When you hear “on rails shooter,” there are a number of great titles that come to mind, putting you back in the shoes of Agent G for House of the Dead 2, or flying through the skies of Panzer Dragoon. It’s a fantastically wide genre that gives a bit for everyone in everything, if that makes sense. I really like shooting things, but it can be cumbersome to need to constantly spin around and see if I’m about to get knifed in the back during Wolfenstein or Blood. Candy Rangers seeks to take the no steering shooting idea and extend it into something that’s both exciting and complex as you fire along a pathway filled with enemies, targets and split second decisions. Unfortunately, the drive to make this game as focus-heavy as possible also results in a massive shortcoming: it quickly becomes a chore instead of a game.

In a world that could be Earth but probably isn’t, the planet is overrun with a mutated species that used to be fun and nice but now they’re mean and angry. They appear to be everything from plants to animals and stuff inbetween, and it doesn’t matter because they’re not you. You are a pack of four characters named Candy, Mint, Plum and Lemon who have been recruited to blast the ever loving crap out of these mutant misfits. Candy appears to be the leader, so they get to be Candy Rangers instead of anything else. Each has a different kind of bullet that technically fires in a different way (sideways shots, diagonally, etc) but that actually doesn’t matter. The important part is they’re four different colors, and the enemies are more successfully damaged by shooting the correct color at them. Remember Ikaruga? That, but without bullet hell intensity.

So the four rangers will walk along a designated path that will change depending on how you interact with the environment and the enemies. You’ll oftentimes unlock bonus drops from successfully clearing entire waves of enemies, or making sure that you knock a target just right as you march on by. Candy and company then can end up on branching routes that will sometimes separate them into different groups, which results in a slight variant to how you shoot things. Other times, you’ll need to use the controls other than shooting to make the best forward progression, as Candy Rangers also gives you the ability to jump, double jump, dash, brake and use a deflecting melee attack to deflect rushing foes and projectile weapons. While you can play this game with mouse and keyboard, the number of buttons you need to keep track of makes the controller your friend.

Aesthetically, Candy Rangers isn’t something to write home about. The anime-influenced style is cute enough, and the rough graphics reminds me of a recent indie title I spotted, I Write Games Not Tragedies. If you’re a fan of what I would call looseleaf anime, then you’re in good company for the sprites and boss designs. Artwork awarded at the end of the stage are the most dynamically drawn things by far. The landscapes tend to be very repetitive in that there is variance as long as you change to different biomes, but, within the same realms, it feels very same-same in both background elements and pathway execution. Sure, I noticed the difference in stark contrasts of mountains and water, but there wasn’t anything that made the scenery pop or exciting. While that’s probably better for a game where you need to be focused on the enemies, it still doesn’t take away the boring aspect.

It’s the same situation with the soundtrack. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the poppy, simple chords that get tossed around as the background score for Candy Rangers, and it does a decent job of evoking an arcade setting. You can appreciate, for the most part, that the music is meant to be ambient as you concentrate on replaying a part of the stage that threw you previously. In that same vein, though, you end up hearing the exact same chirpy, lyricless noise over and over again in your quest for perfection (more on that in a moment), so what sound be pleasant and varied tunes become almost mocking reminders that you’ve already been here before and you’ll keep right where you are until you get it just right.

Which brings us to the gameplay itself. For the most part, I like the concept of Candy Rangers’ rail shooting elements. Instead of focusing on damage and health, the hits you take from enemies equal to a loss of time, making your vigilance essential to getting to the end of the stage before the clock strikes zero. The fact that more time can be given if you find the right hidden branches and points to pivot is exciting and gave me much more of a reason to try and discover the right times to hit certain targets than, say, if it had been a points collectible or an extra life. There are multiple moments per stage where the shooting relents and it’s just a meandering “walk” to the next firefight, so the bonus time is crucial for these moments.

Additionally, the gameplay does pepper in variance at the right times to keep things spicy. There are moments where your characters split up (as previously mentioned) so you might need to deal with enemies that aren’t inherently vulnerable to the bullets you have available. Or, for a different note, there are times where a character will need to hold something, rendering them useless for shooting until they can place the object down. These moments are fairly exciting as you try to fend off resistant foes in order to avoid taking any damage, as there’s usually a great reward for a package successfully delivered. Courier missions might be the bane of many a game’s existence, but, for Candy Rangers, it’s probably the second best moment behind the boss fights.

Boss fights are where the creativity of development team Mechano really gets to shine. After stage after stage of enemy waves popping up and jumping over/running past obstacles, the bosses are an exercise in fast fingers and faster thinking. You need to change between the different bullet types at a moment’s notice, sometimes because your own shots might heal the boss. The big baddies have totally wild and engaging attack patterns that’ll test your reflexes, whether you need to quickly melee strike to avoid being flattened or jump to avoid a freshly sprouted hazard. The race against time feels very real and visceral here, and they’re far and away the best implementations of the game’s mechanics in the entire package. Hell, being able to quickly jump around the map for story mode and return to the bosses just for practice is phenomenally fun.

My issue with Candy Rangers comes in the false sense of forward momentum that the game exhibits. When you finish a stage, you’ll find out, along with your score and star rating, how many Ranger Medals you successfully found. The Medals are used to unlock additional stages, like so many other games before have done in some capacity. When you play Mario Wonder, you try to get the additional Wonderseeds so you can get to new areas, but the levels tend to be very generous: each stage has about five or six Wonderseeds, and you’ll need about fifteen after six stages or similar math. It has a wiggle room that lets you seek out the items but still have fun and not beat yourself up if you can’t 100% every single area. You can if you want to, but it’s not needed to keep the game moving forward.

For Candy Rangers, the margin of miss is razor thin. For all the Medals per area, you can skip usually only one if you want to keep the game moving forward. More than once, I got the boss in the bag, felt awesome, and then needed to go back and redo a previous stage several more times to get the right number of Ranger Medals to advance to the next area. Sometimes it was on me: I felt l wasn’t clear headed enough to make sure I got the very last baddie in a swarm. And sometimes it just felt unfair, like trying to kick a can, do a double jump and shoot a bunch of things out of the air at the same time. Instead of it being a moment of “woah, that’s badass” it turned into “woah, this is balls for no reason.”

And if you simply want to avoid the shortcomings of the main game mode of Candy Rangers entirely, go ahead and do the arcade mode. Don’t worry about plot points or character development or even explaining what the hell is going on in any capacity. Just get on the path, shoot the crap out of things and have a good time. The amount of time given between stages for replenishment is incredibly generous, sometimes equalizing into levels having more time than they normally would in the story mode. Also, if you read everything I just complained about and said “that sounds AWESOME,” then go enjoy Hardcore mode, which turns it all up to eleven and makes the damage more devastating to your time cache. 

Candy Rangers falls solidly in the middle when it comes to on rails shooters. It’s got plenty to do and it’s inventive in the execution, which kept me locked in for exciting fights and the arcade mode. But needing to repeat myself simply to justify the lack of margins of error was exhausting and, frankly, unfun. I’d much rather do a level again because it was thrilling or because I want to challenge myself, not because the game won’t let me go out to play until I clean my plate. If you didn’t like being forced to eat when you’re not hungry, then Candy Rangers might be the extra sweet that you’ll turn down, no matter how sweet it may be.

Graphics: 6 While very roughly hewn, the overall effect for the Rangers is charming, and there is enough variety in the enemies to keep things clear for what to shoot and when. Lightning horse is a fantastic design. Could have used more variation in the landscapes and backgrounds.	Gameplay: 6 The different bullet shooting styles goes unnoticed in terms of color matching. The jump and dash mechanics are interesting, as well as braking. Sometimes had a harder time locking in on fast moving baddies, but that’s a skill issue. The necessity for the Ranger Medals kills the replay factor in terms of want versus need.
Sound: 4.5 Just repetitive, boppy and overall synthetic sound that feels very modern arcade title. It’s not bad or offensive, but I doubt I could pick it out of a lineup with twelve other games where the theme was “upbeat.”	Fun Factor: 5 Let’s make sure players feel like they have choices in the matter. If you have to fully complete a level before moving on, don’t give the illusion of choice. Crafting a situation where a player feels “less than” breeds resentment, and forces me to step away from Candy Rangers before I’m ready.
Final Verdict: 5.5

Candy Rangers is available now on Nintendo Switch, Steam, PlayStation 4/5 and Xbox Series One X/S.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Candy Rangers was provided by the publisher.