Ranking The Lies of P Bosses + Boss Rant 

I wish they'd add an arena mode or something, so you can re-fight your favorite bosses whenever you want.

I can't believe they made potential final boss a potato

Yeah the parry window is not as bad as I had thought... but the attacks that are delayed and then instant make it feel like a complete dice roll... feels bad

For me the delayed attacks make 100% sense when it's puppets I'm fighting, with the humans, they were just being dicks

One thing that is weird to me is that the red attacks don't always 'feel' like a big scary attack, like a big event in the fight. Sometimes they have just taken a basic attack and made it into a fury attack, and this is compounded by the fact that it just seems dropped into movesets- enemies can randomly chain them. They should've been given more of a special status, where you really saw it coming in terms of animation, not just colour...

My problem with the bosses is that the delayed attacks are so comically animated that it doesn't even feel like I'm fighting an actual being trying to kill me, rather than fighting a drunken wizard that falls asleep during half of their attacks. Bosses like Sword Saint Isshin and Owl Father show that you can have incredibly difficult and engaging bosses without resorting to obnoxiously delayed attacks that rely on pure memorization.

King of Puppets commits a cardinal sin of multiphase boss fights, where phase 1 does *nothing* to prepare you for phase 2. It's my biggest gripe, since it makes it feel like you have to learn two completely different boss fights at once...unlike the SUPERIOR Champion Victor fight.

I'm apparently in the niche minority but I really enjoyed BOTH black rabbit brotherhood fights. It reminded me of ornstein and smough how each character was different, with their own move set and attack patterns and speeds, reaches. I thought it was really well done, like if you mixed 4 kings with ornstein and smough, which is high praise if that's what it reminds me of.

I hate how whenever a valid issue arises in a soulsborne game people immediately say it’s a skill issue. Like no, not everyone is a gaming prodigy and you shouldn’t expect people to just “git gud” or not be able to enjoy the game whatsoever.

I still hate Green monster, Fighting it for the first time reminded me of those Corrupted Tree Spirit bosses in Elden ring. The moveset just feels like its a thrashing and flailing mess of hitboxes and I can hardly see what is happening

So, about those boss attacks... Post patch, the Laxasia amulet you dunked on in the amulet video is now a totally viable approach to playing through every boss fight. Vitality+Capacity with a bit of Vigor (and/or the +stamina amulet, and the stamina recovery one is probably the best one in the game anyway) grug facetank supremacy. Guard recovery scales hard and doesn't fall off as fast as health does. So you don't need to guess the parry timing when you can just hard block entire combos like Romeo's Firefowl Dance nonsense, then hit him twice with a medium weight weapon and heal back. Or hell, even greatswords may be viable now due to cap buff. Any attack you know the timing of and can confidently perfect guard is a free buildup for poise break if you have that upgrade, or a free boost of rally health. Edit: Holy Sword is probably the single best weapon in the game for this build. Damage of a Greatsword, speed of a Longsword, guard reduction top 3 in the whole game. It does nothing poorly and is probably the best for a defensive rally build with the right P-Organ.

Laxasia was so much fun for me , it was hard but worth it and not frustrating at all

I really enjoyed this game the most upsetting feature though is near every boss having two health bars for no reason, I think victor was one of the better bosses having 2 phases but on a single health bar

The thing about laxaxia is that the second phase feels so cool to watch but it's a nightmare to play for the more casual part of the community, her attacks are just full of high dashes that make it look like boogie woogie from jujutsu kaisen and her jumps that take so long to fall and then when she does attacks it's ultra fast

I love king of puppets as well Possible Stockholm syndrome, but i genuinely wasn’t good at fighting romeo, but I think that I like the first phase more, by a lot

I said the risk/reward for perfect parry was to low and multiple people told me i didn't understand how the system works, two of them called me slurs, and no one explained how i was wrong. I never felt like i was getting better at the game, just getting through it. I tried a NG+ run but realized i wasn't having fun while watching the game waiting for an enemy to deliver a delayed attack to parry.

I've been saying that the the deflect is hard not because the frames are too little, but because the stupid delayed attacks aren't built for this type of game. Couple that with the snappy "animations", those attacks are often unseeable, so you have to play a guessing game instead of reacting. Glad to see someone with similar opinion.

Can’t think of a boss I genuinely didn’t love fighting ESPECIALLY closer to the end. I think delayed attacks make you keep your brain on and I enjoyed them. Really enjoyed this game as a whole, I’m surprised to see that’s not as unanimous as I thought.

Fighting nameless puppet with the two dragon sword parries was the most fun i had learning a boss in a soulslike for a while

What makes the decay damage on the corrupted circus dude even more annoying is that you can't teleport to a merchant to buy more status effect cures If you didn't have any going into the fight or run out. The only thing that stopped it from being miserable was someone in my chat pointing out that I could use the instant repair kits I'd never touched to keep from having to spend a ton of time repairing, As the damage wasn't as much of an issue because it wasn't a very hard fight if it weren't for the fact that I constantly had to be juggling my weapon durability.

King of Puppets feels like it was designed to be the final boss and I wish it was.

This might be contrarian, but I think perfect guard frames are as tight as they need to be. Guarding, dodging, and surprisingly running away are all effective defensive options. You can juat book it any time a boss goes red and miss (usually). Perfect guarding is just one tool in your toolbox. I never got consistent with it (I'd choose one or two combos to perfect guard and avoid the rest) but beat the game thanks to all the other mechanics.

Question, how do you get so many perfect guards? I noticed this a lot when you talked about the nameless puppet (10:58). You were able to perfect guard multiple attacks in a row (a combo). When i did that, I guarded the first but then my character kept guarding on it's own (after I released the button) so I couldn't perfect guard again in that combo. and at 12:03, you blocked that fury attack way too early but it counted as a perfect guard. I don't get it. I saw that you had the grinder for it but it didn't seem to be active.

My only gripe is what Youwy touched on is it feels sometimes I get two completely different fights on the same boss. Laxassia or whatever was steamrolling me in phase 2 just sprinting around shooting lightning and the time I finally beat her with 5 flasks remaining she never did that move once. Same with Puppet King. I beat him in 3 tries and never saw him light his scythe on fire.

the corrupted parade master does have its place, introducing you to the new tone and pace of the game where you cant summon and where the bosses get harder by showing you a boss thats mostly one youve fought before

It took a while with this game to put my finger on why it wasn't clicking for me when every Fromsoft game (and most C-tier souls clones!) have been among my favorites ever. But risk=/=reward sums it up nicely. I never feel like my skilled play is rewarded in this game. I can perfect deflect an entire rush of delayed strikes and the boss is still able to follow up with another flurry of blows before I can have a chance to follow it up. It made it so, for me, dodging behind enemies was almost always the better approach. And that play style is better left in the Dark Souls 2 days. This game was beautiful, and had moments of brilliance. I may even check out Neowiz's new releases down the line, because I think there was something here. But the combat never stopped feeling like a miss to me, and i'm certainly never coming back to this game now that I've beaten it once. I read it somewhere else, but "Lies of P's enemies are all playing Sekiro while you're playing Dark Souls 2."

I agree that was the biggest thing was how many bosses and enemies had delayed attacks where they wait 15 years then attack faster than you can react. Also boss arenas were not mad well for most the bosses especially swamp monster

Youwy pls make more rant videos, I love those ❤😂

I actually had the opposite experience with Nameless Puppet. Even on my first attempts, when I got to the second phase I nearly killed it every time. But the first phase would either completely kick my ass or take so many of my cells I had no shot at the second phase

Nameless Puppet wins the award for the only boss in a soulsborne game I haven’t beaten. It’s so overly frustrating because every single attack is either an unreactable instant slice or a hyper delayed attack with an extremely nebulous identify on where the actual parry goes off. I get he’s the final boss, but he does triple the damage of Simon, and all of his attacks feel extremely unfair

The frames I am fine with. I can perfect guard Eldest Rabbits spin to win attack all hits. I can perfect guard 90% of the nameless puppets 1st phase. What I have an issue with is the bloodborne spastic attacks wtihout the bloodborne way of dodging them. Also the aforementioned delayed attacks or even delayed into instant smash attacks. Also why do bosses and enemies for that matter have heatlh regen? Nothing worse than doing 6k damage in a combo and then have to guard / dodge an 8 hit combo only to see half that damage was now restored. Totally unnecessary. That is my issues and that is what makes a lot of these bosses just a chore. Everything else about the game is top though so credit where credit is due.

i would change the order but agree completely with ur top 5

I feel you my only problem is the moves bc honestly the health for the bosses are surprisingly low but the challenge is just getting hits

Simon and Nameless puppets were the easiest fights for me. 4 and 2 tries respectively which made the ending so wack for me lol. Laxasia was the toughest for me and she was my favorite boss fight. I had a motivity build with Holy Sword of the Ark throughout the game and that made the last fights trivial

For me Archbishop and Simon would be much lower on the list because I felt like I'm fighting a potato that doesn't fit the screen, I can't see their arms behind their body and half of their attacks are delayed. Archbishop even worse because if you go behind him in a second phase you basically repeat the same fight you did in a first phase. Easy D tier boss.

All of these bosses are F-tier. There is only one triple S-Tier boss in the game, and it is the Door Guardian.

One thing I'll say is that every fury attack has a clear sign of when you should parry, *except* for one, maybe two attacks. Laxasia's dive attack really does feel punishing as there really isn't a consistent way of countering it unless you're counting in your head when the attack happens. Another is maybe Simon's, as he stays in the air unrealistically long and then comes down like a canonball. The move is simple to dodge, at the very least.

perfect guarding actually holds you in place for a second, so using the later part of your s in a dodge can actually get an attack off, when if you guarded you wouldnt have been able to. dodge is not only viable, its good. master that and midrange and throw strats and nothing in the game should give you much trouble (including the health regeneration)

The square root of negative fun would be imaginary fun

Romeo is definetly the best boss not because of how he fights but for lore reasons... my only complaint is the placement of his fight and me personally wanting to side with the puppets, even b4 knowing how corrupt gepetto was. In a new game plus when you can finally understand the puppet bosses, it was such a missed opportunity to be able to side with Romeo, your best friend, and have a different branch on the story

Laxasia and nameless puppet were the most fun for me. I ended up beating King of Puppets on first try because I got lucky, but I kinda wish I hadn't just so I could have spent more time learning and enjoying the fight. Arch bishop, swamp moster 2nd phase, and the second black rabbit brotherhood were absolute ass though, and those are the fights that make me not want to replay the game in NG+.

In my opinion BRB 2nd fight wasn’t too bad once you realize that they are easily staggerable with heavy weapons. As for the criticism of the final boss 2nd phase feeing completely different thematically it is because Gepetto wanted to subdue us to use our heart he wasn’t try to kill us, once the strings were severed and Gepetto was no longer controlling the puppet it wanted to destroy our heart. It hated us because that’s all it could feel (item description from amulet) so it makes a lot of sense why it feels so different.

Valid list!

I really wanna see a miniboss list because aside from like a few bosses there really wasn’t that stood out for me. Minibosses have easily taken the cake as either the best most fun fights or the worlds most egregious painful fights. Also I love how all the worst bosses are like around the halfway point of the game. Both black rabbit brotherhoods , corrupted parade master 🤮 , Swamp Thing , etc

I enjoyed all the bosses except for the black rabbit brotherhood. hard ≠ bad

You do have hyper armor… and you can roll through the fury attacks after swamp monster

Before watching we only have 2 S tiers. Nameless orphan of kos and laxatives the incomplete

Hated the swamp monster the most, idk why took me the longest to beat and even tried to cheese it

I got bum rushed on the second rabbit fight. I was scared that the big would just pop put of the coffin to spite me while they do it.

finally someone talking about how staggered some of the attacks are in this game. some bosses in general are just annoying but add in so many delayed moves and its just downright insulting to the player.

What weapon let's you deflect projectiles back? I noticed it in the lax fight.

I feel like a ton of people ignore how many ways we have available to deal with Fury Attacks. Fable Arts come in *very* handy. And this video in particular seems to just want to get through bosses as fast as possible in the most basic way possible. Which is fine I guess, but I actually love how long bosses can take because it actually feels like I'm up against a wall. I also enjoy when a phase transition surprises me with a different kind of fight.

Just noticed how only the first few bosses have a phase transition without health bar reset and dumb cutscene that deprives you of few precious seconds to heal/buff/sharpen weapon ...

In my first playthrough I didn't use Specters at all bosses, but on NG+ I used on both fights against Black Rabbit Brotherhood, for me fights against bunch enemies are boring and not fun, you just spam attacks trying to kill one fast, predict a few dodges and that's it. Also I totally agreed with your list: Nameless Puppet, Laxasia and King of Puppets were the best boss fights in Lies of P.

I liked the second BRB fight more because of the clutter in the arena.

There really should have been some more telegraphing in certain boss movesets especially for fury attacks. Losing to a fight you could have otherwise beaten first try just because you guessed wrong feels real bad. This is a very case by case basis though, it's not a persistent issue in the game. One huge problem I have is the reoccurring theme of enemies which resemble the basic fodder closely, but have 4x the health, damage, and infinite hyper armor for seemingly no reason. A great example is the crawling puppets that ambush you in the infected train station where the hidden workshop is. Upon seeing them there's no reason to assume they won't resemble the rest of the fodder enemies that you can 2 shot, so you jump in, do like a 6th of their health, then get swarmed by a bunch of them who all have hyper armor. Again this wouldn't be an issue if there was some kind of common signifier through the game that "this jobber is stronger than the typical one", but you just have to figure it out the hard way.

I am in chapter 10 and every boss fight so far has been tedious and unfun. The parry window is too tight to be fun like Sekiro, the dodge and input lag makes the game less fun than Bloodborne. The only good thing it has going for it is exploration, but even that is ruined by elites with too much HP. I can't tell you how many enemies I skip fighting because they have too much HP. Not doing it, so of course the game has to rely on forcing you to fight these enemies to proceed in later chapters. I am kind of giving up on the game now because I know the bosses still to come and NOT one of them looks fun to fight in the slightest. Fuck this game.

Not me forgetting about the king of puppets and thinking he had door guardian at #1 😂

Ive heard a lot of people complain about scrapped watchmen, i suspect its because they werent parrying at that point

Regarding the Brotherhood fight, only the sister is the fucking mosquito, she evades the most and is the fastest. Spear guy is usually on top of you so you don’t have to chase his ass around and the Saber one isn’t has evasive but the damn sister is just annoying, I make it my priority to kill her first cause of that.

Fallen Archbishop should've been lowered just because of the boss dialogue

I actually really liked the black rabbit brotherhood in both fights because using the boss spear weapon, although the best fight is easily laxasia

Instantly get staggered would be too much, but more destruction damage I agree would be good

I agree the payoff for parrying the rage attacks should be higher. It’s high risk, so it should have high reward

King of Puppets being number 1 would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact phase 2 just constantly denies healing. There’s a bit of it in the Laxasia fight as well but it’s not as bad as the King of Puppets phase 2.

The brotherhood bitches are the only boss fights I refuse to do without a specter.

I’m stuck with the nameless puppet. Fought him many times. I’m to the point now I’m going to farm here and there until I can level up my capacity crazy high then I’ll go back to him. All me damned if I’m giving up just heart

I think romeo should've come back later in the game instead of the parade master

This blue thing, on entry. Is not for that free opens?. Spectre?

The Black Rabbit Brotherhood gave me DS2 flashbacks of the gank squad and I fucking hated it....

What I find funny/irritating is that you, a puppet, is easily staggered and has no hyper armor, meanwhile flesh and blood human enemies have all the hyper armor in the world to do their combo attacks with.

I saw a video that helped use acid and take out the black rabbit with a puppet string first then the fight get a lot easier then the spear and the little brother can be killed with sharp pole

I agree area denial is a cheap way of extending a fight and sometimes that's all second phase Simon did

Really surprised with the scathing thoughts on the Black Rabbits 2. Thought they were more than manageable and the added sound queues of them throwing projectiles was more than welcome Plus swamp monster > Victor. That fight's fun as fuck

-Manus 2nd phase is really annoying. It's not fun when you have to ran around most of the time in a boss fight specially in this game. -Lax and Romeo are objectively the best boss fights. -But the boss fight I had the most fun is probably the Black Rabbit gankfest 1. Gankfest 2 was cool too but part 1 was more cinematic and realistic. You feel more of a badass by dunking on those fools.

Man I hate the guy who invented "delayed attack". That shit is so annoying to play against.

Commenting this on yet another video making the same uninformed complaint: We have no idea how many parry frames the game gives. All we know is how it supposedly "feels," which is completely subjective and personal and can depend on a wide variety of different factors from person to person. For me, except for a small handful of extremely delayed fury attacks, everything felt very intuitive and just needed a good amount of practice. Until the data is dumped and the animations have been analyzed, we don't even know *which frames* of the block animation count as the parry, much less how many there are, so to make assertions about frames is pointless. For all we know, it could be entirely reasonable. You'll have to wait and see.

What delayed attacks are everyone talking about ? Lmao like the charged heavies that the enemies do? It’s the same timing every time. I’m confused

Fury attacks are horrible, so I recommend everyone choose the talisman after the swamp monster instead of the katana, because it basically fixes the game and immediately makes the game a better experience 

Im glad you forgot about the door guardian

Perfect guard is the way to play. The more you treat it like bloodborne/sekrio where you have to play aggressive the Better off you’ll be

delayed attacks are the least fun part of BB and ER so yeah i understand the critique

I honestly enjoy dodging, not having as many Iframes changes the way you play and it was fun. However parry/blocking doesn’t feel good at all. I’m pretty bad at it so I understand is mostly a skill issue but I really hate how it works and feels. Breaking weapons with a perfect block almost makes up for it tho 😂

I only played the game recently and kinda sad that I could finish all bosses in about 3 tries, I feel like something was robbed from me with the nerfs

Weird man I liked that the final boss had 2 different phases to be honest I wanted champion victor to have something similar too.

Me taking 1h to defeat laxasia first phase to Realise that i get whooped my ass in the first seconds of the second phase lmao

Use a spear handle for the black rabbit brother hood fights and just spam r2 and it’s the easiest fight ever

Laxasia takes the number 1 for me, 2nd would be NP, and 3rd would be Scrapped Watchman, 4th would be Romeo.

You hit the nail on the head with Simon Manus, I didn't have issue with HP or damage cause I rolled out with the puppet axe blade with the police baton and had 40 points of vigor with the HP amulet and that one amulet that gives you HP, Stamina and legion. If they made his magic spam alot less periodic, it would actually be a decent fight but they decided to amp up the "final boss" part on the final boss and make it so it's more of a touhou fight then a BB/Sekiro fight. All I did for beating Simon Manus for the first time was to run away for the second phase (keep in mind I couldn't beat him for a good hr or so, took a break, came back, couldn't beat him for another hr then realized that running away completely negates 85-90% of his moveset) That's not good boss design, you literally don't engage with close to almost all of the bosses mechanics in the second phase. I didn't even use specters once throughout the whole game, and beat it without the "nerfs". I was so miffed in the end about Simon to a point where I said fuck it and not do the nameless puppet fight cause my patience have been worn to nothing at that point.

King of puppets gotta be one the best bossed in soulslike

as interesting as the king of puppets is, it just was a terrible initial experience for me. his first phase has certain air generator attacks that i genuinely had no idea how to deal with (even after multiple video reviews i still only kindof understand what they want you to do)... and then romeo has a whole bunch of combo attacks that beg you to perfect block them, but the first phase is so long and i was almost always low on resources, so actually doing that was almost certain to put me in a long waiting room to just get another chance to learn just one of his many combos... learning the fight was definitely an inferior experience.

I enjoyed the black brotherhood fight. If you kill the main guy first it ends the fight.

Idk what you are playing but the black rabbit brotherhood they all attack me at the same time

The nameless puppet is so much better than Laxasia for me

I 1st tried stormed watchman and 2nd tried victor haha

They wanted sekiro style deflection with a darksouls character. Terrible mix. One of the main reasons is that Sekiro had no stamina bar. He could deflection and attack constantly until his stagger bar was broken, just like the bosses, which made the fights feel fair.

I think what annoys me more than the delayed attacks are massive bosses in small arenas all having some kind of stampede attack. It's like they purposely made these bosses and moves to fuck with the camera and make it impossible to see what you're doing. I can't tell you how many times I died fighting the puppet monster because his hand nicked me during his charge attack and during the 40 second stumble recover animation P has I get pushed into a corner (where the camera is literally looking inside of the bosses model) and just mowed down from 5-6 hit combos where I can't see anything. When this game is good it's a 10/10 masterpiece, but man when this game sucks it is some of the cheapest poorly designed BS you will ever see.

The king of puppets is not S tier (imo). First phase requires you to be near perfect so that you have enough pulse cells to experience the second phase because the move sets are not similar whatsoever. I think on a second playthrough though, the king is A+ tier.

Nameless puppet is S+ tier imo. Best boss in the game.

ive only played 2 souls like games, this one and elden ring. both playthru's i didnt put any points into hp and im pretty sure i ended lies of p with like 300 more deaths than elden ring LOL, 536 death total for LoP. i think i died 100 times just learning laxasia