Recently finally gotten around to playing Lies of P, and I’ve been enjoying my time a lot - I’d probably put it right between Sekiro and Bloodborne for my favourite Soulslikes. The boss fights have been pretty cool throughout the playthrough. However, the last few bosses, especially Laxasia and Simon, have been kicking my teeth in, so I used a summon to kill both easily.
Now, when people complain about players not playing “the right way” - aka bashing your head in for 10 days straight, using melee only, no summons, magic, cheese, whatever - I’m the first to say that it doesn’t matter how people play the game as long as they enjoy it and that they don’t have to prove they’re “more” of a gamer than someone who did adhere to these self-imposed rules.
After finishing these two fights (I’m at the Nameless Puppet now🫠), however, I kind of feel like I’ve robbed myself of a “worthy” victory because it was soo much easier with the summons than without them. Like, 30+ tries without and basically first try with a summon. It kind of took away the whole challenge and doesn’t feel like I’ve actually beaten them.
Ultimately, thinking that I’ve spent so much time learning their patterns and trying to kill them “the proper way”, it doesn’t feel as bad since I had grown frustrated quite a bit by the end, so I just wanted an easy out. Still nagging on my mind.
What are y’all thoughts on this subject? Is it warranted that I feel like I robbed myself of a proper victory? Should I just get over it? Anything similar happen to you?
Thanks!
Edit: Just remembered that I used summons quite a lot more often than initially thought. I used a summon for both Rabbit Gang fights as well as the Puppet King and the Green Swamp Monster too.
The Rabbit Gang fight felt quite cool like that, especially the first one, since it felt like a real brawl of two equal parties. I consistently got to phase 2 of both Puppet King and Swamp Monster easily but always ended up dying quickly, so the summons took the edge off quite a bit.
Edit 2: Beat Nameless Puppet, probably got a bad ending with Gepetto dying and calling me a useless puppet. But idgaf - I beat that fucker 😎
If they get friends, I get friends.
Fuck every last person who gatekeeps the way someone uses intentional game mechanics.
Fr fr. I will nvr understand how people will tell you how you can’t use whole systems in a soulslike because that is ‘cheating’. “but I beat X boss without Y so I’m better than you!” and I fucking have a defect on my left thumb that makes it harder to use the left analog thumbstick, am I better than you in every game I’ve ever played?
Like people saying using bleed on elden ring makes it too easy. I’m doing a new playthrough with str/faith and let me tell you, I don’t even need to use any incantation cause 2handers do insane dmg and every 5 attacks the boss drops to his knees and I get a free 1/5 of his heath with the crit, exactly how bleed does except most bleed weapons don’t do insane dmg with their normal attacks and no boss is immune to getting knocked down (tho some are immune to crit attacks).