Except for the translation;) it was phenomenally bad.
But gameplay wise, I’m confident that it has some of the coolest mechanics out there In the soulslike universe. I particularly loved that it occurred to me so many times that it had felt completely impossible to beat bosses at first but I gradually figured them out. And many tries after, I slay them like I dance!
Probably THE best “first try” from a studio (I think the only other thing round8 did was a trash mmo?).
The weapon system is very interesting but I am not sure if I would call it good? I love that movesets are decoupled from damage which lets me actually try different movesets with almost no penalty since you upgrade the damage. Except for the unique weapons which I feel were a mistake. That said, this ALSO lends itself very well to ridiculously OP/meta builds and… yeah.
The P Organ system can suck my P Organ. Conceptually it is interesting. In practice it is just a progress gated system that shuts out core gameplay mechanics. Although I hear that got heavily rebalanced for the DLC.
Level design… leaves a lot to be desired. It reminded me a lot of Wo Long and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy: Origins: Chad Garland Edition where you have a LOT of unlockable shortcuts to the previous bonfire… right at the next bonfire. Like the levels were designed to be more interconnected until late in dev.
Encounter design ranges from good to bad but doesn’t swing too hard in either direction and there are some REAL good “fuck you” traps that are usually close enough to a shortcut or bonfire that it is more funny than not.
Boss fights are, mostly, REALLY REALLY good. I admittedly only came in after the NPC summons were added but I found the bosses to be well balanced and quite often beat the boss on one of my “learn their attacks” runs before spending a summon token.
That said, the back half of the core game suffers from “Okay, we have let you try different methods until now but this game is really about parrying” with the gimmick/puzzle boss followed by bosses that basically feel like you are just surviving until you can parry one specific attack to do enough stagger damage to actually hit them.
Haven’t got to the DLC yet. But I am really excited for a sale or to just have an Urge to play it. Is Lies of P perfect? No. Is it even on par with most of the From-Souls (let alone the Niohs)? No. But it is probably The Best Of The Rest and I will probably be there day one for Lies of P 2 (especially if it really is about Them).