This game is definitely a mixed bag. On the one hand I like the concept, the gaphics looks amazing for the Saturn, presentation is excellent and the way in which they implemented a system similar to that of Sonic's rings in a third person shooter is more or less well accomplished. Sadly, it suffers from the typical 3D game problems of the 32bit era: Horribly cringy voice acting (except for the woman who guides you throughout the missions), issues with camera angles and strange collision detection. Still, Burning Rangers has a lot of potential and I'm sure if Sonic Team takes the time to overcome all these shortcomings, the sequel should be a great game... oh wait right, I forgot.

Best experiment Sonic Team has made.

Yeah the controls suck, it's short as hell and the limit timer thing is really annoying but goddamn I love this world and some of the ideas they introduce like having where to go be told to you through an immersive comms unit that just adds so much to the core experience and how it handles having the gameplay be all about saving people are just really neat and ideas that I haven't seen in a lot of other games.

I know this will never happen but I hope this game's world and characters are expanded upon way more, with tighter controls and design choices that won't make me want to have to use save states in the final section, I mean it's firefighters in space for gods sake!

I got past the first stage, and I've seen enough. This is where I stop. I like the concept this game has but the way it is on the saturn makes it extremely hard for me to enjoy it, The controls and platforming are super clunky, camera movement sucks and the gameplay is simply pressing B to extinguish some flames, collecting crystals and pressing the navigation button that generates a voice prompt telling you in which direction you need to go to proceed further, I guess sonic team themselves knew the level design was too trippy and the player might need assistance while trying to find their way across the levels. Overall, this was pretty disappointing...

you never kill a single human being in this game, instead you help them get out of the fire and rubble of decaying buildings, search laboratories and spacial stations. your only weapon is used to extinguish the fire and, at your most violent act, exterminate robots. being a burning ranger is, at first, helping people, not harming them in any way! amazing level geometry, sonic team was at its peak level design-wise, with a lot of space to roam around and turn your camera to locate where you go next, while your team leader chris guides you if you are lost, with a single button pressing. the animated cutscenes and overall aesthetics, together with a cute english dub gives it a very "saturday morning" cartoon vibe or a late 90s OVA anime. also the songs here slaps, specially the main theme! great game!

queria poder ver os mapas por fora como naqueles vídeos de dark souls, labiríntico de forma que você precisa depender dos colegas pra entender como é o mapa e onde ir, mas sem interromper o fluxo: fogos precisam ser apagados e pessoas precisam ser salvas, mesmo que sejam as pessoas erradas nos lugares certos.

dos jogos de profissão (death stranding, papers please) é um dos melhores, mas também se afasta tanto da ideia padrão de como uma profissão funciona que deve inspirar quem nunca nem sonhou em salvar um gatinho da árvore. ser um bombeiro no mundo de burning rangers tem todo o apelo de ser um astronauta no nosso: é a vida adulta mais legal possível, a profissão esporte radical.

#FreeYujiNaka

The grand ambition of creating a game where you rescue people instead of killing them is fully realized here. The choice to have zero soundtrack to instead have your commander read you instructions on how to navigate compromised buildings create a very unique vibe. Yuji Naka did nothing wrong. Except when he did his stock scam and treated all his subordinates like shit.

Having a way to play the game again with the commander being replaced by the opening song playing all the time means they knew what they were doing.

I guess it was great to learn the hard way why this game is underrated.

So back in Middle School for me, I was introduced to the game as being among the more elusive and pricy games for the Saturn alongside Panzer Dragoon Saga. So getting a legit copy was never really in my reach. I did however have the pleasure of seeing a complete copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for sale at a convention, but alas it was over 800 dollars.

When mangling with Saturn emulation off RetroArch here and there I did give the game a shot, and after getting too bewildered, I gave up. The only game I recall ever completing by emulating the Saturn was Mega Man 8.

So flash forward to now. I was ecstatic. I have a modchipped Saturn to play burned games. I was eager to finally give the underrated gem, the overlooked gem a fair shot. Especially for something with such style, and a theme that fits the definition of Jam.
I ended up being left with a product of Sega's time frame.
Wanting the Saturn to die a lonely death.

The main menu alone speaks it all. There's a major gap of something missing. Is there something to unlock? There was. There was a multiplayer mode, a subgame mode, but alas they were removed. Probably to save time. But they didn't have enough of it to make up for the loss.

And the game itself is interesting. You have a tutorial that attempts to teach you. Even if it doesn't teach you it all there is. No mention of the dodging siding mechanic, or the fact putting out green fire gives 5 crystals. That and green fire can also shoot at you.

Then afterwards you have only 4 levels to go through. All of them are lengthy but alas, don't make the game as long as it should be. Sometimes for me playing the levels just makes me linger for more. You feel the lack of refinement, and even the feeling of the developers wanting to polish it some more, but.. Could not.

The first level I'd add admittedly does not make a good showcase of the game as the later ones have a much better handling of the framerate while the first gives the player an awful impression, assuming the whole game is just a big space.

I'd argue the game could've been more polished on the Saturn and heck, would've been a great 1999 release rather than a rushed out the door 1998 one. The Saturn is capable of the 3D. It's just the game in the state that it is, honestly makes it look like a bad example. But when it's not suffering, it can look remarkably incredible.

What I do utterly agree with everyone on however, is that this game absolutely deserves a second chance. It is unfair that Nights, a game that was literally perfect and had no issues on Saturn, was given a touching it up shit remaster treatment, while you got the other Sonic Team Saturn game that's pretty much rotting Anakin Skywalker. I'd describe the camera system in this game to be fighting with a cameraman that happens to be a roaring drunk bear. And another major thing is that despite the Analog Stick offering 360 degree movement, there is no percise movement offered by the stick (walking) WHICH IS A BIG ISSUE TOO IF YOU'VE PLAYED THE PLATFORMING BULLSHIT IN LEVEL 3 AND 4. Doesn't help that Nights and even Sonic World (from Sonic Jam) offered it.

The lack of music isn't too bad in my opinion. As it fits the atmosphere of being a Space Firefighter in a building that's burning down, BUT the bosses go down too bloody easy. They have lively boss themes but just die as quick as Napoleon pleasing his wife if you know what you are doing. The fish one in particular, is literally Proto Chaos 4 from SA1.

And another major issue is definitely the lore BEING ONLY LEARNED IN THE BLOODY MANUAL. For a modern gamer, they aren't gonna understand what the hell is the deal with Tillis or Shou when they talk about certain things, and that's because all of that was in the manual. Atleast with Nights, the basic lore you needed to know was within THE GAME. As it was told visually. With anything regarding what was up with the kids were both cutscenes at that too. The important information that Shou became a Burning Ranger because one sacrificed his life to save him as a child, and that Tillis became an orphan due to a fire taking her parents, was all not mentioned within the game. And even the other rangers have lore too that goes unmentioned in the game. One being that Chris' father was a Burning Ranger, and probably being the very one that saved Shou and died.

In general the game suffered indeed. It has an incredible world. A remarkable concept. Takes the bravest job there is, and gives it a Sega flair. But it suffered. It suffered from being made in a time in the company when rather than keep going, it was to abandon ship and make a wholly new console, despite it's fine library, really a short term answer to what was changing. using CDs, having one stick. Sounds like something against the N64, but was actually against the PS2.

Regardless of it's background, Burning Rangers is a unique game. And due to it's style, it's grace, it's groove. I give it a 4. And it is a replayable arcadey game for sure, despite it's nasty warts. Had it been able to go further and beyond, doing what it wanted to accomplish with its concepts and ideas.. It could have been another exceptional masterpiece from Sonic Team. But alas.. That unfortunately is not what happened.

So please Sega.. Revive Burning Rangers for Christ's sake. They can put out the fire that is your debt.

Just finished this a few minutes ago on real hardware. This has to be one of the most blatantly unfinished games (that could have been good) I've ever seen.

This game some great ideas and moments, high-ish production values given its anime cutscenes, full voice-acting, and multiple vocal songs, but it just doesn't come together into a meaningful experience.

The gameplay is mostly a mess. As cool as the idea of having voice-guided navigation, it's still very easy to get lost due to not having a minimap, and the final level does not have a dedicated button for getting instructions (the game does not tell you this, but in most levels you can press X and Kris will tell you roughly where to go). Additionally, the idea of having jetpacks for platforming is neat and certainly makes it a bit easier in a time when 3D cameras were still wonky, but it's way too loose and imprecise and the camera sucks. This is fun most of the time since a lot of the levels are these open mazes without few enemies (read: fine but nothing special), but whenever the game tries to make you do more precise platforming it quickly becomes a mess. That massive climb section in the middle of the final stage was so horrendous that I decided to listen to the Super Pitfall theme because I was reminded of the AVGN describing how the last thing you want to do is fall down in that game. The muddy graphics with drab color choices do the game no favors either.

Combat kinda stinks too. Most bosses devolve into mindlessly firing off charge shots until you win. During the first boss of the final level, I don't think I moved at all to dodge attacks, I just kept blasting until I somehow won. The final boss is great though. I don't know if the game tells you this, but I found out in the final battle that if you stand still your character will auto-lock onto the nearest enemy. Pretty innovative I suppose since OoT and its Z-Targetting didn't exist yet.

But while the above highlight that Burning Ranger's core game has lots of problems, it really is the unfinishedness of it all that is so infuriating. You have full voice-acting, but it is incredibly wooden, I'd imagine due to a lack of voice direction (can't confirm this but I'm willing to bet ). You have these AWESOME vocal themes, and some pretty solid instrumental tracks, but the gameplay ALMOST NEVER HAS MUSIC. It's quite telling too since the only time outside of a boss fight that there is music is in one segment of the final level which is probably the coolest part of the game. You have this cast of colorful characters that pretend to be interesting, but the reality is that we know very little about them and our ability to directly interact with them is very limited. You have all these people you can rescue and plenty of characters within each level and attempts that twists, but there really isn't much of a plot to be invested in. The final climax comes out of nowhere and feels very unearned, and again, the lack of characterization really hampers the experience. I don't think it's too much to ask since Sega's rival Nintendo managed to make a game with plenty more character interactions several months earlier in Star Fox 64.

And of course, worst of all, the game's length. I don't mind short games, and the levels are rather long, but there's only 4 of them, and the game is over within a few hours due to it being pretty easy outside of the last level. When you consider how much this game is pretending to do on an aesthetic and plot standpoint (on top of there being a scrapped multiplayer mode), I can't help but shake the feeling that this game was very very rushed due to the Saturn's imminent demise

The truly fascinating part about Burning Rangers is that Bulk Slash predates this game by about 6 months, and it achieves much of what Burning Ranger wanted to do but so so so SOOOO much more effectively: Voice navigators with more personality, level design that mixes openness with an arcade feel, vertical movement options (in this case a flying mech instead of a jetpack), a half-decent camera system, much better combat and bosses, actual music...it's insane to me that this never got localized because it could've been a true killer for 1997.

I would digress, but seriously, if you are considering playing Burning Rangers, play Bulk Slash instead.