A gem right out of Ubisoft's vault
I owned Rayman back in the days when I had a Sega Saturn. It belonged to my series of favorite side-scrolling adventures. I found the game very entertaining and very beautiful. If you ever played Donkey Kong Country, you can relate Rayman to this game very much - but without the monkeys and bananas.
The story is simple: Rayman, although he has arms nor legs, has to restore balance to his world by setting free the encaged Electoons. Each scene of a world holds a number of cages with these funny creatures; sometimes they're in plain sight, sometimes you have to look, and look, and restart the level with new powers and look again. In order to advance to the next level, you need to save a certain number of Electoons.
You begin the game with only the ability to jump. But as Rayman meets the fairy Betilla, he gets new powers along the way, such as flying and punching. If adventurous enough, Rayman can even find hidden paths to secret scenes.
The graphics are very beautiful compared to the standards back then; and even if they may seem dated now, the humor, beautiful colors, atmospheric music, and bizarre enemies make up for it. I am very curious what this special edition has to offer regarding the new levels.
If I would have to name one negative aspect of the game, then it's the save system. You have to complete several scenes before you can save your progress, which can sometimes be very frustrating if you are in a tight spot with no lives for spare.
The soundtrack was available on my Saturn disc as a CDDA track, which meant I could just put it in my CD player to listen to it. Yes, it's that good so it's a nice bonus feature that GOG has included here.
If you were out to get this game, don't doubt about it: this is a gem right out of Ubisoft's vault.
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