At one time, Power Rangers was the most successful television brand that Fox had ever produced. Working in tandem with Saban Entertainment, the show caused an almost instant cultural phenomenon by using Japanese Super Sentai footage and injecting it with an American narrative where actors were brought in and voices were dubbed over ranger scenes. Throughout the 90s, Power Rangers was unstoppable but the games never really got the quality that fans of the series were hoping for. There were some cool titles on the SNES but overall Power Rangers games were lackluster. While it’s not perfect, Battle for the Grid is almost as good as it gets for longtime fans, combining characters from across the Power Rangers universe including the popular comics from Boom! Studios for a multi-dimensional 3v3 battle of superstars.
When firing up Battle for the Grid, I was in the middle of chores so my PlayStation stayed at the menu screen for quite a while. From the other room, I could hear this incredible rock music blasting at a breakneck pace, layering echoes from the iconic Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers theme and voices from throughout the series. The part of my brain that fires up for nostalgic things exploded. As mentioned in our news piece about an upcoming patch, I grew up with Power Rangers. I loved the toys, the overarching storylines, the weird fan service episodes that sometimes had crossovers with other franchises like the one starring the live-action, Sentai-inspired Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. It was something that I carried throughout my early years, only being replaced when the main Power Ranger story ended at Lost Galaxy.
Battle for the Grid is that nostalgia distilled but the main inspiration seems to come from the more mature, fantastical comic book stories. While there are certainly some hang-ups in the production values, the underlying fighting mechanics are enjoyable with simple attack inputs but with enough depth to entice some hardcore players.
Available modes are more robust now than at launch. Players can now play through a classic arcade mode, a story mode with cool comic-like scenes, a ranked or casual online mode, standard versus play, practice in training mode, or learn from the tutorial. There’s nothing too complex happening in the mode department but the story is challenging and interesting enough to warrant a playthrough. This is also a great way to be steadily introduced to the character roster.
Lord Zedd appears as a DLC character, who orders a Putty squad to stomp foes.
As of this writing, there are 18 characters to create a three fighter team with and many of the original actors were brought in to voice their characters. It appears that more are likely going to be added in the future but for now, the spread of rangers and villains have some solid representation of the franchise and some fun surprises. Mainstays from the Mighty Morphin series are here such as Tommy Oliver (Green Ranger), Jason Lee Scott (Red Ranger), and Kimberly Hart (Pink but appearing first as the Ranger Slayer variant) with some cool skins such as Jason with the Power Shield or Tommy as the White Ranger. There are quite a few Mighty Morphin characters here, about seven when counting alternate dimension versions such as the Mastodon Sentry (a soldier variant of the Black Ranger) and Dragon Armor Trini (basically HulkBuster armor for the MMPR Yellow Ranger) so the roster is weighted towards that initial series. Although, it is awesome to see characters like the Magna Defender from Lost Galaxy and Cenozoic Blue from the most recent movie adaptation.
Even though most of these characters are Rangers, they all feel pretty different from each other. Unlike something like Marvel VS Capcom which has a ton of characters with lots of quarter-circle inputs, Battle for the Grid leans more towards the Smash Bros approach in its moveset, focusing on simple directions to change an attack. There are four main buttons used, Low, Medium, High, and Special and depending on the character their options will vary. For example, Udonna a powerful ice sorceress from Mystic Force is a great zone character with a freeze stun. On the opposite end of that style is Kat Manx from S.P.D who is a rush down slasher.
High-level gameplay is all about knowing how these simple attacks play into each other and calling assists at the right time. Because of the simple inputs, the learning curve is shallow and I was able to go toe-to-toe with online opponents after just a few hours. I can’t speak for the absolute highest levels of play but there’s enough complexity here with straightforward execution that I found myself compelled to play more and more. It also helps that I have always wanted to see the Power Rangers like this in a game.
Dragon Armor Trini was certainly surprising to see.
These characters look awesome and are in a similar style to what was used on the mobile game (also by nWay) Legacy Wars. Legacy Wars was a fine distraction but I always wanted more from these modern approaches to Power Rangers characters and that’s what I got in Battle for the Grid. Each of them sounds cool, acts cool, and is generally cool as hell. Special moves have dynamic zooms too that have become so common in fighting games but some are more interesting than others. I would have liked to see more special attacks incorporate the Megazords, as they were always my favorite part of the shows. It is cool to see a larger approach on the Rangers and their actual character traits though.
Megazords are handled weird in this title. They can be temporarily summoned and depending on what face button is used they will strike down at the battlefield with big punches, stomps, sword swings, and such. There are four to choose from (currently) after picking three characters: Dino Megazord, Mega Goldar, Dragonzord, and S.P.D Megazord. These attacks look and feel awesome but they can be hard to time and do not feel near as powerful as I would’ve hoped. Maybe we will eventually see a full-blown Megazord fighter from nWay, similar to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition on SNES.
Where I think Battle for the Grid fails the most is the stage design. There are less than ten stages and they feel incredibly flat compared to the characters. This is most evident in the Command Center stage. I did like to see the constant battle between a Megazord and Goldar in Corinth but that was the only stage I considered to be visually interesting. Luckily there are some excellent soundtracks to the action, blasting sick metal sweeps and powerful double bass rhythms. The menu theme especially is one for the ages.
Corinth is the only stage that really feels interesting.
I didn’t expect to like Battle for the Grid as much as I did. There is a surprisingly engaging fighter here with enough options to make for exciting weekend brawls with friends. I’m excited to see how full crossplay shakes up the online modes. I was only able to get into a few, mostly with the same individuals. That said, those fights had few slowdowns or laggy moments and I always felt like I was in control. As far as content is concerned, the offerings are average at the moment so I would like to see more modes and improvements. Stages definitely need some work and we could always use more characters. I think looking back at early Soul Calibur titles and modern Mortal Kombat titles for mode inspiration would be beneficial for these developers.
Flaws aside, this is the best Power Rangers game so far and I can only hope that nWay continues to create and iterate within this franchise. Battle for the Grid is a stellar game for Power Rangers fans and it was clearly made by people with equal love for these heroes.
Find more information on the official website. A digital PS4 copy of the game, as well as two seasons of DLC, were provided for the purpose of review. We are also doing a giveaway that will wrap up on December 31st! Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is available now on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and Steam.
