Highlights
- Soulslike games often include awkward platforming segments that don’t fit with the rest of the game.
- These sections can be optional and lead to valuable rewards, but they often feel luck-based and overly frustrating.
- Soulslike developers have largely kept the ‘bad platforming’ from FromSoft games, highlighting a problem with devs in the genre tending to stick too zealously to the Souls design template.
Ever had one of those gaming sessions where you are playing some really fun game (like, I dunno, Dark Souls say), loving every second of its tight combat, and then, out of nowhere, something awkward happens? You’ve just tried to traverse some narrow beam over a chasm, cautiously inching forward, when suddenly you slip and fall to your demise. At first you think, ‘No big deal, I can try again.’ But then it happens again, and this time, you fail to retrieve your hard-earned souls from where they were last lost.
Several attempts later, you finally make it across, but wait—the beam section goes on! Now, you have to do some seriously tricky jumps from ledge to ledge, praying that everything goes smoothly so you can get back to the part of the game you actually enjoy. But hold on a second… Why are you suddenly getting bombarded with ranged projectiles from off-screen while you’re struggling with your jumps? Oh, no…
Try Jumping To That Hole
For the past few months, I’ve been on a boss-slaying spree in all sorts of soulslikes (it’s not just a phase, mom!). From Elden Ring to Lies of P, I’ve faced creatures that look absolutely horrific and pack a serious punch. But none of these formidable foes terrify me more than the real challenge of these games: dreadfully stiff platforming segments.
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What Is A Soulslike? A Lies Of P Analysis
Lies of P is one of the best Souslike games not made by FromSoftware. Just not in the ways you’d expect.
Picture this: playing Lies of P the other day, I reached St. Frangelico Cathedral. As you might expect from the name, it was a gorgeous building—partly collapsed, of course, since we’re dealing with a puppet rebellion here—with this hauntingly soothing church organ music echoing in the background. But any excitement I had was swiftly replaced by irritation as I realized I was in for a merciless platforming gauntlet. From the ground floor to the chapel high above, I had to navigate the treacherous remains of the clock tower, inching my way up with every nerve on edge.
Needless to say, this place has it all: a poisonous lake you have to cross every time on your way there, clunky jumping (L3 key, of all things), narrow beams, long ladders, swinging pendulums and cogs serving as obstacles, deadly ball traps that could rival Indiana Jones’, and, of course, enemies shooting at you while you perform all those tricks without any tools to shoot them back. And my god, that checkpoint-free section was interminable, like I was stuck in platforming purgatory, replaying the same course over and over for a decent two hours — time I’d have better spent figuring out how to finally beat that Mad Clown Puppet.
And to think, I’ve heard whispers that this isn’t even the worst part of the whole platforming ordeal in that game yet. Sheesh!
Such segments aren’t exclusive to Lies of P. Fellow Soulslike Remnant 2 is just as guilty, and you’ll stumble upon plenty of them in any of FromSoftware’s Souls games too, where you have to hug walls approximately 234 times more than I’d prefer. In Elden Ring, for example, some of the hidden places on the map, like the Divine Tower of Caelid or the Deeproot Depths, can only be reached by careful platforming, on horseback, of all things. Maybe that’s why they threw in a mount with a double jump for the first time ever—to crank up the frustration level of platforming to new heights. In a way, that’s an even weirder experiment than Bloodborne’s Chalice Dungeons.
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To FromSoft’s credit though, such sections are usually optional and lead to some seriously juicy treasures or secret bosses, rather than being forced down your throat like St. Frangelico Cathedral in Lies of P that you can’t even skip. I guess this is kinda worthy of praise. But honestly, it just makes me appreciate Demon’s Souls Remake more, as there’s no jump button in that game at all—cheers to that simplicity.
No One Will Miss That Part
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against platforming in general. Actually, I quite enjoy it when it’s done right, in games where it’s a core part of the experience, with slick and precise movement. Think Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, or Assassin’s Creed, each offering a polished, finely-tuned platforming experience for those who dig it. Well, maybe not so much the latter, considering how often your character seems to have a mind of their own when climbing somewhere in Assassin’s Creed. But seriously, why do developers feel the need to shoehorn these episodes into games where they just don’t belong?
It almost feels like a bad design decision by FromSoft got integrated not only into its subsequent games, but the entire genre that it spawned.
Adding frustrating platforming to every game is like jamming a super tough boss battle into a narrative-driven cinematic adventure that folks mainly play to enjoy cutscenes and characters. Or doing some out-of-place QTE-sections in a racing game like Need for Speed: The Run, because reasons. Or throwing a horde of enemies at you all at once in survival-horror games like The Callisto Protocol, whose combat system is clearly geared towards one-on-one encounters. Or those excessively chatty people in modern racing games that I can’t stand.
10 Best Games Like Lies Of P, Ranked
Looking for a new game to scratch the Lie of P itch? Here are ten great games to play if you enjoyed Lies of P.
Every time I stumble across one of those totally dreadful platforming sections in any Soulslike game, I find myself questioning its very existence — and I still have no answer for that. It reminds me of the early 3D days of first-person shooters, when even great games like Turok or Half-Life had these terrible first-person platforming segments that added nothing but frustration to otherwise great core experiences. In the case of Soulslikes, it almost feels like a bad design decision by FromSoft (yep, even they can do those sometimes) got integrated not only into subsequent games, but the entire genre that it spawned, with many of the games therein not daring to deviate too much from the template.
Seriously, I don’t want to die from plummeting more times than I do during the final boss showdown in combat-focused games, and the developers really need to put an end to this madness. Let’s leave this out-of-place platforming nonsense in the past, or better yet, save it for games where it actually belongs.
Lies of P
$45 $60 Save $15
- Platform(s)
- PS5 , Xbox Series X , PC
- Released
- September 19, 2023
- Developer(s)
- Neowiz Games , Round8 Studio
- Genre(s)
- Soulslike
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