Might Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle is a classic side-scrolling fighting game released by Bandai Namco that is perfect for getting your friends together to beat up some Putties.
The game is based on the 90’s television series as you first become the Rangers and then make your way through Angel Grove to stop Rita and her monsters. Bandai does a great job of scratching that nostalgia itch by using the original music from the series and sound bites from the original cast to give it that real Power Rangers feel.
Up to four players can go into battle in local multiplayer and choose between the original five Power Rangers (more if you purchase the DLC pack). The local multiplayer is great when you have friends over, but Mega Battle could really have done with some sort of online mode.
It’s a sad truth, but gamers are playing with friends online more than they are travelling to their houses. Having online multiplayer would eliminate the trouble of trying to get friends over to play. And as we saw in RWBY: Grimm Eclipse being able to create a room to complete the campaign with strangers online would really work with Mega Battle.
Playing Mega Battle immediately brought back memories of fighting Foot Soldiers in the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time game for the Super Nintendo, controlling your character as you go through each level fighting enemies alongside your friends.
One colleague described the game, after playing a few levels with me, as feeling and looking like a Newgrounds game and Castle Crashers is the perfect comparison in how it plays and looks. If you’re familiar with that game, you know what you’re getting out of Mega Battle.
You can play up to five different Rangers and they each have their own strengths. While most of them don’t feel all that different when you’re busy button mashing your way through enemies, some do stand out. The Yellow Ranger excels in speed, so her jumps are walking pace are noticeably quicker, while the Pink Ranger’s range attacks deal more damage. But again, you’ll likely be choosing your favorite Ranger than choosing a Ranger out of some sort of strategy.
The controls in Mega Battle are pretty simple. You have your light and heavy attacks, your block and your throws. You can combine the light and heavy attacks to perform combos and even launch enemies into the air to perform some great air combos.
However, players do need to be aware of the energy gauge (the blue bar) below their health. When not morphed, you’ll need to perform combos on enemies while in civilian mode (or find blue orbs hidden in trash cans and other breakable items) to fill up the gauge. Once filed you can become a Power Ranger but until you do, you won’t have your weapon or heavy (weapon) attack, just your light attacks.
It’s an odd decision, but does make the game a tad bit harder when starting out. You’ll be weaker and enemies will be tougher to take down until you are able to become a Power Ranger.
The difficulty overall in Mega Battle is pretty standard for this sort of game. It strikes the right balance for the most part, though I do have a problem with how much damage each enemy can take. You need to deal a lot of damage for common Putties to be destroyed, which makes getting through each long level (and believe me, they are very long especially going solo) very tedious and repetitive.
Players can level up each Ranger and improve their skills through a skill tree but it takes A LOT of experience to level up and if you’re playing with friends, you gain less experience. To its credit, every level gives a lot of Ranger Coins, which are used to increase stats and add new controls to every character, but you’ll have to do a lot of battling just to get enough experience.
Overall, Mighty Mophin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle is a neat side-scrolling beat ‘em up game that is best experienced with friends. Unfortunately, the lack of online multiplayer to fill out your party of four really detracts from experiencing the campaign the way it should. Without the help of friends, going solo takes a lot of time and can be repetitive.
Although the game does try and change up the gameplay by adding Megazord battles, which has your friends press the same button sequence within a set time, all of those battles feel pretty much the same, only adding varying difficulties. For $14.99, you will get your money's worth from Mega Battle , just be sure to have friends on-hand.
