Somewhere in the Abbey now, just beat the Black Cat miniboss. I think I've lost all motivation to go on. I'm not having a bad time per se, even the level design and the story aren't as bad as I thought (I actually only hated the boring, right-angled city areas, almost all levels outside city streets were fairly enjoyable). But the combat and enemy design has never grown on me.
Our Korean boys failed to make the combat challenging, fun and fair. I'm not exactly sweating blood going through the bosses and minibosses - almost all went down in 5-10 runs - but there's just something about those delayed swings and fakeouts and zero-windup attacks that I've never got used to. Quite the opposite, it's been pissing me more and more.
FS games aren't blameless in that regard either but it's not nearly as bad, not even in Elden Ring.
In LoP this shit is overflowing and running down the street like a turdpocalypse. Beat the Walker of Illusions miniboss a while ago and this was the microcosm of all the combat problems. The devs just can't figure out how to make combat challenging without resorting to zero-windup, zero-tell attacks and comically delayed swings that come down in an instant. Again, I can tolerate some of it, now and then, but here this crutch permeates everything. The entire combat and enemy design is nothing but crutch. It all feels so goofy and clumsy.
In general, I really liked the polish, the story, most of the artstyle... was even impressed with some of it. Various chardev options were also better than expected, although most P-Organ upgrades are clearly superior than others and you can't really do builds in the proper sense. The level design can't exactly rival Elden Ring's legacy dungeons but it's been mostly adequate and often fun. Big minus points for the linearity and no co-op.
As for the score, been on the fence all my run but ultimately settled on 7/10. It's a fun, well-polished, good looking game with a fundamental combat problem and stifling linearity. But I am looking to the sequel, hopefully they learn a few lessons. Although judging by the insane overrating mania on the interwebz I'm not holding my breath. More than likely the devs conclude that their first ever game was flawless and will do more of the same.
