Lies of P is definitely the best soul-like that is not made by fromsoftware.

The game takes place in a world filled with blood raging puppets that want to take over and kill every human, you play as Pinocchio a special puppet that can lie and do things that you are special for a puppet, the game has some smaller choices that determine if you get more humanity or not and this changes Pinocchio in a cosmetic way mostly. However, it is a pretty cool touch to add this feature.

The combat and overall gameplay structures are good but lacking in some places, the combat is a mix of sekiro and souls, many reviewers say that Lies of P is a hybrid with Bloodborne and Sekiro but I don’t think so.
The enemies are very fast, especially some bosses however our character is slower in combat and this creates a bit of a weird dynamics where bosses and enemies are often faster than you even if you have like 20% equipment load.

Some balance issues are also present, fast small weapons are a lot better than heavy weapons this is because of the fast movement style of the enemies and the lack of poise. Some weapons like the scythe or the bone saw can go through walls with heavy attacks, this can be used to cheese a lot of locations in the game.

the game is pretty easy at the beginning, bosses are not so bad especially if you summon a specter (helper) into the boss fight and they are very very good and basically free. The levels are a lot easier than bosses and dying in the levels is pretty hard. However, something that is weird is that at the end of the game, some bosses don't provide a specter spawn and this is a pretty big issue, especially since the difficulty because 5x times harder without a specter, it was not a super big issue for me because I have played the souls games before and knew that bosses should not be easy, however, if someone is a new player into the genre this is a slap in the face.

The level design is good but very linear however at the end of the game we get more branching paths and ways to traverse the levels but they are overall very very linear and flat in the map design so don’t expect Dark Souls 1 map layout. However I don’t think this needs to be an issue, It was very refreshing to play something that was more linear with some hidden secrets and pretty easy-to-find quests. I also want to mention the level/graphical art style it is very close to the bloodborne grime-ish style and I really like it.
However, one big flaw is that at the end of the game, you can clearly see that the level design and map creation are a lot better, this is an issue because you can see that the first levels do not match the same quality as the last ones, and they should especially to hook the player.

The game has some cool new features like altering weapons where you can combine the handle and the blade of your weapon to create unique weapons with different fighting styles. Also if you have 0 healing left by doing damage you can regen another healing item but only one at a time, this is good because this encourages aggression and fighting to get back health.

However, Neowiz had big shoes to fill and they did it a lot better than many other studios that tried to make soul-like games. So overall even with these listed issues, it is a very good game. The game runs great even on Steamdeck so you should be able to play this even at a potato.

Thymesia

It is made by a small studio and they showed everyone that you can make a great game with a small amount of resources. Sure you can feel that the game is made by a smaller team that needed to place the time and resources in the right place to release the game.

However they put most of it into the combat design and it is brilliant, fast combat with very good feedback with many different special weapons and abilities. The locations are OK and all of them have a cool and different style to them. However you will play the same level two times in a row first from point A -> B then from B -> A. This done so we get more content but they re-use the level they already have.

I do think that this works pretty good in Thymesia because you play this game for the combat and bosses and not really for the level design, and this gives you more time to play around with the combat. I do believe it is important to mention this because the game is not super cheap for what it offers.

However this combat system and the joy it brings is worth the price IMO, especially if you want to help out a smaller studio.
If you have played other soul-likes I do think that Thymesia is worth your money, the game might be short but the combat system is so good and refreshing.