How Lies of P: Overture’s Difficulty Compares to Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Difficulty is hardly what has ever solely defined the merit of a Soulslike game, and the same is true of Lies of P. Difficulty can be an endearing reason as to why players love Soulslikes, but difficulty alone wouldn’t account for exceptional boss design, world design, and so forth. Still, difficulty is an essential element in Soulslikes regarding the challenge one posits in comparison to another, and assessing Lies of P against its expansion, Lies of P: Overture, demonstrates how greatly difficulty can increase between a vanilla Soulslike and its DLCs.

Concerning sheer quality, FromSoftware’s Soulslike catalog has always set a masterfully high bar when it comes to DLCs. Between Dark Souls’ Artorias of the Abyss, Dark Souls 2’s Crown DLCs, and Dark Souls 3’s Ashes of Ariandel and Ringed City, much less Bloodborne’s Old Hunters, some of the best FromSoftware content has been DLC. The same can arguably be said of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, too, which itself set an insurmountable bar regarding what can be expected of a DLC, and Lies of P: Overture doesn’t disappoint in comparison to its level of difficulty.

Lies of P Overture Bloodborne Old Hunters Difficulty

How Lies of P: Overture’s Difficulty Compares to Bloodborne: The Old Hunters

Lies of P: Overture and Bloodborne: The Old Hunters are not only alike regarding art style and atmosphere, but their intense difficulty, too.

Shadow of the Erdtree Makes Elden Ring Seem Like Cake in Comparison

Interestingly, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is more or less what a complete sequel could have amounted to. It may not be as gargantuan as Elden Ring, but Shadow of the Erdtree is nonetheless enormous with a labyrinthine open world, new features and quality-of-life improvements, and a laundry list of bosses who all give the base game’s bosses runs for their money.

As for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses, nearly every one adopts a design style that was basically absent in the base game: incredibly long attack strings with barely any punishable windows. However, no boss can hope to compare to the difficulty posed by Promised Consort Radahn, who may have been nerfed after launch but remains one of the hardest FromSoftware bosses to date.

Elden Ring is still quite challenging, but Shadow of the Erdtree is a different beast entirely. Elden Ring’s Malenia, Blade of Miquella has always been a troublesome and harrowing boss, for example, but the pace and aggression debuted in Shadow of the Erdtree make her and a lot of other bosses seem retrospectively sluggish.

Overture is to Lies of P What Shadow of the Erdtree is to Elden Ring

Lies of P is one of the hardest Soulslikes around, yet its DLC’s difficulty eclipses it in many ways while also giving players the choice to side-step such difficulty and affording an easier experience. For instance, players do not have tedious gank fights to worry about, like Lies of P’s two Black Rabbit Brotherhood encounters. Instead, Lies of P: Overture’s Markiona, Puppeteer of Death sets the stage for a duo boss fight, and all other bosses in the DLC are singular enemies who only have one health bar, with Arlecchino as a lone exception.

Like Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s Radahn, Lies of P: Overture’s Arlecchino, the Blood Artist is undoubtedly the hardest boss in the game. Lies of P: Overture makes a hard game even harder if players are abiding by the same conventions they adapted to in the base game, but their difficulty is mitigated by a lot of choices players can make, as throwables are still fairly overpowered.

The Tracker being summonable for the Two-faced Overseer and Lea being summonable for Arlecchino, the Blood Artist can make those boss fights remarkably trivial, whereas Radahn being fought with either Sir Ansbach or Thiollier can be more detrimental than helpful. Overall, Lies of P: Overture’s difficulty has the same atmosphere that Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree does as flavorful Soulslike DLCs, but the latter maintains the edge.

Lies of P and its DLC now have difficulty options—Butterfly’s Guidance (very easy), Awakened Puppet (easy), and Legendary Stalker (the base game’s original default)—and will soon include “various adjustments, including difficulty reduction,” meaning that Overture may be as easy or as hard as players wish.