How "hard" is it really?

[Localmind]

I DO NOT play "souls-like" games, I do not like when it's hard beyond belief. But I am interesting in this game because of the themeing and the story.

How "hard" is it really? I don't mind "challenging", but I don't want it to be something like "one hit and your dead".
As something to compare to, I'm currently playing Control. I find that game can be challenging on the bosses but doable. If Lies of P is around the same "challenging" level as Control then that's fine. If it's "one hit and your dead" kind of hard, I'm not interested.

Again, I'm fine with a challenge, but not "so hard if I blink and get hit I die".

So, how would you say the difficulty is?

[SadPlatty©]

It's a little difficult to really say - but on a scale of 1-10, parts are around a 3 or 4, and some are around a 5 or 6.

The difficulty mostly lies in these themes :
- Learning enemy move-sets; determining when to attack vs when to hold off, and what range your working with
- Weakness exploiting; nothing new here, but if your using non-effective attacks, fights will be harder. It's not Shin Megami levels of "if you don't use X damage on this specific enemy - you will lose" either, save for 1 boss that is what we call a "Spectacle Boss" (made difficult with an easy enough to exploit weakness you need to figure out)
- Enemy placement; expect guys placed next to cliffs with the sole intention to knock you off the first time. Always be cautious and this will not be as problematic. Don't bum-rush either and you'll be fine.
- Bosses are all over the place; some are easy, some are frustrating. Just remember to take a break after a few attempts or something; sometimes your just not in the right head-space for the boss your fighting.

It is probably the easiest "Souls-like" honestly for folks who are new to the genre thanks to quality of life features and at this point being tuned a bit more.

[WhiteLezard]

Super easy; easily the most newcomer-friendly Soulslike.

[C1REX]

If you don't intentionally make the game harder then it's just right and not super difficult.

Some people intentionally avoid using specters/summons, consumables and mechanical arm to make the game harder as otherwise it's too easy for some.

[D Kruger]

It gets harder closer to the end. The first half is rather easy, Id' say.

[MundM]

It's a game where difficulty is extremely subjecitve. Depending on how good your reflexes and how fast your learning of the mechanics is, you can have a decent or a frustrating time.

My 2nd playthrough was 3 times as fast as my first, which is how that usually goes with this kind of game.

The thing is, either this game us fun to play to you, or not, but going at it just wondering about the difficulty, will make it frustrating for you. I personally enjoy the combat ao much, that it doesn't bother me to try a boss 30 times.

[Speedwack]

I'm 8.5 hours in so far, and I personally think it's been quite bearable compared to From Soft's games. I still think the hardest From Soft game I've played is Bloodborne and Sekiro. Albeit, Bloodborne is my favorite one across all of their games - just hits a spot for me.

[Niras]

The hardest part of bosses are combos and delay attacks.
Combos usually have some mix up in the form of couple swings being little faster or later. Also bosses have couple variants of their combos which they use seemingly in response to your attacks.
e.g 5th major boss (King of Puppets) does overhead 1/2 attacks and sometimes he uses a sweep after them. In my experience he only used the sweep whenever I went an attack to far.

might be a skill issue on my part lol

Delayed attacks messes up with parry timing. Many bosses mix couple of them in their combos.

Fury attacks (read unblockable) are very hard to parry and often delayed. Sometimes they take form of charge which very tricky to parry

[MundM]

Originally posted by Niras:

The hardest part of bosses are combos and delay attacks.
Combos usually have some mix up in the form of couple swings being little faster or later. Also bosses have couple variants of their combos which they use seemingly in response to your attacks.
e.g 5th major boss (King of Puppets) does overhead 1/2 attacks and sometimes he uses a sweep after them. In my experience he only used the sweep whenever I went an attack to far.

might be a skill issue on my part lol

Delayed attacks messes up with parry timing. Many bosses mix couple of them in their combos.

Fury attacks (read unblockable) are very hard to parry and often delayed. Sometimes they take form of charge which very tricky to parry

You can get a talisman at 2/3 of the game that makes it possible to simple dodge fury attacks.

[Niras]

Originally posted by MundM:

Originally posted by Niras:

The hardest part of bosses are combos and delay attacks.
Combos usually have some mix up in the form of couple swings being little faster or later. Also bosses have couple variants of their combos which they use seemingly in response to your attacks.
e.g 5th major boss (King of Puppets) does overhead 1/2 attacks and sometimes he uses a sweep after them. In my experience he only used the sweep whenever I went an attack to far.

might be a skill issue on my part lol

Delayed attacks messes up with parry timing. Many bosses mix couple of them in their combos.

Fury attacks (read unblockable) are very hard to parry and often delayed. Sometimes they take form of charge which very tricky to parry

You can get a talisman at 2/3 of the game that makes it possible to simple dodge fury attacks.

Ikr but it's very heavy and not worth potential +2 amulets Imo, especially when you can just simply dodge or dash away from them. Some don't track you or track you only half way through.
e.g
5th boss (Romeo) has fury stomp from high jump which can dodged away.
other attack is his stomp on the ground which always face you but stays in place.
Both are long enough to make distance from the boss.

They're also very delayed so you can just get gud and learn parry window for them.
The hardest one to parry is 3rd last boss Laxasia (counting the one in true ending) at the beginning of 2nd phase after shooting bunch of projectiles. You can barly see red glow and animation of this attack doesn't have anything in regards to telegraph. I timed parry window based on projectiles.

Equiping this amulet makes me feel like deliberately going against how the game meant to be played by somewhat ignoring a mechanic. Regardless it's good they give you the option to make fury attacks more manageable.