I just hope all of those ideas can stay fresh throughout a promised 50+ hours of content, which sounds like a tall order for a game potentially lacking a strong story hook. Each system pays tribute to wrestling’s nuances in fun ways that I’m eager to dig into later in the adventure. Players can even customize Muchacho Man’s entrance or cut promos before big fights, adding some extra details that make it feel like a wrestling game rather than a standard turn-based RPG. I’ve barely gotten to experiment with managers, who grant passive boosts during battles and have their own special buff moves, and there’s a heel/face morality system that promises impactful choices down the line. Fortunately, there’s a way to enable auto-pins in the main menu for anyone who finds that mechanic a little too gimmicky for its own good. A character then needs to select a pin from their special move menu and complete three well-timed button presses within 10 seconds to get a “three count.” It’s another clever system, though one that can get old fast - especially when you botch a pin and your opponent springs back to life with a bit of health. When an enemy’s health is low enough, they lay down on the mat. As such, many enemies in WrestleQuest need to be defeated via pinfall. Of course, most wrestling matches don’t end by beating an opponent to death. They need to think about the “flow” of a match to really maximize the rewards earned for completing one. That idea creates a thoughtful battle system that doesn’t just encourage players to spam their most powerful moves over and over. On the flip side, low hype can stack debuffs on the party, even cutting how much experience is earned at the end. The higher the meter goes, the more passive bonuses the party gets during a match, like increased attack power or AP regeneration. Taunting, for instance, will add more hype as the wrestler showboats to the crowd. Every action either raises or decreases a hype meter at the bottom of the screen. To replicate that, WrestleQuest has a unique hype system that players have to manage too. There’s an art to keeping a crowd entertained that goes beyond moves. Skybound GamesĪs any wrestling fan will tell you, a great match isn’t just about big moves. It’s a smart system that twists a standard RPG party system into something that makes sense in a wrestling game. One character can spend a turn to set up a tag maneuver, allowing another in the party to unleash a powerful tandem attack. Though what’s particularly neat is its approach to combo attacks, finding a fun way to integrate tag team and trio moves. Each recruitable character comes with its own suite of moves, from stunners to multi-target hockey slapshots (in the case of my deer pal Stag Logan). I can even counter certain enemy attacks by landing a correct button press at times, a clever way to emulate reversals. It’s a little more active than just choosing a move from a menu, which adds more stakes and tension to even the simplest strikes. The basic attack system isn’t too far off from the Mario and Luigi RPG series, where players need to nail button presses to get more damage from strikes. Each turn, party members can choose between four different actions: Strike, Taunt, Item, and a list of character-specific special moves that use up AP. Naturally, all battles take place in a ring and are presented like a wrestling match. What I’m more engaged by so far, though, is a creative RPG setup that feels wholly original. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason, but I suppose that’s exactly what my own stories were like as a kid. One minute I’m in a junkyard avoiding wrecking balls and fire-spewing cars, the next I’m traversing icy mountains. So far, I’ve been shuffled between biomes with very little narrative setup or cohesion. It’s clearly going for childlike silliness, down to its toy-themed presentation. That journey starts with an extra narrative twist too, as players jump between two different lead characters seemingly on a collision course.īased on its earliest few hours, storytelling isn’t so much where WrestleQuest shines. To achieve that, he sets out on an unpredictable, often absurd adventure full of big muscles and even bigger personalities. Cream of the cropĭeveloped by Mega Cat Studios, WrestleQuest follows an amateur wrestler named Muchacho Man who is looking to win his world’s most prestigious championship. For kids who grew up worshiping “Macho Man” Randy Savage, it’s the kind of goofy blast from the past that’s sure to dig up some old memories. While its silly story has yet to hook me, its battle system finds some creative ways to translate the fast and fluid nature of wrestling into a suitable turn-based RPG formula. Ahead of its release, I went hands-on with WrestleQuest, playing through its opening for hours.
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