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Lies of P is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most anticipated games of 2023 — and, well, with good reason: it seemingly shares much the same “DNA” as FromSoftware’s best titles.
Many different studios tried their hand at creating a “Soulslike,” but none were able to replicate the full depth and allure which Hidetaka Miyazaki’s team brought to the table — across a multitude of different IPs, no less.
We still don’t know how good a game Lies of P actually is, and this newly released demo, fun though it is, should by no means be used as a benchmark for the entire game. Most of it looks absolutely amazing, but we’ve been burned many a time in the past, so we’ll still wait a bit before drawing any concrete conclusions.
Lies of P, by the looks of it, isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel or, say, “one-up” FromSoftware’s most legendary titles; NEOWIZ’s take is a lot more modest in nature, and it puts an emphasis on combat and ambience over sheer originality. We’re totally okay with this.
With it being such a prominent, highly expected release, we cannot help but wonder: what kind of gaming rig does one need in order to reach a satisfactory frame rate? Is Valve’s Steam Deck powerful enough to deliver a 60 FPS experience? What about integrated graphics?
Let’s take a closer look!
Can You Play Lies of P on Valve’s Steam Deck?
You can and, fortunately, it runs beautifully on Valve’s breakout handheld gaming PC. With everything set to Low and FSR turned off, Lies of P runs at a very stable ~55 FPS, with a few dips to mid-40s at times. To reach that oh-so-vital sixty FPS mark, you’ll have to set FSR to Balanced which, fortunately, doesn’t incur any perceptible loss in visual fidelity.
There is, to be fair, a bit of visual artifacting, but it’s nothing too egregious.
The demo runs well and looks great, which means that — if the game doesn’t come out with any horrendous bugs or glitches — you’ll be able to play through the entire campaign on Valve’s Steam Deck without an issue. We assume that, as you progress through the story, you’ll encounter bigger bosses and more complex environments, so you might need to set FSR to Performance (should push come to shove), but it’s still way too early to make any kind of prediction.
All in all, Lies of P runs great on Valve’s Steam Deck and we, for one, couldn’t be happier for that being the case!
Can You Play Lies of P on Integrated Graphics [iGPU]?
Seeing how Lies of P is able to run on Valve’s Steam Deck — which features a wholly unique combination of Zen 2 CPU cores and an RDNA 2-based iGPU (all within a fairly restrictive TDP) — it would take no Sherlock Holmes to surmise that, if you have a laptop with one of AMD’s latest and greatest iGPUs (Ryzen 6000 and 7000 series), you’ll be able to play at even higher resolutions without any issue whatsoever.
Moreover, we’re quite surprised by just how well the game runs even on a thin and light ultrabook. Our testing was done on an ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED with a Ryzen 7 6800U. We’re talking about an APU with a 15-28W TDP which, obviously, is not a tremendous amount of power.
We were able to get a stable 60 FPS with the following settings:
There are no dips whatsoever but do make sure to set your laptop to its Performance profile (or Balanced, at the very least). Also, playing whilst plugged in is basically a must.
The inclusion of AMD’s FSR 2 is a highly welcome one although, in all fairness, it’s not implemented all that well. There’s a tremendous amount of visual artifacting even on the Balanced setting, to say nothing of Performance or Ultra Performance. Whether that’ll change once the game is released still remains to be seen, but we’re not overly optimistic.
That being said, it is by no means a dealbreaker and, frankly, reaching a stable 60 FPS without FSR would be nigh impossible (at 1600×1000, at least). You can also tweak things even further, too: Medium settings are also viable and, if you’re okay with lowering the resolution even further (or limiting yourself to 40 FPS), you could no doubt get rid of FSR altogether.
The most important thing is that the game still looks rather incredible even at Low settings and sub-1080p resolutions. The ambience is there which speaks volumes about NEOWIZ’s creative vision and ability to execute. The game, at least based on the demo, really is as incredible as we all hoped it’d be.
Here’s a collection of screenshots:
And, perhaps best of all, it’s fully optimized which, in the age of horrendous PC ports, is quite a breath of fresh air. Moreover, with just a bit of tweaking, you’ll be able to play it on a wide range of systems — even ones with integrated graphics. A dedicated GPU is recommended, though, as is so often the case.
Note: If you have an RDNA 2 or RNDA 3-based mini-PC, you’ll most likely be able to game at 1080p as your APU won’t be as power-constrained as the one we had for testing purposes. You might have to employ a bit of upscaling magic (FSR 2, in other words), but the game will still look incredible and, perhaps most importantly, will run at a steady 60 FPS.
Lies of P is scheduled to release on September 19th, 2023, on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X.