Dancing Pandas: Ranger's Path

A short and good game.

Sometimes you just wanna be a panda dancing to the beat as you eagerly explore a lush island dotted with other friendly pandas, helping them solve little problems while you search for your Nana. That’s the experience of Dancing Pandas: Ranger’s Path as you take on the role of Mico, who has arrived at the island in search of his grandmother after a mysterious letter arrived for him. The game is a nice and cozy stroll (and soar) from start to finish, lasting about 4-5 hours if you’re trying to find most of the stuff on the island. If this style of casual exploration and chatting with quirky characters is your vibe, Dancing Pandas will aptly scratch that itch for a couple good gaming sessions at a nice price ($12.99 MSRP.) Read my full review over on Gaming Furever: https://gamingfurever.com/news/reviews/dancing-pandas-ranger-s-path-review

Good game to play when you are not in a hurry and need something to do

Disclaimer: I know the people who worked on this game so take this review with a grain of salt. I will however try to be as authentic as possible. Game runs mostly fine and I didn't run into any game breaking bugs. Some minor ones here and there but nothing serious. I also tested with a PS5 controller and it seemed to work just fine. The gameplay and moving around feels snappy and responsive. However I do wish that you could turn off the mouse smoothing for the camera. The environments and the characters look very charming. The animations and how the player and various characters move around make them look really wholesome. I do wish that there was a little bit more sound effects for various things like the dialog bubbles or the characters talking or stuff popping on your screen in general. The dialog bubbles could also have a small icon displaying that you can progress by a button press. The missing tool stuff could also be presented with an icon of said tool instead of just "(missing tool)" text. Exploring around feels good when you can find a lot of gems that you can actually spend to get some outfit pieces for your character. It makes it feel like you want to explore instead of needing to explore. Talking about exploring. There really are not any quest markers to hold your hand so sometimes finding the correct NPC to finish up your quest is behind walking around and retracing your steps. So there is a lot of walking around. Often times it made me wish for a sprint button to make it a little less tedious to walk around the same places. This could also perhaps be fixed by adding little icons on the map to where each NPC lives maybe after you've talked to them and taken the quest? In conclusion: A very charming and cozy game that is probably perfect for small kids. Lots to explore and secrets to find in the world. And in the end I was kinda hoping to see more of the story and the world.

I just 100% this game, and it was a pretty solid game. The best way to describe it is a cozy open world 3d platformer collectathon and quest game. It's gameplay and world are comparable to games like A Short Hike, Haven Park, and Lil Gator Game, and it was definitely worth the price that I got it on sale. Its really fun to explore and complete quests for the variety of panda npcs that you'll encounter. The only major drawback I have with this game is its slowdown I experienced while playing it on steam deck, which didn't happen constantly but appeared when exploring various locations on the map. Overall, a pretty fun time.

Overall I think this game is a sweet, cosy and such a lovely chill game to zone out to. There's a few quality of life things which could make the game a touch easier at points, the main one for me is markers on the map for pandas who are involved in active quests (excluding grandma of course) and maybe clues from quest givers on the directions of lost items (I never found that underwear!). If you like games like A Short Hike then I'd suggest giving this one a go.

- Cute art style - Simple quests (the hardest part is having to do a little bit of looking around for some things - Sofi can help with that!) - Upbeat, fun, and relaxing music - Good story & easy to follow along - A little bit of humor here and there in the dialogue - You can purchase cosmetics (from an interesting character) to dress up Mico! - The ending was adorable, uplifting, motivational, and super cute! - Yes, Mico dances. - I love birds, so it's a given that I enjoyed having Sofi with me. -- Players havd been reporting bugs in the Discord, and the devs are quick to get fixes out! My only con is that is sucks up a lot of GPU (especially during cutscenes) & nearly crashes my OBS if I play higher than Low graphics. The framerate cap update allowed me to stream the game with adjusted settings just fine, though!