I am not that great at difficult games. I can’t tell you how much I stink at anything FromSoftware makes. But! I appreciate what FromSoftware does. I understand what they are trying to do, who it is catered to, and how they craft their difficulty that is more gameplay-centric than anything else. FromSoftware crafts the controls, the visuals, and everything in between well so that the player has the best chance of surviving their transparent, sometimes impossible experience. I get it. I respect it. Still don’t love it.
Difficult and tricky games in general are built for specific types of players and as long as a reviewer can understand that, there isn’t much to truly dislike about the design. It’s like building a muscle car with a stick shift. Maybe it wasn’t built for you because you’re in love with automatic, but you have to respect how it is crafted and caters to specific groups. And for those of you unfamiliar with stick shifts, they are way harder to deal with than pressing a button or moving a knob to the ‘D’ position.
Analogies aside, here we are with Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus. This is a gorgeous game that is built on great intentions and meticulous craftsmanship. It sports a unique flavor of story and gives you all it has with essence and mysteriousness. And all of it isn’t as appreciated as it could be because of controls that get in the way of the gameplay. If you’re going to make a game tricky and difficult, don’t make the controls the driving force behind that leading frustration.
So, grab your bo staff, prepare yourself for some tricky jumps, and let’s get going on this review.
Gorgeous graphics that dance with the story
Starting with the positives is a good way to wade into the negatives. Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is a gorgeous game for your eyes to feast on. The animation is well done with beautifully drawn models that represent a god-driven time in Japanese folklore. The artist(s) who designed the art has a wonderful admiration for what Miyazaki does with his Studio Ghibli work, as the creatures and gods featured in the game could certainly be a cast of characters from one of Miyazaki’s films. Seriously, this is very Spirited Away. I can dig those visuals.
The visuals are only rivaled by the majestic, yet simple story of Bo, and Bo’s journey through Japanese folklore where the fox battles monsters from Japan’s lore in hopes of fulfilling a prophecy. The story, much like the visuals, is beautifully crafted and plays hand-in-hand with the graphics. It’s easy to buy into this mystic world of Bo’s and its constant reminder of its spiritual nature.
These two elements, graphics, and story, are the strongest part of Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus. They were done with extreme care and are a true entry point for buying into its gameplay. They will certainly keep you engaged and focused with progression, if not only to see how the devs can up themselves to the next level as you push Bo through their destiny.
Rarely do I start with graphics and story to lead a review but I wanted to make sure that you understood that there is some strong positivity in both. You’re certainly going to get your money’s worth with these two game elements. They lead the way.
Gameplay that is hit-and-miss
The gameplay for Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is what you would expect from a Metroidvania precision platformer. It’s going to be difficult, and precise, and you’re going to breathe a sigh of relief after you defeat every boss. It’s like climbing a mountain, where you might have a helluva time getting to the resting point but the view will be worth the effort given.
The effort given in Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus mainly starts with jumping around, traversing a platform-filled landscape that is unforgiving, and figuring out puzzles while smashing creatures with your Bo stick. These are the main mechanics and gameplay items of interest you’ll be running into during your stint with the game. They’re honestly not too bad in design but other gameplay elements prevent their challenge from being fun. We’ll get to that in a second. Let’s focus on the positives here.
Landscape and levels
The landscape of Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus has you bouncing off mushrooms, leaping ledges, and taking chances to progress through the game. The journey into the unknown and going with your gut are the main driving points of continuing the adventure. The levels stretch far and wide in terms of girth and height. You will find yourself jumping and scaling different areas, sometimes without regard for Bo’s life, to open up more of the level.
Now, you have a lot of good bits of level to explore and discover items and secrets. This is a typical type of formula for a game of this design and genre. You want to keep the player looking around and taking chances, and there are plenty of good reasons to do so, especially for the completionists out there. The motivation to keep looking for things that look out of place or give you signs that you should check ‘there’ is thick and present in every part of the game. This is the type of game where you spend more time than you thought searching for goodies and areas you didn’t catch the first time around. Again, this is great for those folks who enjoy exploration in a platformer, and it will certainly keep people’s eyes on everything they run into.
The main gameplay elements for traversing these levels and reaching new heights/areas are by using mushrooms and lanterns (and other ways). The mushrooms are like a wonderful trampoline that will propel you upward, are vital for success against the first boss, and can sometimes push you upward into lanterns. The lanterns can be used to double-jump your way to higher parts of levels and provide an outlet to secret ledges that offer up some goodies. They aren’t easy to navigate but they are useful when done right.
Regardless of items that help you travel, the levels are designed to be difficult, challenging, and rewarding. The level design and items that push you through them are well-designed and thought-through. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the level design and how you get through it. It’s quite good.
Puzzles and creatures
Equally creative are the bosses, puzzles, and creatures that try to prevent your progress as you push through Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus. The former is amazingly done, as they are larger-than-life creatures with unique difficulty patterns that make them a challenge. For example, the first boss you will run into is a ghost creature that dive-bombs you from above. All you’re given to go against the creature is a giant mushroom in the middle that will bounce you high enough to swipe at the ghost multiple times. That ghost starts with a patterned set of moves and then shifts its attack to something more unpredictable. The shift of that attack helps keep the boss fight interesting and is expected when playing a game of this type. This is Dark Souls level of tricky shifting with attacks, which I know many gamers of this genre love.
When you’re not fighting bosses, you’re searching the levels for ways to progress the game. The game embeds some small puzzles into the mix as you journey toward a boss fight. Along the way, you’ll also be challenged with small quests that will help you progress and open up passageways to the next part of a level, which will eventually lead you to a boss fight. The hardest part of the puzzles in Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is just keeping up with their location. Side characters will drop hints of where you need to go or what you’re looking for during an adventure. Sometimes the hints are subtle, which makes the game all the more challenging, and other times the hints are blatant, which makes it easier. Regardless, there are hints and they help get to and sometimes solve puzzles.
As nice as the levels might be, as challenging as bosses and puzzles might become, the fun constant with this game is the creative enemies you encounter. There are some cool-looking enemies in Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus and there are some goofy ones. All are beautifully drawn and each comes with a deadly personality. From tiny ghosts, big blue blobs with facial expressions, and even fast-spinning creatures that are tough to hit, you’ll find plenty of good enemies in the game. You will not be short of those in this release. They’re fun, sometimes tricky and difficult in their movements and styles, and they complement whatever level you might be on.
Stick and move
To battle all those creatures and traverse a level’s landscape, Bo is armed with weapons and side spirits called Daruma. The Daruma are interesting, as they’re essentially just special moves (through other beings) that will help Bo during their quest. They can be activated with a touch of a button and a sip of tea. They grow bigger with each boiling state achieved in the game (a teapot level that is numerically measured) and become more powerful when the teapot level reaches its zenith. They’re a good side weapon/helper during the game that provides more context to the game’s gameplay and stretches out the game’s depth.
As for the weapons, while they are limited in number, they are mostly stick-related and are used for specific tasks. For example, you will get a Bamboo Bat early in the game that can be used to propel blue glowing objects/beings. The bat can only be used for blue glowing enemies/objects but provides a secondary item to get through puzzles or problematic enemies. Again, the weapon variety isn’t huge, but for this type and size of game, it’s enough to make the gameplay direct, purposeful, and engaging. I’ll take that any day of the week with a precision platformer like this.
The road bump
While the game looks amazing, the story is solid, and the variety of enemies, bosses, and everything in between is good, the difficulty is propelled to a new level thanks to the controls. And just so you know, you never want to make the controls a primary point of difficulty in a game…unless you’re creating Fall Guys. Those controls are imprecise for everyone, which makes it sick sort of fun.
Anyway, the controls are not precise in what they can do, as sometimes the button push doesn’t produce a consistent button response, something that can be corrected with an update. In addition, the controls can be downright frustrating when simply going from point A to point B. For example, the biggest problem I had in the game was simply getting access to different parts of levels, especially when it involved jumping from lantern to lantern. There were more than a few times when I would have to push the jump button and the attack button together to propel upwards through a series of lanterns and onto a platform. Most of the time, I was frantically trying to get enough leap to make the jump. There were no enemies around me, rather just me and my buttons fighting each other.
At times, I felt that maybe I was going in the wrong direction and wasn’t supposed to go up a lantern pattern, simply because it wasn’t easy to access. But because I committed to the lantern jump, I was sometimes stuck in a part of the level that now required me to complete the lantern jumping. I spent a good chunk of my time with this game simply fighting with the frustrating controls.
At no point during gameplay should someone not playing Fall Guys ever fight with controls. The control issue didn’t seem intentional as much as it was just inconsistent design execution. I didn’t enjoy this portion of the gameplay and it affected my entire experience, as I didn’t want to continue playing the game. And trust me, I continued until my last drop of patience was used up.
Now, part of me thinks maybe the controls were on me. Maybe I was doing it wrong. Maybe I just didn’t listen to the instructions carefully enough. Maybe I’m old and my timing is finally showing its age. Trust me, I looked inward in the hardest of ways and tried to justify my struggles before looking outward. It’s safe to say that the biggest difficulty and obstacle in this game were the controls. They were an uphill battle that I didn’t win. I wish I had because the rest of the game is quite good. But this was my struggle during my review period with Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, and one that I couldn’t win.
On that note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus from developer Squid Shock Studios is a beautiful game that features all the right magical moves to make this a challenging precision platformer but stumbles badly with imprecise controls that make what would be a good experience frustrating.
