Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local / Online)

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Review:

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a Fighting game with a ridiculous dimension-hopping time-traveling plot that’s a convenient excuse to bring characters from every era of the multiple decade-spanning show (as well as the recent film reboot) into one game together to duke it out in a 3 vs 3 team battle-style fighter.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the series, but I did watch a good portion of the show’s earliest incarnation, and from what I can tell it seems to be pretty well-represented here, bringing back many of the shows’ actors to voice their roles, and with the game’s moves and characters making plenty of references to the show.

Having said that, while this game clearly does what it can to show series fans a good amount of love, on a technical level this is a bit of a mixed bag. The character models are good and the game has an absolutely solid framerate, but the move effects aren’t very good and the backgrounds seem sparse and extremely lacking detail. One arena fought in the original Power Rangers’ HQ had me both loving and hating it – I thought it was wonderful fan-service to have Zordon watching over the battle, but cringe-worthy levels of bad to see the place rendered in such a cartoonishly garish fashion.

Surprisingly, the combat in this game is actually pretty damn good. There’s a good variety of moves for all of the characters, who feel varied enough that players are sure to find at least a few that speak to them, and there’s enough depth here that more advanced players will have plenty to bite into, while being accessible enough that new players can still have some button-mashy fun.

In part this is thanks to its system that assigns special moves to button and input combinations rather than Street Fighter-esque directional sequences. Doing a special move is as straightforward as pressing a direction and the special button. Furthermore, the various super moves are performed with simple two-button combinations, including the once-per-round ‘Zord attacks, which allow players to have one of four giant Zords stomp on the battle from above with screen-filling attacks – a delightful addition to the gameplay, and one that does a great job of incorporating that element of the show into the gameplay here.

With all this game does right, it’s a shame that it falls short in a few areas. Firstly, some of the hit detection here is a bit iffy, particularly with jumping attacks. I feel like players will quickly learn that there are some attacks in the game to avoid simply because their hit detection is so terrible.

In addition to this, the game is very content-poor. While it was released at a budget price of $20, that still doesn’t excuse that the game comes with only twelve characters, with six more offered as DLC. I feel like fans of the show may very well be disappointed if their own personal favorite ranger didn’t make the roster.

Add to that only a small handful of fighting arenas, and it definitely feels like this game could have used more time cooking to get a greater amount of content. Also, while this game boasts cross-platform multiplayer online play, you’re not likely to be able to make use of it – the game’s online servers are a ghost town.

There is so very much to like in Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. The actual core Fighting game gameplay here is fantastic, and the game honors its franchise with some really good fanservice. But what could have been a phenomenal game is marred by a lack of content, poor graphics, some spotty hit detection, and a dead online mode. Fans of the show looking for a fighting game should still absolutely check it out, just be aware that this is a flawed experience.

tl;dr – Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a 3 vs 3 Fighting game with characters and references from throughout the many incarnations of the Power Rangers franchise. The core gameplay here is excellent, but the game is hurt by a lack of content, occasionally poor hit detection, underwhelming graphics, and a dead online mode. Despite its flaws, it’s still well worth checking out for series fans, but to everyone else these flaws make it hard to give it a full recommendation.

Grade: C+

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