P's Lies: Overture proudly wears blood inspiration on her sleeves
Blog Andrew Joseph 22 May , 2025 0
In 2021, Round 8 and Neowiz announced P's lie, a moody soul, answering a question no one had ever thought about: What if Bloodborne was actually a reimagining of the Victorian Carlo Collodi Pinocchio? When it launches in 2023, it was surprised by skeptics and over-delivered its dark fantasy environment and the joy of its aggressive battles. Two years later, I had to spend some quality time with Overture (an extension ironically named as the popular action game). Even though I didn't see an hour past the first stage and about an hour of the new boss recall mode, it was obvious that the South Korean team was ready to surpass again.
The overture is a prequel to the P-Lie incident, just before the puppet madness begins, the robot Thralls massacres everyone in the city of Krat. But it turns out that many of its ideas about settings, weapons, etc. are actually meant for the base game, but are cut to prevent the original version from being too swollen. Jiwon Choi, director of the 8th round studio game, told IGN in an interview that he and his team were not content to let these ideas be underdeveloped and unfulfilled. Through the translator, he describes P's lies as the ultimate “complete” overture.
P's lies have always been associated with blood, mainly because of its appearance, and because the battles in both games adhere to the soul-like traditions, but give up key behaviors such as blocking. Even after launch, a large DLC was released well to be released to the original project, which has become a FromSoftware signature. But Cui's team accepted the comparison. “It's our honor (compared to from Software).” He added that this inspired them to do things that could clear high expectations, and they can only hope that they do it with the lies of p and will continue to do it in the prologue.
The first step you take in the boot P of the nominal character P is to enter the snow-covered area around the Krat Zoo. The story details are light and the developers are nervous about anything we haven't seen so far. After some prefaces on your Lantern Cricket, it's hard not to spend a few seconds swaying on a brand new weapon in the overture: a leonheart who looks exactly like that kind of kindness would commission for itself. This is one of several new weapons I chopped in this frozen Menagerie, and on top of the new weapons of the existing type, there is a new, very cool legion arms that work very differently but very effective.
The pale knight, known as the Little Knight, is my main weapon against the Ergo poison monsters on the suburbs of the zoo and on the walls. It has a weight and attack mode similar to a greatsword, but its heavy attack pulls the trigger and comes with a double barrel gun that screams at the enemy. The recoil of these shots pushes p, so it can be useful when mixed into attack strings to maintain avoidance. I learned it was too late in the demo, and it was a trick that you could actually fire the weapon again to re-engage the massive follow-up attack on the bad guys. So basically, it's the coolest weapon ever.
Another new weapon type I dabbled in is the bow, which is the first fully ranged weapon in the series. This feels perfect for poking smaller enemies from a distance, but can't make reasonable marks on larger enemies. I think over time there might be a way to use its perfect draw mechanic to threaten the various bad guys in Down Range, but I can't manage it in my hour. I wish I spent more time with a pair of long claws to chop off the enemy, another new type of weapon that I usually reserve for the best rage. This doesn't scratch the surface of the weapons I've covered, which are obviously new additions to the existing weapon genre, but for me, people who really like the weapon customization aspect of the basic game will have a lot of new toys that blend together.
The new Legion weapons I tried also add a lot to the P's kit. My favorite is another gun: a double barrel, payable to mitigate the type of power, transmission and impact on the bad guys. It's a tighter option, but even at half the cost, it makes the feed short work roam around the snow or the shabby halls of the zoo itself. Go all out, this is a reliable tool that can make bigger enemies or at least interrupt their attacks for a second. In the demo, I came to the second arm, but this in itself is undoubtedly a powerful offensive choice. It fires a blade, which will rotate for a short time to the enemy, similar to a throwable saw blade, with two differences. First, it can fire multiple blades immediately to cause some significant damage to a target over time, and two blades quickly press the button before releasing the flight blade, and you can completely change the attack to a set of blades dancing around the P, which is perfect for dealing damage to solid AOE.
Speaking of the goal, the cast of the enemy in this section is very noticeable outside at the beginning of the level, but as we go deeper into the area. Some biting wolf and trash zombies are run by the mill, but like some very angry kangaroos and an Elogue's troubled elephant, the evil-style surprise with life really makes me wonder. I spent so much time fighting the latter that I just reached the end of the level to see the boss: Ergo's twisted giant crocodile.
At this point, the boss will get a new focus in the patches of the base game, which will be accompanied by two new game modes: Battle Memory and Death Parade. Death Parade is a straightforward boss, you can make playlists of at least 3 bosses and try to knock them all out in one go. Meanwhile, the battle memory allows you to return to the old boss fights and try to defeat them again, now up to five different hard levels, each level adding to the unique statistics these bosses get in this mode. The rewards of conquering these layers have been suggested but not elaborated. I went back to an old boss, the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, and saw how the 3rd level differed from what I remember in the basic game. The way they beat me and my rusty fingers didn't point out any real difference, but like the rest of P's lies, I'm sure teasing this mystery brought a lot of experimentation.
P's Lies is one of the outstanding games of 2023 and one of the best in its action RPG subgenre. Overture won't use too many recipes, but I found the new ingredients it adds (such as new weapon types and extremely weird monsters) that there will never be too many good things even if it's largely the same thing.