Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a fighting game developed by San Francisco-based game developer nWay, featuring characters from the Power Rangers franchise. It was released digitally for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch on March 26, 2019, for PlayStation 4 on April 2, 2019, for Microsoft Windows on September 24, 2019, and for Stadia on June 1, 2020. Limited Run Games released a standard physical version on the Switch and PlayStation 4 alongside a more expensive Mega Edition in November 2019.
Characters:
The game features twelve playable characters, with nine additional characters available as downloadable content via three season passes.
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| Dragon Armor Trini (MMPR Yellow Ranger), Udonna (Power Rangers Mystic Force White Mystic Ranger), Cenozoic Blue Ranger (Power Rangers 2017 movie Blue Ranger) |
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| Jen Scotts (Power Rangers Time Force Pink Ranger), Trey of Triforia (Power Rangers Zeo Gold Ranger I), Lord Zedd (MMPR) |
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| Anubis "Doggie" Cruger (Power Rangers S.P.D. Shadow Ranger), Eric Myers (Power Rangers Time Force Quantum Red Ranger), Dai Shi (Power Rangers Jungle Fury) |
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| Robert "RJ" James (Power Rangers Jungle Fury Wolf Ranger), Lauren Shiba (Power Rangers Super Samurai Red Samurai Ranger II), ?? (My guess is Scorpina from the silhouette) |
Jason Lee Scott - MMPR Red Ranger I/MMPR Red Ranger Dragon Shield
Trini Kwan - MMPR Yellow Ranger I Dragon Armor*
Kimberly Ann Hart - Ranger Slayer/MMPR Pink Ranger I
Tommy Oliver - MMPR Green Ranger I/MMPR Green Ranger I V2/MMPR White Ranger
Goldar
Lord Zedd** (Season Pass 1)
Trey of Triforia - Zeo Gold Ranger I** (Season Pass 1)
Mike Corbett - Magna Defender II
Jen Scotts - Time Force Pink Ranger** (Season Pass 1)
Eric Myers - Time Force Quantum Ranger** (Season Pass 2)
Anubis "Doggie" Cruger - S.P.D. Shadow Ranger** (Season Pass 2)
Kat Manx - S.P.D. Kat Ranger
Udonna - Mystic Force White Ranger*
Robert "RJ" James - Jungle Fury Wolf Ranger** (Season Pass 3)
"Jarrod"/Dai Shi - Black Lion Warrior** (Season Pass 2)
Lauren Shiba - Samurai Red Ranger II** (Season Pass 3)
Gia Moran - Super Megaforce Yellow Ranger
Mastodon Sentry
Lord Drakkon/Drakkon EVO II
Cenozoic Blue Ranger I*
* Added via free post-launch update
** Paid downloadable content character; number denotes which season pass the character is included in
The Plot:
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are training in the Command Center when it is breached by Lord Drakkon, an alternate future version of Tommy Oliver trained by Rita Repulsa who killed her and the other Rangers in his dimension. Despite the arrival of Time Force Ranger Jen Scotts from the future, Drakkon manages to kill the younger Tommy and escapes. With his Chaos Crystal now charged by Tommy's green chaos energy, Drakkon and his forces begin travelling across time and space, using his Dragon Cannons to remove Rangers' powers and steal their morphers. Zordon sends a warning through the Morphin Grid and, with Jen's help, begins sending Rangers through time to protect other Rangers being pursued by Drakkon.
During an encounter with the Ranger Slayer, a future version of herself from Drakkon's universe, Kimberly Hart manages to free her from Drakkon's control, though Ranger Slayer continues to feign loyalty to avert suspicion. The Rangers regroup at Corinth, where Dr. K is working on a way to disrupt the Dragon Cannons, but they come under attack by Drakkon's forces, including several Power Rangers placed under his control. Drakkon, who has powered himself up using the stolen morphers, arrives and overwhelms the Rangers, forcing them to retreat to the Command Center. Ranger Slayer arrives and reveals Drakkon's plan is to gain full control of the Morphin Grid and rewrite reality, using the morphers to increase his resonance with it. She suggests destroying his tower in their home dimension, preventing him from crossing dimensions and sharing his morphers' powers with his armies. Knowing they will be unable to do so alone, Zordon asks Rita to help stop Drakkon.
Led by Jason Lee Scott, a united group of Power Rangers storms Drakkon's tower. They are attacked by Drakkon and the Rangers under his control, but Mike Corbett is freed by the spirit of the Magna Defender and defects back to Zordon's forces. Rita infiltrates the tower and uses a Powerdraining Candle to weaken Drakkon, forcing him to retreat to stop her. Trini Kwan uses her Dragon Armor to grow and topple the tower's antennae, causing Drakkon's forces to lose their powers and breaking his control of the other Rangers. Rita attempts to kill Drakkon, but his minion Finster-5 disarms her and the other Rangers. Finster-5 attempts to stop Drakkon from using additional morphers to restore his powers, believing the process will be fatal, but Drakkon kills him and proceeds. As he powers himself up, he is challenged by Tommy, restored to life through the Chaos Crystal's powers. Tommy defeats Drakkon, whose body has become unstable due to the morphers' power, and he escapes as Drakkon explodes, destroying himself and the tower. Zordon thanks all the Rangers for their help, and Ranger Slayer reassures Tommy that he will never become like Drakkon thanks to his bonds with his team.
Gameplay:
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a fighting game in which players compete in battle using characters with different fighting styles and special attacks. Players select teams of three characters to engage in one-on-one combat, and can choose to switch between them at any point during the match. When all three opposing teammates have been eliminated a Victory is declared. Ultra attacks can also be performed, calling on Megazords to assist with the battle.
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| One of the early ads for the game listing features available at launch. |
Ranked Online, Arcade, Versus, Casual Online, Training and Tutorial modes were available at the game's launch. A story mode, loosely based on the "Shattered Grid" storyline and written by Boom! Studios Power Rangers comic book writer Kyle Higgins, was added to the game in April 2019 along with three additional characters, voice acting and two new stages. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers actors Jason David Frank, Austin St. John, David J. Fielding and Kerrigan Mahan reprise their respective roles as Tommy Oliver/Lord Drakkon, Jason Lee Scott, Zordon and Goldar. An update in July 2019 added three characters via the first Season Pass, and additional features such as cross-platform play between the Switch Xbox One, and Windows versions; cross-platform support for PlayStation 4 was added via a later update in February 2020, making it the first fighting game of the eighth generation of video game consoles to support fully platform-agnostic multiplayer. A second season pass was announced alongside the game's Windows release. A third season of content was announced on May 25, 2020.
The Verdict:
After divulging about seven years of my gaming life into playing Street Fighter IV at the competitive level, I honestly burnt myself out on the fighting game genre by the time Ultra Street Fighter IV and then Street Fighter V dropped shortly thereafter. That being said, I still dabble here and there on an occasional new fighter that peaks my interest, such as Tekken 7, Soul Calibur VI, Injustice 2, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, Gundam Versus, or even the recent Guilty Gear Xrd -STRIVE- beta to boot. My personal issue is that a lot of these games don't hold my interest long before I go back to playing something else, especially with the sheer complexity and/or time sink required to truly master these games.
With Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, I didn't run into that problem in the least. This is a VERY simple fighter to pick up and play for all skill levels, whether you are a seasoned pro at the genre or casual newcomer. You won't find any complex button inputs to perform special moves and attacks. Instead, everything is simplified, much like in the Super Smash Bros. series. That simplicity made me want to try out every character instead of shying away from others and keeping to the ones that I felt "safe" with in terms of the least amount of complex inputs to memorize and master.
I know the "hardcore" mindset of the FGC (fighting game community) tends to hear "simplicity" with dread as it tends to create an "EZ Mode" that rewards players lacking skill, but I have been always of the mindset of why do we have this artificial barrier of entry for this "elitist" club of players who bitch and moan about wanting more players to join it? Remove that artificial barrier and you would have more players willing and wanting to stick it out with your game for the long haul. The main reason that the first person shooter genre isn't going anywhere anytime soon is that they don't require any complex button inputs nor forces players to invest into a $100+ specialized controller/fightstick just to be somewhat competitive with the online environment. There isn't any artificial barriers of entry, which allows players to invest in the strategic aspect of gameplay instead of worrying about landing complex inputs with flawless precision. Right off the bat, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid sold me onto this game with the lack of any of that. I was excited to suggest this game to not only all of the Power Rangers fans - old and new - that I personally knew, but to gamers in general that I thought would enjoy this game.
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| Summon your Megazord! |
The gameplay combines the good of what we know and love from the Marvel vs. Capcom series with its tag team gameplay, but keeps things fresh enough in terms of the leniency and accessibly of the combo system to deal massive amounts of damage with relative ease. It's to be expected that a game like this would have "touch of death" combos, but there wasn't a single moment that I didn't feel like I couldn't come back in a match - at least in some capacity as long as I had the comeback mechanic in term of the Megazords that are available when you construct your team(s). Your Megazord meter can be used to summon your team's Megazord to rain down devastating attacks on your opponents, lock them down for potential mix-ups for your own team's combos, or even be used to counter another team's Megazord with the right timing at the cost of your own meter. Like any other "good" Versus title, there's also Snapbacks to force in a specific teammate into battle and Push Blocking to deal with rushdown-heavy combatants.
If I had any gripe about Push Blocking, it's the same issue that I had with it in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as people will take FULL advantage of you mashing for it during blockstrings and whiff/delay the combos on purpose, thus setting you up in some highly disadvantageous situations. In those situations, it's not a design flaw with the game, but just a hurdle each player has to adapt to within those unique situations.
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| Send down the Putty Patrol! |
Each character has an EX move (a more powerful version of one of their trademark attacks that costs 1 bar of super meter) and a Super Move unique to that character that deals massive damage at the cost of 2 bars of super meter.
The biggest disservice to this game and the 25+ year history of the Power Rangers franchise as a whole is the size of this roster. By default, there are only 4 seasons (2 seasons of Mighty Morphin while 1 season of Lost Galaxy, Super Megaforce, and S.P.D respectfully) represented in this game if you didn't purchase any of the downloadable content nor download the characters that were added for free following launch. I had the pleasure of picking this up while it was on sale, along with Season Passes 1 & 2 as part of one of the many PlayStation Network sales going on this summer. Otherwise, there's no way in hell I would have shelled out the cash for this game at launch if I knew how small this in-game roster was. Fortunately, the physical disk version of the game is set to release in October 2020 with every fighter to date available, along with the upcoming release of Lauren Shiba (Power Rangers Samurai Red Ranger II) and the remainder of Season Pass 3's DLC content.
That being said, it's still pretty jarring to know that Power Rangers has been around this long and there's little representation across the board for a lot of the seasons in that franchise's history, especially with some of the modern outings, such as Ninja Steel and Beast Morphers - which is currently airing on Nickelodeon.
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| This is only a FRACTION of the characters in Power Rangers: Legacy Wars. Explain to me why we couldn't get a sizable roster like this game did? |
The small roster feels like a complete slap to the face, especially when you compare it to the in-game roster of Power Rangers: Legacy Wars. To make it more jarring, Legacy Wars was developed by nWay who worked on this game as well with the major difference being that game was made for mobile platforms and this was made with gaming consoles and PC in mind, despite the similar visuals. I would LOVE to see the wealth of those characters come into this game sooner more than later.
This is a VERY minor gripe, but I was bummed out that I couldn't swap out certain Rangers for their Super Sentai equivalents - namely Gia from Super Megaforce for Luka Millfy (Gokai Yellow) from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger - instead of their traditional Power Rangers iterations. I guess I would have to hunt down some of the various import Super Sentai video games if I want to see any sort of representation from those teams in any capacity.
Story Mode
I can't say that I was too impressed with this story, especially having read the BOOM! Comics of the same name. They took some "creative" differences in terms of adapting this story for this video game. I'm guessing it's for the same reasons that Injustice: Gods Among Us have done with their video games as it's to not to heavily rely on the source material for they have a bit of freedom and wiggle room in future updates and expansions to the lore and sequels to the video game.
The Story Mode in this game isn't much to write home about, but I cleared all three Acts within the span of two and a half hours casually in one sitting. I have linked my complete playthrough stream archive of that gameplay below.
Once again, this story is hindered by the massive disservice that this game's in-game roster provides. You're left fighting the same grunts and henchmen for Lord Drakkon over and over again, along with some "brainwashed" Rangers littered in-between. I couldn't tell you how many times I grew sick of fighting Mastodon Sentries and Goldar on a repeated basis. If I didn't genuinely like the gameplay of this game, along with these characters in this continuity, then I honestly wouldn't have bothered playing this to its conclusion just from the sheer redundancy of it all.
I can't give them a pass on not representing a lot of the characters from the very same Mighty Morphin continuity that this story takes place in. Billy and Zack are oddly absence for majority of this story, despite the Mastodon Sentries being in the game along with the Cenozoic Blue Ranger. They could have re-skinned those characters for something, narrative-wise. I thought it was in bad taste that they got a poor imitation for Barbara Goodson's Rita Repulsa too, but I was saddened that Robert Axelrod died before Lord Zedd's inclusion into the game. Sadly, Zedd has absolutely no presence at all in this narrative, but at least they found a way to give Rita a prominent role.
On the positive side, the story does allow you to play roughly every fighter available in the game by default without any of the Season Passes, so that was a plus in that regard. A lot of the DLC characters are either shown in the background during cutscenes, so they have a place in the narrative to some extent.
Arcade & Training Modes
The Training Mode/Tutorials give players a sense of how to play the game from beginner techniques, such as movement and basic attacks, before graduating to advanced techniques, such as push blocking and breaking throws. The tutorial ends with a full blown match against the AI, putting everything that you have learned to work. The tutorial isn't as robust as the one for Killer Instinct or Skullgirls, but it's better than nothing at all which you usually tend to get from Vs. titles like this.
Arcade Mode scraps a lot of the redundancy from the Story Mode and recycles the same pre-fight lines for every battle in 7 battles back to back until you face Goldar (along with his Mastodon Sentries), Ranger Slayer (along with her Mastodon Sentries), and finally Lord Drakkon himself as the final boss. Each of those "boss" encounters have text dialogue exchanged between the key characters, but don't have any sort of any unique endings after defeating Lord Drakkon. In that aspect, it's a bit of a letdown, especially for the characters who don't get much action over the course of the Story Mode. The lack of voices to those dialogues came off as really lazy and half-assed to me in that regard, especially when the Story Mode was a post-launch addition. They could have done something more with the few Power Rangers alumni that provided their voices for this game.
The lackluster effort put into this mode reminds me a lot of how not just Street Fighter V (which got bombarded with criticism for it - rightfully so if I may add...) but a lot of modern fighters tend to neglect this aspect of offline/single player play. It's been said time and time again that these games and genre as a whole cannot thrive off of the "hardcore" competitive player base forever. Mortal Kombat 9 - along with almost every new fighting game that NetherRealm Studios puts their hands on - has a wealth of single player and multiplayer content to please casual and hardcore players. This idea that the developers think that they can hand players an incomplete game and allow players to "fund" it's progression to its "true" completion with season passes is getting to the point where it's beyond ridiculous. We are three seasons into this game and I think it's comical that this game is still lacking in a lot of pivotal content.
Online Matches
Despite all of these shortcomings, I want to praise this title's online component. I played through the online Ranked Matches until I hit Platinum League to get a proper assessment of the online environment. Long story short? This game has an EXCELLENT online netcode. That's amazing, especially when this game has cross-platform play across PC and all current generation consoles. Outside of a few random disconnections due to server errors and/or sore losers, I never ran into a match that was so littered with lag that I felt the matches were unplayable. I am more surprised that there's a healthy online component for this game period, especially when the genre has so many options available at gamers' disposal. More developers in the genre need to take note with the marvels that have been done with Power Rangers' netcode. It doesn't matter how great your game is offline when players can't enjoy it online, especially now more than ever when players are forced to play at home instead of in-person due to the current global pandemic.
I firmly believe that more fighting games should adopt rollback netcode or GGPO for their fighting games instead of the tired and true delay based netcode that the industry seems to constantly rely on. I have played a lot of fighting games over the last two console generations and this is easily the best online experience I have had out of any of those games to date.
Play It or Don't Bother?
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| Assemble your crew. |
If you're a fan of Power Rangers, definitely give this a look, but you might be disappointed that your favorite season in the franchise isn't represented. As it stands currently, I wouldn't purchase this game for what it retails for at $20+ digitally as you're getting a pretty basic bare-bones fighting game for the digital pricing, but the physical disk release in October is shaping up to be the game that SHOULD have been released when this game initially launched.. The digital pricing is a complete rip-off when the individual Season Passes go for $15 each ($45 total for all three) when they aren't on sale. You're better off waiting for the physical release of the game that is set to release on October 8, 2020 that gives you EVERYTHING right out of the box - Season Passes 1-3 along with all of the extra costume skins and DLC add-on characters - for the flat price of $30.
This game doesn't have "auto-combos" that many casual players enjoyed in Dragon Ball FighterZ, but does have the traditional "magic series" (chaining button presses from Low, Medium, and Heavy attacks in succession for simplified combos) combos found in Capcom's Vs. series. On the positive side, if you're looking for a fighting game that anyone of all skill levels could jump into in the same vein of Super Smash Bros. series' style of inputs, you can't go wrong with this game. There's no Dragon Punch/Shoryuken, Tiger Knee commands, nor strict frame perfect precise inputs in this game. As it stands currently, the only "complex" inputs are jump-cancellable attacks and that's not "required" for the long-term enjoyment of this game.
That being said, this game isn't going to be for everyone. If you want to try the bare bones version first, I humbly suggest waiting for one of the digital sales on PSN, Xbox Live, Steam, or Nintendo's eShop before full investing into the title. If you do decide to take a chance on this fighter, you'll find one of the most rewarding combo systems that I have had the pleasure of experimenting with in recent memory, only bested by Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite's combo system (despite all of the negativity surrounding that game since launch), with an excellent online netcode that allows players to find other players of all skill levels to test your skills against.
It's a tough call, but I genuinely had a blast with this game and was pleasantly surprised at the gameplay - both online and offline, despite the various shortcomings that I have mentioned. Sadly, this is a game that needs more support to become what it SHOULD be, especially for a game that is allegedly honoring the 25+ year history of the Power Rangers franchise. Much like Power Rangers Super Megaforce, this is a labor of love that has good intentions, but needs some polish before being truly great.
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