Highlights
- Lies of P features memorable boss fights and mini-boss encounters throughout its 11 chapters, providing a challenging and varied gameplay experience.
- The third act of the game can feel prolonged, with bosses becoming arduous due to their speed and health. However, they bring dynamic mechanics to the fights.
- The Black Rabbit Brotherhood encounter in Lies of P offers an interesting take on the Shadows of Yharnam boss fight from Bloodborne, but their second encounter in the latter half of the game feels repetitive and undermines its initial impact.
Many boss fights and mini-boss encounters are memorable in Lies of P, which is impressive due to how long the game is on a first playthrough. There are 11 chapters in Lies of P with their own respective locations for players to warp between, and almost every single Stargazer checkpoint features some horrific enemy or important interaction that is lying in wait. The game arguably drags on in its third act and bosses at that point can feel incredibly arduous due to their speed and health, but many are also unique in the dynamic mechanics they bring to a fight.
It’s always nerve-wracking to happen upon a Stalker, for instance, who may or may not wish to harm the player on sight. Moreover, anywhere with blue plague mist is likely to be a difficult sequence, especially when the game introduces colossal scorpion-like carcass beasts that slightly resemble Elden Ring’s Fallingstar Beasts. Fewer fights reflected bosses that appeared in Bloodborne than fans might’ve assumed there would be, too, and that actually serves as a detriment to Lies of P when it’s considered how its Black Rabbit Brotherhood encounter was almost a better take on the Shadows of Yharnam.
Lies of P’s Black Rabbit Brotherhood Could’ve Been a Great Shadows of Yharnam Antithesis
Before Lies of P launched, the Scrapped Watchman seemed to suggest that the game would have its own takes on multiple Bloodborne bosses because it was designed similarly to Darkbeast Paarl. Obviously Lies of P leans heavily on FromSoftware tropes and features in its action-RPG, but it turned out that Lies of P had some fairly creative boss encounters as well as extraordinarily inventive enemy designs in general.
Lies of P’s Romeo, King of Puppets in particular has been stumping players at the midpoint of the game due to both phases being wildly opposite and equally imposing. The only other boss in Lies of P that could resemble another Bloodborne boss at all was the Black Rabbit Brotherhood ensemble and its potential tribute to the Shadows of Yharnam due to both fights including multiple bosses in one arena.
However, while Bloodborne’s Shadows of Yharnam and Lies of P’s Black Rabbit Brotherhood have that loose connection, the latter was nearly better if not for the same fight being thrown onto players’ laps but in reverse later in the game. Indeed, the first Black Rabbit Brotherhood boss fight takes place in the Malum District and players initially contend with the Eldest alone.
Once his health drops to predetermined points, each of the other Brotherhood affiliates leaps down from their perches and joins the fight, with the Eldest fortunately having less aggro in comparison to the Youngest, Eccentric, and Battle Maniac. Therefore, if players whittle down the Eldest’s health slowly and take out each other affiliate individually, they will be finally left with the Eldest at low health once the other members have been taken care of.
This results in the Eldest’s death, with the others leaving to plot their revenge. If this had been where the Black Rabbit Brotherhood’s involvement ended in the game it could have offered a wonderful alternative to the chaotic, outnumbered encounter of Bloodborne’s Shadows of Yharnam. Instead, the group corners the player in the Relic of Trismegistus Combat Field beneath Hotel Krat for a second bout. The fight is almost identical to the first one, but the inverse; the three smaller members are all in the arena at once with their own respective health bars, but still take much more damage than the Eldest and still operate by aggroing one by one.
Then, when one final affiliate is left standing with low health—or if they all reach a low health threshold—the Eldest emerges from the arena's coffin as an undead carcass with a slightly different move set than before. This fight is no more difficult or tedious than the first one, but since it’s essentially a mirror of the initial encounter’s gimmick, it does end up feeling undone by its own repetition.
Lies of P is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
