Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle Review

If there was any way to say “milking a franchise,” then it would be Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle. This game looks great with its cartoon visuals and simple play style, but the lack of a story and terrible AI and hit detection have churned out something that screams “Cheap cash in!”. It’s even hard for the most dedicated Power Rangers fan to give this game a high grade as it fails to entertain even at its budget price point.

Game Name: Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle
Platform: Playstation 4 (Reviewed), Xbox One
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Developer: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Release Date: January 17, 2017
Price: $14.99 USD / $22.95 AUD (via PSN & Xbox Live)

If you were expecting a real new story in Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle, then you’re going to be disappointed. The Rangers are summoned to find some crystal that Zedd wants to use to take over the world (OF COURSE!) or some nonsence. Honestly, it’s just a badly designed framing device to take you through 6 levels of what are basically repeats of old TV show monsters while battling wave after wave of different shaded Putty Patrollers.

In terms of gameplay, Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle plays like your typical old school brawler like Streets of Rage & Final Fight. You start out as your chosen Ranger in unmorphed form, punching your way through Putty Patrollers till you build up enough energy to morph into your Power Ranger outfit and then you have an additional weapon based attack to work into your combos. While this sounds fine in theory, the terrible hit detection makes thing frustrating as hell. At times you’ll be what you think is right in front of an enemy, yet you’ll be hitting thin air most of the time. Button delay is also another issue here. Many times I’ll need to hit the block button to stop an attack from landing, but the delay means I end up blocking after the hit lands, costing me unneeded life… Which sucks even more when you realize that this game is one life only and when it’s gone, you go back to the beginning of the level. Things only get worse when you have to go into Megazord mode. In this mode, you get two sections: One where you’re in Assault Mode, shooting the monster in specific spots; and the other where you’re doing Quick Time Event button presses to do damage as the actual Megazord.

Usually, these things are not an issue when you add more players into the mix… Not online though because that would be fun. Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle is local play only. However, when you add more people to the mix, you have the issues of power and life orbs going to the character who doesn’t need them at all, leading to characters dying needlessly. It only gets worse in the Megazord segments as you need ALL PLAYERS awake to hit the QTE buttons as the game will assign a moment to each player at random, making failure a higher probability. The only thing adding more players helps is that you don’t get swamped easily like you do in single player mode.

If there is any positive to be found in Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle, it’s the graphics. The cartoon style works really well for Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle as it invokes an almost comic book style. Sure this was done so you don’t have to use many frames of animation in the game, cutting down costs, but the result is a game that is pretty smooth and flows really well when the action heats up. The over-exaggerated big head style allows for some interesting visuals, especially for the villains, however, the Megazord segments look like something out of South Park. This change is so drastic that it really breaks you out of the immersion of Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle, a real shame in that respect.

Given that this is a nostalgic MMPR game, you’d think that they’d be using the amazing soundtrack that Ron Wasserman did for the TV show… Nope! One generic rock track put on repeat for the whole god damn game. Even the sound effects are generic as hell. There is voice work, but it’s all by impersonators, leading to something that is somehow WORSE than the dubbed Super Sentai footage used in the TV show.

I’m going to be honest, Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle looks and feels like a cheap cash-in, and I really hate games like that. Resident Evil did it with Umbrella Corps and now Power Rangers did it with this. Maybe if anything I can recommend it for the young kids out there to play for a while with friends, but other then that I can’t say that Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle isn’t even worth dropping the low price point on. Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Mega Battle is something that I would expect for like $4.99 on a smartphone app store, not a console release. Let’s just hope that the movie produces something with a lot more time and effort.

*Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle was provided to us by both Bandai Namco America (Xbox One) and Bandai Namco Australia (PlayStation 4) for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.