Lords of the Fallen

Did you ever make it to the top of the area behind the locked door in Pilgrim's Perch? In my game this unlocked large shards for sale at the weird little travelling merchant, who was camped next to the Vestige. Only a finite number though.

Turns out legging it through a new area in the hope of findings a vestige is /not/ the best idea. My 10,000-odd vigor is now with Crimson Rector Percival....meaning I have to do a gauntlet to him and then beat him to get them back.

Is he do-able or should I write my souls off?

I've had two attempts and he seems like he might be manageable /except/ he constantly spams a healing spell - really annoying (I've eliminated the umbral parasites in the arena, I assumed they were healing him, but it's a spell).

Yes, that's him. Moth! Great idea, cheers, I'd completely forgotten about that. I'll head in and do precisely that, then come back to him a bit later.

Cheers loto. I ran in and mothed out of there, will return to him. I then pushed on into the gorge area and have just done the Ruiner, who was possibly the easiest boss of all so far - at least once I realised I should swap out Inferno for Radiance.

Yeah, they need to improve the performance and frame rate. I don’t know anything about the Devs, but they’ve issued a few patches now that seem to nerf good weapons and spells and not concentrate on the basic performance. It’s bad sometimes and it’s a shame as it’s a cracking little game.
The enemy lock on is poor too and can easily get you killed, deciding to swap from a strong enemy to a bit of environment mid battle. I think they wanted to get this out for sale before Spidey2 and COD came along, when it would have benefited from longer in the oven.
I still love it, but it’s not the finished article yet

Progressed some NPC quests and got the Perch key. Some bloody hard enemies on t’other side with those bastard archers making a comeback. Anyway, fell into a pit and got Devotion Might, which is a big hammer scaling with strength and radiance.
I’ve spent the last 3 hours twatting bucket heads and ruiners. Sweet, sweet revenge. Even unupgraded, this thing stonks.

I’ve got three areas to choose from now. The F’in Perch, the Fridge or the Fire.

Its the Pilgrim's Perch Key and you have two options

1) Buy it for 18k from Stromund at the Hub - not recommended, its a mid-game or later game area and enemies are tough

2) Progress through the game and you will get it for free at around the right point...

Yes, and I do think it's fair to compare them as they came out at more or less the same time and they are both of the genre. Both games follow the template but also innovate in impressive ways - LOTF will the dual world mechanic (amazing really that this, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been done since Soul Reaver? My wife looked up from her DS yesterday and said "is this a new version of Soul Reaver"?  ), Lies of P perhaps less dramatically but still impactfully with the blade and hilt system, organ, legion arm and a tonne of quality-of-life tweaks. The vibe and atmosphere of each is very different: you may prefer the grimdark raaawwwkkk fantasy of LOTF or you may prefer the weird steampunk pinnochioborne of Lies of P. I think both are pretty damn great in terms of design and atmosphere.

Perhaps my main criticism of Lies of P is the uneven boss difficulty - that's hardly new to the genre and is also true of LOTF. Also, the fact you can't summon other players in Lies of P. MP would be a lovely addition to the sequel. 

Anyway, LOTF is a piece of shit technically, while Lies of P gleams, a perfect compact jewel box of surprises. And that's a shame, a real shame. It doesn't matter how impressive the art design is, or the dual world concept. You throw all that out when it becomes a damn slideshow. It is as you say JonFE mostly an issue in areas heavy on particle effects - the Fen was the first problem area, and Calrath can get pretty dire. It seems quite random otherwise - things will be fine, and then the frame rate will just plummet (this has also happened once or twice back in the hub). Please please fix it! I can see myself playing through LOTF a couple of times, but not if they don't sort it. 

THe level design is phenomenal. What they tried to do was make it so interconnected that you woul dget around with no vestiges in NG+. Too much of a backlash meant they put all the vestiges back in, but incrementally remove some with each NG cycle. The level design supports this. It'll basically become like Dark Souls 1 and you have to walk everywhere, which I'm not totally against tbh.

I think the idea was actually the opposite, that you would only have the one, movable vestige to use and every other one from base NG would be gone.

I'm finishing off the Tower, so must be getting towards the end now.
Still enjoying it and I've maxed out my weapons & catalyst. Fingers crossed it doesn't go laser spam for the remaining areas, its still good to explore.

Series X or PS5 for this? Under £40 is tempting

Definitely PS5. Both have some issues but Series X is worst. There's a Digital Foundry video if you're curious