Is Lies of P Easier or Harder than Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring?

Are you wondering whether Lies of P is easier or harder than Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro and Elden Ring?

The answer: it’s one of the hardest Soulslike out there. There are no easy exploits or cheeses, no items you can use to drastically reduce the difficulty. Getting through and finishing the game is entirely based on skill and muscle memory and will test even the most hardcore Soulslike aficionados. Bosses are incredibly challenging, deal massive damage, aggro hard, and most of them have two phases each with a full health bar. Additionally, they have extensive move sets that are always randomized, can deal damage at long range and some have deadly AoE attacks. Forget about brute-forcing your way through the game. As with any Soulslike, you can farm currency (Ergo), but over time you’ll realize how much more important it is to learn and proficiently use the perfect parry mechanics than leveling up your Motivity or Technique attributes a ton. This is especially relevant for the endgame stages when most bosses will take very little damage from standard and heavy attacks.

Unlike Elden Ring, where you could revisit or altogether skip some bosses and go explore elsewhere, Lies of P is standard Dark Souls formula. You won’t be able to progress unless you defeat a boss at the end of each main area. You can rework your build by respecing as many times as you want, but you won’t get away with the fact that you must learn the timing of enemy attacks. The game’s combat system is very much like Sekiro’s where you have to patiently learn your opponent’s move set and when to time your perfect parry to get them groggy and perform Fatal Strikes. However, even getting an enemy groggy is hard. Most of them take several Perfect Parries in a row to go groggy and for some their groggy state doesn’t last that long, making a Fatal Strike opportunity go null. Another reason why mastering perfect parries is a lot more important than dodging is because they’re kinder on stamina and weapon consumption. As such, most elite enemies and bosses can take several tries, even with a Specter is summoned. Speaking of which, don’t heavily rely on Specters. They’re very unreliable, especially in NG+. Sometimes they can endure through an entire first phase, other times they die almost immediately.

In conclusion: you must master the perfect parry mechanic. There are not many workarounds for when you get stuck, except for learning enemies’ attack patterns as best as possible. You can make things slightly easier by an appropriately slotted P-Organ or by equipping the Perfect Grindstone, but must still master the game’s combat mechanics.

Below we will break down in more detail what makes Lies of P easier or harder and compared to Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro and Elden Ring.

What makes Lies of P harder:

• No ranged classes whatsoever. Even ranged Legion Arms such as Falcon Eyes deal laughable damage when maxed out. This forces you into a melee class.
• Bosses and even normal adds hit hard and take very little damage, even more so in NG+. You want to pump a lot of points into Capacity in order to be able to carry more weight, thus more protection-boosting Defense Parts and Amulets. These can sometimes be life-savers. Vitality, Vigor and Motivity or Technique are equally important, but you need to add weight, too.
• Almost all bosses have two phases, with the second phase usually considerably harder than the first. Some of them even deal status effect damage, most of which can kill you very easily. Some boss fights are just plain unfair, with you having to deal with 3 enemies at a time.
• Almost all enemies, with the exception of low-level mobs, don’t get stunned by your attacks. They can easily power through your attacks and deal damage. As such, you need to play more defensively than offensively sometimes. If you’re attacking an enemy while they’re about to strike, you’ll get damaged.
• Some bosses, like King’s Flame, Fuoco, have insane hitboxes and player tracking, making instant turns in the middle of their attacks to refocus on you, or homing in on you. Overall more unpredictable and erratic move sets.
• More than 20 bosses and very large mob variety, meaning more fights to deal with, more move sets to learn.
• The game is also very long, with each playthrough easily lasting more than 40 hours. Only truly dedicated players will make it to the end and achieve the Platinum.
• There’s no online coop unlike Elden Ring and the Souls games, so no Ergo duping, no item dropping.

What makes Lies of P easier:

• You can regain part of your health after a normal parry if you quickly damage any enemy. You can even increase how much health you get back on your P-Organ.
• Perfect Grindstone: this allows you to turn any normal parry into a perfect one, meaning you can just hold through all incoming attacks for up to 10 seconds. You can even unlock an additional use at the P-Organ.
• You can have up to 11 Pulse Cell uses if slotted in on your P-Organ and also increase how much health is gained back per use.
• You can summon Specters to aid you in boss battles. However, don’t overly rely on them as these are based on a consumable called Star Fragment that uncommonly drops and you can be easily tempted to dish it out all on one single boss to make things easier. It’s far better to learn how to perfectly parry a boss than not having any Star Fragments available for much harder bosses.
• Perfect parrying/deflections: you don’t have to dodge everything but can use perfect deflections to save stamina for stronger attacks.
• Wishstones: you can buff your Specter via Wishstones. Then again, because Specters are very temperamental, sometimes spending Gold Coin Fruits on these can be ineffective.
• You can ever so slightly reduce the difficulty by putting a lot of point into Capacity to increase your weight, thus making it more bearable for your character to equip better Defense Parts and Amulets.
• Amulets and Defense Parts: some Amulets, like having that extra stamina boost or increased damage on human enemies, can sometimes make some bosses easier.
• Elemental throwables: these can deal substantial damage and can be used to whittle down big chunks of an enemy’s health or when in a moment of panic. However, you won’t be able to defeat big enemies or bosses just by spamming throwables as you’ll soon run out. You’ll still have to actually fight them.

The above is based on 100+h of gameplay. These findings are primarily my own, combined with two other players, all of whom have platinumed other FromSoftware’s titles before.

What is your difficulty rating of Lies of P after having beaten it? Which bosses did you find the hardest? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

For more guides check out Lies of P Wiki. For all bosses check out Lies of P Boss Guide.

Note: this article was based on the original difficulty at launch. An easy mode called “Butterfly’s Guidance” was added with Patch 1.008.000 that makes the game considerably easier and doable for everyone regardless of prior experience with Soulslikes.