Just an aside, I'm disappointed in the Lies of P demo.
It's definitely taking portions of Bloodborne and Sekiro to make a new game, and I love the dark take on a fairy tale setting, but mechanically the game is off-putting.
It's definitely a parry based game over dodge in the very beginning, however mechanized spastic enemies make parry timing difficult to judge. It doesn't help that the parry window is absurdly small.
It has the Bloodborne trick of recovering partial lost health through attacking and perfect parries result in zero damage loss, or depending on weapon, an opening for a critical.
It has a Sekiro like stagger mechanic but no stagger gauge, so it's all more guess and hope.
The first boss is absurdly hard to dodge consistently, while going full parry/block had me beat it in one go.
The level design is like a cheap imitation of Bloodborne in terms of layout; the veneer is slick, but the bones are hollow and not very interesting.
I gave up somewhere after a cheap attack animation that had me fall off a ledge with an enemy, there isn't animation cancelling for dodging as far as I can tell.
Supposedly you unlock new skills, one of which is an improved dodge, but much like the maligned early version of The Witcher 3, you don't bury key mechanics in a skill up later that are fundamental to combat styles.
You have an interesting durability mechanic that feels like another meter to manage, but the flourishes on the animation make it satisfying, IMO. The gun arm mechanic is cool too, but there is ludonarritive dissonance since in one instance, the gun arm could punch down and iron door, but another several where a simple lock stops your progress.
So far it's on the "would buy it bundled or below $10" out of 10 right now. Perhaps they could tweak timings and make parrying more significant, while also adding the poise gauge on enemies.
But the level design is likely not getting fixed...
I recommend you try it just to see it as I think it's artistically interesting, but lots of little issues that show the cracks in the house Gepetto built...
