Developer.....Sonic Team Publisher.....Sega Players.......1 Difficulty....Medium
While we were all eagerly anticipating a sequel to NiGHTS, or even a Saturn Sonic game, Yuji and his bods were hard at work on this fire-fighting epic. When it came out, there was a little disappointment, but I'm about to explain what everyone was on about and hopefully prove a few people wrong along the way...
Burning Rangers allows you to play as one of two characters, Shou Amabane and Tillis, each with their own sorrowful pasts. You have to traverse the four huge levels, putting out fires, saving people, defeating strange biological and mechanical menaces, and just generally being a good person. You have help along the way; you have a neat voice-navigation system which is used by tapping the X or Z button, where Chris Parton (your navigator) tells you what to do, as well as helping Tillis (or Shou, depending on who you are controlling) and fellow Rangers Reed Phoenix and Big Landman in their mission. it's great for when you get stuck. The fires around the levels are of different severity and need different courses of action. Extinguishing fires gives you energy crystals (formed by energy conversion), all with a few quick blasts of your extinguisher, but large fires may need a full charge from your weapon, although this destroys any crystals. Fires erupt with only a whistling sound and a glowing wall for warning, and if every time the danger limit goes up past a 20% mark, this triggers a chain reaction of explosions which get higher in intensity according to which limit it is, be it 20, 40, 60, 80 or even 100%. At 100%, the explosions will not stop unless you put out a stationary fire (i.e. not those explosions). It's best not to get to there. You can do this by extinguishing the fires. But watch out! If a flame touches you, you will lose all crystals gained and, just like Sonic and, to an extent, NiGHTS, you have a limited amount of time to collect as many as you can. In this case, however, you need the crystals for another purpose - transporting survivors. 5 crystals will do such a thing, and ten ensures extra safety and thus will give you an extra continue. In these sequences, you just watch your character interact with the survivor in a 3D cut-scene (along the lines of what you see in Panzer Dragoon Saga). Relevant actions undertaken by the other Rangers are shown in cut-scenes too. Films complement the end of each level, and it's nice to see Sega keep something in a translation - the Manga clips are fab.
The game is quite large initially, with four huge levels to explore, but the first thing you'll notice are the graphics. Using an enhanced version of the NiGHTS engine, Sonic Team have crammed the game full of amazing lighting effects (almost as good as on Panzer Dragoon Saga) and transparencies. There are plenty of effects, an abundance of colour, and it moves pretty fast as well. Great detail has been incorporated into the characters too, and the presentation screens are all in hi-res. The bosses are huge and almost as good as their NiGHTS counterparts. The films are definitely of the highest quality, with excellent picture quality, sharp CD-quality stereo sound, and a near full-screen display. I don't seem to mind the American translation, despite the lip-synching problems; these clips are fab, not only because of their Manga nature, but also because of the fact that Sega has improved the clips for us Europeans! However, the game suffers from Saturnitis; polygon glitching and clipping are common-place, the draw-in distance is rather close and slow-down is pretty regular; NiGHTS was a little more polished and probably more spectacular in truth. Also, the frame rate is slightly lower than NiGHTS, hovering at around 17 fps (20 NTSC). Having said that, this doesn't really affect the gameplay. The main problem is that the PAL version has a rather letterboxed screen, along the lines of what Sonic R has. The 3D problems were one of the reasons why some people were slagging the game off, saying that the Saturn couldn't handle anything, but not every game can be a 3D paradise with no problems, can they? This game proves the Saturn's power.
The game also has a brilliant soundtrack. The songs continue the trend from NiGHTS (i.e. they are good), and the voice navigation system really sounds and works well, but I don't think the effects and music are as good as in NiGHTS. I still like them though. Actually, there's very little in-game music, but this is an advantage because you can hear the fires and the general atmosphere easier.
The game isn't too hard, yes, but finding all of the people and defeating the bosses in as quick time as possible is a challenge for everyone, not to mention keeping the danger limit gauge down. The game has a feel to it similar to NiGHTS, in that you'll always return to it, but I wouldn't expect the same appeal. Having said that, the game gets larger in size as you play, rescued people send you letters (and gifts, like pictures and games), and areas previously blocked-off reveal themselves. The people you rescue are recorded in a list which you can view on the options screen, along with any letters and gifts they may have sent. If you don't want to play any of the random generatons that the game creates - even though they are pretty similar - you can enter the password for your last mission and play the same setup again. The real gem is the difficulty of getting S grades for each level - something I haven't achieved yet.
You have 360 degree movement around the levels, and the controls aren't too hard to learn, but the feeling of mastering the controls is so much higher in NiGHTS. Some people choose to compare this to Tomb Raider - don't, for TR's sake. This game shows up Core for not putting TR2 on the Saturn, not only with its superior movement and graphics, but also with the depth and innovation that the game has. TR2 may seem bigger, but BR has lots of replay value and is full of secrets, from controlling the other characters in the game to sound tests and the like. Unfortunately, the 2-player mode never arrived in the West (blame Working Designs - it's always their fault, so why not now?) but from what I heard we aren't missing too much.
It's not quite NiGHTS, in that it is harder to learn and possibly more confusing, but Burning Rangers is a neat game. Saturn owners could do a lot worse than buy this; I got my copy for a tenner from Dixons. Lovely people.
As for a sequel, there's no news as of yet. More exciting is the rumour that they are working on NiGHTS 2...
Graphics: 90% Audio: 91% Originality: 75% Lastability: 90% Gameplay: 91%
Overall: 90%
For some cheats, click here to download, when I have them up. Alternatively, click here to see Frequently-Asked Questions about the game from GameFAQs.Com.