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.)
The gameplay consists of walking around the panda-filled island, which is actually much bigger than expected at first glance, and completing tasks to gain “Courage Hearts” that will allow you to do more confident things, like attempting harder tasks or asking more personal questions to fellow pandas. As you explore, you’ll pick up collectibles and find more pandas to talk to, which will give you helpful tips, some intriguing dialogue backstory, or allow you to purchase new tools or costumes. These little moments added to the world feel, and were sometimes more deep than I expected on the surface. It felt like a nice, quirky, lived-in slice of life for these pandas, and I couldn’t have been more chill while enjoying the gameplay style the game employed. The stakes were never too high, and the ability to fast travel after uncovering a portion of the map (using gems I had collected to buy the section) was a welcome option. I did want to make a note that the game doesn’t seem to autosave enough, and you have to go in and manually save in the menu to ensure it does. When I completed the game, there was no way for me to go back and save or continue after finishing, which was unfortunate, because I wanted to finish off a few more achievements.
Other than the obviously cute, wiggly, and adorably designed panda folks that inhabit it, Dancing Pandas’ World is a colorful blast of foliage and flora, with the various areas of the island covering all types of scenery, including sandy beaches, autumnal mountainsides, green valleys, and tropical seascapes. Eventually, you befriend a lovely bird named Sofi, who will help you find any valuable collectibles you may have missed nearby. The game helps you as much as you want it to with completing quests and exploring the island, which is helpful, because some of the items to collect are pretty small and can be easy to miss if you don’t know you’re looking for them for a quest. I wish there was actually more to purchase with my gems other than map pieces and a few Ranger outfit pieces, but I’m not expecting a huge wardrobe from a game like this, admittedly. Also, your movement is based on the camera’s orientation, which was a problem a few times when my camera would whip around because it hit an overhanging structure that would cause it to reorientate. It never caused any huge trouble, but it was a minor annoyance. I also ran into a quest later in the game where I had to figure out where someone was based on context clues and a dialogue box, and the dialogue box didn’t seem to be based on where this person was in the world, once I finally found them. I spent about 30 minutes running around on a random cliff, heh. In the end, I could’ve found them quickly if I knew where to look, but I seemed to be being pulled in a different direction at first. Overall, the small issues I had were just that: small.
As you explore, you’ll be audibly whisked away by the soundtrack, which composer Tom Schipper did a beautiful job with. Luckily as well, the game doesn’t crowd the peaceful music with tons of unnecessary sound effects, and as such you’ll really get to be carried by its flowing, melodic pace as you complete your tasks. Sometimes this lack of sound effects can seem like something’s missing, like a practical beep or snap or the like when completing an action or task. Overall, the music made up for anything I felt was lacking in the sound department, and I appreciated the touches that were there.
Dancing Pandas: Ranger’s Path is what you want in a cozy game like this: a little, lively world to explore, a few tasks to complete at your own pace, and an achievable goal to pursue. All the while you get to talk with panda people and be one yourself! You don’t get to do that in every game, right? At a price of $12.99, it’s a perfectly pleasing piece of gaming goodness.
