Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind Review – Nostalgia vs Gameplay

Great for nostalgia! Not so great otherwise!

Admittedly, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are not my favourite team, I know I'll see myself out soon after I've said my peace. That honour actually is a joint one between Time Force and Dino Thunder. But the original teens with attitude always held a soft spot as the foundation the entire franchise is based on. So naturally when I happened upon Rita's Rewind, a retro beat 'em up which followed the original team in a new adventure, I had to at least give it a playthrough for nostalgia's sake. Although, after 3 full playthroughs and a platinum trophy later, there's a part of me that wished it just stayed as nostalgia.

Rita's Rewind story

Starting out around the time of the series' final season Cosmic Fury, Robo Rita heads back through time to the 90s as another scheme of conquering the world. It's then up to the original cast of rangers to stop her, as well as the original Rita Repulsa and her various cast of villains. To be blunt, you won't find much in terms of story here, it goes through some watered down plot points of the original series such as the Green Ranger, whilst telling its own story. But it's so far set into the background and hardly expanded upon that it's very quickly forgotten about! It feels like a feature length episode of the original series and has all the charm packed into it that made the franchise so special to so many. With an extra cocktail bar location where you can swap rangers, interact with some of the show's supporting cast, and play some newly original arcade games, one of which is pretty awesome!

Rita's Rewind gameplay and combat

Gameplay is a mixed bag, you control one of the five rangers, although outside of cosmetic appearances of weapons and special abilities, there is no differentiation between them. The sole difference in gameplay that I noticed fell onto the pink ranger's Zord, as since it flies, there is a bit more mobility than the other rangers. Aside from that, combat is exactly the same and whilst starting out fun, its lack of depth becomes apparent as each stage goes on. Since there is only one dedicated attack button, it leaves very little variety for combos by switching attack buttons. There is no such thing as a punch button and a sabre button, everything is tied to the single attack button. Hit detection is also a nightmare at times, even just being a few pixels above an enemy is enough for your hit not to register... but enemy attacks can still hit you! Alongside this is an incredible lack of iframes when hit, getting endlessly stunlocked can occur more often than expected, and sometimes by the most generic and weakest of enemies.

Level design, bike stages and Zord stages

Level design is pretty cool, the first half of the game is unique, pretty to look at and feature many staples of a great beat 'em up. Dressed up enemies such as clowns and perfectly fitting 90s punk rockers, alongside environmental hazards that can be used to help or hinder you, it's the perfect chaos that defines the genre and makes you want to press of to see what crazy concoction of madness will come up next, my favourite being set at a carnival with an awesome roller coaster shooting section. Whilst later levels don't have the same level of polish, the last few being very generic and short, they still serve the purpose and setting the scenes of escalation that's expected from an episode of Power Rangers. Alongside the standard stages are motorbike and zord stages. They're essentially on-rails segments which involves shooting at enemies and hazards on the screen and picking up power ups. The motorbikes are by far the best of them, they're short, sweet, fair and fun. I found myself actually going back to replay them the most, if nothing else because they give by far the fastest exp for your character's level. Less impressive are the zord stages... oh god, the zord stages... slow paced, hazards everywhere, scarce power ups and difficulty spikes so absurd I had to go back and check the game's difficulty setting several times. These are not very well thought out, they offer little in the way of finding some of the game's secret collectibles, and completing some of the various side objectives can feel like a chore. I couldn't help but roll my eyes and sigh whenever I realised the stage would involve them. I understand they're quintessential to the Power Rangers experience, but quite frankly I would have taken any other compromise as a way of making them playable, especially when the aforementioned bike segments were so well made in comparison. Even worse is the megazord fights. A first person view point where you have to punch the enemy until you can strike them with your power sword, it ultimately comes down to chance, as sometimes you will be able to defeat the boss right away or you will be stuck for literal minutes waiting for them to get close, the lack of a ranged attack is quite frankly infuriating. The best part about the megazord is you can't die, so there's no chance of having to reset and do it all again!

Rita's Rewind boss fights

As with the usual staples of a beat 'em up, Rita's Rewind also comes with a large selection of boss fights. My favourite of which took place in a cemetery based stage against Bones, he serves as a recurring mini boss. Each fight is almost completely unique and seeing his body and move set adapt to losing bones from a previous encounter felt rewarding, and like you're actively playing a role in beating back the buy guys. That being said, there are some stinkers that are very noticeable! The first being a dual fight against Chicken and Turkey, I'm actually convinced this one wasn't play tested properly. As it's almost impossible too land a full combo on one without the other jumping on you, they almost never leave themselves open at the same time, so you're stuck on the defensive doing chip damage and being left open to be stun locked. The other notable example is the legendary Tommy Oliver himself! The difficulty spike against him is overwhelming, to the point where I genuinely thought the fight was scripted and you were meant to lose, so when I died and saw the game over screen my jaw hit the floor.

Verdict: is Rita's Rewind worth it?

My thoughts are incredibly mixed on Rita's Rewind. It has all the charms of what makes a good retro beat 'em up, yet at the same time there is so many questionable decisions made with regards to gameplay gimmicks, issues with hit detection and outrageous difficulty spikes. Whilst I can recommend this to fans of the series and retro beat 'em ups, players should know going in that there are absolutely better modern games of the genre. It's a decent game with a nice Power Rangers coat of paint!

Score: 6/10

Written by Nick on Rewind

I'm Nick. A gamer dad who has been gaming since the PS1 days. I often find myself talking relentlessly about games to the frustration of my girlfriend. I review games and make opinion pieces as my way of getting my thoughts on paper best I can.

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