played quite a bit of Lies of P tonite/today and im digging it.

The biggest stumbling point for me so far is wrestling against my Fromsoft muscle memory and trying to learn LoP's rhythm and flow. I know a lot of reviews are saying this game is really cribbing Fromsoft hard, especially Bloodborne and Sekiro specifically but in the moment to moment combat this game DOES feel like its own beast and will feel bad if you try to play it purely like either of those two games

I'm still early enough that i dont have my P-organ (heehee) yet, and to my understanding, there are options early in the upgrade tree that improve some things like dashes. But even without those QoL upgrades, im getting a feel for what this game WANTS to be and i can dig it.

P (is that his name?) generally does not move around as fast as Hunters or Sekiro or Tarnished. Strafing attacks is something that takes more effort on the players part, which means if youre trying to circle around enemies, even big bosses, expecting to avoid their offense the same way you can in FS games, then LoP will feel INCREDIBLY sluggish and awkward at first. Design decisions like the way blocking still has (SIZEABLE) chip damage, the relatively small parry window, and the way perilous attacks are both unblockable AND ignore the i-frames on your dash will all make combat feel really, really claustrophobic at first. On top of this, many attacks are very committal. Their cancel windows for dashes or blocking are late into their recovery so you cant whale on an opponent and then mash block/parry when you see an enemy attack start up.

However, i think the design intention behind this is to discourage auto-pilot gameplay. It feels like they want you to really, really learn boss/enemy movesets (kind of like sekiro) and have answers ready for them rather than defaulting to an overly passive, or overly aggressive playstyle. The combat has a unique rhythm to it imo and once you start to click with that rhythm, it starts to feel really, REALLY good. I think the devs have 100% hit the nail on the core dopamine hit of "oh god this fight is impossible how the fuck am i ever gonna be able to do this.... wait, no i can do this" that i heavily associate with Fromsoft's catalogue.