Lies of P, that gothic Bloodborne-esque Soulslike about Pinocchio beating the springs out of demented puppets, is officially out on Windows, PlayStation, and Xbox. Since duo developer Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio’s action-RPG takes a lot of inspiration from FromSoftware games, the going will absolutely get tough while making your way through its nightmarish rendition of Belle Époque-era France. But one cool aspect about Pinocchio souls that’ll aid in your journey is weapon customization, which is so deep and so nuanced that I hope other Soulslikes take note of what’s being done here.
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Loosely based on the 1883 children’s fairy tale The Adventures of Pinocchio, Lies of P is a brutal Soulslike requiring patience, dexterity, and persistence. As you explore the once-prosperous world of Krat, now beset by a puppet frenzy that’s killed most humans and a petrification disease that’s turning the remaining people into monsters, you’ll come across an assortment of weapons with a variety of moves and stats. There are axes, batons, daggers, scythes (my personal fave), swords, tridents, and more; it can be dizzying searching for the perfect fit that matches both your character build and preferred playstyle. Thankfully, you’re never really locked into any one specific weapon type so long as you take advantage of the in-game customization options to create your own piece of killing equipment.
Break your Lies of P weapons in half, who cares?
Early on, after you beat the saw blade-wielding Mad Donkey, you’ll pick up the Enigma Assembly Tool. This item unlocks the “weapon assemble” feature, which allows you to break most armaments into two parts—blade and handle—so that you can MacGyver them back together again. It might not sound that special at first, especially since you won’t have a whole lot of weapons in the beginning, but this unique feature adds tons of depth to your build-crafting.
Say you’re honing the Motivity stat, an attribute comparable to something like Strength in Dark Souls, but you’ve got a rapier that centers around the Technique (this game’s Dexterity-like stat). Instead of giving up the weapon, particularly since it’s a good early-game one, you could just snap the entire thing in half. The blade determines the damage your weapon will do while the handle dictates both its moveset and stat scaling. So, you could take the blade of the rapier and duct-tape it to a handle that pairs better with the stats you’re focusing on and boom, problem solved. You’ve now got a weapon that fits your current build.
It doesn’t stop there, though. In traditional Dark Souls fashion, you can acquire special weapons by giving a certain vendor boss souls (here called Ergo). While you can’t disassemble these armaments into their disparate parts, you can still tweak them to match whatever stats you’ve pumped all your Ergo into. Thanks to cranks, upgrade materials you buy or find in the world, any weapon can be modded to have your preferred stat scaling.
Take the Puppet Ripper, a scythe that has been carrying me through the mid-to-late game. It’s a special weapon, so you can’t break it in half, and scales with the Technique stat, an attribute I’ve poured most of my Ergo into. If I were focusing on, say, Motivity instead, I could use a Motivity crank to switch the stat scaling of the weapon to better pair with what I’m going for. I didn’t need to do that since I’m already building out a Tech character; however, even though the Puppet Ripper is a Tech weapon, I was able to further upgrade its Tech stat scaling by using a Technique crank. Now, I get an additional damage increase thanks to the Technique crank and my high Technique stat.
But even before I got the Puppet Ripper, which didn’t grace my hands until a little over the halfway mark, I spent a lot of time tinkering with my weapons. I’d snatch up any and all armaments I could—in chests, on corpses, off vendors, you name it—just to see what the moveset was, how the stat scaling compared to what I was currently using, and if there was any way I could combine what I found with what I already had to make something you wouldn’t find in the game normally.
That’s the beauty of Lies of P’s weapon customization: You can create something that’s uniquely you. While the special boss weapons are immutable, you can mix and match pieces from the several dozen standard ones to unlock hundreds of melding possibilities. You want a huge great sword attached to a tiny dagger handle for faster attack patterns? No problem. You’re looking for a baton that deals electric damage? You can cook that right up, no recipe required. Or maybe you just really like that shovel but hate the handle it’s connected to. Just break the thing in two, stick that shovel head onto a handle you like, and there you go.
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Buy Lies of P: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
This weapon customization system is one of the coolest elements that separates Lies of P from its contemporaries and inspirations. By composing most weapons of two highly tweakable parts, you’re able to really fine-tune your character build without sacrificing your fave playstyle.You can respec your character about two-thirds of the way into the game if your stats aren’t to your liking, but that’s almost an afterthought when you can just alter your equipment to better fit what you’ve got going on. You can retain your weapon’s speed, for example, while fitting into a strength build and vice-versa. So, seriously, forget about it. Play Lies of P how you want because you can mold it to fit you.
