I still remember the exact moment I realized Lies of P: Complete Edition had completely hooked me. I was crouched behind a rusted fountain in the flooded streets of Krat, stamina bar nearly empty, watching a puppet twice my size wind up for an overhead swing, and instead of panicking I found myself calmly calculating whether I had enough health regeneration banked from my last perfect guard to eat the hit and punish it. That single moment sums up everything this game does right. It takes a genre that has become almost oversaturated in recent years and finds its own voice within it, wrapping a genuinely clever combat system around a twisted, melancholic retelling of Pinocchio that never once feels like a gimmick.
For those unfamiliar with the setup, the story drops players into Krat, once a shining example of industrial progress, now a decaying husk of a city after an event known as the Puppet Frenzy turned mechanical servants against their human creators. A mysterious illness has also wiped out most of the population, leaving only a handful of survivors clustered around Hotel Krat, the central hub where I returned again and again between expeditions. I played as P, a puppet awakened with unusual free will, sent out to find his creator Geppetto and uncover what actually caused the catastrophe. The storytelling leans on the genre’s usual habit of hiding lore in item descriptions and environmental details, but unlike some of its influences, it never felt so cryptic that I lost the thread entirely. Conversations back at the hotel filled in enough gaps that I always understood the emotional stakes even when the finer plot details stayed murky.
This Complete Edition bundles the base campaign with the Overture expansion and every piece of cosmetic content released since the original 2023 launch, which means what I played represents the single most polished, content rich version of this game that currently exists on any platform. Having spent a considerable number of hours across both the main story and a solid chunk of the expansion, I feel confident saying this is one of the finest packages a soulslike has received in years, and its arrival on Switch 2 gives it a genuinely compelling new home.
Mechanics and Gameplay
At its foundation, Lies of P plays by the rules that fans of this genre will recognize instantly. Health and stamina govern nearly every decision I made in combat, currency called Ergo drops from defeated enemies and gets spent on leveling stats or purchasing gear, and dying drops everything I was carrying right at the spot where I fell. Retrieving it requires making it back there alive, and every hit I take along the way chips away at how much I actually recover, which kept every return trip tense even when I technically knew the layout of the area.
Where things get interesting is in how blocking works. Absorbing an attack with a raised guard still costs health, not just stamina, but that lost health can be recovered by landing hits shortly afterward. This creates a constant push and pull between playing safe and playing aggressively, because standing still and blocking everything slowly bleeds me dry, while going all out without care gets me punished hard. Nailing a perfect guard, timed right as the enemy’s weapon connects, negates the damage entirely and opens a brief window for a devastating counter. Learning to read enemy tells well enough to consistently land these perfect guards became one of the most satisfying skills I built over the course of the campaign.
The weapon assembly system deserves its own spotlight because I have genuinely never seen another game in this genre handle customization quite like this. Nearly every weapon splits into two components, a blade and a handle. The blade dictates raw damage output, scaling, and elemental properties, while the handle controls the entire moveset, meaning the actual animations and combo patterns available to me. I spent an embarrassing amount of time mixing and matching, at one point running a heavy cleaver blade on a nimble rapier handle just to see what would happen, and the resulting weapon behaved nothing like either of its parent parts. Both halves also carry their own Fable Arts, special techniques fueled by a meter built up through regular combat, ranging from stat buffs to screen filling finishing blows.
Sitting alongside the main weapon is the Legion Arm, a mechanical prosthetic that replaces the traditional shield slot with something far more versatile. I cycled through several variants during my playthrough, including one that fires a grappling hook capable of yanking enemies toward me or launching me into an aerial slam, another that unleashes a burst of flame, and one that lays down corrosive gas across a wide area. Upgrading these arms at Hotel Krat using rare crafting materials made a noticeable difference in tougher fights, and I found myself leaning on the grappling variant constantly to close distance against ranged enemies or to escape sticky situations in narrow corridors.
Character growth extends further through the P-Organ, a skill tree fueled by a scarce resource called Quartz. Nodes here unlock permanent passive bonuses like extra healing charges, additional amulet slots, or extended windows for recovering health after a block. The pacing of unlocking these felt well measured, never handing me too much power too quickly, which kept exploration feeling purposeful since every hidden Quartz fragment I found translated into a tangible improvement down the line. I will admit the sheer number of overlapping systems, armor pieces split into multiple components, cube attachments, amulets, and two separate core stats governing offense and technique, felt overwhelming during my first few hours, but everything clicked into place once I understood how the pieces interacted.
Difficulty sits in a reasonable middle ground on the default setting, punishing carelessness without feeling needlessly cruel, though certain bosses demanded real study before I could reliably survive their combo strings. What really stood out to me was the inclusion of two additional accessible difficulty options layered on top of the standard experience, which can be swapped freely at any point without locking away content or endings. This felt like a thoughtful way to widen the audience without compromising the intended experience for those who want the original challenge intact.
Level design leans linear rather than sprawling, favoring a clear critical path with short branching detours that usually lead to shortcuts, hidden loot, or optional encounters rather than entirely new zones. It lacks the interconnected, looping architecture that defines some of the genre’s most celebrated maps, but exploration still felt rewarding thanks to well hidden secrets and clever shortcut placements that made backtracking far less tedious. Side quests carry a mixed bag of quality, some offer genuinely interesting branching outcomes tied to the game’s moral choice system, while others amount to simple fetch tasks that felt more like padding than meaningful content.
That moral choice system, built around whether P chooses to lie or tell the truth in conversations with survivors back at the hotel, is one of the quieter triumphs of the whole design. These decisions ripple outward, shaping relationships and ultimately steering which of several possible endings I received. What impressed me most is how the game refuses to frame lying as automatically wrong, several of my most meaningful lies came from a place of genuine kindness toward people who did not need the harsh truth in that moment, which felt like a clever subversion of how most games handle honesty as a moral binary.
Graphics
Visually, Krat channels a decayed belle epoque aesthetic that mixes elegant European architecture with grimy industrial horror, and it remains one of the most striking backdrops I have explored in this genre. Rain slicked cobblestones, crumbling opera houses, oil stained factory floors, and broken puppets slumped in corners all combine into an atmosphere that feels genuinely unsettling without leaning on cheap jump scares to get there.
On Switch 2, the presentation options are more generous than I expected from a hybrid console port. Docked play offers three distinct modes, a quality option targeting thirty frames per second with enhanced lighting and some ray traced reflections, a balanced option that tries to split the difference, and a performance option that pushes toward sixty frames per second at the cost of resolution. Handheld mode currently only offers quality and performance settings, and I noticed the handheld performance mode felt closer to a balanced experience rather than a locked sixty, though a day one patch is scheduled to introduce a more dedicated sixty frames per second option specifically for undocked play.
After testing all the available configurations extensively, balanced mode became my personal favorite for docked sessions on my television, offering the best compromise between crisp detail and consistent motion. Quality mode looked gorgeous in still shots but struggled noticeably during effects heavy encounters, and the camera based motion blur applied in that mode became genuinely distracting during fast paced fights, with no toggle available anywhere in the settings menu to turn it off.
Object pop in showed up occasionally in denser environments, particularly in areas like the arcade district and the zoo section introduced in Overture, where distant scenery would visibly resolve into higher detail as I moved closer. In tighter interior spaces such as warehouses, panning the camera quickly sometimes revealed brief white flickers while background geometry finished loading in. None of this broke immersion for me in any lasting way, but it was noticeable enough to mention, especially compared against the far more stable rendering I remember from other platforms this game has appeared on.
Character models hold up reasonably well up close, though hair texturing looks noticeably coarser than I expected, and distant objects lose a fair amount of surface detail. Animation work remains a genuine highlight throughout, with weighty, deliberate movement on both P and his mechanical opponents that sells the horror of these once helpful machines turned hostile.
Sound
The audio design carries an enormous amount of the atmosphere in this game. Most exploration unfolds in near silence, footsteps echoing off empty streets, distant machinery groaning somewhere unseen, and that quiet makes the sudden orchestral surges accompanying boss encounters hit that much harder. These compositions lean grand and theatrical without tipping into melodrama, giving each major fight its own distinct musical identity that I still find myself humming days after finishing a session.
Collectible records scattered throughout the world let me unlock additional tracks playable back at Hotel Krat, and the main hotel theme became an unexpected favorite of mine, a quiet, melancholic piece that offered a genuine emotional breather between brutal encounters out in the field. I caught myself simply standing in the lobby a few extra minutes on more than one occasion just to let it play out.
Voice acting across the main cast, including Geppetto, Sophia, and my constant companion Gemini, delivers performances with enough weight and nuance to sell some genuinely emotional beats later in the story. Combat sound design pulls its weight too, the clang of blade against blade during a perfect guard has a satisfying metallic crunch to it, and the mechanical groans and shrieks of hostile puppets closing in add a layer of dread that pure visuals alone could not achieve.
Fun
This is ultimately where the whole package earns its keep. The loop of finding a new weapon part, theorizing about which handle might pair well with it, testing it against a tough enemy, then adjusting my Legion Arm loadout to compensate for whatever weaknesses I discovered, kept me constantly engaged in a way few soulslikes have managed. I rarely settled into one fixed build for long because the game keeps dangling new toys in front of me that beg to be tested.
Boss encounters stand out as the clearest highlight. Each one brings a distinct silhouette, a readable but demanding set of attack patterns, and just enough unpredictability to keep me honest even after dozens of attempts. Some of these fights frustrated me to the point of setting the controller down for a few minutes, but the eventual payoff when I finally cracked a pattern and walked away victorious delivered exactly the kind of satisfaction this genre promises but does not always deliver.
The Overture expansion amplified that enjoyment even further than I expected. Set before the events of the main story, it introduces tougher, more aggressive bosses, fresh weapon options including a genuinely useful ranged bow, and several welcome quality of life tweaks, like the ability to allocate Ergo directly from a rest point without navigating extra menus. The final encounter in this expansion in particular left a strong impression on me, demanding real mastery of everything the base game had already taught.
The added accessible difficulty options broaden who can enjoy this experience without gutting its identity, though I did notice some rough edges in how those easier settings were balanced within Overture specifically, where certain difficulty tiers felt slightly miscalibrated compared to the base campaign. Even accounting for that, the overall sense of fun stayed remarkably consistent across a campaign that, combined with the expansion, easily stretched past the forty hour mark for me.
Performance and Optimization
Running this on actual Switch 2 hardware left me largely impressed, with some caveats worth flagging clearly. In docked performance mode, I encountered very few noticeable frame drops even during chaotic multi enemy encounters or particularly effects heavy boss phases. Balanced mode held up nearly as well while offering a modest visual upgrade, making it my recommended setting for anyone playing primarily on a television.
Quality mode is where the compromises become obvious. Frame rate dips became genuinely distracting during intense combat, and that previously mentioned lack of a motion blur toggle made camera heavy moments feel uncomfortably smeared. I would steer most players away from this setting entirely, in both docked and handheld contexts, unless visual fidelity truly outweighs smoothness for their personal preference.
Handheld performance mode, at the time I played, behaved more like a loosely stabilized version of balanced mode rather than a locked sixty frames per second experience, which was a bit disappointing given how well the docked equivalent performed. The scheduled day one patch aimed at introducing a proper handheld performance target should address this directly, though I was reviewing ahead of that update being live.
One small but persistent annoyance worth noting is that switching between graphics modes requires backing all the way out to the title screen, there is no in game menu option to swap on the fly. It is a minor friction point, but one that adds up if you regularly switch between docked and handheld play throughout the day. On a more positive note, loading times remained impressively brief across every mode I tested, which made repeated boss attempts and death recovery runs feel far less punishing from a pure time investment standpoint.
Final Verdict
After finishing the main campaign and pushing well into Overture, I feel entirely comfortable calling Lies of P: Complete Edition one of the standout soulslikes available today, and easily one of the strongest big budget ports Switch 2 has received so far. It succeeds not by copying its inspirations wholesale but by identifying exactly what makes this genre satisfying and then layering genuinely original ideas on top, particularly through its weapon assembly system, its Legion Arm variety, and its surprisingly nuanced approach to moral choice.
The Switch 2 version carries a handful of technical rough edges, an unstable quality mode, occasional pop in, a somewhat clunky settings menu, and a handheld performance mode still awaiting its promised patch, but none of these issues undermine the core experience in any meaningful way. What remains is a tightly designed combat system, a genuinely moving story wrapped around a dark reinterpretation of a childhood fable, gorgeous art direction, and an emotionally resonant soundtrack that lingers well after the credits roll.
I recommend this without hesitation, both to longtime soulslike veterans hungry for a fresh challenge and to newcomers who have always felt intimidated by the genre’s reputation for cruelty. The accessible difficulty options make the entry point far gentler than it used to be, while the depth of the combat and progression systems ensures plenty of long term satisfaction for those chasing mastery. Bundled together with the excellent Overture expansion, this Complete Edition stands as the definitive way to experience this story, and now, thanks to Switch 2, it is finally portable too.
The Good
- Combat system that rewards both patient defense and calculated aggression
- Weapon assembly mechanic offering genuinely varied and creative builds
- Legion Arms adding meaningful tactical options to nearly every encounter
- Memorable, well designed bosses with distinct patterns and personalities
- Outstanding soundtrack, particularly during boss fights and quiet hub moments
- Moral choice system with real narrative weight and multiple ending paths
- Complete package including the substantial Overture expansion and cosmetic content
- Strong docked performance across both performance and balanced modes
- Additional difficulty options that widen accessibility without removing content
- Fast, unobtrusive loading times throughout
The Bad
- Linear level design lacking the interconnected exploration found in genre highlights
- Quality mode suffers from noticeable frame drops and unremovable motion blur
- Occasional object pop in in denser or more detailed environments
- Graphics settings can only be changed from the title screen, not mid game
- Handheld performance mode feels inconsistent ahead of its promised patch
- Overlapping progression systems can feel overwhelming during early hours
- Some side quests lean heavily on repetitive backtracking with little payoff
- Easier difficulty balancing feels slightly uneven within the Overture expansion
Rating:
Graphics: 8.5
Fun: 9.5
Gameplay: 9.5
Sound: 9.5
Performance and Optimization: 8.0
FINAL SCORE: 9.0 / 10.0
