u/DontFlameItsMe

To preface, recently completed it, what a fun game. I'm not an NG+ cycles guy, but combat in this game is so engaging, I'm running a new play right away.
Personally, the story is fine for a videogame, if a bit predictable. Style and music do the heavy lifting, at least for me.

I've seen many people praise the way game has handled lying and the idea how lying is very much a human thing. Fun fact, animals (and insects) can lie too, but I'd hate to put "aktually" glasses for a poetic artistic vision devs tried to craft.

My gripe with it is that lying in the game presented not just as a human, but a humane thing. And it just doesn't always work.
In the game, you can generalize lying into 2 categories. Lying to protect yourself or someone else and avoid the unnecessary violence - absolutely legit and properly done.

And lying to be kind and make someone feel better. And here I think where the writers fail, since a lot of the time you infantilize characters to make them feel better, which is disrespectful at best and unkind or plain evil at worst.

I'll start with weak examples and escalate towards the stronger points. (spoilers, obviously)

1. Telling an old lady she still retains some beauty from her youthful portrait. Not even a lie. There was a recent post on how every character in the game is extra pretty, old lady included. At worst it's not a lie, but a flattery. Which is totally fine.

2. The best example is the sick lady quest in the beginning. At the face value, her request is selfish and monstrous. Take her baby from a family fleeing a calamity and get it to a dying sick mother, which will doom the baby.
   But she obviously is not thinking straight either from a disease or the sheer grief (there's even a sign in that area saying that everybody there is sick or a lunatic). Lying to ease her final moments is a humane thing to do, although accepting the quest in the first place seems a bit weird.

3. Lying about the message robot waifu left for a gentleman. In NG+ cycles turns out to not even be a lie, but canonically we have no way of knowing that. At that point, we don't even have any evidence if puppets can be sentient, P included.

I get he is in grief and has a big sad, but how is this moral or kind?
If one of your friends falls in love with an AI chat bot, and then chat bot's memory gets wiped, and your friend is moping around (there've been such cases irl), would you tell him the AI loved him back? Or would you try to pull him back into reality?

That's the thing with trying to make people feel better, that is not always kind. If your kid wants to eat pizza and watch tiktok all day instead of studying or playing with friends, allowing it will indeed make him feel better. Is it kind though?

4. The biggest examples are in the DLC. Lying to a dying fisherman about his village. That is so infantilizing and disrespectful. The absolute UNIT of a fisherman, who among all the gloom and chaos chose to spend his final moments doing what he loved. Doesn't this hardened old sailor deserve to know the truth? The guy is so intense he battled fish for three days and nights, putting his life on the line, but we're gonna treat him like a ten year old boy?
   I absolutely get the opposite perspective, and easing his passing is humane, I would love nothing more. But there are other ways. Share a beer and a story with him, keep him company, speculate on whether someone managed to escape the village. But we're locked into binary truth/lie option, and the game telling you what is a good option by rewarding only one.

5. Lying to a blind lady about her canvas being blank. Do I even need to say anything here? Granted, I told the truth and got locked out of the quest, so may be it turns out we're saving the world by doing this. Would be more like writers contort themselves to justify a morally wrong act. It's even worse than with the sick lady. At least there we're lacking context and knowledge about the world at the start of the game.

Should we sell her like a dead hamster while we're at it? And tell her hamster doesn't move because he is lazy. And the smell? They all smell bad.

"The game is about lying, you gotta lie, bro".
"You don't have to choose lie, it's still your choice".

The game takes a stance on what is good by rewarding humanity which contributes to a better ending. I think the story's heart or intentions are probably in the right place, but it's moral compass is misguided.

It doesn't point north, but instead points into like a Miyazaki's poison swamp.

Like, we didn't murder anyone?

Sure enough, we killed many puppets, carcasses and some humans, such is the nature of a combat driven game, but it's purely out of self-defense as we were going about our business to try and stop local apocalypse.

Did we kill someone before waking up? Is there a lore reason or is he just messing with us?

UPD: NVM I'M STUPID. He used the word "killer", not a "murderer". Engrish hard.

I did some research and many people recommend starting it ASAP, because you get some lore titbits later in the base game.

Others pointed out that DLC is hard and it's better to start it after finishing base game when you get levels and weapons.

I honestly don't care much about either of those arguments, but my concern is that if I go there ASAP, then I'll be finishing the base game overleveled with broken ass weapons.

So, yeah. When do I start the DLC? =/

So there's a damage penalty if you mismatch blades and handles, aka trying to slash with a rapier.

But I'm confused on how this works.

Blades often have listed 2 types of damage, Slash and Stab. Does that mean they are fine doing both? And if the handle has only Slash, then on the final weapon you get Slash (=) 2 horizontal lines indication, and on Stab you have just (-) indication.

On mismatch you have 2 downward arrows, but what those two indications mean?

I'm also confused on some damage tests. For example, I'm doing Motivity build and tested damage on the first zombie guy you meet on the Path of Misery.

+3 Wrench head with a Police Baton handle (the one that buffs your next attack for giga bonk) did like around 200 damage to the guy multiple times.

And then +3 Salamander fire dagger with Giant Wrench handle did also around 200 damage. But they have completely different base damage numbers, dagger should be doing way less damage.

What gives? Did I mismatch somehow the weapons? Are those zombie guys somehow more resistant to Strike attacks than Slash and Fire?

So I've done some research into softcaps and damages.

A lot of your damage comes from weapon upgrades, as is the case for a lot of souls games. But LoP seems to lean even more heavily into it. And even with an S scaling on your handle you seem to get pretty meager returns past like 30/40 on your damage stat.

Granted, a small +3 to damage can be the difference between needing two swings to kill an enemy instead of three swings, which is huge.

But overall, if you want the maximum squeeze from minimum investment in stats, wouldn't it be better to have a quality handle, even with C/C scaling with like 20/20 in Motivity/Technique instead of S scaling and 40 in damage stat? Has anyone tested it?

Froms games are the only soulslikes I've tried so far. May be also Sifu, but it's probably a different genre.
Completed them with different builds, parried Malenia and Radahn, and mostly enjoyed my time as a whole.

But the one thing that I'd say Froms are doing really bad (except boring ranged gameplay) are the huge boss fights. Camera flying all over the place and forcing to play lock-off is not even half bad.
What's annoying is the proper strategy of beating them - constantly sniffing their loincloth, keeping your position up their butt cheeks and stabbing their toes while this really epic music is playing that doesn't match the silly tomfoolery happening on the screen. You can't see what's the big guy even doing.

It's like in that olden game of Battle Toads and Double Dragon, where there's this huge guy and you punch him in his toe with your tiny fists and he's eventually like, "Ouch. You've defeated me, sir".

As a sidenote, I'd say games like Shadow of the Colossus had really good fights with giants. Rykard in Elden Ring was a huge boss done right I'd say.

Anywho, I don't think I'd be able to endure another round of this silly design. But I want to try out the game. Are there any issues like that?