Candy Rangers Review

Candy Rangers is a single-player on-rails shooter where you are in control of four unique characters all at once, which is a twist on the genre. Developed by Mechano and published by JanduSoft, it looks to be very different from the other titles I have played. I was very curious to see how I would be able to control this many characters on my own.

When you begin the tutorial, you learn that each of these girls has their own colour along with a unique shooting style: Candy (red) can shoot sideways, Mint (green) can shoot upwards, Plum (blue) can shoot in front and behind, and Lemon (yellow) has shots that can clear diagonal formations of enemy waves. The weapons they are equipped with — which look like candy canes — aren’t only guns: they can also be used to parry incoming enemies or as hooks to grab onto objects to swing off to get through the levels.

The colours that are assigned to the characters represent a different button to change who is shooting the gun. On my Xbox controller, yellow is the left face button, green is the top, red is the right, and blue is the bottom; if you find it easier, you could use the D-pad in the same directions instead. When the waves of enemies come towards you, each has a circle around them with a coloured arrow pointing to the corresponding button to hit. This addition makes it easier to use the correct character’s gun, as it would be very hard to remember what to hit for each colour otherwise!

To fire at the foes coming at you, aim your crosshair at your target and hold down the correct colour shown. If you panic and use the wrong gun, it’s okay; you can still destroy the enemy, but you won’t get the combo points for it. Still, it may be the right choice when the only alternative is getting hit and losing time off the clock.

Before you start the mission, you see the score, the amount of time you have, and your largest combo chain. The score and chain/combo will be filled in once you complete the stage. For example, Poplars 3 gives you 90 seconds to reach the end goal. That may seem like a lot of time, but when you realise every hit from the enemy takes away five seconds, it disappears quite fast. Muscle memory helps a lot here; the colours of the shots needed to take out the enemies in front of you don’t change every time you challenge the level. Enemies can sneak up behind you, so be sure to watch out for that or use Plum’s weapon and fire your gun in that direction.

As you progress through each of the areas, you will stop at multiple spots on the path; each of these is a level to challenge. To successfully complete the stage, you need to get to the end goal before the allotted time runs out. If you fail, you will have to try again and improve your time. To help you out, there are clock items that give you 15 seconds of additional time; sometimes you find them lying right on the path, and other times they are hidden in boxes that you need to destroy. Make sure to grab these, as taking damage from enemies eats up a lot of your available time.

The other item you need to collect is medals. Each level has two or three of these to collect, depending on your performance and whether you pick any up during the stage. Some stages require you to have 12 or 15 medals in your inventory to unlock them. If you don’t have the required amount, you will have to rechallenge levels you completed before and find the hidden medals in that stage. It is easy to see how many are hidden there, and the number you have collected so far. When you play through a stage and see that you have missed some of them, I think it makes sense to keep replaying until you find them all, as you will be familiar with the enemies that will be coming at you. This may make it easier in your hunt to find the medals you need to progress.

Candy Rangers has 20 main stages, including secret paths and four bosses to challenge. For each stop, you are ranked based on your performance, which includes chaining combos together and not getting hit by enemies. The most you can earn is five stars, giving you a crown and awarding you a “memory picture” that shows a moment from one of the characters’ pasts, displayed on that stage’s Mission Data page.

Once you beat the game, you will unlock an arcade mode to play, and you will get Inky as a character who can shoot in all directions. At any point, if the game isn’t challenging enough, when you are shown the Mission Data, if you move over to the extras tab, you can play it on hard difficulty.

The visuals in Candy Rangers are brightly coloured, and the heroes and enemies have a black outline so that they stand out from the background. Each member of your team has a unique hair and outfit colour, so they don’t all look the same. The environments are very simple-looking and not detailed, but that is okay since they would probably be too distracting if they were. I did find that the look of the game appeared almost blurry and not crisp, especially when you are trying to read text on the screen, like the numbers telling you the amount of time that you have for that stage. To go along with the vibrant colours, we have upbeat and cutesy music accompanying it, though if you play for an extended period of time, it may get repetitive since there isn’t a huge number of tracks.

Candy Rangers is a surprisingly challenging game; it took me a while to properly use the team of four effectively, along with the crosshair controls. I had to put quite a bit of time into successfully completing the first few stages; I never realised how much getting hit by enemies would mess you up. When you only have 90 seconds to complete the stage, losing five seconds per hit adds up fast!

In the end, this title didn’t really leave me with a sweet feeling. The look of the game wasn’t crisp and felt blurry, and the tutorial didn’t explain the controls very well, especially since it was different from what it showed the controls are supposed to be in the main menu. This, paired with the repetitive music, brought the experience down. Though if you are a fan of on-rails shooter games and want something different from the usual offerings you come across, Candy Rangers may be a title to check out if you want a challenging experience. It was neat being able to swap to the different coloured weapons on the fly to rack up huge combos. Just be aware that it may take a bit to get used to this control scheme and may require some experimentation.