Platforms:
PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5
Released:
July 18, 2024
Publishers:
Humble Games, Marvelous
Developer:
Squid Shock Studios
Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus looks like a classic side-scrolling Metroidvania, and it is, except that description belies the game’s true focus. Realistically, this is a demanding, at-times brutal platformer with Metroidvania elements, set in a gorgeous world inspired by Japanese watercolour art. It has a beautiful art style and animations, an intriguing narrative, and an excellent soundtrack, but the precision-perfect platforming required basically from the outset is jarring if you came in superficially expecting a simpler experience.
You play Bō, a freshly born plant-like creature in this fantastical world populated by anthropomorphic animals. After a basic tutorial, you meet a fox-like creature who seems mildly annoyed that you even exist. The story is deliberately vague, leaving you to piece it together based on what you pay attention to. As the fox begrudgingly gives you your first power-up, you might notice a Godzilla-sized skeleton destroying a town in the background. The story has something to do with that. From a bird with one head that knows it’s in a videogame and another head annoyed with the first, to bosses who try and fail to gaslight you, the game is full of charming characters and clever writing.
Your first ability, and what most of the game is based around, is a double jump, which works differently to most games. Whenever you hit something – an enemy or interactable object – you glow, and you only get your extra jump during that glow. It’s a flexible mechanic, as you can chain jumps and hover by constantly hitting the same thing below you. Since combat in Teal Lotus is a further test of your platforming, this multi-jump becomes invaluable in every fight. Every ability you continue to get benefits you for both exploration and combat, but again, platforming is your main use case in either situation.
Similar to Hollow Knight, you have a stock of tea (mana), which you can drink to heal yourself by one, and you can gain more tea by hitting enemies. Tea is also spent to summon Daruma, small creatures that work almost like spells. You also have Onamori, collectable talismans that grant you various passive buffs. You can find Daruma and Onamori, get them as rewards, and once you reach the big city in the middle of the map, you can buy and upgrade them too. The city also introduces some crafting mechanics, so you can erect new buildings around town. You reach the city roughly a third of the way into the game; a reprieve from the toughest part of the experience, at least from my perspective.
The world of Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, is divided into two continents separated by a bridge of terrifying length. You begin in the smaller continent and explore its two small interconnected biomes, classic Metroidvania stuff, before you get on the bridge. The bridge is a wake-up call to what the game demands of you. It’s one linear gauntlet after another, with you sometimes needing to clear multiple to reach the next checkpoint. There’s nothing to explore, you can’t even access the map. It is, especially if you kept dying like me, gruelling, repetitive, and at times tedious. I was surprised I was still in the early hours of the game.
The boss at the end of the bridge showcases several issues with the game. It requires you to use a new ability – redirecting enemy projectiles – which sometimes didn’t work because the UI prompt to use it occasionally didn’t appear, leading me to demonstrably get hit by a projectile I ran into. This was an issue I ran into with other movement abilities throughout the game, sometimes those UI prompts never show up so you don’t know what your character is responding to. This issue affected prompts for other abilities as well. If multiple enemies are overlapping an object, your hit will sometimes only recognise the object or the enemies, not all. Prompts often didn’t appear if I was too close to the object in question, or too far away, or if I’d already used it, or seemingly randomly. These issues occur a minority of times but I encountered them throughout the game.
“This is a very difficult game, even while you’re invincible.”
Since you are unable to see enemy health, I also found myself confused as to why I was dodging the same attack patterns for more than 10 minutes. The game was registering that I was dealing damage, but was I really? I had no way of being sure. This turned out to repeat with every subsequent boss; they have too much health for how many actions they perform, and subsequently take too long to fight.
Despite my issues, I’m mature enough to admit that most of my failures in Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus came from my own lack of skill. To mitigate this, the game offers two powerful accessibility toggles: Invincibility and Infinite Mana. I’ve previously gone on record about happily using these game-breaking, immersion-destroying features to jog on past sections I struggle with. But in Teal Lotus, I quickly realised these options did nothing to make the platforming – the most important part of the game – easier. This is a very difficult game, even while you’re invincible. “Touche, Bo,” I said, out loud, to my TV.
After crossing the bridge, I resolved to avoid all optional challenges in the game. This worked for a time, until I hit a dead end, except for this rock-hard multi-stage platforming challenge that was surely not mandatory, until I realised that was what I had to do to get the next Metroidvania power-up. There’s an elegance to how everything you achieve links to some other storyline. I stumbled onto an optional boss that didn’t seem to lead to anything, until it was revealed to be part of a quest I was yet to discover. You’re allowed to explore and do stuff out of order. The game encourages sequence breaking, so you discover how malleable the sequence is. Like any game, you eventually hit a stride and everything clicks, though, again, this doesn’t make it easier, or boss health less ridiculous.
7
Good
Positive:
- Meaty platforming to sink your teeth into
- Engrossing world and characters
- Excellent art and music
Negative:
- The linearity of the bridge section is painful
- Unnecessarily long boss fights
- Occasional UI glitches
Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus wears its inspirations boldly – Hollow Knight in particular – but makes its unique mark in a delightfully crowded modern Metroidvania market. The platforming is difficult but the level design is creative. The boss fights are too long but encourage you to use what you’ve learned. There are UI issues but they don’t occur often enough to ruin the game. The bridge section is brutal but shows an impressive confidence in the level design that persists until the end. The writing, art, and music are sublime. You should play this if you’re a genre fan with more patience than me.
About the Author
Pedro Cooray
he/him
Pedro would like to apologise in advance for talking about Final Fantasy XIII-2 during a totally unrelated conversation. He really can't help himself.
