I am far from the #1 Power Rangers fan. I have vague memories of watching it on TV when I was younger, but I frequently missed episodes. Plus, when it comes to fighting games, most of my experience is with Super Smash Brothers. However, I heard good things, and I’m not afraid to step out of my comfort zone. Fortunately, I was not disappointed.
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a team-based 2D fighting game with a cast built up of iconic characters throughout Power Rangers’ twenty-five years of history. Big ones I assume to be fan favourites and others I’ve personally never heard of all join the fight. The base game has twelve characters, but a further six can be added as purchasable DLC. The ones included in my review copy, didn’t strike me as especially over-powered. I will point out though that Lord Zedd’s ultra move is amazing in all the right ways.
The fighting gameplay is also, right in all the right ways. I am a filthy casual (and proud of it) and even I was able to string together a couple combos here or there. The controls remind me a lot of Super Smash Bros in that they’re basically the same for every fighter, making it easier to play with any character you choose.
Basic attacks are divided into light, medium and heavy strikes. You also have specials, that change when pressing forward or back. Holding backwards guards, but grabs break through defenses. That’s the essentials down, but added into the mix are supers and ultras which consume some of your power metre (filled by combos made by you and against you as well). There’s some variation in the specifics of each moveset but in general, certain sequences will result in a nice combo.
My go-to combo in single-player was light, medium, heavy heavy heavy, followed by a super if I had one. That carved through most of the AI opposition, which generally posed little challenge. This combo of course, was nowhere near as successful against actual players that actually block things mid-combo.
In terms of modes, Battle for the Grid has a lot to offer. A fully-fledged story mode is included with a few animated cut-scenes and some text-box conversations eases you into the controls and introduces the roster. Arcade mode lets you pick three fighters and puts you up against a gauntlet of seven fights, and is fun if you have no-one else to play with or just want practice outside of the standard training mode.
As for fighting against actual people, there are online and versus modes. Online match-making is available, but you might struggle to find a match, even with cross-play between PC, Switch and Xbox (get with the times Sony). When I played closer to launch I found some online opponents though. Those fights went one of two ways. I had a fair fight against another casual newbie, or I got decimated by someone who’d spent hours work-shopping combos in the training mode. They knocked me up in the air so hard I may as well be pregnant.
Thankfully, with the introduction of steam’s remote play together feature I managed to try versus mode with my friend Nelson A.K.A. DemonDragonMaster. Follow him on YouTube and Twitter and tell him he owes me for this shout-out. We spent a few hours playing against each other, calling bullshit after every combo (as you do), and marvelling at how amazing Lord Zedd truly is. It was a great time and proved to me that Battle for the Grid is great for more casual players too.
There’s a lot of depth to the combos you can pull of, as is evident by the hit streaks players landed against me online. But I derived the most enjoyment playing with Nelson and just spamming the same moves over and over, playing mind games, and gawping at how cool the super moves were. Each character’s super move is unique, and most of them are awesome.
The graphics sadly, aren’t as awesome. A lot of the textures look like they belong on the PS2, and some of the effects are downright laughable. The rangers’ models however, are pretty great, and move fluidly in combat. Ignore the background and it looks fine.
The music is suitably energetic and pumped up, especially the main menu theme which is incredibly “extra” in my opinion. The sound effects are punchy enough to convey punches, and in general, everything sounded about right. Nothing stood out as bad-sounding… Well, except for Goldar’s voice-acting. I don’t know if that’s how he originally sounded and this was a faithful representation, or if it was just plain awful.
Overall, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a great fighting game for casual players (like myself) and hardcore combo masters alike. It’s a great celebration of a series I missed most of, and has more than enough content to keep anyone playing into the wee hours of the night. Especially if you want to “git gud” online. The presentation does allude to it having a smaller development budget, but the core game-play and modes are enjoyable and accessible, making this an easy recommend for anyone looking for a new fighting game to try out.
A digital copy of Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid for Steam was provided by the developer.
Find Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1110100/Power_Rangers_Battle_for_the_Grid/
