"Your Springs Are Reacting."Who doesn't want to fight as a puppet resembling Timothee Chalamet, tell lies in the plagued city of Krat, and explore their P Organ? Join us for a conversation about a new soulslike inspired by The Adventures of Pinocchio, called Lies of P.
"Your Springs Are Reacting." Who doesn't want to fight as a puppet resembling Timothee Chalamet, tell lies in the plagued city of Krat, and explore their P Organ? Join us for a conversation about a new soulslike inspired by The Adventures of Pinocchio, called Lies of P.
Welcome to the first episode of Hip Fire, a mini-series where we share our first impressions about a game after playing it for only 5 hours. Well, more like 5–12 hours for the Lies of P Demo. Yeah, we know we suck at things, lol. Anyway, this demo is incredibly polished. So polished Joseph thinks it might be the best demo he's ever played. Willie breaks down the scrambled messages seen in the boss fights, and Taylor wonders if he can finally wield Pi-NOSE-cchio's nose as a deadly weapon. Together we dig into the game's combat mechanics, intelligent level, and boss designs and talk about the potential of the full release. In our opinion, this game will be good enough to compete for GOTY. Get good or get rekt, fool.
Games briefly mentioned in this episode: Amnesia: The Bunker, Starfield, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Yakuza, Aliens: Dark Descent, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, Mortal Kombat 1, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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The music you hear on the podcast is by ELFL, Lexica, and Christian Nanzell.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: I think if you've done everything, you should get two quartz and you can unlock one thing if you want.
Joseph: Ah.
Taylor: Hm.
Willie: So, yeah, the thing that you see Geppetto for is because he can do something called, uh, he can like alter your P-Organ, which is the thing that is, [laughter] is such a weird name.
Joseph: It's basically your heart, right?
Willie: It's basically your heart. [Taylor snickering] It's the thing that's on the loading screen too, which is cool-
Joseph: Yeah, super cool.
Willie: -cause it's a heart with like this cool mechanical gear system in it.
Joseph: I didn't know that until the end.
Willie: Yeah, so, but you see that, like, when you sit in the chair at Geppetto, you can go in and you can see the skill tree and he'll, like, make upgrades using something called Quartz.
And if you put two Quartz in any of the first four choices, if you put two of them in there, it will unlock that ability. And so I did that specifically to unlock the dash, just to see what that looked like.
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: And it is, yeah, it does work pretty well. But I think It is about how much capacity you have, is that what it's called?
And like, yeah-
Joseph: I think so
Willie: - what your weight is. Because anytime you're at 60% or more, you'll become slightly heavy. And once you're slightly heavy, you slow down just a little bit.
Joseph: I'm pretty sure I was slightly heavy throughout most of my play, play in the demo.
Willie: I was for a long time until I started paying attention to it and would just put on...
What is the word? A different frame, I think.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I, instead of doing like the-
Joseph: Like a lighter one?
Willie: I would just put on the lightest frame that I could.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:48
Joseph: What is up? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for joining us for a casual, unscripted conversation about video games. My name is Joseph, and I'm here with my friends Willie and Taylor, and we're just three regular guys already speculating which game is gonna win Game of the Year, but I digress. So what have y'all been up to this week?
Willie: I've been listening to, no, I listened to episode 10, the like outtakes and whatever behind the scenes shit. I like that you, you made it sort of a, a running theme that we always talk about who's going to go first.
Joseph: [Laughs] Taylor's fucking zippered shut just a second ago.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, not happening.
Willie: Yeah, we didn't talk about who was going to go first today, so [Taylor laughs] we just didn't say anything, which is nice.
Joseph: I almost brought it up-
Taylor: Could have been a standoff. [laughs]
Willie: Yeah, it was a little bit of a standoff. I was waiting to see what Taylor was going to do.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But I think it's especially funny because it comes up in that episode a couple of times. And I think Barbara thought it was funny [Joseph laughs] whenever we were listening to it, because it was just, it's ridiculous that we, we do have to think about it.
And I was thinking about it in context of, um, your intro is always like, join us for a casual unscripted conversation. [Taylor chuckling] And it's like, literally, we're, you're reading from a script for the beginning-
Joseph: yeah, yeah [laughs]
Willie: -and we always decide like, who's going to talk first.
Taylor: Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.
Willie: Which kind of defeats the point of that sentence, but-
Joseph: I've thought about that.
Willie: The rest of the conversation is unscripted.
Joseph: Right, right. [Taylor snickering] I've thought about that a couple times. Like, should I not say that? The larger conversation definitely is what I'm thinking of when I, [chuckles] when I'm thinking of the word unscripted. [Taylor snickers] I mean, you can't script Taylor.
Taylor: No. I've tried. I've tried to put myself into an AI and it just, it tries. It gives it 120% as AI always does.
Willie: It just comes up with shit like a AI duck that is gonna murder you or some weird shit?
Taylor: I mean, yeah, that's, that was my first soiree with it, but now it comes up with way more interesting things to murder.
Joseph: What was the thing you were trying to remember to do?
Taylor: Oh-
Joseph: We just talked about it.
Taylor: I need to, yeah, I need to make, uh, generate an image of, uh, Zack Morris, Justice League.
[laughter]
Willie: The Zack Morris cut, right?
Taylor: Yeah, the Zack Morris cut. Everybody's got those old phones and everybody's getting calls. So look out for that.
00:04:08
Joseph: Nice. Well, any, any speculation from either of you about what's going to win Game of the Year? At least from what we know is on the horizon slash what has been released.
Taylor: Hmm, I would have to guess Amnesia: The Bunker, because I've played about 10 minutes of it, and it was already so scary that I couldn't progress. So it might be that one might be that one because I won't ever see the ending of it. Or any more of it.
Joseph: I feel like Willie wanted to spit his drink out [Taylor snickers] just a second ago. Uh maybe just looked like that.
Taylor: Lacroix, it's gross.
Willie: No, I was just uh, clearing my throat.
Joseph: Ah, I thought for sure you would say Starfield, Taylor.
Taylor: I think it might be Starfield, man. That game looks amazing. Looks like they've moved away from like their- I'm sure the core of the Fallout style Skyrim engine is in there, but it looks like they've made it quick enough, snappy enough, and changed the HUD enough that it should feel futurey. Looks fun as hell.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I definitely think it's going to be between Starfield and Tears of the Kingdom, I think. There's other good things that are obviously coming out, but when you think about game awards just overall. Yeah, I feel like it's always going to be- it's not always going to be some AAA title, but I feel like there's a lot of good AAA titles this year-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -that people have been waiting for. So I think it's probably going to be one of those two, even though, I don't know, I'll play Tears of the Kingdom at some point, but I don't know when.
Taylor: Same. That one's on the list.
Joseph: You should start it soon, man. It's a big game.
Taylor: Do you think there will be bugs on Starfield?
Joseph: I bet.
Taylor: Thousands of planets. [laughs]
Joseph: Super complex.
Taylor: Over a thousand worlds.
Willie: Very complex. And Bethesda always has some bugs at the beginning for sure. If I don't see a gigantic wrench or sandwich or something on one of those planets as a bug.
Joseph: Oh they did-
Taylor: -I'm going to be very disappointed.
Joseph: They did show sandwiches in the deep dive.
Taylor: Yeah, the food.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: And I'm a fan of that good looking food.
Joseph: I would hope that there's no true bugs in any of the like ship customization or like the things that are, you know, building the outpost, the ship building, that kind of stuff. That's where I would wish there's not any like big buggy things.
Taylor: Yeah, that stuff looks amazing. Layers on layers on layers.
00:06:32
Joseph: Right on.
Well, thanks for tuning in to our first "Hip Fire" episode.
Taylor: Hip Fire!
Joseph: "Hip Fire" is a mini series where we share our first impressions about a game after playing it for only 5 hours. And today we're going to focus on the Lies of P demo. Not to be confused with somebody named Elijah P. [chuckling] Because that's seriously what I hear. Every time I hear the name. Anyway.
Taylor: Elijah P. Worrell-
Joseph: [laughs] Yeah
Taylor: I believe, is who you're thinking of.
Joseph: If you've never heard of Lies of P, which I imagine some of you haven't, think of a world where Bloodborne meets Pinocchio. Yes, that Pinocchio. And more on that later. Unfortunately, the demo is only available until June 20th, so if you didn't download it before then, you'll have to wait until the full release on September 19th.
But I have a really good feeling this game is gonna be worth waiting for and playing because this might be the best demo I've ever played. What about you Willie? What do you think?
Willie: I read that in the script that you said we don't have [Joseph and Taylor laugh] and, uh, I was thinking, have I played a better demo?
And I'm sure that there is something that was like, definitely something that I really liked, like there was a Resident Evil demo or something at some point. And I would have been super stoked about it. Nothing pops to mind.
And I do think that this is a really good game. I think it is a game that could come up in conversation for Game of the Year, but I don't know if it'll win. Though there's been huge interest in the demo, it seems like.
Joseph: I think it could contend, like it could be nominated.
I don't know if it'll beat, it'll beat out Nintendo and Tears of the Kingdom, but I think you're right from like your initial reaction, like before the demo was released. Like, I do think this game could be big. It's pretty fucking polished already.
Willie: Yeah. It looks fucking beautiful.
Joseph: It looks damn good.
Taylor: I'm digging it.
I hate the naming of everything. I feel like whoever did that is in my naughty list for sure.
Joseph: Like just the title or even things inside the game?
Taylor: Oh man, from the title to the Ergo, Ergo, the things you're collecting. I just feel like Souls-likes, as we go further and further into that spiral of lookalikes and Souls-likes, people have to get more ridiculous with all the naming structure.
And it may be one of those things that as you play into it, maybe you start getting more story that gives them context, but at the beginning, it just almost seems like a book that is in a different language and I'm trying to wrap my head around it.
At least with Elden Ring, you had still had fires. Like they were called different things, points of grace, and even that gets to a point where when you're trying to explain it to someone, outside of that game, it gets a little bit different, uh, difficult. Where they're, they're saying like Stargazer, you dump your Ergo into it so that your pole arm can extend further. I-
It's- uh, besides the naming though, I really like it. It's a pretty solid ass engine. It feels a lot like a Soul's game.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
00:09:39
Taylor: The beginning sword, eh, I'm not a big fan of, and then I got a larger kind of an ultra sword and that's feeling a little better since I like heavy weapons, but still it feels a little generic.
I don't know what you guys have thought about the combat.
Joseph: Well, at the beginning of the game, which weapon did you choose? Did you go balance, dex, or strength?
Taylor: Oh, that's true. I think I went balanced.
Willie: I think you went dex based on-
Taylor: Oh
Willie: -cause you said something about. You said rapier, didn't you? Whenever you had mentioned it-
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: -cause that would be the next weapon. If that's actually what you picked.
Taylor: Okay, maybe I did. I might have.
Willie: What, what was the style? Like what, sorry, what was the like, attack?
Taylor: Like a halberd, like a, so just a three, just a three attack.
Joseph: Was it a thrust, a forward thrust or?
Taylor: No, it's not a thrust, it's a slash.
Willie: Okay, so you did go balanced. That's balanced then.
Taylor: Okay.
Joseph: Way of the Cricket. I think it's Way of the Cricket, Way of the Bastard, and then I don't remember what the strength build is.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: Yeah, I don't know either.
Joseph: Or weapon at least.
I don't like the name of the game. [Taylor chuckles] I haven't from the get go. But everything else I'm totally cool with. Ergo, like the rest of the naming convention, Stargazer, is like, that doesn't bother me at all.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: Like, I, I like that it's different and like it's, it does seem very foreign when you start the game.
Taylor: Yeah, it does.
Joseph: But, like you mentioned, Taylor, I bet there is some kind of context that gets wrapped around Ergo and it has a lot of context surrounding it that just makes it feel better overall. You know, along with the Stargazers and stuff.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I feel like that could very much happen in this game based on what's happening in the story so far.
00:11:14
Taylor: There's some language we don't understand, right? Like when you're fighting the first boss-
Willie: Yeah. And others.
Taylor: You see a little language.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Alright. So yeah, that, that would make a lot of sense. I do like that.
Joseph: I think it's like distorted English, even though it looks like it could be like Hangul or a different language. I think it's actually just like distressed and distorted English down there.
Taylor: Huh? That's interesting.
Joseph: It's kind of strange though because it just pops up for a second and then it's gone.
Taylor: Yeah, you don't have time to try to decipher it with your eyes or anything. You just see a quick glance and that's it.
Joseph: I do question its purpose. Like, just to begin with. Like, it seems to serve no purpose at the moment.
Taylor: Yeah, is it gibberish? Because these boss er-
Willie: It's not gibberish.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: Because I saw that people had translated it, or like figured out what it said.
Joseph: Oh really?
Willie: Because it is-
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: -it is distorted. Um
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: The Parade Master one is, this is in random order because someone on the Lies of P subreddit had translated it. So I will say shout out to Ricky H. Tebb, I don't know.
Taylor: Hm.
Willie: Just a random person-
Taylor: Lets go Ricky!
Willie: -that's screen captured some stuff.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I think this is a Parade Master one, yeah. When you re enter after death, there's this thing on the screen that says, "Come on in, we have been waiting." And then, "Oh, the king is celebrating," and "Finally a guest is here, kick this party into gear."
Joseph: Ah! [laughs]
Taylor: Nice.
Joseph: Are they just like Easter eggs?
Willie: Entering into the second phase with Parade Master. It's "What a lot of balderdash," and "Bad children getting the stick."
Joseph: Hm.
Taylor: [chuckling] Huh.
Willie: And then dying to the Parade Master. There's a few more. "Oh, you're just in time. Listen. Do you hear the carriage that's come for you?" Or
Joseph: Whoa
Willie: "Now he shall be happy. Now off to our toyland" And then-
Joseph: Huh.
Willie: "How unfortunate. And charming carriage was waiting for you."
Taylor: Ah
Willie: And there's a whole list, there's more, like I said, Lies of P subreddit.
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: The heading for that is "Translated all the different Parade Master and Scrapped Watchman dialogue I could find. Also, an alphabet."
Taylor: So... There's probably going to be either things, you know, a books or runestones or something that you can read and you learn that language over time, or maybe just learn it all together, or maybe there's an object or a class you can choose where you can actually read that stuff.
I bet there's going to be a way because if you think about it, that would give the perfect reason to go back, and, you know how you can rekindle your fire in the Souls games. So it makes- brings back all the enemies, but it makes them even stronger, so that you can get more souls, or just see cool new enemies whenever you do that.
That would give you a good reason to go back. Cause then you could look at all that dialogue that you missed because it was in the gibberish and then actually read it. Cause that's very interesting. I love that dialogue.
Joseph: It's not what I expected it to be.
Taylor: No, me neither.
Joseph: My speculation, off the dome speculation is that it's somehow tied back into the works of the person that wrote The Adventures of Pinocchio.
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: I could see that.
Joseph: Somehow inspired by those works. And this is like a, an interesting way to include more things inspired by those works in general.
Taylor: Hell yeah.
00:14:26
Taylor: The wording reads like the tone of the game and kind of the dark and dismal.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: It's always raining.
Joseph: Which holy shit, just beautifully dark.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Visuals, the mood, the atmosphere. I never played Bloodborne, but it's getting a lot of, you know, drawing a lot of parallels to Bloodborne, from people playing the game.
Taylor: Yes, it is. It is a lot like Bloodborne in that it's, it's a dark, mysterious, scary world, but you do want to delve in it. You want to go in there and see what kind of nasties they've got and kind of crazy bosses exist.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And this one is in the, in the robot realm. So that's got me even more interested.
Joseph: I think that's the thing about this game and why it might be doing so well as a demo, like over a million downloads, installs-
Taylor: Wow
Joseph: -of the demo and it hasn't, it's been like a week I mean it hasn't been that long. But I think part of the draw was just the fact that it is Pinocchio reimagined in this dark fantasy world.
You know in a Souls-like game where you know there's gonna be difficult combat sequences and bosses. I think that's part of the draw. What makes me really happy and excited is that they've really fucking delivered. It's not like it was a bunch of hype and then you get into the game and it sucked. [laughs] It's actually really damn good.
Taylor: It's impressive.
00:15:42
Willie: I've definitely really liked it a lot. I've enjoyed playing it even though it can be frustrating at times because it is difficult. And you guys said so much that I feel like there's so much to touch on, [laughter] like the comparisons to Bloodborne. I have never played those series either. I've watched some people play, but from what I gather, the guard regain damage thing is something from Bloodborne
Joseph: Mm
Willie: Where you get, if you block something, but don't like perfectly block it, your health bar-
Joseph: You take chip damage
Willie: -goes down a little bit, but you can... You can regain that if you can get hits on creatures. So you'll gain back-
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: -some of the damage that you take.
Taylor: I didn't even notice.
Joseph: But I think you have to damage them before they damage you again.
Willie: Yeah, exactly.
Taylor: I didn't even see that that was part of the mechanics. I'll have to keep an eye out for that.
Willie: Yeah, it's like-
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: -if you don't perfect block-
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: -then you'll take some damage from just blocking. Uh, yeah, the chip damage, as Joey said already.
Taylor: Cool.
Willie: But you can get it back as long as you don't get hit again.
Joseph: Pretty interesting.
Taylor: I'm gonna try that out after this.
00:16:41
Willie: And then... Taylor mentioned the Ergo, and I think there's definitely some stuff in the loading screens that speaks to a little bit about like what it is, but I also just think from the very beginning, I assumed It's a nod to the Latin cogito ergo sum or whatever, which is I think therefore I am. Descartes's thing.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: And it's like-
Joseph: That makes sense. Yeah.
Willie: I assume like every puppet is dropping really a soul, right? Like this-
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: -I think therefore- it's it's "therefore" is what it is, right? In that translation? But if you're thinking about it from the point of I think therefore I am like every time they drop something they're dropping a little bit of their consciousness.
Taylor: Ah, that's cool.
Willie: And you're picking it up.
Joseph: I think they are specific about it in the game to say that Ergo is pretty much what's like powering all the puppets.
Willie: Well, yeah-
Joseph: What's giving them life like in this world.
Taylor: That's interesting.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I love that spin on it. That actually makes it way more appealing.
Willie: And so one of the, the screens, one of the loading screens is like, I'll just read it. Uh,
"Ergo is a miraculous power stone that can be mined in the underdark ruins of Krat. Over the decades, Ergo has brought great wealth and technological advances to Krat, but it all came with a price. A curse."
Taylor: Hm.
00:17:54
Joseph: And the curse, the petrification, right, is what they call this- puppets going haywire and basically turning on humans and stuff like that.
Willie: Well, there's that puppet frenzy that happens, is what they call it at some point.
Joseph: Oh right.
Willie: But the petrification, I think, I don't know if y'all interacted with the weeping woman.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. In the window-
Willie: She's still looking for her baby. And that whole zone is like a petrification, like quarantine zone.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: So I think like, their literally like, skin is hardening and they're turning into something else.
Joseph: Because she talks about like stone coming over her eyes or something-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -starting to basically take over her eyesight.
Willie: Yeah, and she wants her baby back before she does that, before she loses her vision to the stone.
Joseph: This reminds me, so in the game, one of the mechanics is that you can choose whether or not to lie. And part of the world is that it's almost like the puppet commandment is that a puppet cannot lie. It's, I guess in the guidelines of how they were manufactured and built.
But you play as, who I guess is P, um, which I assume is short for Pinocchio, but maybe it's not. But you play as a puppet that's special and actually has the ability to lie.
So Willie, What did you say the baby was? Or did you even return it?
Willie: I did return it. I said it was cute. It was a cute baby. [Taylor snickers]
Joseph: That's the human, uh, oh no, okay, so you didn't say it was a puppet.
Willie: No, I didn't say it was a puppet.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: I said it's a cute baby. I assume from the only two things that we get to see in this game, obviously we should have said this up top, but this whole thing is going to be spoiler filled because we're talking about this demo and I feel like we should just talk about it.
Joseph: I think that's fair because it's only, like, it's only the first two chapters.
Willie: Yeah. I sort of assume by the name, it almost feels like all the important decisions you should lie about-
Joseph: [laughs] Yeah
Willie: -because you can.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: And you have to for the first one, because like, you can't get into Hotel Krat if you're not, if you don't say you're a human.
Joseph: Taylor, you did make it to Hotel Krat, right?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, ok.
00:19:54
Taylor: I'm just wondering, will Pi-nose-cchio's nose get so long that you can use it as a weapon now? [Laughter] You can swing it around and stab fools in the eye with it.
It said something like your gears are changing inside or something like that, right?
Joseph: Yeah, like your springs are reacting.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah, there we go.
Joseph: I do wonder what that was about.
Willie: Me too. To be clear, that was like when you enter the hotel for the first time and you lie for the first time.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: There's the text that Joey just said that, yeah, your springs are reacting. Is that what you said?
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: Because I think that's it.
Taylor: I immediately thought that that was the, what do they call that system?
Your chaos system or your good and bad.
Joseph: Oh, right. Like your alignment.
Taylor: Alignment there you go yeah that's that's what it made me think of immediately.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Especially the way that it went red like that and the same red animation is what enemies do when they're coming at you with a with a powerful hit.
Joseph: What's interesting is that it happens throughout the game when you're not making a choice as well what it came across to me as is maybe, it's him becoming more human.
Taylor: Ooh. Oh, right.
Joseph: Like becoming a real boy or something along those lines because there was a moment, uh, so it happens at the door of Hotel Krat and then it can happen when you're talking to Lady Antonia, the owner of Hotel Krat.
Taylor: Okay.
Joseph: It happened to me there.
Taylor: You didn't lie or anything, you just straight up did dialogue?
Joseph: No, no.
Taylor: Hm.
Joseph: So she gives you, she gives you an emote. That I think is the Look at my Clothes emote.
Willie: [chuckling] Oh, yeah.
Joseph: Like after she gives you the like school uniform. So if you have that uniform on- I don't know if it takes both of these things- But I had the uniform on and I did that gesture in front of her, and then it triggered like some dialogue. And then after that I got a spring- "your springs are reacting" moment.
Willie: Interesting.
Taylor: What color is the school uniform? Is it white as well?
Joseph: It's dark, I dunno, it's dark.
Willie: Dark blue.
Taylor: That's good. I noticed with the white blouse that you're wearing at the beginning or shirt whatever you call that, it's hard to read the text-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -of what, what the items do because half of the text or a quarter of the text is in front of that shirt.
Joseph: Ah, yeah.
Taylor: It's hard to, it's hard to read it.
Willie: Interesting.
Taylor: Or impossible to read it.
Joseph: I love how blood soaked that gets.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah.
Joseph: When you get messed up, it's like just drenched in blood.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I kind of wish it stayed around longer before like getting washed off in the rain. I wish it stayed longer because it looks pretty damn cool.
And then there was a second place. I don't know if y'all made it this far, but there's the gramophone in Hotel Krat. And you can get- oh, you, you must've got it, Willie, if you did the side quest with the baby puppet.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: But you get a vinyl record.
If you go back to Hotel Krat and you play that song, it has a spring, "your springs are reacting" moment, like after you finished the track.
00:22:41
Willie: Oh cool, yeah, I was wondering what you did with that record that you get, but I didn't actually ever do anything with it.
Joseph: There's a gramophone that's like near the Stargazer in Hotel Krat.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Also by like the front desk puppet, but yeah, if you play it there, it's actually really good.
Taylor: Hm.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I kind of want to put it in this episode. [Willie chuckles] Like maybe I'll put it in right here.
[music]
Joseph: But I liked it man. I liked it a lot.
Willie: That's cool.
Joseph: Which gives me a lot of hope for the other, the other tracks that might be a part of the game.
Willie: Yeah. I mean-
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: I liked all the music in general.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: There were definitely, I don't know, there were tones of some other music in it. The feel of it felt like something else too, to me-
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: -and I could never really place it.
I liked it. I enjoyed the music. Like I said earlier, just the graphics in general, I really liked. Like you said, the clothes getting bloodstained whenever you were just going off on people is cool, but it does go away a little too fast.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
00:24:08
Willie: And just like looking around the world at the building, multiple buildings and the stuff that's just laying on the ground everywhere, is like, pretty detailed.
Joseph: The reflections. Gosh, like the ray tracing, like right out in front of Hotel Krat before you walk in for the first time. If you look at those puddles, the standing water on the ground, I was kind of blown away.
Taylor: It's getting incredible. It's a lot more seamless. I feel like the first games that we saw that were really showing it on console seemed like it caused a little more chug sometimes, or it would just be a little... not quite as crisp, I would say. Like maybe the overall image or the image in the reflection was just not quite as, what you would hope for. Like it prol- it looks amazing.
Joseph: There were two other moments where I was kind of just like really blown away by the graphics, like the texture. It was the floor in Hotel Krat. It's like this really glossy, shiny marble. But if you catch the light off of it, it looks real.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah.
Taylor: Hm.
Joseph: That. And then there's a painting on the wall in front of Lady Antonia. Like, where she's sitting in the wheelchair. If you catch the light off the painting, you can literally see brush strokes on the painting, dude. Like, impasto.
Taylor: Oh, wow.
Joseph: And I was like, what?
And like, I had like an actual verbal response to those two moments where I was like, [laughing] oh, shit.
Willie: [laughs] Yeah.
Taylor: That's cool.
00:25:28
Willie: I will say, uh, maybe this is first noticed in Hotel Krat, but one of the things that I thought was a little strange about the game was, not the voice acting. The voice acting was good. I really enjoyed that, but the amount of time between each line that's said is kind of ridiculously long.
Joseph: Right. Like, unless you, unless you manually advance it.
Taylor: Yeah. That's what I've been doing.
Willie: Yeah. It's like, why did they, what choice was that? It could be to leave the text on the screen for people who are reading it, but it seemed too long for that even.
Joseph: Why I don't believe that's why it's longer, is because when items come up on screen, the descriptions, they go away so damn fast. You can't even read them.
Willie: [Laughing] They do go away so fucking fast.
Taylor: Yeah, those loading screens are nothing.
Joseph: What the hell? So you immediately have to pop open the menu to go back and find that object to read about it. So I think that should be longer. And then I think the time in between lines of dialogue should be way shorter.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Because it does interrupt the flow too.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like the NPCs talking, like it interrupts it enough that I think it should be shorter.
00:26:29
Taylor: Did they mention if the, if your progress from this will continue when the game comes out?
Joseph: I don't know. I've been thinking that the whole time I played it, and I have no idea.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: I saw people discussing that online, and I don't think there was a conclusion about it.
Taylor: Yeah. Ok.
Joseph: I do think it is meant to be the first two chapters of the game. Like, those are, like, in fact, the first two chapters.
Taylor: And so you said there were, you ran into a couple of bosses or three total.
Joseph: Yeah. Three.
Taylor: Three
Joseph: The Parade Master, who you fought, and then Mad Donkey, which is the, the boss, right before you find Geppetto.
Taylor: Oh nice.
Joseph: But that's a human boss. It's a human boss and a donkey mask.
Taylor: Oh wow.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: So you do get to humans. They're not all robots. Like- or puppets, rather.
Joseph: At least that one.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: All the other humans are NPCs that, you know, are helping you along in some way, but that one he, I forget all the dialogue in that scene, but he's obviously looking for Geppetto and mad.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: His name is Mad Donkey, so he's definitely mad about something. [Taylor laughs]
He's looking for Geppetto to get the truth about something.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Yeah, he's mad at Geppetto and- I think he says, and the alchemist for creating the puppets.
Joseph: Ok.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: He says that they're responsible for the puppet frenzy in the first place. Like they would-
Joseph: Right.
Willie: That wouldn't have been possible without whatever work Geppetto was doing.
Taylor: Makes sense.
00:27:55
Joseph: Venigni, is that his name?
Willie: Venigni, yeah.
Joseph: That basically made, made the Legion Arms that you can equip.
Taylor: Oh.
Joseph: I mean, you basically have a mechanical arm that has different abilities and you can swap them out. Or either given more, I guess they're all crafted. They're pretty much all crafted by Venigni or Eugenia who's at the workbench in Hotel Krat.
Taylor: Have you gotten any more besides, I think the one I have right now is the harpoon.
Joseph: Yeah. Puppet String.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. Puppet String.
Joseph: It's just that one. And one more that's like, Fulminis. It might be called.
Willie: Yeah. Something like that.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: I can't remember what's what it's called either.
Joseph: It's like an electric shock.
Taylor: Ahh.
Willie: Yeah. It applies the Electric Blitz stuff.
Taylor: Okay. Yeah, that's, that's powerful. I was having a lot of trouble with the Parade Master until I applied the electricity. And then the first time I did that, I think I beat it.
Joseph: That's what I did. Because you can buy it-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: -from the merchant, like right outside the Parade Master.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: I ended up using Electric Blitz on uh Parade Master too.
Taylor: Yeah. I finally remembered that I bought that stuff. And I tried the flame, didn't seem to do much. So maybe the flame will be more effective against human enemies and the, and the Blitz, electricity will be more effective against, you know, classic-
Joseph: Robot puppets.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph: The boss is really, really damn good. I thought.
Taylor: Yeah, the Parade Master was beautiful and they, they really added a lot of variety to him to be a first boss.
He kept getting me with that- where he would, he would do one come down with his, with his broom, and then another one and then you would get out of those, and you go up to start hitting him, but then he had like an angry, like, "Argh", like he would just stomp it once.
Joseph: I hated that one.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: He just swings it straight down.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's not even a move. He's just like, mm-mm, like he's getting, uh, reset basically. And, ugh, I would be under that constantly.
Joseph: Hats off to the devs for that one. Cause that one got me a bunch of times too.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Cause you rush in and they're like, Hey, there's this delayed, like pretty simple attack that goes straight down and that's right where you are.
Taylor: Yep.
00:29:57
Willie: In general, I felt like, before I talk about the bosses, I felt like the enemies, especially early on, felt pretty easy to deal with. But also, because they're puppets, they move in some very strange ways. And so every now and then, especially I think the enemies with the candelabras, like the long sticks with the candelabra on the end-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: [laughing] Yeah.
Willie: -they would do a weird attack, like from the ground up or something, and I would always mis telegraph it, like, or like misjudge it, and would end up getting, taking one hit at the beginning, because I like thought I was just going to run in there and like hit these people quickly.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: I got got a lot of times because of the animation of the swings, like it's, it's very, um, snappy.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: In a way that it's hard, it's hard to judge.
Willie: It's unnatural. Like a-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: It's almost like a, a Ring girl situation or something like that, that like it moves in this weird mechanical but also just unexpected way when they attack sometimes.
Joseph: I like it because it does make it challenging.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And you know, just outside of, outside of the timing itself, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like, perfect guard, man. Perfect guard and perfect parry, they're, it was pretty difficult, like, at the start of the game for me.
Taylor: Similar to zombies and skeletons from the Souls games. How they had weird cadences sometimes.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Often dictated by how heavy the weapon was that they were carrying or something like that. So they would have different move sets and cadences.
Joseph: What about combat overall? I enjoyed it. I think the dodge is a little sketchy. Like it, I wish it dodged a little bit. I don't know, more efficiently, like Elden Ring, like when you, you can roll and then it's like straight up. I don't know, I feel like the I frames were better.
Taylor: Is it noticeably different if you lighten yourself up? I feel like my guy right now is very heavy. Probably because of the big sword I'm using.
Willie: It is a little different if you lighten yourself up. But also, there is an upgrade at the end. If you get to the very end and you can upgrade your dash-
Taylor: Oh
Willie: -so you can do like a double dash, basically, like you can dash in the middle of a dash.
Taylor: Oh. That's cool.
Joseph: You can do that before the demo ends?
Willie: Mm-hmm. Because you can keep playing after.
Joseph: Right, right. And, and you get to Geppetto's tools-
Willie: Yeah
Joseph: -and you see the, the actual skill tree, you can get one of them?
Willie: Yeah, you should. I think if you've done everything, you should get two quartz and you can unlock one thing if you want.
Joseph: Ah.
Taylor: Hm.
Willie: So, yeah, the thing that you see Geppetto for is because he can do something called, uh, he can like alter your P-Organ, which is the thing that is, [laughter] is such a weird name.
Joseph: It's basically your heart, right?
Willie: It's basically your heart. [Taylor snickering] It's the thing that's on the loading screen too, which is cool-
Joseph: Yeah, super cool.
Willie: -cause it's a heart with like this cool mechanical gear system in it.
Joseph: I didn't know that until the end.
Willie: Yeah, so, but you see that, like, when you sit in the chair at Geppetto, you can go in and you can see the skill tree and he'll, like, make upgrades using something called Quartz.
And if you put two Quartz in any of the first four choices, if you put two of them in there, it will unlock that ability. And so I did that specifically to unlock the dash, just to see what that looked like.
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: And it is, yeah, it does work pretty well. But I think It is about how much capacity you have, is that what it's called?
And like, yeah-
Joseph: I think so
Willie: - what your weight is. Because anytime you're at 60% or more, you'll become slightly heavy. And once you're slightly heavy, you slow down just a little bit.
Joseph: I'm pretty sure I was slightly heavy throughout most of my play, play in the demo.
Willie: I was for a long time until I started paying attention to it and would just put on...
What is the word? A different frame, I think.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I, instead of doing like the-
Joseph: Like a lighter one?
Willie: I would just put on the lightest frame that I could.
00:33:43
Joseph: That's interesting. I think in general, the combat is good. I think I like the combat in Wo Long a little better, but I do like the combat in Lies of P.
Willie: It did feel sluggish to me at first, but as I got used to it, I felt like it was fine. Even though I did die a lot at some bosses.
Joseph: I did too. I think what I'm having the most trouble with is the parrying. Like the perfect parry.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Mm.
Joseph: And just timing that correctly because there were so many times in the boss fights where I was just trying to perfect parry and I was just taking so much damage that it's like basically ruining that run at the boss. Just to like try and practice the timing.
Willie: I will say so there are bosses in this and then there are like mini bosses. The main bosses I think are the Parade Master and Mad Donkey and then the...
Joseph: Scrapped Watchman
Willie: Scrapped Watchman at the very end.
Taylor: I think I'm at the one of the mini bosses right now. The real big dude that guards the box.
Willie: Uh-huh
Taylor: You have to go across like a circular platform.
Willie: Yeah, you drop down-
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: -onto the lower level and then walk across the platform to get to him.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Yeah, I thought I snuck past him and I was going into that room-
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: [laughing] -across from him and I turned around and he was coming real fast and yeah, didn't end well.
Willie: Yeah, I can't remember what that one's called.
Joseph: There's a stargazer right across that platform.
Taylor: Yeah, and I couldn't get it because he was, I went over to it and I was like, what the heck is going on?
00:35:09
Taylor: So if I, if I'm not getting the option, or is there a level to how many, uh, like a max level up level?
Willie: I don't think so.
Taylor: Cause I noticed I s- okay.
Willie: Also, here's the part where I admit how long I played this game. Cause I realized while you were saying the intro, like, oh, we play five hours of this game.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: And it's like, I definitely played more than that.
Joseph: How much was it?
Willie: I think it was closer. It was closer to like 12 hours total by the time I finished.
Joseph: I think I played eight.
Willie: I did, I think I wrote it down, uh, it was 11 hours and 45 minutes and 57 seconds, if you want the seconds, so really 11 46 basically.
Joseph: I'll have to check again, I think mine was 8, because I went over too, just from like exploring and trying to do everything.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It was also longer than I expected, but I think I was also playing longer than most people do.
Willie: I felt like I did too. Some of that was me exploring and like going back and leveling.
Joseph: Mmm
Willie: Which is what would- how I know the answer to Taylor's question, is like I think I'm at level 38 or something. And I don't know that any-
Joseph: Does it actually count the levels?
Willie: Mm-hmm
Joseph: Oh, I don't even know if I realized that.
Willie: It's definitely in the level up screen, but I think it's also, like, there's this weird, there's actually a little P-Organ in the top of the screen, I think, uh, just to the left of your carry weight when you're in the level up screen.
Joseph: Oh, right, right. Okay.
Willie: And I didn't know what that was for the long time, for the longest time. And then I realized it was my actual level.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And I think at the save screen, when you exit, it might tell you. But maybe not.
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: I think it tells you the location and the time.
00:36:43
Joseph: What uh, what weapon did you choose at the beginning?
Willie: Oh, I chose the saber at the beginning. The balanced.
Joseph: I went with the rapier. I like the speed of it.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I felt like it didn't do as much damage. I mean, it definitely didn't do as much damage as the greatsword. But I almost wish I started with the balanced because the moveset. I think it's just, it does a little bit more damage and the guard, the guard reduction was better. Like maybe the worst on the rapier.
Willie: Yeah, I think that's true. I don't know. Yeah, so you haven't gotten to this yet Taylor. The other thing that's interesting about it is you can disassemble and reassemble weapons.
Taylor: Mmm
Willie: So-
Joseph: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Willie: You can take the blade and the handles and mix them up. So ultimately what I ended up doing, I think is what a lot of other people did in the demo, which was the rapier handle and the great sword blade.
Taylor: Okay. Oh man.
Willie: So it's like super quick and still does lots of damage.
Taylor: Whoa.
Willie: For a long time, I was using the rapier handle and the electric coil blade.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Which was also fun. Cause that electric coil that you get destroys some people.
Taylor: Huh. That's cool.
Joseph: The Electric Blitz really helps with the puppets.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Taylor, so you definitely haven't gotten to the point that that is unlocked.
Taylor: Mm-mm.
Joseph: Which happens right after the second boss.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: What's cool is you can upgrade the blade and the handle independent of one another so that when the weapon is disassembled they still kind of carry their upgrades, right?
Willie: I didn't ever see that the handle still had an upgrade, but I guess I didn't really look that well. Maybe I'll look now.
Joseph: I didn't upgrade a handle, but I upgraded the rapier blade.
Willie: Yeah, that's the thing. I upgraded it while it was one piece.
Joseph: Right, that's what I did.
Willie: So when I took them apart, I don't think the handle had the plus two on it or whatever
Joseph: Ahh, ok.
Willie: But the blade did.
Joseph: Yeah, interesting. I like this game mechanic, man. This system where you can swap handles and blades. Like, I think it's pretty cool.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: It's fresh on my mind because of Tears of the, uh, Tears of the Kingdom and the Fuse in that game. Where you get, there's just like almost unlimited customization and what kind of weapons you can build and what types of elements you can combine.
But I like it in this game just because it's a way to mix things up and there's a little bit of creativity involved. Honestly, the hardest thing for me was playing this game after Tears of the Kingdom or during Tears of the Kingdom because I kept like whiffing my Fable Arts because it's Y on the Xbox controller and that's the button you use to run in Tears of the Kingdom, so I was like constantly
Taylor: Oof
Joseph: accidentally pressing Y and just like whiffing the Fable Arts.
Taylor: That'll do it.
Joseph: It took me a while to get used to that.
Willie: I opened this game for a reason, because it's something we're talking about now and I don't even know what. So now it's just open. It was something very specific, you said a second ago, and I was like, I don't know, I'll check, and then I don't, I don't remember anymore.
It's gone.
Joseph: Was it the, the handle upgrade?
Willie: Oh yeah, yeah. I think that was it.
00:39:43
Joseph: You know, one other thing that kind of got me was the way the inventory is managed. Like the quick inventory, like you either press up and you get access to like three slots on the belt or you press down and then you cycle through other options on the belt. But there were times where I was accidentally healing with the pulse charge instead of using the weapon grinder.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Just because I was like I had the wrong category selected.
Taylor: Mm
Willie: Yeah
Joseph: And so like I kept accidentally doing that for a few hours until I did it enough times that I started checking before or like keeping a better eye on it.
Willie: I hope that there's like a belt upgrade so that the upper belt and lower belt slots can have more things.
Joseph: Mmm
Willie: Cause just having three items on it-
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: -kind of felt like a hindrance sometimes. It feels like later on, if you've got multiple throwables and multiple resistant type things, like it's gonna just be overwhelming very quickly cause like you don't have enough room to switch through them like quickly.
Joseph: Right now it feels like they're trying to manage the amount of items you have to cycle through.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: By keeping it a pretty small number, but that's a good point. I wonder if they do expand that or if you expand it through the skill tree in the game as you progress.
Willie: Skill tree or you like find a bigger belt, you know?
Joseph: Uh-huh
Willie: Like you just find a bigger pouch at some point.
Joseph: And that makes sense. It could be in like Geppetto's set of tools, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That there's a belt upgrade of some kind.
Willie: Oh, what I was missing from that sort of selecting the items was the hold up or hold down to get back to the first item. [chuckles]
Joseph: Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Me too.
Willie: I kept wanting it to be, be something that I could do to go back to the pulse cells really quickly or whatever and couldn't do it.
Joseph: That would be great. I also. There's the Electric Blitz, like what the icon looks like in the little belt photo. It looks very similar to what the grinder looks like.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So I had trouble, because they were in that same group-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: -like differentiating them from each other. Cause I think the center is like highlighted in a different way and there's, they're also using color.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That was confusing me about which of those two belt slots I had equipped because I think it's red. Like it highlights it red-
Willie: Uh-huh
Joseph: -whether or not you're on the top level or the bottom level. And I literally couldn't see that, like I don't know, for a good while.
Willie: The, the Blitz one, it's got some blue tint to it, but it is definitely, it looks the same, minus the like, blue tint on it.
I, I can't, I don't have one right now, so I can't tell you for sure.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: But I was definitely keeping it in my extra bag, instead of my belt.
Joseph: [chuckling] That's probably what I should have done, just to get 'em away from each other. I do like the extra bag too. I mean, definitely reminds me of like the system in Elden Ring.
Willie: Yeah. What is that thing called?
Joseph: I do you like that.
Willie: A quick pouch or something?
Joseph: Yeah.
00:42:27
Willie: Yeah. As far as I can tell, the handle didn't get a plus whenever.
Joseph: Mm. Okay.
Willie: I'm gonna go see if she'll do that right now. What's her name? Eugénie.
Joseph: Yeah. Eugénie or Eugenia.
Willie: I think it's Eugénie is how she says it.
Joseph: Eugénie.
Willie: That was another thing I noticed about the names. So, thinking about the little cricket, the mechanical cricket that's in your Monad's lamp that you have on your hip. Jiminy, it's like spelled Gemini, but it's Jiminy. When you first meet the character in Hotel Krat who like greets you and it's the person who you level up with, she introduces herself and it looks like it's Sophia, but that's not how she says her name.
Joseph: Really?
Willie: She says Sóphia or something like that.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: The accent is in a different place. So it's not Sophia, it's Sóphia or something like that.
Joseph: Mm interesting.
Willie: It's just said slightly different. And then Polendina is the... I think Antonia cause- calls him her butler-
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: -but he basically is the, the hostess or the host at the desk counter in the hotel.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But I felt like the names were interesting and a couple of things were pronounced in interesting ways.
Joseph: And the way that they're written, is nice.
Willie: Yeah. Or the way they're written. Yeah.
Joseph: I like that too. Especially the, the Gemini Jiminy thing. Like that was a, a nice twist. And just doing it a little different.
00:43:47
Joseph: What is interesting to me is, I think this game is going to be successful. Like probably no doubt about it, based on just how polished that demo is and the number of downloads it already has.
What happens after this, dude, when they go down the rabbit hole of treating other fairy tales and things like that in the Souls-like way, you know, like um, I don't know, Hansel and Gretel or something, or like Alice in Wonderland as a soul's like, would be pretty awesome.
Like, where can it go, like, if this does end up successful? Dark reimaginings.
Willie: Probably more so, just back to their original roots, even though this is like, not that, right?
Joseph: Uh-huh
Willie: But like, original Pinocchio is very fucking dark. The story is intended to be a tragedy in the way that it's written.
Joseph: Uh huh.
Willie: I'm trying to think what other, what other fairy tales would be cool like that. I think the Alice in Wonderland would definitely be a good, a good call.
Joseph: Yeah
Willie: Because there's so much to play with in that world already.
Taylor: It's already dark imagery too. Like a lot of, it's easy to go down that path where, as with Pinocchio, it seems like it's a little more of a stretch to make that world creepier because it had been so Disney fied.
Joseph: You know, it's been so long since I saw Pinocchio.
Willie: Yeah
Joseph: Like, I didn't even see that, um, that recent Pinocchio like, reimagining.
Willie: Yeah, the Guillermo del Toro.
Joseph: Which is only like a few years old, right? Yeah that one.
Willie: Uh. Yeah, it's like maybe two years old right now. Maybe not even.
Taylor: Oh, I forgot he did one.
Willie: I turned it on and watched it, but I was tired, so I fell asleep.
But it was good, from what I saw, and I know what happens in it.
Joseph: I barely remember the story, like, of Pinocchio to begin with.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Coming into this game, like, I barely remember anything, like, any of the details, for sure.
Willie: I didn't remember really too many details either, without- I remember the big pieces, but I did, like, read it again, just to remember.
Just trying to connect pieces to see what, what was a nod to the original story and what,
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: -what was just sort of a spin on everything.
00:45:44
Joseph: You know, there's the, the clothing that you get from Lady Antonia. That is that school outfit.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But it's called someone's memory.
Taylor: Hm.
Joseph: And it has the, the letter M like embroidered on the front or something.
So it's very clear that you probably need to use this outfit with like some. NPC at some point, or it's somehow tied to somebody in the story.
Taylor: Hm.
Joseph: But that little bit that they gave us in the description of that uniform gives me hope for the story of the entire game and like how it's all woven together and how interesting it can be.
Willie: Yeah, I ended up using the, just while we're thinking about costumes, I ended up using the Mad Donkey's hunting apparel like outfit. I didn't use the, the mask, but I did use the, the outfit.
Joseph: I did exactly the same thing.
Willie: Because the outfit looks cool.
Joseph: When I put the mask on, I was like, no, this doesn't really, it doesn't really feel like me.
00:46:39
Joseph: All the way back to the beginning of the game, I don't quite understand why you start in like a train car.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: You know, I haven't really figured that out. Like, why, why are you there? And like, why are you woken up there? But anyway.
Willie: I don't know if I thought about that too much. The only, like, lore that comes up in the loading screens is about the train system in Krat, and like, that being a major development.
But I don't know why you wake up there.
Joseph: Yeah, I was definitely wondering, like, as I was playing, I was like, why did we start there other than having a place to start? But, one of the things I immediately thought when starting the game is that I just feel like puppet Timothée Chalamet.
Willie: Absolutely. [laughs]
Joseph: Like I couldn't stop thinking that.
Willie: Yeah, the whole time.
Joseph: Like this is-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: Like I feel like I'm playing as Timothée Chalamet.
Taylor: Yup.
Joseph: Like his movement is even kind of like his movement, at least in the movie The King.
I think you watched that, Willie. Did you watch that?
Willie: I still didn't watch it. I don't think. No, I didn't.
Joseph: The way P walks in the game reminded me of Timothee Chalamet, as well as his hair and then his like complexion. But I was feeling that the whole time.
00:47:46
Willie: Real quick, cause I was looking at the weapon upgrades. So what I remember now is that you can alter the handle at Eugénie, but we can't do that yet because we don't have the right-
Joseph: The cranks.
Willie: Yeah. The, those pieces to do that. And you can alter them so that they have a different... not ability, but they're either based on Motivity or Technique or Advance. And so those change, like you can change the level of like, what's the focus to basically give it to scale with Motivity or scale with Technique or scale with Advance.
Joseph: You can determine that when you upgrade it?
Willie: When you change the handle. If you alter the handle. If you have those-
Joseph: Yeah
Willie: - cranks that you were talking about. There's like the Motivity crank, the Technique crank, and the Advance crank. But you don't find any of those in the demo as far as I know.
Joseph: Yeah, I don't think I did. The, so Motivity I'm just assuming is like Strength and, um, Technique is Dex?
Willie: I think that's true. Yeah, and Advance is the sort of Legion stuff, all of the statuses.
00:48:45
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Taylor, how did you feel about the combat in the game?
Taylor: It feels good after, after doing it for a couple of hours, it started to make more sense.
Um, I haven't gotten to the point where like the Puppet String is feeling natural or- I don't even know what it's doing, but like it just shoots out at them and disrupts them for a second. And, um, I guess that's it.
Joseph: It depends on who you use it on, but you can totally scorpion motherfuckers to you.
Taylor: Oh, really? Ok, so-
Joseph: Like the smaller enemy, uh enemies, you can use it like a hookshot.
Taylor: Huh. Okay. Yeah, maybe, maybe I have to apply some technique or something to it, but.
Willie: As long as they're not blocking, cause some of the enemies can block, and if they're- I mean, ah, obviously all the enemies can block, but if they are blocking when you use it, it'll just ricochet off them and not do anything.
Taylor: Oh, maybe that's, that might be what's happening.
Joseph: I was impressed that some of the enemies can actually dodge. Like Mad Donkey, he can dodge the Puppet String. Like just kind of sidestef- sidestep it.
Taylor: Ooh
Joseph: and I was like, this guy.
Taylor: Cheating.
Joseph: Oh, damn. This reminds me. One of my favorite things is when you are parrying effectively, or when you get the perfect parry, you can break enemy weapons.
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: Wow
Joseph: Which is pretty sick. That's how i ultimately defeated Mad Donkey, is by like finally breaking his weapon to the point where he didn't have that insanely long reach.
Taylor: Wow. Is that any, any enemy? You can break?
Joseph: I don't know if it's any enemy but i think it's, probably, a lot of them.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: I would guess it's any one of them. But many of them, like I said early on, are pretty easy, mostly. So, like, you don't ever have to fight them that long
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: to, like, destroy them. Like, I feel like you'll kill them before you'd break their weapon.
Taylor: That's a pretty neat, just cool little feature to have in there.
Willie: There's some, I don't know if they're soldiers or what, later on that have these big blades like large
Joseph: their, like broadswords
Willie: broadswords, and those are cool when they break. When you get those to break and it just like cracks in half and falls off, it's like...
Taylor: Crazy.
Joseph: Man. If you get two of them on you at once-
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah
Joseph: Man, [laughs] I was getting wrecked by those guys.
Willie: I will say the other thing about the arms is with the Puppet String, I noticed when I was looking at it while playing that there are, there are levels to it, right? Like you can actually upgrade them at some point.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Because like level one is like, you can press and hold it to attack. And level two is something about dodging. And I didn't know what that meant. Like it enables a dodge after a hit; is level two. And then the third one is like, if you hold it, it triggers some sort of extra attack, that I don't know what it is.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: I think those are upgrades because it has like a one, a two, and a three, like next to it, like Roman numerals.
Joseph: And that was where the things in the menu that are like grayed out-
Willie: Mm-hmm
Joseph: -in the demo, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's cool. The idea of being able to upgrade your favorite one or the most useful one in that situation is nice. I wonder how many there are going to be, just throughout the entire game.
Willie: Yeah, arms, I have no idea. I had read something about there being something like 30 types of weapons, and the math doesn't really, I don't, I'd have to think about the actual math, but there were like over 30 types of weapons and hundreds of combinations
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: but it feels like it would be more than that, for sure.
And there are some weapons you can't. I think somewhere in one of the loading screens, it's like special weapons can't be disassembled.
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: Like they're meant to be used in that state.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: So there are certain weapons that you couldn't take the blade and handle apart. And it's because there's something special about them.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But we don't see any of those in the demo.
Joseph: Yeah, that's cool.
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: 30 plus weapons, I think that's a good number to, to be able to mix and match. I don't know, Willie, did you fool around with the, [chuckles] like, the electric baton?
Willie: I used it for a little bit and I think I put the handle on something. You mean the policeman's baton, right?
Joseph: Yeah, that, yeah, that's what I meant.
Willie: Yeah, yeah. The electric coil I did use, the baton, I used for like 10 minutes at most, I think. I wanted to use it more because that dude kicked my ass a bunch. [chuckles]
Joseph: Me too. I feel like he was the hardest outside of a like real boss.
Willie: Yeah, for sure. Which is where you're getting, Taylor, after you get past that one big dude.
Taylor: Oh, ok.
Willie: [chuckling] It's the next thing that comes up pretty much after that.
Taylor: Great.
Joseph: You fight one though in the, in the train station.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: It's a, it's a like lower level one that's just easier to beat.
Willie: I think it has less health
Joseph: Ok
Willie: -because the other one felt like it had way more health.
Joseph: Yeah, dude, it's like three times the amount.
Willie: [laughs] And, yeah, about that boss, or mini boss, that took me, I think, the longest to beat out of any of them, I'm pretty sure. I don't know how many times I played that fight, but it was a lot.
Joseph: Same
Willie: And then, the Mad Donkey, I think I did twice. I got him quick, for whatever reason. It was not, it felt so much easier, and I think it was because I was playing that that police fight so much, that I just like figured out how to parry, figured out how to like perfect dodge, figured out how to like perfect block, all of those things that I needed just to like fight the Mad Donkey, and it was fine.
Joseph: Mad Donkey. He definitely got me more than twice. It probably took me like 10 tries to beat him.
00:53:59
Willie: If I made a death compilation from the stuff that I captured, I feel like it would be too long to post anywhere.
[Laughter]
Joseph: Did you record the gameplay?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: So, I'll.
Joseph: That'd be fun to watch.
Willie: I'll, I'll see. It's way too many. There's way too many deaths. For sure.
Joseph: Are you talking just like total deaths? Or-
Willie: Just bosses, I think.
Joseph: -like any particular boss?
Okay.
Willie: So I know how many times I fought the last boss because of the Star Fragments, because I used those to fight.
Joseph: Oh, to summon?
Willie: Yeah, to summon the specter at the end.
Joseph: Gotcha.
Willie: And I know that I fought the last boss 19 times before I finally got him.
Joseph: You had that many star fragments?
Willie: I had like 21 total.
Joseph: Oh shit. I feel like I had like 12. When I, the first time I summoned the specter, I think I had like 12 in the inventory. That's interesting because that puppet has like Blitz.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: [scoffs] Yeah.
Joseph: You know, so it's like, it's the reverse of Parade Master, where you can like really use Blitz.
I mean, I know it's like tutorial bosses, right? Where they're like, hey, here's a merchant, you can buy throwables and, you know, elemental things that you can apply to your blade. But yeah, the reverse there. Where- and then you have things that allow resistance at that point. So like, it's almost like a 180.
00:55:13
Willie: Taylor, you mentioned getting fire at some point.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Were you buying those from that one guy?
Taylor: Yeah. And I think I found one or two of them as well. I- They might've been drops or maybe I just picked them up somewhere, but.
Joseph: And are you, are you talking about like Thermite, like the throwable fire?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: I think I only found two of those and I don't remember being able to buy any, or maybe I just didn't. I don't remember.
Joseph: If anything, it's probably at that first merchant where you can buy the other two weapons, like starter weapons.
Willie: Well, that's what I mean. I went back there multiple times and I only saw the throwing cells and something else.
Joseph: Uh, okay. Maybe they are just drops.
Willie: And then those go away. What sucks is, once you progress too far into the demo, he only sells those weapons. That merchant stops selling the other throwables.
Joseph: Really?
Taylor: Hm.
00:56:02
Willie: At least he did for me. I need to go do the survey for this game. Cause they did put out a survey for it.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: To like, get feedback and stuff, obviously. Cause it's a demo and they want to like, fix things. I, on multiple occasions, at least twice, but maybe three times, bought stuff from Polendina in Hotel Krat, and it didn't, it just, I didn't get it-
Joseph: Mm, really?
Willie: -but I lost my Ergo.
Joseph: Ohh
Willie: Like, I spent like 1,200 dollars at least twice, and saw them go into my inventory, like, saw like, you know, at the bottom of the screen, it says like, in bag and in storage, and I saw the number go up to three, like, there's three in my bag, and then when I backed out and I got to the boss. I didn't have throwing cells and I was like, what the fuck?
Taylor: Oof
Willie: I just spent 1200 Ergo on this and I did it again and I was like, all right, well, that's a shitty bug.
Joseph: Really?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. Didn't automatically go to storage either? it wasn't-
Willie: No.
Taylor: Oh, man.
Willie: That's what I thought too.
Joseph: Were you playing on PC or console?
Willie: I am playing on PC. Yeah.
Joseph: I wonder if maybe there's something there.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Or, you know, like a PC bug versus a console bug.
Willie: Right. Yeah, yeah, that could be true. And I wonder if that's even true with the things that Taylor was talking about. Cause like, I don't think I saw a Thermite there at that person,
Joseph: but I definitely, I definitely had Thermite in my inventory during the playthrough for sure.
Willie: I only ever had two total. Three, I think, during the entire playthrough.
Joseph: I had the throwing cells, I definitely had those. I had something that was like Electric Blitz that you can throw. Along with the Electric Blitz that you can apply to the blade itself. And then there was the sawtooth, wheels...
Willie: gears, yeah.
Joseph: And then Thermite. I don't know if there's anything outside of that, but maybe, I don't remember what the Blitz one is called.
Willie: That's just the throwing cell.
Joseph: Oh it is throwing cell. Ok.
Willie: That's actually called the throwing cell. And then the Thermite is Thermite.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: And this is going to be on Game Pass, right?
Joseph: At least the demo is.
Willie: Yeah, and I think that the game might be, because I think there was a... Maybe it was the demo that was just like preload the demo. But it definitely hit, I definitely clicked preload on the game too.
Joseph: Mm. So maybe there was a preload the full game?
Willie: Maybe.
00:58:05
Joseph: If it is, holy shit. [Willie chuckles] If it is, I'm not looking forward to September because, that literally September 19th is the same day as MK1.
Willie: Mm-hmm
Taylor: It looks like it. Says pre install Lies of P and play hundreds of high quality games for one low monthly price with Game Pass.
Joseph: That's wicked, dude. That and Starfield and Star Wars Outlaw. No, that's 2024 game.
Taylor: Yeah. They really are stacking on the quality.
Joseph: [laughing] Yeah dude. It's getting ridiculous.
Taylor: Cuz that, Starfield. Starfield is going to be...
I feel like that could be, I don't know if you guys remember, you probably do. When, um, when No Man's Sky, when that was really blowing up and it was a huge phenomenon that people had to be on streaming because it was that exploration. It was just like the real world of like, Hey, if there's a new place to explore, you're going to have a shit ton of people that, that want to do it.
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: And, uh. Could be a blast off for Xbox. Really. That could be their first amazing reason for people to buy into the Game Pass and buy Xboxes and all of that stuff. I'm sure that's what they're trying to do. And then with the, not to derail from the convo, but things like Yakuza, things like that showing up on there.
Wow.
Joseph: Yeah, they're flexing hard, man.
Taylor: They really are.
Joseph: They've been flexing Game Pass real hard. And who knows? Maybe they're just trying to get ahead of Sony, you know, or get ahead of PlayStation. What is it? PlayStation Plus?
Taylor: Yeah, and that, now's the time to do it because they've, they're finally seeing some of these titles come out to light instead of just being like, Hey, you know what, two years from now, or may as well be infinite amount of time from now, you know, you'll play these. So get the game pass now.
It's so much harder to say that, but this is quality. This is quality, like coming out with the demo that's this polished and this good. And really that you could spend three to 10 hours playing, I'm sure pretty easily.
Joseph: It's long too. There were moments where I was like, Oh, first boss, the demos over, like you kind of initially think that, but then no, there's a second boss.
And then like, you're like, Oh shit, here's Geppetto. It's going to end right after meeting him. No, it doesn't. [laughs] Then you go on to a third boss.
Yeah, it's
Taylor: smart. It's a smart way to do it. Like get people tangled up in that lore and in the story and get them knowing it. Cause then as soon as it comes out, people are going to take off running.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: You know, cause they'll have already played this or it starts them wherever, however it takes care of it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Taylor: You're going to have people that just want to get into that new world and just start seeing the new bosses and everything. See who can get there first. So, this will probably be a fun one to stream as well.
Joseph: And I feel like they're confident. They're confident that this game is good.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Or else they wouldn't have done a demo that's that, that packed and that long.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Which, the hint was the demo being 20 gigs.
Taylor: [scoffs] It was a big one.
Joseph: I think when I downloaded it, it was like 20 gigs. I was like, holy shit, this demo is 20 gigs.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But then you play it and it's like, okay. This thing is super polished. Looks fantastic. And the demo is running really damn good.
Taylor: I didn't notice very much screen tearing or anything like that from the early Souls days, so they're definitely good developers.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Some good stuff going on. Do we know who the team is behind it, or is it kind of a...
Joseph: It's like Round8, Round8 Studio I think, and they really haven't done anything, I believe.
Taylor: Ok.
Willie: Yeah, and it's, so I guess, let me check real fast, cause is it the publisher then that is...
Joseph: I think the publisher is Neo Wiz.
Willie: Neo Wiz, okay. Yeah.
Joseph: Which I think is South Korean, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Bless Unleashed. Bless. Well, that's cool. I always love when a new, a new player enters the arena-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: With a really good game. Cause then you know, hey, this one does good. It kills it. And then we're going to get another one in two years or three years. And I think that's going to be important right now, especially as AI starts kicking up.
And once we start seeing these, the AI have an effect on games and that you could come out with a super polished ready game in a year.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That's going to be very important to have these good devs, that you know you can rely on, and you know that they're putting out a good product.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Especially if they keep trying to sell them for 70 bucks or 60 or
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Whatever the price is by then. Might be a hundred, who knows?
01:02:11
Joseph: The last couple things I wanted to mention were the level design, I think is really good. When it, when it opens up, Taylor, you haven't gotten here yet, but after you get past that mini boss you were talking about, there's a Stargazer, and then you kind of get into the city streets. Like, uh, I guess it's Elysium Boulevard-
Willie: Mm-hmm
Joseph: -at that point, but the level gets, there's way more verticality and the level where there's like, uh, there's a top level and there are ladders that you can go up and down and you can kind of see over some of the areas you've already traveled through in the game.
Taylor: Awesome.
Joseph: But love that. I think it's, I think it's well done. I'm definitely digging the way these levels are crafted and the visibility too, when you're on the bottom level or the top level, I think is done pretty damn well. And it wasn't boring, like going through the streets and stuff like that and the rooftops, like it was not boring to me.
Willie: Yeah, I think that's why I ended up playing so much and like, and why I did go back and level a bunch.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: When I was having a hard time with a boss, I would just go back and kill a bunch of stuff so that I could buy some more levels.
Joseph: Man, I lost all my Ergo in the Parade Master fight.
[chuckling]
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: Like it wasn't going back to level, I was just going in there just getting beat down time after time and I was like, I have nothing, I can't even buy Electric Blitz anymore.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And I was too impatient to go through and like get some Ergo so I could buy, at least buy like three ergo blitzes. I mean not ergo blitz, but Electric Blitz. I was getting kind of crushed.
01:03:39
Joseph: The other thing I wanted to mention was the animations. I think the animations are really good. Like even the really subtle ones like turning on the lantern and like popping the Ergo or activating a Stargazer. Like I think all of those are really well crafted.
Willie: I do think all those-
Taylor: Yeah, sound is good too.
Willie: Yeah, I think all those are very cool. I will say again that the voice acting was good, except for those pauses in between. And I will say the animations for that, if you're just watching the conversation-
Joseph: Ah, yeah
Willie: -like from the third party perspective, the mouth movements are weird when they're speaking.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: There's like, they're not even trying to make them match-
Joseph: Uh-huh
Willie: -the text on screen-
Taylor: Hm.
Joseph: I felt the same way.
Willie: Which I guess is fine if you're not trying to make it match at all. But it's literally just them moving their mouths, like randomly.
Joseph: I wonder if they'll clean that up.
Willie: I don't know.
Taylor: Yeah, I do too. Or if that's on purpose, maybe it's an artistic thing or-
Joseph: Or is it a demo thing, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like, is it?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Is it like that's, that's one of the things we didn't do for the demo was like really spend a lot of time there.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I felt the same way though, especially in the non cut scenes.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, you're farther away, like the point of view is farther away, so you're not super zoomed in on someone's face.
So there's a little bit of, you can take a little bit of liberty there though, but it's noticeable.
01:04:51
Taylor: It's a good one. More demos like that, please.
Joseph: I'm looking forward to this game. Way more than when it was like coming out or when we saw it. What was that? Was that Summer Game Fest or was it the Xbox?
Willie: Yeah, we saw something at Summer Game Fest, for sure. I had seen it before and told you about it and you were like, What? I don't understand what you're saying.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: And then Summer Game Fest, it came out, and I was like, I'm telling you, this is the one. Joey was already talking about Tears of the Kingdom being Game of the Year, and I was like, you haven't even seen Lies of P yet.
Joseph: I was underestimating it at that point, but now playing the demo, I was like, this could contend for sure. I don't, I don't know if it'll topple Tears of the Kingdom.
Willie: I don't think it will just because of the name recognition.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Because I don't think any award show ever really give a shit about what is like, actually the best game because that's also unquantifiable, right?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: People like different stuff from games, so whatever. I- so I think on brand recognition and longevity alone-
Joseph: The legacy, yeah.
Willie: Something like Tears of the Kingdom is probably gonna win, even over something like Starfield, which is, it's Bethesda, so people will like it, but it's not- it doesn't have-
Joseph: 30 years
Willie: 30 years [laughs] of brand behind it.
Joseph: [chuckles] Yeah. Also, I think some, any Legend of Zelda game is just going to immediately have a wider audience of people that want to play the game and people that are willing to try the game versus something like Lies of P or even Starfield. But I think these all three of these games, I think, could be in the conversation for Game of the Year.
Willie: I definitely think they will be in, in the conversation.
01:06:22
Joseph: Uh, and excited about the music. After at least that one vinyl record in the game, I was like, okay, if they've spent some time crafting the music within the game, that's going to be nice. And also something I would want to collect. Like the way it started, I was like, hell yeah, I'm going to collect all these.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Because I think it sounded really good. Who knows how many there will be, but yeah, I'm looking forward to whatever side questing. Is gonna be included in this game.
Willie: I'm gonna go listen to that now. You mentioned it. [Taylor laughs]
Joseph: It's good.
Willie: I'm still in the game, cause-
Joseph: Oh yeah, I felt like it fits the game so well.
Willie: What did you just say?
I just need you to say it again exactly as you said it. If you could.
Joseph: I feel like it fits the game so well.
Willie: Right, yeah. That's what I thought you said. And I was, you were saying that as I was reading the title of this record, which is just called Feel.
Joseph: Feel, yeah.
[Laughter]
Willie: I'm definitely excited to play this full release and I could see myself spending 10 times the amount of time in the game.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. For sure.
01:07:21
Willie: Taylor, do you think that, uh, you'll finish this demo?
Taylor: Yeah, I'll try. If I get to a boss that I simply can't beat, I probably won't beat my head against a wall, but I will, there's a lot of stuff that I want to see that we talked about, and I want to try out. And I mean, like you said, whenever I got to Hotel Krat, that definitely helped, having that point that you get to the hub, and you get to see how everything functions, how all the mechanics work.
What all you can edit and build or at least some of it, that definitely was a good gust of wind to the sails that kept me going. So, and figuring out, you know, the before this mini boss, there's a kind of big dude that comes out with an axe. He runs out onto a rooftop that you're on-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And, he's a lot tougher than you expect.
He just seems a little bit bigger than the other puppets, but it turns out he's really beefy and his health bar and you're swinging away at him. It's not doing much and you're on a rooftop and he's just wailing on you. There's stuff like that, that I've been able to overcome that I really like. Like, I feel like they did a really good job on their scaling. That guy wasn't impossible.
So as long as it keeps being stuff like that, and like with the Parade Master, you can figure out a way to make them a little bit easier, then I'm going to stick with it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Because that's, it's really cool. I love the overall, just the style and everything is perfect.
Joseph: I was going to recommend, Taylor, if it takes a long time, like if you're getting burnt out with the demo, I would at least play right past the Mad Donkey boss. So that you can-
Taylor: Ok.
Joseph: You can unlock the system of the weapon upgrades and, or at least disassembling and reassembling different, different combinations of blades and handles together.
Taylor: Ok.
Joseph: Just to see what that is like, because really after Mad Donkey, it's way shorter of a game from Mad Donkey to the Watchman.
Taylor: Okay.
Joseph: It feels like it's not even half as long as what the beginning of that game is to get to that point.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It's fast.
Willie: There's really not much left-
Taylor: That's promising.
Willie: -after, after that.
Taylor: Ok
Willie: There's like not that many enemies in the last section that you have to go to.
Joseph: That's true. Yeah.
Willie: I will say about that Mad Donkey fight, it was, that was one of the easier ones for me.
And I think it was just because I was just keeping my distance and letting him swing and then run in and hit him. And I noticed you can roll around that guy and get backstabs, basically.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Fatal strikes or whatever a lot. You can do that quite often actually with-
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: -with the Mad Donkey. If you just like keep your distance and then run and roll around the back of him and you'll, you'll trigger those like quite often.
Joseph: That's what I would do, Taylor. I didn't even, I didn't even try that, but that could dramatically change the fight.
Taylor: That sounds like something I'll need to try. And I noticed that with the Parade Master too, that the safest place in this first phase was to be as close to him as possible, and then in the second phase they, you know what I mean, like there's always a little gimmick to, or something like that, that if you're patient enough you can usually find, sometimes that's my problem, sticking with it and being patient.
Willie: That was definitely my issue, especially with the fight you're gonna get too soon, the police watchman person who's just a like, One of the bigger police people, uh, with a huge health pool, it seems like. I was definitely trying to rush that fight too much for a little while and not just being patient with taking the hits where I could get the hits in.
Joseph: Same.
Willie: Only other piece of advice I could give there is that if you perfect block the fury hits, like those red tinged attacks. If you block those, it usually gives you a little bit of opening, but also that's the only way to not take any damage from those is to get a perfect block. I mean, obviously run away and don't get hit at all, but you can't just hold block cause you'll just get knocked over.
Joseph: Or dodge. You also can't dodge them.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: If you're within striking range, like you're going to take damage from both of those.
Taylor: So it has to either be either be perfect or-
Willie: Or run-
Taylor: -get out of the way.
Willie: -real far away.
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: [laughs] Yeah.
Taylor: Huh. That's cool. I don't think I've ever played a game that usually the red is just absolutely no. So that's interesting.
Joseph: I guess that's their, that's their fix because you can't dodge it
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: without taking damage, so perfect guarding is the only option.
Taylor: That's awesome. Get good or get wrecked.
Joseph: Shit, I might try to play some more of that. Just to go back through.
Taylor: Yeah, I'm definitely going to.
Joseph: At least go back to all the merchants and make sure I've seen all the items.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Maybe purchase them and try them out.
01:11:43
Taylor: And I saw yesterday, Aliens: Dark Descent came out.
Willie: Oh yeah? What is that?
Taylor: It's evidently a real time strategy aliens game, like kind of a top down. It's not for me, that's for sure. But it's just good that games are still coming out. We need things to fill the time. I asked Rebecca to knock me out in a manner that would keep me in a coma [Joseph and Willie laugh] until Starfield comes out and she refused, which is [chuckling] just selfish on her behalf.
Joseph: [laughing] Gosh
Taylor: She knows she could work and take care of the baby for all that time [laughing] by herself. So anyways, hopefully some cool games come out between now and then and until this comes out.
So this'll be a week or 10 days, I guess, after Starfield comes out.
Willie: Like Joey said, September is-
Joseph: It's not-
Willie: It's gonna be ridiculous.
Joseph: It's gonna be ridiculous. Yeah.
Taylor: It is.
Joseph: Like don't know how I'm gonna choose like what to play.
Taylor: Well, it seems like this will be right about that time that you need a good palate cleanser from playing a bunch of Starfield.
Just overplaying it, staying up late, kinda like we did with Elden Ring. And then you need this. Is this going to be multiplayer as well? Or is this single player?
Joseph: I didn't see anything that signaled a co op play.
Willie: Yeah, me neither.
Taylor: Hmm. It'd be interesting for them to take everything they have from Souls-likes and then choose not to do any multiplayer.
But I could see that as well, making it super heavy. One player
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Story driven. That would work, too. I'm not going to be mad at it either way.
01:13:19
Joseph: Yeah, agree, um, but like I mentioned at the start of this episode, from what I found online, the demo is meant to only be available until June 27th, and I think this episode is going to come out after that, so it might not be available. But the response, the response and the amount of downloads. I wonder if they would extend the ability to download the demo or if it truly is going to be a hard cut off between the 27th of June and September 19th when the full release happens.
Willie: Now I don't know what the date is, so you can clean up whatever you want as far as when the demo is available because I think in the beginning you said the 20th.
Joseph: Oh yeah, I might have said the 20th.
Taylor: You're dropping lies.
Willie: You did say the 20th for sure.
Joseph: Whoops, I think it's the 27th.
Willie: Okay.
Joseph: What did I write?
Willie: 20th.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. Maybe that's just wrong. I mean, it can't be the 20th, because [laughing] you could probably still get it right now.
Willie: Yeah, I think you can.
Taylor: Oh, damn. I forgot Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon also comes out next month. No, August. Mmm.
Willie: That'll be cool too, for sure.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: We still don't know when the Elden Ring DLC is coming out.
Joseph: Oh, man. Watch them fuck around and that be September.
Willie: [Laughing] Yeah.
Taylor: Oh my god.
Willie: Also September 19. [Joseph laughs]
Taylor: They would. They would.
Joseph: Yeah, Jesus.
Taylor: That'd be sick.
Joseph: Like okay.
Taylor: And that'll be paid for sure.
Joseph: True.
Taylor: I'm gonna have to take on six more jobs to be able to afford all the games that are coming out in the next few months. Thankfully Game Pass is gonna make it a little bit easier.
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: I'm definitely looking forward to whatever this game has and sinking a bunch of hours into it and Mortal Kombat and, [laughs] and Starfield.
Taylor: Same, expect an episode on pretty much every one of those.
Willie: [laughs] Yeah
Taylor: And some streaming. I feel like-
Joseph: [chuckling] Yeah
Taylor: -with everything coming out around the same time, it is the perfect opportunity to get everybody's streaming, uh, streaming setups going and working. Get them polished and then just stream the hell out of those games, where-
01:15:12
Willie: I also still need to finish Jedi: Survivor. So there's that.
Joseph: Oh, shit.
Willie: Which was part of the problem with me playing this game was that on Jedi: Survivor, I was using X Box controller and that uses X and Y buttons as weak and strong attack-
Joseph: Ah
Willie: -you know, which this game follows the triggers, right trigger and right bumper as being-
Joseph: Mm-hmm
Willie: -the weak and strong attacks.
Taylor: I switched mine up. I just went ahead and changed mine because the right bumper on my controller as y'all know is garbo. So now I use it for heals because that's something you're doing a lot less consistency.
Joseph: Oh snap
Taylor: consistently.
Willie: I thought about doing that 'cause I was like, well, I wanna make this match something else that I've played. And then I was thinking about it and I was like, wait, Elden Ring is mostly this. I will say the one thing that I hated of all of the controls is running with B.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: And jumping with clicking the left stick.
Joseph: That was weird.
Willie: That was like the worst part of the whole thing, was having to click the left stick to jump.
Joseph: I didn't even realize you could jump, like I missed that part of the tutorial, [Willie chuckles] like, I think cause it popped up right when there were enemies attacking me so I didn't read it. So I didn't even know you could jump until like I was beyond Mad Donkey.
Willie: [Laughs] Nice.
Joseph: Like that running jump. And then I never even really did it.
Willie: I only found a couple of uses for it ever. It's cool because it's a jump into a roll.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: So I assume it's a good way to close distance and get like next to
Joseph: That's true
Willie: -and like behind something.
01:16:40
Willie: Oh, the enemy that can fuck off is the chimney sweeps. Because I feel like-
Joseph: The chimney sweeps?
Willie: They're the guys who hold a long pole with these long like
Joseph: [laughing] Ohh
Willie: twisted shit on the end of them.
Joseph: Yeah, they do like the ramming attack.
Willie: They do the ramming thing.
Taylor: Yeah, oh God.
Willie: And that thing you can't- I, multiple times, instead of just running up to them and hitting them, I would try to roll through that-
Joseph: Bait it.
Willie: -Or jump and roll through that-
Joseph: Oh
Willie: -and instead I would just get caught and get hit five times while he's just ramming me with a stupid chimney sweep tool or whatever, like-
Taylor: [snickers] Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And it's just going, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta
Willie: [laughs] Yeah.
Taylor: Hitting you over and over, so when will it stop?
Willie: Yeah, that dude can fuck off. All of those. I hate them.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: From what I could tell, if you get hit with like the first one, you're gonna take all-
Willie: Yeah
Joseph: -the fucking hits and damage.
Willie: Uh huh.
Joseph: And you can guard it, but it just does a ton of chip damage too. Cause it's like five hits.
Willie: And as I leveled up, I literally would just run up to them, just fucking hit them three times and like kill them.
Joseph: Yeah, like before they even get started.
Willie: Cause if you let them start, it sucks.
Joseph: Yeah, don't come here with that shit.
Willie: Yeah, anyway, I'm glad we got to play this demo. And I will probably play more, but if you listen this long, we appreciate it. If you're listening to the end of the episodes, we appreciate it. Go follow us, like, on Instagram.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
And if we do start streaming, there is a Berries and Blades Twitch channel that you can find us at. I never mention it on here, but we do use that channel to play D&D every Wednesday night. I say every Wednesday night, but... When we're available, we play D&D on Wednesday nights, so check out BerriesandBlades on Twitch for that and hopefully other future streaming video games.
Willie: But thanks for listening.
Taylor: Yeah, we appreciate y'all. Take it easy. Keep 'er real.
Joseph: Take it easy.
Taylor: Take it easy. Take it easy.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:18:25
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Taylor: This just in, YoogaLabs puts out a game about a monkey's butthole. Brought to you by Yooga Sauce, drink, energy, blast, boom! In your face.