WrestleQuest Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: N/A

WrestleQuest combines wrestling and classic turn-based role-playing game into a pixel art adventure. You take control of two parties. One party is led by Muchacho Man and the other is led by Brink Logan. Both main characters have the dream of becoming a professional wrestler. In fact, the world that the game takes place in is full of action figures that seek to become professional wrestlers as well! The game is full of legends of wrestling. Randy Savage, Sergeant Slaughter, Road Warriors and Jake “the Snake” Roberts are just some of the legends you’ll encounter. The game is developed by Mega Cat Studios that has previously worked on many other pixel art games.

If you’ve played any old-school Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) then you’ll feel right at home with WrestleQuest from the beginning. The game has its own world map along with stages and towns to progress through or visit. Instead of random battles, enemies are present in each stage and you can either sneak by them (by keeping distance) or engage them to trigger a battle sequence. The actual combat in the game is very unique. All battles take place inside of a wrestling ring – I suppose your characters carry one with them.


Screenshot

During battle, you’ll have a hype meter at the bottom of the screen. The more you raise the hype meter, the greater bonuses you will receive, such as greater attack power, bonus recovery AP, etc. If you allow the meter to fall too low, you’ll start to get negative status effect. The meter can be raised by attacking with variety and by taunting your opponent. It can also be raised by equipping each character with a certain class (technique, powerhouse, etc). The weird thing about the classes is that each of them have some pretty bad negatives (decreasing your attack power, making skills take more AP to do) but they also have some good positives for raising the hype meter. Really the hype meter is more important than the negative stats that you’ll receive, but it is hard to realize this from the start until you begin to see how the hype meter benefits your party.

All characters have standard attacks and skills. Skills all cost AP (Ability Points) to perform. Some characters have status effect skills and healing skills and some of the bigger characters have their own grab attack skills. There are also tag team skills. To set up a tag team attack, you have to get one character ready by using AP then another character has to use AP to join that character in an attack. You’ll be using AP like crazy in this game, but with each level you gain, the HP and AP is restored and also you can raise the hype gauge far enough to start restoring your AP per turn.

Any type of wrestler enemy must be pinned in order to finish them off. Once you take all the HP from a wrestler enemy, they will fall and you will gain a “pin” ability under your skills. At that time, you have a few turns to pin that enemy. Once pinned, you’ll have to play a little Quick Time Event (QTE) minigame to finish off the enemy with a pin. Failure to complete the minigame will result in the enemy getting a few HP back and then you’ll have to down them again. The whole idea of pinning is interesting from the start, but it quickly devolves into wasting turns once you start running into several wrestler enemies in the same enemy party.


Screenshot

Besides the pin QTEs, you’ll also have to engage in many timed QTEs while performing attacks. There are QTEs for normal attacks, skills and for countering an enemy that is attacking your party. The QTEs remind me of Super Mario RPG button pressing, except these are timed QTEs that quickly appear on the screen. Mario RPG QTEs were based on actual timing, while these are more random and can be failed way more easily. The bad part about the QTEs in this game is that the game will often punish a player for not completing the QTEs successfully. You’ll suffer damage for not completing a counter QTE and you’ll either lose attack power or whiff an attack altogether when you miss a QTE while attacking. There is nothing like spending around 30 AP to perform a tag team attack only to fail both of its QTEs and miss all damage opportunity on the targeted enemy. QTEs seem to get faster based on the type also. Some QTEs feel impossible to respond to at times.

The game is presented with pixel graphics. The entire game looks quite good. Backgrounds and character models look like something pulled out of the 16-bit era. Animations are very smooth as well. The game really has a lot going for it with its overall look. It looks fantastic. Character models and enemy designs are a mixed bag. Some characters look unique but some of them look generic. Muchacho Man gains many basic action figure party members throughout his journey and many of them have too basic of a look to them.

The game’s story is quite boring overall. Both parties in the game struggle for the leader to become a professional wrestler. Dialogue can be a total snoozefest much of the time. I can only read so many walls of text about different wrestling organizations before I zone out to the dialogue. The dialogue is often full of light-hearted expressions and small talk. The game really doesn’t need as much dialogue as it has. I honestly started skipping through the majority of the dialogue after about 3 hours into the game. It takes around 2-3 hours of boring dialogue, story, and tutorials to reach an area where you are free to explore and engage in fights. Before that, the game will offer you a few fights with tons and tons dialogue in between.


Screenshot

Even with the insanely boring story and dialogue, this game has some pretty good gameplay. If you can reach the point (around 2-3 hours) where the game actually starts to allow you to venture out on your own, the game gets much better, but before that time, it really drags heavily. If you can get adjusted to the quick QTEs and having to waste turns on pinning, the combat system is actually quite good. The hype system is one of the best parts of the combat system. If you can gain enough hype to build the meter all the way, each battle becomes much more fun. Boss battles are also a lot of fun and a good challenge as well. WrestleQuest is definitely a long RPG with a lot of content (side quests, main quests, hidden items). WrestleQuest is worth a try for fans of JRPGs if you’re in it for the long run. If you’re expecting quick amusement however, this game really takes a while to get good.

The Good:
+ Interesting battle system
+ Overall look of the game is quite good
+ Full of content

The Bad:
- The story is boring
- The dialogue is sleep-inducing
- The game focuses WAY too much on dialogue for its own good
- Too many QTEs during combat

Final Rating: 65% - If you can survive WrestleQuest’s extensive commentary, there is a good RPG with some nice combat beneath.

 

Note: A review code for this game was provided by the publisher.