Bobo Bay

I'm really, really torn about this one. I grew up on Chao Gardens and bought this game the same day I got a Chao tattoo, and this is definitely the truest spiritual successor I've found. But it's not there yet. It feels like EA. The aesthetics are cute but some of the complexity and navigation feel impossible. Even though there's more direct tutorials about how stats and grades work than the Chao Gardens had, I'm far more confused. It doesn't help that these wordy tutorials are tucked inside a tiny screen-within-a-screen with the cellphone UI. It's aestheticlly cute but it comes at the cost of user experience, especially on the Steam Deck screen, and the game is Verified for it. On top of that, the cellphone interface feels so incredibly unintuitive. Even with the prompts right next to the phone, I'm so used to pressing B or A for interact or back in menus that I keep jumping on my bobos by accident. There should be an option to pause and make the cellphone full screen. The UI stuff might be better if you're not playing on Steam Deck but there's other usability decisions that don't make sense to me. Bobos have to be individually placed for competitions, there's no menu to select from, so you need to get all of them to follow you into the trials area. Sometimes after a trial they'll all still be there so I can pick a different one for another trial but sometimes they're just gone and I only have the one I did the trial with. It would have also been a nice upgrade to have similar selection menus to what the races need for the doctor and registration, even if that's not what the Chao Gardens had. The game is meant to be a spiritual successor to the Chao Gardens and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. There's lots of love put into it, and some upgrades from the source material, but a lot of missed opportunities to improve the gameplay experience. If SEGA won't, fans will, and clearly there's a market for it, of which I am a part of. And that's why it sucks so hard that I can't recommend it in its current state. I hope to be able to come back to it one day if they make significant UI and UX changes (or at least implement the option to have those changes) but I can't justify spending more time on this game right now. Or $20.