Power Rangers: Battle For the Grid is a 2D Fighter that combines a wide variety of characters from the show’s 25-year history. It sees Lord Drakkon, also known as the Green Ranger, slip through and destroy multiple dimensions in his ultimate goal of being one with the grid. This is a plot really made for fans and is not easily accessible to those that are just looking for a fighting game without knowing anything about the Power Rangers. That includes me, unfortunately. I got the gist of the story but did not learn much of anything about the characters or the lore. A small in-game glossary would have gone a long way.
Interestingly enough, we play as both the evil and good sides. This allows us to play as every character, as well as seeing things from their perspective. Starting off we are treated to a sparring match to let us come to grips with the gameplay. Before long we see the forces of Drakkon pretty much Order 66’ing every other Ranger and doing a fantastic job at it. His forces trash all opposition throughout most of the game. It is refreshing to see a competent villain and it does a great job of conveying the gravity of the situation. This plot won’t win any writing awards, yet it is engaging. The frankly sub-par voice acting also gives it a cheeky b-movie feel.
This is a four-button fighter. We have access to light, medium, and heavy attacks. The last button is used as a special attack whose effect will vary wildly between characters. It can range from throwing land mines to charging with your sword. There are no quarter-circle special moves or any other form of complex inputs. While it is easy to play, it is far from being a simple button masher with no strategy involved. The real depth comes from learning how to stick together combos using all of your character’s move-set, making learning how they play essential. All of the twelve fighters on this roster are quite unique and handle far differently.
On the bottom of the screen you will find your Super meter. It is filled up a bit each time you land an attack or receive damage. There are two uses for it. One is to activate a powerful miniature combo that can be linked with an ongoing regular combo for big damage. The other use comes in the form of your ultimate move, which will chew through a good chunk of your foe’s health bar if you manage to land it. You’ll need two full meters for the ultimate move, unlike the single bar you need for the combo. Both are easy to activate as they have bound macros allowing you to use them by simply pressing a gamepad trigger, rather than requiring holding specific buttons.
Most of the action will be taking place on the ground. There is no aerial dashing, so jumping can leave you a sitting duck if done at the wrong moment, not to say it doesn’t have its uses. It is quite a fast-paced title full of flashy effects and fluid gameplay. Battle for the Grid is not a lazy, licensed game cash grab, as we are sadly all too accustomed to these days. This easily stands on its own as a fun and well-made Fighter, whether you are a fan of the source material or not. It is also a 3 vs 3 fighter. The campaign will not do a good job at training you for that kind of combat since most of the fights found within it differ wildly. It can be 1v3, 1v1 but with multiple health-bars, or many other combinations. Rarely is it 3v3 though.
Granted that you are not knocked down on the floor, you can call a partner in to assist you with a quick attack, or switch to them while your current fighter recovers. The health bar of combatants currently resting recharges fast, encouraging a very aggressive playstyle from both sides to keep them from fully recovering. Each attack landed on a character will chip away at the total amount of health they can recover, so a returning combatant that has previously been on the beating end won’t be good as new upon return. The thing you don’t want to happen is for them to lose all their life and be knocked out. That will cause you to have to continue on with only the other two fighters for the rest of the match.
Calling in a partner for an assist can cause big damage when combined with your own attacks. It is a double-edged sword though. Your partner will not be able to block, meaning the both of you can very easily find yourselves on the receiving end of a combo and damaging both their health-bars. If your teammate was already wounded, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he got knocked out by that. The 3v3 is a really strategic element that goes to show how simple controls does not equate to a simple game. Easy to learn, hard to master is quite a suitable term for this title. That brings us to the fourth “fighter”. We can pick one of four giants to offer a one time assist after an actual fighter is knocked out. Hold both bumper buttons on your controller to activate it and have it wreak havoc on the battlefield.
Giants will throw massive sweeping attacks for a brief time and they punch like a truck. It is cool for the spectacle, yet I wish there was an option to turn them off for Ranked Online matches. They are far too disruptive and party-game like compared to the rest of the skill-based combat. You can block a giant’s attack, but just because they lost a character doesn’t mean they were currently losing. Both side’s teams will usually be battered if on an equal skill level. If the one that just lost a character activates it and then lays heavy pressure to overwhelm you, that can feel cheap. Then you do the same to him when you lose a character and it just throws the balance off unnecessarily. In other modes, the addition of giants does add a fun bit of unpredictability to a battle.
This brings us with a rather large issue found in this title. There are no means of gameplay customization, which I found shocking after the campaign. You can’t fight 1v1 nor can you put several health-bars on a character. Heck, you can’t even change the difficulty. It is pure 3v3 with the addition of giants whether you are playing Versus, Arcade, or Online. Easily the worst is the lack of a difficulty setting. On Versus, the AI enemy is a joke, while with Arcade they only start to offer a bit of a challenge toward the end of the eight overall matches. Arcade doesn’t even have unique endings or anything of the sort for the twelve characters, they only have a tiny bit of text before a few matches. This causes Battle for the Grid to lack any staying power for anyone not into playing online and has just finished the campaign. Odder still, in Training mode you actually can change the AI’s difficulty level.
To continue on with the negative, there are two characters that are playable in the campaign yet are locked behind a paywall for any other mode. That did not sit well with me, despite this being a relatively cheap game at 20 US Dollars. Call me old fashioned, but I would have far preferred for them to be unlockable fighters at the very least. There are other DLC fighters which are perfectly fine since they weren’t actually playable characters. If I had to cast another complaint, I’d say that some occasions in the campaign are far too drawn out. You’d fight a villain, reinforcements will come and you’ll play as them, then back to the heroes. There is a fine line between feeling epic and feeling drawn it. It is a minor complaint though. In no way did it keep me from still enjoying it overall, even with my lack of Power Ranger knowledge.
A really cool touch is found when queuing up for online matches. On the loading screens as you wait for an opponent, it will teach you all manners of interesting facts about the show and its history. As an example, let me recite one of them. “The Lightspeed Titanium ranger is the first fully original Ranger created by the American production team”. What does that mean? Beats me, yet I find all these little facts quite charming and makes it obvious that the developers have a clear passion for what they are working on. Battle for the Grid also has cross-play, allowing you to play against users from all platforms. That single-handedly saved the Google Stadia version, which is the one I have. As much as I enjoyed the story, the intense online gameplay and great netcode is what repeatedly keeps me coming back.
Power Rangers: The Battle for the Grid is clearly a game on a small budget. From its graphics to the comic book looking cut-scenes, it is far from an AAA release. What it does have is exceedingly fun gameplay, good balance, and tight controls between all of the highly varied characters. It is a shame that none of the modes offer any of the gameplay customization found in the Campaign nor a difficulty setting. That does heavily impact the single-player portion, and some may find the campaign a bit too difficult if they are simply here for their love of Power Rangers, not of the genre. Don’t let that dissuade you much. At the price of 20 bucks, this in my opinion has more than enough content and entertainment for both fans of the Power Rangers and fighting games. Battle for the Grid should not be overlooked if you are either of those.
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