WrestleQuest oozes with charm, easter eggs, and sweet chin music thanks to how well it blends traditional RPG elements with a clear love of classic wrestling. It’s easy to look past some of its design quirks because of how well other RPG elements are implemented that respect the player’s time and encourage them to play an active role in worldbuilding. The Switch’s current implementation ain’t the best, but the game sure had me in a cobra clutch for hours.
Thanks to my godfather, I was fortunate to have grown up as a fan of pro wrestling and the opportunity to see some incredible live shows spanning Smackdown, RAW, and even Summerslam. Somewhere on my hard drive is a picture of high school Will (who’s tall to begin with) standing next to the likes of HHH and the Undertaker. If you don’t know – these two folks are behemoth human beings. I digress, I would show up to these events with my father and godfather, play Smackdown vs. Raw on my PSP in between matches, and scream WOO when Rick Flair showed up with a steel chair. Well, he was a face – HHH and Randy Orton were the ones carrying the sledgehammer/chair.
I loved playing Smackdown vs. Raw on my PSP way back when. It was goofy, just like the wrestling shows I would watch. I was also a fan of RPGs, but wrestling and the role playing genre are two things that didn’t seem to mix. At least until this year – Mega Cat Studios have taken a stab at creating a wrestling themed RPG called WrestleQuest. It’s wild, follks. If you’re a wrestling or an RPG fan, grab a steel chair, sit down on it, and read on.
WrestleQuest has the look and feel of most traditional JRPGs, most notably the old school Final Fantasy titles. There’s a massive overworld separating towns from dungeons, small nooks and crannies buried in each map, and various elements of traditional RPGs like turn based battles and the like. It feels incredibly familiar despite having a pro wrestling spin. Mechanics are introduced early on and are returned to at key moments, reminding players of their use in the growth of the main character over time. At the same time, some mechanics are mentioned once and then never again, such as the Hype Type that lets the player assign passives to each character that can emphasize their strengths and weaknesses similar to the Bravely Default role system without the massive shifts in abilities. In some ways, the execution of WrestleQuest’s RPG mechanics should have been adjusted, while other facets made the game an enjoyable experience.
Despite having the retro RPG feel and look, WrestleQuest doesn’t rely on random encounters and insane levels of grinding for the player to gain power over time. Instead of random encounters that interrupt gameplay, WrestleQuest adopts a hybrid approach used by Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Undertale. Each map has a set number of battles available; you can only start them if you literally approach the enemy’s sprite. I appreciate how respectful the game is of players’ time in that repetitious fluff is entirely overlooked. Sure, it’s important to participate in the few turn-based battle opportunities in each map, but it was quite possible to simply forgo some battles because of how strong I became from the few battles I completed in each map.
Turn-based battles are incorporated well into WrestleQuest’s gameplay loop, utilizing strikes, gimmicks (spells), taunts, and items all the while the player is expected to manage a hype meter that grants buffs and debuffs depending on the player’s progress. When selecting or receiving an attack, the player is presented with quick time events (QTEs) that can boost damage output or prevent enemies from landing additional debuffs. For RPG fans, it’s a similar system as that in Paper Mario and the Superstar Saga series. QTEs are great in diluting what otherwise would be the player button mashing the same button to proceed and encouraging the player to play an active role in battles.
Characters pick up quite a bit of gimmicks and tag team abilities, however. Gimmicks involve a single party member using an ability, whereas tag team abilities involve two or three party members participating in a single attack command to unleash godlike amounts of damage. It got to a point where leveling up a member of my party notified me of a litany of gimmicks and tag team abilities being unlocked. I appreciate how so many gimmicks (spells) are unlocked right from the start, but seeing that many available in a single level up cycle is overwhelming. I would prefer it if the characters in my party had fewer, but more meaningful, abilities to choose from in order to highlight specific party members’ strengths and weaknesses. The more abilities available, the easier it becomes to forget the uniqueness of a specific member when it comes to party management.
I found issue with two battle-specific elements in WrestleQuest. First, each input is tied to a specific button on the Switch, like B for Strike. So, if I wanted to Strike a single enemy, I would have to press B, and then select an enemy with B, and then confirm my choice with…A. If I press B a third time, I would be taken back to the main input screen and start the process all over again. I get that attaching things to specific inputs can be beneficial, but one input (like the A/O button) should have been the universal “back” button for the sake of consistency. The other minor critique I have is of the “pin” system. When defeating an enemy, there is a chance that it your character will weaken it and require you to “pin” the enemy in order to completely eliminate it. The requirement for pinning an enemy is cute and thematically consistent with this being a wrestling game, but not all enemies had to be pinned. Some could simply be defeated once their HP hit zero.
The main quest is not the only set of objectives available for the player to consider completing. In true RPG fashion, side quests emerged that varied from silly minigames to secret boss fights that unlocked special summons that allowed me to bring the likes of the Road Warriors and Junkyard Dog to assist me in battle. Yes, you heard right: It’s possible to unlock THE ROAD WARRIORS AND SUMMON THEM IN A BATTLE!
My inner wrestling fanboy still can’t get over how cool it is. Seriously. It’s that cool.
The rest of WrestleQuest’s RPG elements are well thought out and given wrestling appropriate themes. Managing your character’s morals is done through the karma system, in which your actions dictate whether you become the heel (evil villain) or a face (good guy). Depending on which actions you choose, additional abilities and quests become available that let you continue down the path of being good or evil. I appreciate my choices carrying meaning in-game; not only do I feel invested in my characters’ development, but I also appreciate reaping the benefits of aligning with specific behaviors that change how I play.
WrestleQuest’s storytelling structure can feel choppy, jumping back and forth between Brink Logan and Muchacho Man as they make their way to achieving greatness among pro wrestlers in two seemingly separate stories. While it can feel like this approach was meant to segment these contrasting characters’ narratives and give them moments to shine, the ends to each chapter varied wildly. Sometimes chapters ended on cliffhangers, while others felt more complete. There were several instances where I wanted to go back to one of the specific character’s stories because I had become so attached to that specific story being told and tie up any loose ends.
This method of storytelling can work with varying degrees of success. The Last of Us Part II and the Octopath Traveler series come to mind when I think of individual narratives that end up merging together at critical points. For TLOUII, the dual storytelling of Ellie and Abby gets players on board with each character one at a time, only switching up the narrative structure at a singular massive juncture. When I played TLOUII, I was given the space to connect with Ellie and Abby’s individual past and present before I learned about their future. For Octopath Traveler II, each of the eight characters were slowly introduced in a fashion where I was given the freedom to continue a character’s story when I wanted to so long as I was appropriately leveled. For the case of WrestleQuest, I wasn’t given a choice in advancing the story, nor did I feel like I was given enough time to connect with Muchacho Man and Brink Logan.
On the other hand, WrestleQuest’s story content is bursting at the seams with stellar Easter eggs for classic wrestling fans. Telling the story from the perspective of podcast hosts playing with toys reminded me of my childhood; while I didn’t play with WWF figures, I sure as hell put together ridiculous stories with my own action figures. The stories themselves are imaginative, silly, and avoid taking themselves too seriously for the purpose of selling a story and getting players to temporarily care about the protagonists they control.
This is where I’m torn by WrestleQuest’s story. I loved the story itself, but I was disappointed with the means in which it was told. In an RPG, the story is a prime vehicle to which players are pushed forward through to the end despite repetitious turn-based battles. If that vehicle stalls or unexpectedly changes lanes, it becomes quite easy for the player to forget about why they’re taking the time to play the game. The best RPGs use storytelling as another reward for grinding beyond additional power, too. I wanted that feeling of a reward and push to keep going through the motions.
Pro wrestling is meant to be fun and outlandish. The memorable moments I think of when remembering classic Wrestlemania matches are all those that were larger than life thanks to the superstars and commentators. WrestleQuest captures all of that silliness, outlandishness, and memorability quite well, instilling it into a fun RPG that is rewarding for RPG players as well as wrestling fans looking to relive their favorite moments and have a good time.
WrestleQuest succeeds at a level that other wrestling titles of late just haven’t been able to reach for quite a while. WWE’s 2K series has fully invested itself into giving players a creation suite and modes that emulate general management. Sure, these games are wrestling arcade games over all else; they’re not RPGs by any means. But as a wrestling fan, I’m looking for titles that instill nostalgia while being over the top. The recent 2K titles of late take themselves way too seriously despite “Super Cena” existing alongside the 11 other playable John Cena versions in WWE 2K23. Playing WrestleQuest reminded me of the ridiculousness of wrestling’s past without getting boring, tacky, or losing the plot.
Playing WrestleQuest on the Switch was not the best experience, but it’s improving on a patch-by-patch basis. Other than visual artifacts and inconsistent frame skips, I encountered a handful of times where the game would force close or prevent my progression (requiring me to save and reload to fix). Traveling between rooms/buildings in a town would present a loading screen, making it frustrating for instances where I would have to walk inside, load, talk to someone, walk out, load, and continue on. It’s not the worst Switch experience by any means, but it may be a case where the game isn’t fully optimized for the Switch’s hardware at this time. Or, it may just be a game that’s worth playing on the PC or on PlayStation. Either way, the Switch experience is subpar; consider waiting a bit for additional bugs to be squashed before jumping into the Switch variant.
WrestleQuest oozes with charm, easter eggs, and sweet chin music thanks to how well it blends traditional RPG elements with a clear love of classic wrestling. It’s easy to look past some of its design quirks because of how well other RPG elements are implemented that respect the player’s time and encourage them to play an active role in worldbuilding. The Switch’s current implementation ain’t the best, but the game sure had me in a cobra clutch for hours.
