detail you can get into into, like, creating your character, craft of your character. And I don't know if there's a better feeling mechanic this year or any year. And I'm talking just like

the feel, visually, the sound of breaking an enemy's weapon. Yeah. Like, and these trailers kind of spoiler.

That is such a, that is such an amazing feeling to wear down an enemy so long and to be perfect pairing and perfect blocking every one of their attacks. And any time that, you know,

an enemy, you can't break everybody's weapon. You got to keep that in mind. Like, you'll notice that if an enemy's swinging a big club at you and you perfectly time that block, it'll glow orange.

But if an enemy's punching you and nothing's glowing orange, you're like, all right, well, nothing's going to break on this dude. All I'm doing is building stagger, which is still good. But the thing I love the most is like, it's such an easy concept

that I can't believe I'm as blown away by it, and I feel like it's amazing because we just haven't had it very much in games like this. But the idea that if you perfect block their attacks enough, their weapon will break, and then they do less damage

with that broken weapon. Yeah. Such a stupid-ass easy concept. Oh, yeah. Just surface level, like, yeah, duh, the weaker weapon will do less damage against you. But it's so genius and it works so perfectly with how I want to play this game. I sometimes have more success just dodging enemies, but I have a lot more fun trying to get the perfect blocks down to have that boss finally do one more swing in me. And the sound and, again, all of it together just, it reminds me of like,

carrying somebody in Dark Souls or getting that perfect sort of stagger and bloodbore to go in for the visceral attack. Like, this is on that level for me of, like, they have the perfect sound effect for it. And it is amazing. A game that doesn't do it great,

Atlas Fallen has like an awful Perry sound effect. It sounds like, some people were like, this sounds like a, a middle gear solid menu sound. Yeah. Like, this game has like a,

like a, like a, just a great impact sound. The weapon breaks, you see it. fly off. Yeah. And then you're like, oh shit. Now I got you, bro. Yeah, it is such an awesome feeling. One thing about the Perry, right? I wish the timing of the Perry was a little bit more forgiving. There were so many times where I'm like, I swear to God, I got that, right? And like,

maybe that's a get good moment for me, but I've also heard from other people, so which makes you feel comfortable that it might not just be me. It's a tough game. It's tough. I'll say like it is, I thought it was going to be pretty easy because I, I guess when I played the demo back several months ago you know the final boss of the demo I was like okay I'm kind of I'm struggling here but I beat it within like an hour maybe an hour and a half

and this time I was like you know what I'll summon the little specter I'll summon the specter and it was so fast like I beat this boss so quickly on the first try and I was like man maybe they tune some stuff down because this this feels a little bit easy honestly and I was quickly just shut up because several bosses later took me you know I was I've taken like you know an hour and a half to like you know around 60 minutes to 90 minutes for a lot of these boss fights I was looking forward to

Lou Boo from Will Long Fallen Dynasty I was looking forward to like getting to the end of the year and being like all right that won that won the award for toughest boss battle of the year there's some there's a couple of boss fights in here around like oh this is harder than Lou Bo and Lubu had me like shaking in my boots Loubo had me struggling Louvo had me breaking controllers there's a boss battle in here and there's like the ones like toward the end

where I'm like what the how the fuck do they expect anybody to get past this and eventually I do when I'm like what the fuck was that? I'm sweating dude but it's also one of those games that reminds I mean it's the best and worst

parts of any souls like where there are several enemies that aren't bosses that are just going to ruin your goddamn day. There are several just standard enemies that are, you know, larger and more, you know, these aren't just normal mob enemies, right? But, like, there are some dudes out there,

like, every time I see one of those fuckers. Yeah. Dude, I got fucked up by a bear. That bear fucked up my shit. I was like, ah, shit. Like, you're not even, like, a big puppet. Like, you're not even, like, a demon or whatever. Yeah.

You're a fucking bear. You know, you didn't. didn't even get a cutscene. You just kind of strolled in here. I just kind of saw you just walking around. And I was like, oh, I'll take this bear out. And that bear fucked me up. And then I went through.

And I, like, I made that bear. My grind bear, where like, I was like, I'm coming down this path a hundred times just so I can get ergo. And I'm murdering this bear like fucking 100 times in a row just so I can get all this XP so I can level up. Yeah. And then you equip that one little talisman or whatever that gets you more ergo whenever you kill somebody.

And like, all of those systems play so well together. I love that this game does have passives like that. The enemy that kept on getting me was the early on was the big fire dude who would hit you once and knock you down and as you're like recovering would whack you like at least five or six more times. Fuck that guy. Yeah, that dude was an asshole. That's a really, really terrible dude.

You got other categories in there? Yeah. I wanted to talk about like systems when it comes to like not only just what we talked about with the P organ. but the other talent trees, um, I think that it can get a little bit overwhelming. For someone like me,

who is pretty familiar with the flow and rhythm of a soul's game, this kind of hits a lot of those same beats, um, where if you kill a big boss, guess what? You're going to get a special boss soul. Yeah.

And you can break that soul to get a bunch of ergo or get a bunch of souls or whatever. Or later on, you'll find an MPC who says, hey, give me that special boss soul and I'll give you a cool weapon in exchange for it. So, like, a lot of those rhythms are still there. Yeah. I broke that rule super early on.

No. Which is like, whatever. I've never been, like, my chat always would freak out whenever I'd be playing these games. And they'd be like, no, don't get that weapon. And it's like, I don't need to get every weapon. It's okay. One of the weapons, like, carried me through maybe like eight hours of the game.

Like, one of the weapons I got. One of the special ones? One of the special ones, yeah. Yeah, so, like, keep that in mind. There are a lot of the same rhythms that you're used to. You're going to get that same verse chorus, verse chorus, instrumental break, final chorus. Like, they hit all the same sort of beats that a From Soft game would do.

So when you beat a big boss, make sure you're not breaking that big ergo thing. I do feel like leveling up took quite a while. Like, I'm used to, when I play Elven Ring with my, Mike and Nick, and we beat a big boss, and it's like, here's 80,000 souls or whatever. Here's it ruins all the... And I feel like any time I'd beat a massive boss, it would be like, here's 6,000. It's like, God damn, you're gonna...

You're allowing me to level up once. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. That feels kind of bullshit right now. I wasn't sure how you were feeling with, like, leveling up early on, because I know it's some criticisms we had with Starfield. takes a while to level up and at least later on

and then you can't reset any of your points I'm not sure if there's any reset points here I didn't have so you can re spec after a certain point I didn't find the respect because I wanted to respect real bad because again I put myself in hard mode but I couldn't find the respect and so I thought I wasn't there until I hit somebody else up

and they were like oh finally found it is this place I'm like oh shit maybe we were talking about another game where it took really long to level up I think Starfield had that. Was it Starfield? Okay. But I didn't really have, I didn't have as much of that issue, but I think part of that might be.

So, what, rewind, like a year and a half ago when we were reviewing Eldon Ring. And one of my big complaints with Eldon Ring was like, yeah, I feel like I'm being forced to just grind. And, like, I'm going, I'm on the same hill, taking out the same people. And I'm doing that for, like, hours on a time just so I can level up and then grind. I hated you for saying that. I know, like, that's what I resented you. And, like, you know, that was a beef I've had with that game. I think, I think there's something that's swished within me where in this game,

I found a pretty good hallway and I was like, I'm going to put on a podcast. I'm going to be in this hallway for an hour and a half just fucking grinding out XP. And I did that and it was the best feeling ever. I enjoyed it so much. I didn't want to stop. I was like, yo, I'm getting so fucking powerful.

Just killing the same three enemies. It was three. It was like two like fucking like puppets without even like skins. They were just like their puppets that were falling off the bone. that I was taken out and then one big guy I took out those three puppets so many

and then I found another room in the same route that had two more puppets in it I was like oh I'm about to get more XP out of these guys and so I fucking I kept grinding the same NPCs like kept getting the same XP I leveled up like maybe 15

to 20 times just based on that hallway and it felt so fucking good and so I think just early on I had already just like over leveled myself that hit equilibrium pretty quickly like further into the game where like you know you get to a boss and it's like, okay, this is leveled out.

Like, these guys are on my level. But I think once you're that far into the game, you've kind of just locked into like whatever your thing is. And it becomes even less about leveling as it is about collecting the right items and talismans and upgrading your weapon and stuff like that. So I really didn't like struggle with that stuff until late, late game where I felt I was just too weak. And that ended up just coming down to like, all right, I guess I'm just going to try harder.

Another nice quality of life thing I wanted to throw out there. is them kind of having their own category for throwable items. Usually FromSoft just has like, here's everything you've ever picked up. Oh, yeah. But you have to kind of decide which are throwable and which you're consumable. You know, like, they just have like a whole bunch of stuff,

but there's like a special section that's like throwing items. And it's like, oh, shout out to you. That's awesome. One thing I'll shout out. There's an item that's like a go back to the last checkpoint type item when you use it. Like, for me, I have a map to X and then write on the D pad. And it's so close. Because like one of the, again, like earlier in this episode, right, one of the complaints

is that, oh, you have to, you have to go back to the hub area to then level up. You have to talk to a person. When you use that item, a menu pops up that's like last stargazer or the hotel stargazer. And so do you want to go back to your last checkpoint or do you want a quick, quick travel to the hotel? And like, when in those bouts of, I'll call it grind paralysis, right? Like I'm just like in my mode of get XP. All right, I got enough to level up. X, write D-pad.

Is that on a cool down? No. That's just forever. It is forever. Yeah, you can use it whenever you want. Oh, wow. And it is the most convenient. Like every Souls game needs to have this thing.

So in Dark Souls 3 there's an item called the Homeward Bone that takes you back to either the last bonfire or your hub world. But then you can eventually level it up to a point where you have one. in perpetuity, you just have like the permanent version of it. But that's neat that you have it from the get-go. I wasn't sure what that item did. And yeah, with every new sort of soul-style game, you're going to have to learn a new terminology.

You're learning a new dictionary. You're learning a new language. Like, how is this game trying to get across what I know the other games are getting across? Yeah. I appreciate those that like this game expects you to kind of know already. Like all the stuff is the same, right? like we know what the packs are that you you pop to like get more XP we know like again like the it's called the homeward bone homeward bone yeah it's a wild name for that bone it's insane it's a little

bone you eat it wrote that bone well you have that right like there's a level of familiarity where if you played one of these then like you kind of know what you're getting into but this game also does have a pretty good glossary and a pretty good tutorial system where you'll get the pop-ups of like oh yeah here's this thing that we'll tell you a quick thing about. And then, you know, it's a bit more, I guess, on the face of it of trying to teach you how to play the game. Which, again, I appreciate it. I think that's good for people that might pick up Liza P as their first one. One last thing I wanted to throw out.

Because, again, I'm loving this game and I can't wait to get back to it. And it's such a small thing that I don't have a whole lot of high hopes for, and I don't want you to spoil me on anything. but if you could just give me the overall vibe of it because if any of you all play the demo there's a moment where and the demo takes place right at the beginning of the game and there's a moment where they're like hey

you can only enter this hotel if you're human that you have to lie in order to get into the hotel what are you going to do? Are you a puppet or are you a human? You choose, I'm going to lie and you say that you're a human and they let you in and it's like oh wow, puppets can't lie.

How is this dude lying? And I always thought this system was going to be insanely shallow. It's still very well, maybe. But there was a moment with an MPC where an MPC was like asking me stuff about the hub world. And I didn't want to let them know. Just based on past experiences with Souls game. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

There have been a lot of Souls games blessings where sometimes you just I just made you I just pluralized your first name blessings there have been several Souls games where maybe you get a little too lax of days ago

and you're like yeah let Ronnie in basically you have good knowledge like yes like you've been here before you know what the vibes are and I say you let fucking Ronnie in and then you show up back to your hub world to level up and all your homies are dead

and you're like oh my God Ronnie Ronnie the murder I mean, actually was a murderer. They don't just call them that. You know what I mean? So like, there are moments like, I've already hit one of those moments. I'm like, oh, this is kind of intriguing. And I don't know if it's going to amount to very much at all.

But I appreciate that it's there in the form that it's in because it's at least making me think, you know? Yeah. There is, it's tough to talk about without spoiling things. And so I'm not going to spoil anything. But, like, I think for me, I was satisfied with, like, how decisions I made. On a zero to five, where would you rate those little decision making, like, the quality of... Maybe like a three. Okay, that's way more than I thought in me.

Yeah, like, it's not going to be like, you know, life altering, at least from what I understand, unless I go back and make different decisions. It turns out it's a fucking different game. But... There are three different endings. Oh, is that confirmed? Yeah. Okay, cool. But yeah, like, there are...

When you make certain choices, it does affect things, is what I'll say. Okay. But... I like that. I don't think I had anything. like that where I'm like, oh yeah, come over to this thing. And then all of a sudden, like, I'm like, oh, shit, I fucked up. Everything's fucked. Oh, God. Like, I never had any moments like that. But there were cool moments of like, oh, shoot, do I tell this person, this thing? Like, what I will say,

because it's, uh, this is a pretty cool story about like, again, the character you're playing, them being a puppet. Uh, a lot of the themes revolve around making human choices. And so there would be characters they're talking to that are going through a thing. And it's like, do I lie to comfort this person or do I tell the truth even though the truth is kind of fucked up. And like those decisions kind of like build into who your character is. And like they have ramifications to your character. And so when you get to those decisions like you had to kind of think about it. Right.

And like there are more like that is a lot of what the game is doing with its choices without spoiling anything. And I think that's something is really neat. I like that a lot. I would have not have expected very much from that. Because that's what you're giving me right there blessing is like you're taking the from software sauce. And you just let me dip the chip in a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit.

I got that toastada and I just dipped it in a little tiny bit and that's just enough for me. Any closing thoughts, bless. Again, like, I absolutely adore this game. I think it's up there with the best games of the year for me. I'm so curious to see if other people agree, right? Like, I'm not, I don't know what anybody else is giving this game. I don't know what reviews look like, right? But, like, playing this game, I'm blown away by it.

I think it'll probably be in, like, my top five, maybe in like a year that's already stacked. we'll see when Spider-Man 2 comes out, you know what I mean? Like, it's tough to figure out what the 5 is. But, dude, it's incredible. It's already seeming like the biggest surprise of the year, for me at least, where, again, we see a lot of these games come and go. We see a lot of games with big promises and never quite deliver, but this one is seeming like it might play. The fact that I'm playing this game post-elder ring, and I'm in love with it. I think speaks volumes to, like, how good it is.

Like, again, it's tough to, and I don't want to get into this whole thing and, like, just compare it, even though I've compared it a lot already, of soul stuff, right? Like, you know, I don't know. People are going to like this as much as Bloodborn. I think there are plenty of things that Bloodborn does better. I think there are something that this game does better. Look, on their website, they say this game is a Soul style game. Yeah, exactly.

There's no way you can disconnect the two. Like, it is very, very much part of that DNA. The thing that impresses me the most is that not only do these guys get it, but they injected enough originality into it where I'm like, oh, okay, this is, this is its own thing. and this thing is a game that stands on its own two legs and has something to say and has something here that makes it worthwhile to play even outside of the other games that'll come before. And so, yeah, I think this game is up there for me and I absolutely adore it.

Yeah, and just check your corners. You're always going to have someone popping out from somewhere trying to stab you in the back or knock you off a ledge. 1,000%. It is very much a soul's game in that way. But thanks for watching and listening, everybody. We appreciate you very, very much. That's been blessing. I've been Andy. This has been the kind of funny games cast. Make sure you go to the video if you're listening on audio

and just click the like button and say, Pam, Andy, what a host, huh? What a host. That guy was hosting today. That guy hosted today. Appreciate you all watching, everybody. We'll see you all next time.