Prior to playing Lies of P, my top two were Sekiro and Bloodborne, in that order. Bloodborne was the first soulslike I've played ever, apart from a little DS1 back when I was like 12 on the janky PC port, and I bounced off it hard. Took me several attempts and multiple years to get in there and start enjoying my time. Pretty much same goes for Sekiro where I prefer the gameplay a lot more to Bloodborne's, might be a top 5 game of all time for me.

It's saying a lot that LoP is right behind Sekiro, before Bloodborne, in my top 3. It just combines the best of both worlds of both Sekiro and Bloodborne. The atmosphere is amazing, the combat feels snappy, responsive, and weighty, the story is very touching and personal. The soundtrack - holy, the soundtrack. Combining modern music on the records you collect with classic Souls (boss) music a la Dark Souls and Bloodborne is genius.

I'd never have expected for LoP to surpass Bloodborne for me considering I've listened to the Paleblood Hunt front to back like 3-4 times, have watched every imaginable video essay about Bloodborne, have merch, have played through the entire game like 5+ times. LoP really just feels like Bloodborne 2 in the spiritual sense - LoP very much is different to Bloodborne in many ways.

I know it's a way past dead horse by now and many in the community feel like we don't need a successor to Bloodborne. But I'm just so in love with the franchise, it'd be fucking stellar if we had any more to play. LoP will be happy in its second place until then

Recently finally gotten around to playing Lies of P, and I've been enjoying my time a lot - I'd probably put it right between Sekiro and Bloodborne for my favourite Soulslikes. The boss fights have been pretty cool throughout the playthrough. However, the last few bosses, especially Laxasia and Simon, have been kicking my teeth in, so I used a summon to kill both easily.

Now, when people complain about players not playing "the right way" - aka bashing your head in for 10 days straight, using melee only, no summons, magic, cheese, whatever - I'm the first to say that it doesn't matter how people play the game as long as they enjoy it and that they don't have to prove they're "more" of a gamer than someone who did adhere to these self-imposed rules.

After finishing these two fights (I'm at the Nameless Puppet now🫠), however, I kind of feel like I've robbed myself of a "worthy" victory because it was soo much easier with the summons than without them. Like, 30+ tries without and basically first try with a summon. It kind of took away the whole challenge and doesn't feel like I've actually beaten them.

Ultimately, thinking that I've spent so much time learning their patterns and trying to kill them "the proper way", it doesn't feel as bad since I had grown frustrated quite a bit by the end, so I just wanted an easy out. Still nagging on my mind.

What are y'all thoughts on this subject? Is it warranted that I feel like I robbed myself of a proper victory? Should I just get over it? Anything similar happen to you?

Thanks!

Edit: Just remembered that I used summons quite a lot more often than initially thought. I used a summon for both Rabbit Gang fights as well as the Puppet King and the Green Swamp Monster too.

The Rabbit Gang fight felt quite cool like that, especially the first one, since it felt like a real brawl of two equal parties. I consistently got to phase 2 of both Puppet King and Swamp Monster easily but always ended up dying quickly, so the summons took the edge off quite a bit.

Edit 2: Beat Nameless Puppet, probably got a bad ending with Gepetto dying and calling me a useless puppet. But idgaf - I beat that fucker 😎

I like me some carbonated water personally, and tap water in Germany is super clean and tastes nice almost everywhere. However, I've heard of some people before that they dislike Sodastreams for some reason or another. What gives?

It's around 40ish FPS on a base PS4 which kinda puts it in an uncanny-valley-sorta area where it looks smoother than the standard 30FPS and also more sluggish at the same time. Still awesome to play