Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid - Review

When Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid was announced and showed that there would be original Power Rangers content in the game, my inner 10-year-old screamed with enjoyment remembering all the Saturdays (not) wasted sat in front of the TV waiting for the show to come on and get my rangers fix… I had a Megazord, Tommys Flute, Dragon zord and all the figurines… Some may do a Homer Simpson and shout Neeeeeerrrrdddd… I will happily agree with that sentiment.

So, to hear that a new fighting game was coming to console had me excited. When the game code arrived in my inbox (Thanks nWay!) I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the game and see what it was all about.

I loaded the game up and soon my excitement kind of turned to disappointment, I won’t explain that just yet, but needless to say, I was zapped of most of the excitement I had for the game.

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a 3 on 3 fighting game where you get to pick 3 characters to be in your team from the roster, you then have to select a special, which comes in the form of Megazord etc.

The first thing that I noticed when I had played a fair few matches of the game was how well the game performed, even when playing online, the 60fps seems to hold up very well and I didn’t notice any stuttering or jolts while playing. Even when more than the standard 2 characters were on screens, such as going for a combo with another member or all 3 members of your team, there still wasn’t any drops that I could notice.

What was more impressive is that this held up while playing online as well. The technical aspects of the game feel spot-on, nWay have stuck to the tried and trusted method when it comes to a fighting game and it has paid off, the game feels smooth to play, the movements are brilliant and it holds up technically on the frame rate, my only issue was that the backgrounds to the fights while Power Ranger orientated were a little drab and plain and didn’t have any life to them.

Now, I mentioned above that when I started the game and had a look around my excitement kind of dropped a bit with it, I can hear you all now going “Why Joon, you’ve given such a wonderful account of it above, what could possibly bring it down?”… Well, let me tell you, it’s how the game has been sold and the content available. You have the basic game and the limited edition, which scores at a beautiful £20 extra.

I was sent the basic edition for the sake of this review and all this edition includes is 9 fighters from across the 25 years of Power Rangers, 5 arenas and 3 specials/ultras…. That’s your lot. There are 3 more characters there who are locked behind the season 1 pass. 25 years of Power Rangers history and this is what we get? From the original Power Rangers, we only got Jason and Tommy (Red and Green Rangers) as well as Goldar the Ape…. No Puttys, Rita, nothing from the last reboot we had not long ago…. Terrible. There does look to be more coming to the game, but whatever that is looks like it’s behind a paywall with season passes. As I can see there is more than the first season pass to come. So as you can see the base game is light on its feet, and there are only so many times that you can play with the same characters without getting bored.

There are variants that of the characters that you can unlock, and one of those was the original Pink Ranger, but again, this is behind a paywall by the looks of it.

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid while being technically strong and smooth to play seems to limp to the K.O in each round with the lack of content. I really do hope that down the line more free content such as fighters and arenas are added to the game to beef it out.

There is so much potential here that it would be a shame to waste it, especially when there is so much content that can be brought to the game from 25 years of the series. Would I recommend the game? Based on the technical aspects, yes, you can probably get enough playtime out of it from online matches, maybe, but be prepared to be disappointed with the content on offer.