Three and Out – ‘Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid’

Sometimes you aren’t looking for AAA titles with beefy budget visuals and hefty cinematics. Sometimes you don’t feel a need to drop the usual sixty dollars on a game you’re not entirely sure about. And sometimes it all comes together in a tight package with wrapping paper, showcasing a nostalgia that hasn’t quite yet been sated since a questionable 2017 adaptation that is probably best left as a murky memory. nWay’s Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid was the perfect twenty dollar treat that I knew I needed once I saw it. This is a fighting game that knows it comes from a small budget, but struts its stuff with a pride strong enough to let the gameplay thrive and keep me constantly engaged.

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a 3v3 tag team versus fighting game with a small cast, consisting of nine Power Ranger characters (soon to be twelve after an upcoming free DLC update as well as an upcoming season of additional characters) from throughout the series. The gameplay in Battle for the Grid that takes a lot of notes from other games in the genre, most notably the Marvel Vs. Capcom series containing mechanics like tagging, snapbacks, assist, and supers. In addition, there is the unique mechanic of calling either two different megazords (giant robot mechas) or Giant Goldar that are separate assists which become active once you lose a character. In terms of visuals, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is quite honest about being a budget fighting game and “looks” like it is worth twenty bucks. Animations are pretty rough most of the time and as a fighting game it needs give proper visual feedback so that I may effectively watch my opponent’s options as well as my own, otherwise I’d be lost trying to react to my opponent’s Ranger Slayer, hopping around chucking arrows until I die. Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid takes its visual shortcomings into account and makes the gameplay have a weighted feel, letting matches become clear without causing attacks to appear slow as I combo my opponent to death. I found that I could easily kill each character in three decent strings or even in two pretty good combos in the corner, which I believe is correct in tag based fighting games. This is an environment where each player has three characters. Each character can recover health just by tagging out, so even with this volatile damage output, matches can still take a good two minutes before ending – which is par for the course in these types of games. Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is very self aware game and orchestrates itself in a way that not only produces functionality, but also enjoyment.

As a fighting game, Battle for the Grid offers the right kind of experience that allowed me to do damn near whatever I wanted in terms of gameplay. In its development there were big Fighting Game Community names with Marvel Vs. Capcom history (Justin Wong, IFC Yipes, and Clockwork) that had their hands on and gave input to the mechanics and gameplay, helping the devs create something truly fun and engaging like the many other games of this genre that came before it. Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid expresses its influences with pride as my megazord shoots finger cannons from the sky after being summoned by a flute dagger. A great amount of my time playing was spent in training mode, discovering what I could get away with and doing flashy combos and touch of deaths – which is all I really ask for in tag team fighters. Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is about beating face with a team of fan favorite Power Rangers characters with few limits and having a great time.

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