The following contains major spoilers for Lies of P: Overture.
Comparisons between Lies of P and Bloodborne have been rampant since the former Soulslike was announced. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before their DLCs, Lies of P: Overture and Bloodborne: The Old Hunters, were as well. It doesn’t help that Bloodborne is one of FromSoftware’s most popular and mystifying action-RPGs, with a port, remaster, remake, and sequel demanded for the past decade, yet Lies of P earns its Bloodborne comparisons with similar approaches to aesthetics and atmosphere. But it’s one thing to garner those comparisons and another to meet any expectations that they’d produce, and Lies of P and its expansion, Lies of P: Overture, do, especially when it comes to their inherent difficulty.
Lies of P: Overture Broke Me, But Not Because of Difficulty
Lies of P: Overture is debatably much harder than the base game, but it also tells a much sadder story that is accentuated by character-driven drama.
Bloodborne: The Old Hunters Remains One of FromSoftware’s Greatest Challenges
A key factor in assessing Bloodborne: The Old Hunters’ difficulty is that it is overtuned for the time in which players will be able to access it. To the uninitiated, Bloodborne’s DLC is remarkably easy to access, and it’s that ease of entry precisely that can result in a mistaken overconfidence, or at least a false assumption of how difficult it might be.
The Hunter’s Nightmare is immediately unwelcoming, teaching players that they are nowhere near ready to idly wade into The Old Hunters’ content after merely defeating Vicar Amelia and allowing the Amygdala to snatch players in the Cathedral Ward. The catch here is that The Old Hunters houses many of Bloodborne’s best weapons, which can’t be retrieved elsewhere, and so players are advised not to have too many blood echoes on them as they’re likely to lose them in an effort to hurriedly loot while evading enemies.
Otherwise, the DLC is still tremendously difficult, whether players attempt to explore it when it becomes accessible or closer to the end of the base game. As such, Bloodborne: The Old Hunters’ bosses are its true pillars, and not all are created equal in terms of difficulty; for example, Living Failures and Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower can be terribly easy, whereas Laurence, the First Vicar and Orphan of Kos can be harder than any other bosses in the entirety of Bloodborne.
More often than not, player skill and the knowledge of how to exploit in-game resources or strategies can determine what makes a boss easy or hard, and whether a boss is easy or hard is subjective and based on players’ individual experiences.
Lies of P: Overture Goes Toe-to-Toe with Bloodborne: The Old Hunters, and Then Some
Lies of P: Overture aligns itself fairly closely with Bloodborne: The Old Hunters. Not only does Lies of P: Overture feature fish/shark enemies like Bloodborne: The Old Hunters does, but it also whisks players to the past to witness prequel events that reinforce lore from the base game’s present day. As for difficulty, Overture is scaled quite high, too, and that’s a bit more alarming as it takes almost until the end of a playthrough for players to actually reach Lies of P: Overture’s DLC access point.
Soulslike DLCs are understood to be more challenging in principle due to them being post-launch experiences that appropriately figure players are already familiar with the base game and have conquered it, though, and Overture is no different. The Old Hunters is a slightly shorter DLC and has smaller zones/chapters than Overture, but Lies of P: Overture’s bosses give Bloodborne: The Old Hunters’ a run for their money.
In particular, Lies of P: Overture’s Arlecchino, the Blood Artist may be one of the most difficult bosses in any Soulslike, let alone Lies of P. The boss fight is made trivial if players choose to summon Lea, to be fair; either way, Lies of P: Overture, overall, is relatively comparable to Bloodborne: The Old Hunters from a difficulty standpoint.
Lies of P and its DLC now have difficulty options—Butterfly’s Guidance (very easy), Awakened Puppet (easy), and Legendary Stalker (the vanilla game’s default)—and will soon include “various adjustments, including difficulty reduction,” meaning that Overture may be as easy or as hard as players wish.
WHERE TO PLAY
Lies of P: Overture is a dramatic prequel to the acclaimed soulslike action RPG, Lies of P. It transports you to the city of Krat in its final days of haunting, late-19th-century Belle Époque beauty. On the brink of the Puppet Frenzy massacre, you follow a legendary Stalker—a mysterious guide—through untold stories and chilling secrets. As Geppetto’s deadly puppet, you’ll journey through Krat and its surroundings, uncover hidden backstories, and face epic battles that shape the past and future of Lies of P.
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PC
