Lies of P: Complete Edition Review - The Puppet's Finest Hour

There was a stretch of years where 'Soulslike not made by FromSoftware' was basically a polite way of saying 'competent imitation.' Lies of P is the game that broke that pattern. When it first launched it stunned a lot of skeptics — myself included — by not just aping the formula but genuinely understanding it, earning a place among the best the subgenre has to offer regardless of who made it. Now it's landed on Switch 2 as the Complete Edition, bundling the base game with the excellent Overture expansion into what is unambiguously the best way to experience the fall of Krat. Coming back to it on a handheld, I was struck by how well it holds up. This is a puppet's tale worth pulling the strings for, and here's the full breakdown of why.

A Grim Fairy Tale

The premise sounds like a pitch that shouldn't work — Pinocchio, but as a Belle Epoque horror show — and yet it's one of the most striking settings in the genre. You play as P, a puppet who wakes in the elegant, decaying city of Krat just as it's being overrun by murderous automatons and things far worse. The whole place walks a knife's edge between beautiful and horrifying: gorgeous art-nouveau architecture buckling under the weight of a mysterious plague, opulence rotting in real time. What surprised me most is how thoughtfully the game threads the original fairy tale through its own concerns. The story of a puppet who longs to be real becomes a genuinely affecting meditation on humanity, deception, and what it costs to become something more than you were built to be. It's pulpy and sincere at once, and it works.

Refined Soulslike Combat

Combat is the beating heart of Lies of P, and it's where the game graduates from 'good homage' to 'genuinely great in its own right.' The centerpiece is the perfect-guard system, which rewards frame-tight defensive timing by letting you chip away at an enemy's weapon until it literally breaks in their hands — a mechanic that turns a nervous, reactive defense into an aggressive tool once it clicks. Layered on top is the Legion Arm, a swappable prosthetic that opens up real tactical variety, whether you're roasting a mob with a flamethrower or yanking a distant enemy in with a grappling hook. And then there's weapon assembly, still one of the most creative systems the genre has produced, letting you bolt any blade onto any handle to build a weapon tuned exactly to your stats and taste. The boss fights that all of this builds toward are demanding but scrupulously fair, delivering that unmistakable Soulslike high — the surge of triumph that only comes after a wall of failure finally gives way.

The Overture Expansion

Too often, bundled DLC feels like an obligation the developers padded out to justify a re-release. Overture is the opposite — it's some of the strongest material in the whole package. This substantial prequel chapter digs into Krat's history and deepens the lore in ways that genuinely enrich the base game rather than just extending it, and it comes stocked with new bosses, new weapons, and a fresh region absolutely riddled with secrets to uncover. Crucially, it's tuned for players who've already mastered the main campaign, so its encounters bare their teeth even to veterans. Playing it back-to-back with the base game as one continuous experience, I appreciated how confidently it holds its own — this isn't a victory lap, it's a real second course.

Switch 2 Performance

The nagging question hovering over any Switch 2 port is whether the hardware can actually keep up, and for a precision-timing game like this, performance isn't a nice-to-have — a single dropped frame during a perfect-guard window can cost you a run. Happily, the Complete Edition largely delivers. Docked, it holds a stable framerate while retaining impressive visual fidelity, and even in handheld mode it stays remarkably composed, with only modest concessions to resolution that you stop noticing once you're locked into a fight. Load times are snappy too, which matters enormously in a game built around dying and immediately trying again; the less friction between attempts, the better. It's a technically accomplished port that makes the Switch 2 a legitimately good home for the game, not a compromised afterthought.

Final Verdict

Put simply, Lies of P: Complete Edition is the best version of an already excellent game. The base campaign, the standout Overture expansion, and a genuinely strong handheld port add up to an easy recommendation whether you're a curious newcomer or a returning fan looking for a reason to fall back into Krat. The steep difficulty will still turn away players allergic to the genre, and a few enemy encounters lean on repetition, but neither dents the overall achievement much. If you've been holding out for the definitive Soulslike experience you can take on the go, this is unquestionably it.

Pros: Deep and rewarding combat, Gorgeous atmosphere, Excellent Overture expansion, Strong Switch 2 port
Cons: Steep difficulty for genre newcomers, Some repetitive enemy encounters