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 😎
Just play the games the way it feels more fun to you. All that should matter about how you play is “are you having fun?” If the answer is yes then you’re playing the game “correctly”
The thing is, it didn’t feel fun getting beaten repeatedly, even though I’m used to it having platinumed Bloodborne and Sekiro, but it also didn’t feel satisfying to win using a summon. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t base my entire enjoyment on an arbitrary restriction and goal that I want to attain.
I think your internal conflict is valid, but I think it’s okay to let yourself off the hook from squeezing the maximum satisfaction out of a game all the time.
You felt like each of those bosses reached the point of “not being fun anymore”, and you took action to move on and find the fun again.
Likewise, using a summon doesn’t invalidate all the hard work you did already do to learn the patterns. The fights became so easy with the summon BECAUSE the work you put in prior.
You’re over-thinking it, my dude
The thing is, it didn’t feel fun getting beaten repeatedly, even though I’m used to it having platinumed Bloodborne and Sekiro, but it also didn’t feel satisfying to win using a summon.
Why not? Genuine question, what about it made you not enjoy it? Did it end up feeling too easy?
If they get friends, I get friends.
Fuck every last person who gatekeeps the way someone uses intentional game mechanics.
Fr fr. I will nvr understand how people will tell you how you can’t use whole systems in a soulslike because that is ‘cheating’. “but I beat X boss without Y so I’m better than you!” and I fucking have a defect on my left thumb that makes it harder to use the left analog thumbstick, am I better than you in every game I’ve ever played?
Like people saying using bleed on elden ring makes it too easy. I’m doing a new playthrough with str/faith and let me tell you, I don’t even need to use any incantation cause 2handers do insane dmg and every 5 attacks the boss drops to his knees and I get a free 1/5 of his heath with the crit, exactly how bleed does except most bleed weapons don’t do insane dmg with their normal attacks and no boss is immune to getting knocked down (tho some are immune to crit attacks).
I cheesed the game using throwables and summons and I absolutely loved it. Without those I would’ve been frustrated and spent quality time on ignoring the tools that help me finish the game and compensating with my hard labour.
Feel that! I mostly stick to “traditional” gameplay personally because I like it that way the most, but it’s absolutely hilarious to see what people concoct when they’re creative. I’ve watched a couple cheese videos for Laxasia, for example, and outside of people like Ongbal who make any boss look like a clown, there were a lot that were using the Legion Arm or consumables a lot and to great effect. Pretty awesome, really
Yup! In the latest friends per second podcast the podcasters were talking about how From Software games (tbh Lies of P is a love letter to bloodborne) don’t explicitly give you a difficulty modifier but the games themselves have several things/objects/weapons that can modify the game difficulty for you. It’s like the setting is hidden within the game, rather than on the menu.
This idea really clicked with me. So if gamers want an easy mode, they use the “cheeses”, if they want hard mode, they ignore that, and if they want to change difficulty, they simply equip/unequip the cheese.
People who treat single player/pve games as if they’re competitive hobbies are really weird. Their talk of “honor” and of not using mechanics (that are in the game to be used, because the developers want you to use them) because they’re “shameful” is extremely silly.
In other words: fuck the gatekeepers, do what makes YOU feel good.
You said it yourself: you had spent a lot of time learning the patterns, but had grown frustrated by that time. Basically you’d have two choices
- what you did, and finish the fight easily using summons (which is easy only because you already spent a lot of time learning the boss)
- decide to do it without summon, and maybe have the satisfaction to win without help, or submit yourself to too much frustration, rendering the victory meaningless because at the end it had become a chore, and not fun at all.
At the end of the day, the most important element is to have fun. But even with summons, victory is never underserved, those games are still brutal.
