Lies of P vs Elden Ring: Which Soulslike Is Right for You?

Scale and Content: Elden Ring Is Far Bigger

Elden Ring is a full open-world game. You roam the Lands Between across six main areas on your spectral steed, Torrent, with linear hidden dungeons tucked into the map and fast travel between checkpoints called sites of grace. It’s a big-budget FromSoftware production, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, and one of the longest soulslikes you can play.

Lies of P is built on a smaller scale. NEOWIZ and Round8 Studio (now Nough) set the whole game in one city, Krat, which you push through area by area from a home base at Hotel Krat. It comes from a much smaller team, so don’t expect Elden Ring’s range of environments, enemies and gear.

Both games have one big expansion. Shadow of the Erdtree, released in June 2024, takes Elden Ring into a new region called the Land of Shadow and sold more than 10 million copies on its own. Lies of P’s Overture, released in June 2025, is a prequel set before Krat’s fall, with new enemies, weapons and side quests. It’s an excellent expansion, with some of the game’s best bosses. Even with Overture, Elden Ring plus Shadow of the Erdtree is the much larger package.

Combat: Lies of P Borrows From Bloodborne and Sekiro

Elden Ring gives you more ways to fight. You can stay up close with melee weapons, attack from a distance with bows and other ranged weapons, or build around sorceries and incantations cast with a staff or sacred seal. You can dodge, block with a shield or parry for a critical hit, sneak up on enemies with stealth, and fight from Torrent’s back in the open world. Ashes of War add a special weapon art to your weapon, and you can swap them freely.

Lies of P is a melee game first. You trade light and heavy attacks, then block or parry. A perfect parry staggers the enemy and damages their weapon, while blocking costs a little health that you can win back by hitting straight away. P’s mechanical Legion Arm adds tools like a grappling hook, and filling a gauge unlocks each weapon’s special move, called a Fable Art.

It plays like a mix of Bloodborne, Sekiro and Dark Souls, and its gothic look invites constant Bloodborne comparisons, which director Jiwon Choi has called an honor. If parrying is the part that interests you most, our Lies of P vs Sekiro comparison looks at how its perfect guard stacks up against FromSoftware’s sword-fighting game.

Difficulty: Lies of P Is Harder to Start With

Lies of P is one of the hardest soulslikes out there, and three design choices explain why it feels tougher than Elden Ring. There are no ranged classes, so you can’t hang back and use magic or arrows. There’s no online co-op, so you can’t call in another player for a tough boss. And you have to beat each area’s boss to move on, while Elden Ring usually lets you ride off, explore somewhere else and come back stronger.

That freedom makes Elden Ring the most accessible Souls game FromSoftware has made, even though it has no difficulty settings. On top of leveling and exploring, you can summon AI spirits with Spirit Ashes or bring in other players through online co-op.

Lies of P has some help of its own. You can summon an AI-controlled spectre before boss fights, and since the update that arrived with Overture in June 2025, a new easier option called Butterfly’s Guidance makes the game considerably more forgiving. That’s a real advantage if you’ve bounced off soulslikes before.

So which is better for a first soulslike? Start with Elden Ring, mainly because it lets you choose how to tackle its challenges. Lies of P lands better once you’re comfortable with the genre.

Builds and Gear: Elden Ring Has More Variety

Elden Ring is the bigger playground for builds. Your starting class sets your first spells, equipment and stats, and you spend runes at sites of grace to raise attributes. From there, you can mix weapons, armor, shields, spells and Ashes of War into almost any style, from heavy armored knights to fragile spellcasters. Its depth of weapons, armor and movesets is the biggest gap between the two games.

Lies of P goes deeper in one specific area: weapons. You start by choosing one of three combat styles, then most weapons can be split into a blade and a handle and recombined with other parts. You level P’s attributes with Ergo, unlock a skill tree with Quartz and equip Defense Parts. What you won’t find is armor. P’s outfits and masks are cosmetic, so your defense comes from parts and stats rather than from what you wear.

Story and Setting: Pinocchio’s Krat vs the Lands Between

Lies of P is a dark retelling of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, set in Krat, a city inspired by the Belle Époque. Puppets that once served the city have gone into a murderous frenzy, and you play P, the one puppet who can lie. Key conversations ask you to tell the truth or lie, and those choices change side stories and the ending.

Elden Ring is pure high fantasy. You play a Tarnished, an exile summoned back to the Lands Between to repair the shattered Elden Ring and become the new Elden Lord. George R. R. Martin wrote the world’s backstory, while Miyazaki wrote the main storyline. Pick Lies of P if you want a more personal story with clear choices, and Elden Ring if you’d rather explore a sprawling mythology.

Lies of P vs Elden Ring: Full Specs

And the Winner Is…

WinnerElden Ring

Lies of P is one of the most polished soulslikes outside FromSoftware, and it does a few things better than Elden Ring. Its weapon assembly system is clever, its parry-focused combat is sharp, its Pinocchio story makes its choices count, and it runs on lighter PC hardware. But it isn’t the one we’d point most players to. Elden Ring is bigger in every direction, with more ways to fight, far more build variety and an open world that lets you walk away from a wall and come back stronger, which makes it the better first soulslike too. If you’re torn on Lies of P vs Elden Ring because you’ve already beaten Elden Ring, Lies of P is a great next step for a tighter melee challenge. Everyone else should start in the Lands Between.