Neowiz recently invited Wccftech out to a private hands-on event alongside other media and content creators at The Paramour Estate in sunny Los Angeles. As part of some of the first opportunities to go play Neowiz and Round8 Studio’s expansion to 2023’s surprising puppetry action RPG Lies of P, we enjoyed (and suffered) through some of the new content featured in this anticipated expansion and enjoyed a brief respite of tacos and a metal rendition of Feel to cap off the evening.
Lies of P: Overture takes the bold approach of making the DLC a prequel to the story, rather than continuing P’s adventure after the credits roll. To access the DLC in the first place was something that Neowiz hadn’t been entirely upfront about, but did seem to tentatively agree about a particular damaged and overgrown stargazer in the Path of the Pilgrim. A loading screen tooltip also advised visiting the Star’s Chrysalis near the Malum District. Whether there’s more to be done to access Overture’s new campaign beyond finishing the game for the first time and returning to that particular golden stargazer still has to be confirmed by Neowiz.
Our hands-on time with Lies of P: Overture was split up into two sessions of equal length. Our first breakout session centered on the Battle Memories boss fights that are also set to come to the base game for Lies of P in a future patch. In this mode, players can challenge any boss they’ve fought once they finish the story and achieve at least one ending first simply by visiting the Hotel Krat stargazer. These fights are locked to the Legendary Stalker difficulty, but each features five different tiers of difficulty that ramp up the enemy’s strength and stats. Completing a fight on a particular might reward players with something special if the fight is completed in a certain amount of time, although I only saw items like collectible pins being unlocked by finishing a fight on the fifth tier. These pins, by the way, are part of a new cosmetic for Lies of P: Overture where the main character can equip and show off up to three pins on their satchel that otherwise don’t provide a statistical bonus from what I could see.
There’s a second battle mode called Death March where players go through a sort of Boss Rush with multiple fights in tandem with a limited supply of consumable items and resources, but it wasn’t something we were able to check out during our hands-on session.
In the Battle Memories mode, we faced off a trio of bosses that highlighted how diverse the enemy types can be in Lies of P: Overture. The very first fight was a puppet and master fight where players have to contend with not just a human-type enemy capable of explosive light magic spells, but also a valkyrie sort of puppet that could attack independently. Players might instinctively move to finish off the puppet first, but all this does is phase the enemy briefly while the main boss revives their puppet and restores their durability to fight once more. The second was a hulking abomination within a dingy sewer whose attacks are just as damaging as they are telegraphed. I found this fight to be much simpler and straightforward than the puppeteer from the first encounter once I got a feel for getting back in the groove of parrying attacks. Sure, it did have an enrage mode during its final 1/3rd of health, but by then I had a good flow to the combat and P’s new Legion Arms definitely helped deal damage while staying a safe arm’s length away.
The final boss was a massive chimera hybrid of multiple animal types, crystalline structures, and human-like upper torsos, each with differently wielded weapons that could swing and clear out a dozen meters across in a single slash or explode the ground around P if trying to play more defensively. On top of that, the boss transitioned into a second phase where its attacks got much more vicious in addition to a few beam lasers that would catch me by surprise. Trying to fend off this boss with the new bow weapon was largely ineffective, given the sheer amount of HP this boss had versus the miniscule amount of damage the bow could pull off (a tradeoff from having unlimited arrows and staying out of melee range, I suppose). While I could finish the first two bosses with relative ease on the third of five difficulty levels, I was only able to fend off this final boss on the first and second difficulty levels in the limited amount of time I had.
The second half of our Lies of P: Overture preview centered on actually diving right into the DLC from when it’s first available. Here, P and Gemini venture into the snowy outskirts of Krat and stumble across the Krat Zoo, seemingly still open to the public. There aren’t any NPCs to interact with during the introductory hours, so who’s to say if we might see the real Alidoro in all his katana-wielding glory later on in the DLC? Instead, it’s a snowy path filled with relatively straight corridors and a few spots off the beaten path for consumables and simple loot leading up to the front gates of Krat Zoo. Not all is as pristine and glamorous as Krat once was, as the wilderness is already filled with blue-blooded Carcass enemies and mutated animals alike. I suspect the Carcass Butcher’s Amulet purchased from Pulcinella in the base game might be one of the best accessories to put on for the DLC, at least in the early moments.
Even if you’re intimately familiar with the flow of Lies of P’s combat and are sufficiently geared up, the enemies in Overture are no joke. Even the basic mindless carcass zombies can knock P down in a few hits and trying to take on two or more from a bad vantage point can leave the player ganged up on. This is another time where I wished the bow was more effective, but instead it seems more used to harass enemies that might have poor pathfinding, or at least could simply not reach the player, rather than trying to engage on even footing. Instead, there were two weapons I gravitated towards the most in Lies of P: Overture’s modest selection of new weapon types. The first was a windmill-looking rotary saw that would actually charge up with stronger attacks if P dashes with the weapon equipped and a large gunblade, where P can fire off explosive shells at the end of combo swings or even propel himself around the arena like a Gunlance user in Monster Hunter. This latter type, much like the Bow and a number of other weapons in the Overture preview, is unique in that they do not have a separate handle and blade, meaning swapping about like you could with nearly every other weapon in Lies of P isn’t an option.
Even the minibosses that exist like skill checks against the player in order to progress could be a struggle early on in Lies of P: Overture. A hulking gorilla Carcass marked off the front gates to Krat Zoo and existed to make sure the player understood either how to perfectly parry, something I had to retrain my muscle memory after playing more lax titles like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and The First Berserker: Khazan as Lies of P: Overture features a much tighter parry window, or get used to dodging out of harm’s way. This gorilla was easily the death of me three or four times before I finally persevered, only to realize later on that no, that is simply a regular enemy type who shows up at least more than once in the back portion of the Krat Zoo. There were other vicious Carcass animals throughout Krat Zoo, including a stampeding mammoth, which was surprisingly much easier than either of the gorillas, and a corrupted crocodile, which served as the main boss for this playable section. Regrettably, I was not able to reach in the limited time available. Instead, I focused on exploring the side paths of Krat Zoo and taking a return trip to Hotel Krat to see what had changed.
While I couldn’t venture out and see everything I wanted to outside of Hotel Krat, I did get a rough idea about how little has changed outside of the Overture map. Taking a moment to harvest some gold coin fruit or upgrade the weapons I had on me (there was a dragon spear ala Guan Yu’s signature weapon in the item box to try out) instead showed that there were the same rewards and +10 enhancement cap from the base game, although I would think that enhancement cap would be lifted later on in the DLC if the power scaling goes up. The P-Organ system also appeared to feature the same nodes from the original and respeccing still required gold coin fruit, something that seemed obvious given that both respeccing and even venturing into the Overture DLC both required completing the game at least once.
Three hours were not enough to do more than scratch the surface of Lies of P: Overture, and I’m already considering how my NG+3 playthrough will go in preparation for tackling the DLC. There’s initially a bigger focus early on with using large two-handed weapons in Overture, so I’m looking forward to picking up that gunblade once more and exploding my way to glory. There isn’t a firm release date beyond Summer 2025, but alongside the Overture DLC, there will also be a sizable patch with quality of life fixes for all players, including two new difficulty levels geared towards a more story-focused experience for those that might want to explore Krat but not have to fully engage with parrying and the other more difficult nuances to Lies of P’s combat. Lastly, Lies of P Overture will launch as a $29.99 premium DLC for the base game.
[Editor’s Note: Lies of P: Overture was previewed on PC. Travel and accommodations were provided by Neowiz.]
