No exploration gameplay element seemingly in Lies of P

[God of War]

title

[brewedjuice]

exploration was def weakest part, basically just hallway leading to hallway leading to either "the loot way" or the boss way. i was hoping for a branching point, like central irrythil for ds3 where you can go to profained or pontiff, or back to smouldering lake. and yea end dragged a tiny bit.

i wouldnt call it bad.. the focus was meant to be more on the narrative so a more linear map makes some amount of sense so its easier to put you where they want you and when. not really what i wanted, but idk still pretty good for a first "souls like".

builds felt more like they existed to justify multiple weapons, instead of just going full sekiro and giving you "sword."(though even sekiro had a map that branched and gave a lot of different directions if you explored.) build didnt seem to matter most of the time, though advance felt at least a bit different than pure str or dex. they all basically just dumped into hp and carry weight eventually after a soft cap in dps stats, though tbf thats pretty on brand for souls, too.

i was just happy to have another game play closer to sekiro and hoped From took the idea of "sekiro with stats" and gave it a shot themselves. not perfect, but compared to a lot of stuff on steam that bears the tag, one could do much worse.

[Shreddy]

It didn't bother me at all, in fact it was a nice change to just be able to focus on combat. Sekiro is my highest rated souls like and it isn't linear, Lies of P is my second favourite and it is linear so for me at least it doesn't seem to be a critical part of the experience.

I wouldn't say combat was standard either, once again Sekiro did it better but this has much, much better combat than Dark Souls, Elden Ring and Bloodborne etc.

You are bringing up games like Lords of the Fallen which failed commercially and has mixed reviews with players and are trying to compare it to Lies of P which was a massive success with positive reviews so maybe you just have questionable taste when it comes to these games.

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

There is no exploration in "Venigni Works" or "St. Frangelico Cathedral" or "Estella Opera House" or "Lorenzini Arcade" or "Grand Exhibition" or "Barren Swamp" or "Krat Central Station" (later) or in the "Arche Abbey"?

There is no exploration?

I think you should play through the game again because on my second playthrough I was already surprised at how much I had forgotten from the first playthrough, it was pretty impressive my friend ;-)

This my help aswell >>> https://liesofp.wiki.fextralife.com/Locations

Peace ;-)

[brewedjuice]

i mean... no mostly not. theres a circle occasionally, but its still basically: straight line, T junction with a (usually) tiny "loot path" and a "progression path", straight line. it really is exceptionally linear (even if the hallway bends... theres still one path). dont get it twisted, i like the game, i played thru it like 3+ times, but yea it de-emphasizes exploration. sure you're "exploring" an area, but that doesnt really count as what we're talking about when there's legitimately one path forward and maybe a door to the side that opens to your stargazer. presumably they just need a bit more practice since yea, there is definite potential.

[shwarmizzle]

i'd rather have this than "exploration" of lords of the fallen and hellpoint

[greenlionguard]

Tell me you aim directly for the bosses without telling me you aimed directly for the bosses.

[brewedjuice]

Originally posted by greenlionguard:

Tell me you aim directly for the bosses without telling me you aimed directly for the bosses.

nah man, its not even that deep. im pretty sure the only things i missed the first time was not finding the scarlet lady in the opera house, and maybe a piece of armor when you go back to the train.. OH and one of the emotions for the robot in the swamp .
I mean bosses are one of the main reasons i love these games. but so is exploration. so if you think i didnt crawl all over this map in 3 freakin playthroughs you're dreaming. i'll find the "right" way just so i know which way to go last lmao.

i had forgotten the locked gate bit right before green monster tho thats a good call. not as hard to miss as ash lake lmao, i instantly fixated on it when i first saw it in game, but its something. i just hope they can run with it a bit more next time is all.

[MundM]

Wow, what a clown!

[Corona Scurrae]

Originally posted by seir_:

The linearity in this game feels about the same as the larger missions in Nioh 2.

there is huge difference though. nioh combat is much better than this game.

Originally posted by greenlionguard:

Tell me you aim directly for the bosses without telling me you aimed directly for the bosses.

it's hard to do anything else when you have the level-designer of final fantasy 13, creating your levels.

[Kasagi]

can you share family with me

[BiskutMentega]

I like linear game. Give me more linear game. I don't have time to be exploring for 100 hours per playthrough. I want to kick some bosses butt and then progress with the story.

[dande48]

There's no "Elden Ring" exploration. The Dark Souls games were also mostly linear. That's what I liked about them. The difficulty was fine-tuned. No skipping around the map to become OP, no wondering if you were under-leveled for a particular area.

[Loli-Knight]

Yup. The game is known for being good, but it's also notorious for being relatively on rails for a souls-like. That said, we can easily just blame that on the devs being new to it. They seem pretty receptive towards feedback, so Lies of P 2 will probably have full on entire optional zones and all sorts of misable stuff.

Originally posted by dande48:

There's no "Elden Ring" exploration. The Dark Souls games were also mostly linear. That's what I liked about them. The difficulty was fine-tuned. No skipping around the map to become OP, no wondering if you were under-leveled for a particular area.

I get what you're trying to say... but you're objectively wrong. I mean, going all the way back to Demons Souls hopping around to one place to get something OP then going somewhere else to do so again, then going back to world 1 to steamroll it is pretty common. EVERY Souls game has non-linear pathing to a certain extent that enables you to get all sorts of powerful stuff without utilized bugs and exploits. That part of your argument aside, you're also missing how Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne (hell, even Sekiro) had numerous hidden areas that people missed all the bloody time and outright entire optional zones. They were only linear in the sense that actually beating the game had a couple of hard requirements that you could usually spread around to your liking to one degree or another.

Originally posted by greenlionguard:

Tell me you aim directly for the bosses without telling me you aimed directly for the bosses.

While there are a scant few optional rooms that players are likely to miss if they don't comb the area by and large players will see practically everything in the game by merely running from boss to boss. Heck, you can't even really miss quests since NPCs that got updated have borderline unmissable markers in the teleport menu.

Originally posted by BiskutMentega:

I like linear game. Give me more linear game. I don't have time to be exploring for 100 hours per playthrough. I want to kick some bosses butt and then progress with the story.

You know you can just go do that in a non-linear game too, right? You can literally skip anything and everything between bonfires and bosses in all Souls games. You don't have to explore jack.

Originally posted by seir_:

The linearity in this game feels about the same as the larger missions in Nioh 2.
It allows some exploring, but it's mostly there to unlock a shortcut, or a short detour to get some loot.

The locked region before the Green Monster of the Swamp is the only larger area I could think of which is totally optional and missable.

Yup, that's the only actual optional area outside of a couple rooms people regularly miss the door/hallway for. And it didn't even have a proper boss fight or particularly unique loot at the end of it. Neat area, but total letdown.