Fighting Games Friday: The Fantasy Force Grid

If you’ve been keeping up with the posts on this blog, first of all: Thanks a lot. The contributors here appreciate it. Second, you might have noticed the lack of Fighting Games Friday entries for a short while — since the beginning of September, in fact. There simply hasn’t been as much news to cover in the last few weeks, for whatever reason. There’s a fantastic chance that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed back a bunch of news and hindered the developments of several titles due to be revealed by now, along with delays that would have occurred due to other reasons, like Guilty Gear Strive’s.

There’s been enough news in the last couple of weeks for a new post, which is why you’re seeing this here today.

Developer nWay has been steadily providing updates and content for Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid following its March 2019 release, to the point that it qualifies as a full-fledged game now. The cast was initially threadbare for a three-on-three title, it lacked voice acting outside temporary voices from the development team themselves, and the game was as broken as an early licensed Arc System Works fighting game early on. But all of this was rectified in future updates, and the team has shown no signs of slowing down despite this not being anywhere near the most popular fighting game at the moment. It shows their dedication.

The newest character to release is Lauren Shiba from Power Rangers: Super Samurai, an important inclusion thanks to being one of only two female Red Rangers in the series. Her array of juggle combos makes her look fun to play, though that’s no place to judge how viable she is. One of her super attacks looks reminiscent of Vergil’s Level 3 Hyper Combo from Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 — particularly hilarious considering the existence of Time Force’s Quantum Ranger in the game, who’s played by the same guy who voices Vergil in the Devil May Cry series: Daniel Southworth. It’s no surprise that a move of this type is in the game given its myriad of references to the Marvel vs. Capcom titles.

It was difficult for any Power Rangers fan to not figure out the next character based on their silhouette: Scorpina, one of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers’ earliest villains. She wasn’t in many episodes, but just take a look at her design to see why she left an impression on the audience, especially the unmasked variant. She’ll be the third and final character to release this season, though a trailer further showcasing her will come at a later time, before she arrives on December 8th.

There’s no way to tell whether there will be further content following this season, but the developers have ideas. Several members on the team are Street Fighter fans, and would be happy to include characters from the franchise. Street Fighter has already crossed over with Power Rangers through mobile game Legacy Wars and the special short film; hell, Ryu and Chun-Li even have Ranger variants. They’d be a perfect fit, and a way to further boost the game’s popularity if Capcom gives the team the rights to use them.

Meanwhile, Jump Force is still in the process of receiving a second set of characters as part of this new season. It started with Shoto Todoroki from My Hero Academia and continued with Meruem from Hunter x Hunter. The next character will be Hiei, another face from the trio of heroes from Yu Yu Hakusho. He’ll join series protagonist Yusuke Urameshi and villain Younger Toguro when he arrives sometime this fall for the PS4, XB1, and PC versions. He won’t arrive in the Switch version until 2021, thanks to the port releasing more than a year later.

Two characters will remain following Hiei’s release, coming from Bleach and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Don’t hesitate to make any guesses. I’m not, though.

Granblue Fantasy Versus Ver. 2.01 arrived via a patch this week. Belial was added as a playable character to kick off the second season, alongside balance updates that will seriously shuffle tier lists. Belial is as fabulous and memetic to see in action as the previews suggested, showing how the development team had a good time animating him. The rebalancing has been a frequent point of discussion, to no surprise — we’re talking about an Arc System Works patch here, and they took this to Blazblue levels. Certain characters have lost key bread and butter combos, like Katalina, meaning players will have to at least somewhat relearn how to play them. We’ll see how different those tier lists look in due time.

Cagliostro will be the next character to arrive in Versus, who will come in late October. Subsequent characters remaining in the second season should be revealed soon.

Sega is teasing… something about a Virtua Fighter plan with esports. A new game? Rerelease of an old one like Final Showdown four tournaments and to gauge interest in a new installment? Who knows, and it’s also not known how long we’ll have to wait for them to detail this. I’m guessing it’s a rerelease of VF5FS, but it will be one of the cruelest teases in video game history if (or when) it doesn’t turn out to be for a new title.

As I mentioned above, it hasn’t been a busy time for fighting game news. Perhaps that will change in the next several months, as developers further outline their plans for the next console generation. If not, I’ll have to come up with unique ideas for these posts.