The following contains major spoilers forLies of P: Overture.
Comparisons betweenLies of PandBloodbornehave been rampant since the former Soulslike was announced. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before their DLCs,Lies of P: OvertureandBloodborne: The Old Hunters, were as well. It doesn’t help thatBloodborneis one of FromSoftware’s most popular and mystifying action-RPGs, with a port, remaster, remake, and sequel demanded for the past decade, yetLies of Pearns itsBloodbornecomparisons 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, andLies of Pand its expansion,Lies of P: Overture, do, especially when it comes to their inherent difficulty.
Bloodborne: The Old Hunters Remains One of FromSoftware’s Greatest Challenges
A key factor in assessingBloodborne: The Old Hunters’ difficultyis 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 ofBloodborne’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’ bossesare 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 ofBloodborne.
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: Overturealigns itself fairly closely withBloodborne: The Old Hunters. Not only doesLies of P: Overturefeature fish/shark enemies likeBloodborne: The Old Huntersdoes, 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 reachLies 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, butLies of P: Overture’s bosses giveBloodborne: The Old Hunters’ a run for their money.
In particular,Lies of P: Overture’s Arlecchino, the Blood Artistmay be one of the most difficult bosses in any Soulslike, let aloneLies 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 toBloodborne: The Old Huntersfrom a difficulty standpoint.
Lies of Pand 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.
Lies of P: Overture
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.
