3.5/5 ★ – benhmedia's review of Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus.

This is a hard review to write. I’ve just shelved this game for the time being, after over 15 hours and loving SO much of it. It was a 9 out of 10 for much of my playthrough. But a variety of small things started to add up, combined with one VERY big thing that frustrates me to no end. But I’ll get there. First off: there is so much to love about this game for any fan of metrodivanias and challenging platformers. The art style, level design, music, side characters, and many of its boss fights are excellent. On the surface some may say it’s too similar to Hollow Knight, and it definitely does borrow a lot of mechanics. However, thanks to its distinct Japanese world and its big focus on aerial combat, it manages to separate itself JUUUST enough. It’s a game that’s dripping with charm and atmosphere, and plenty of challenge. In certain ways, a little too much challenge. I’ve seen some complain that the trickier platforming gauntlets of this game don’t have enough checkpoints. I personally wasn’t too bothered by that, though I can see how adding some more of those might make the game feel slightly less punishing - which isn’t a bad thing. What really bothered me, though, is how excessively sponge-y some of the bosses are. Particularly, the giant fox and the giant spider. I’m all for a good challenge (Hollow Knight and Cuphead are two of my favorites), but when fights start feeling more repetitive and tedious than they are exhilarating, it starts to get old. However, this was only mildly annoying for me with the aforementioned boss fights. What really killed my interest in beating this game is the final boss. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a sudden and drastic nosedive in enjoyment than I have after realizing how long and repetitive this final fight is. It’s six phases, three of them are exactly the same, and if you die on any of them, you have to start back from the beginning. Again, I love a good challenge, but this just feels cheap. It feels like such an artificial way to make the game harder. I could maybe beat it if I kept trying and coming back to it, night after night. But after a couple nights of failing to beat this boss, I realized something tragic: the game stopped being fun. Or at least that final part of the game did. It doesn’t feel like it’s a final fight that respects the time of its players. I will say that I still respect SquidShock as game developers, as I’ve seen them leave comments about how seriously they’re taking negative feedback, and how much they’d like to improve the game for the next update. It’s also tragic how their distributor, HumbleGames, has suddenly fired all their staff without any prior notice. This leaves SquidShock with 0 post-launch support, and will make updating the game on consoles quite a challenge. So I eventually plan to give this final fight another chance, and maybe even 100% the game. I’m willing to change my mind later on considering Bo an all-time great. But until an update comes that balances the game out in significant ways, this gets a 7 out of 10 from me.