AEW Fight Forever review: A good start

After waiting three years since its inital announcement in 2020, AEW’s first home console game has arrived, one of the first viable alternatives to WWE’s long-running 2K series in quite some time. The good news is that the gameplay is excellent, harkening back to the Nintendo 64 era of wrestling games. The bad news is a lack of content makes Fight Forever feel like the bare minimum.

It’s obvious from the get-go that the development team fully focused on making this a spiritual sequel to No Mercy on the N64. Every aspect of the gameplay feels like the old AKI wrestling system, right down to some of the animations and taunts. Unlike recent WWE games that lean heavily into realistic simulation with submission systems and stamina bars, Fight Forever has an excellent quick-paced arcade feel that has been missing from wrestling games for decades.

Fight Forever’s key matches, aside from the standard tag team, multi-man, and ladder matches include the Casino Battle Royal, which in Fight Forever is essentially a Royal Rumble match where entry is determined by the card selected in the beginning of the match. There’s also the exploding barbed wire death match where the object is to throw the opponent into, you guessed it, exploding barbed wire. After 120 seconds, the ring will explode, causing total mayhem. There’s even a fun easter egg in this match type if you look hard enough. 

Then there’s the Lights Out match, which is fun as the weapons (skateboard!) are fun to use. And good news for those that like extensive blood in pro wrestling games: this is an extremely bloody game if you choose to go that route. That pretty much covers it for match types. Some notable omissions include cage matches and Blood & Guts. It’s been quite a while since there was a pro wrestling game that didn’t have a standard cage match.

Road to Elite is the game’s story mode, and it too borrows aspects from No Mercy. You can choose either a created wrestler or an AEW star to play a one-year period where wins and losses send you into different storyline branches. The mode also encourages you to play mini-games (which can be silly, but fun), do sightseeing at the locations you travel to, take selfies with AEW stars, and train to replenish health and unlock more skills. It doesn’t take long to clear the mode, maybe a few hours at most. There’s a replayability factor here in that other storyline branches can be explored. But I wish it was a little more in depth, like how No Mercy had separate stories for each title.

Speaking of created wrestlers, Fight Forever’s creative suite is amazingly shallow compared to most recent games. WWE 2K22 and even Street Fighter 6 had plenty of ways to make creative, original characters, something that will be hard to do here. Fight Forever only gives a handful of options to alter a character’s facial features and body. The clothing selection feels minimal, and creating an entrance is kind of moot as the game doesn’t have full entrances, only short ones that last a few seconds. Extra taunts and entrance poses that can be purchased in the game’s shop for in-game currency, but it doesn’t make up for the limited options.

I should mention that some aspects of Fight Forever are also pretty dated. Wrestling’s breakneck pace make matches and storylines even from a year ago feel extremely old. One storyline in Road to Elite had me embroiled in a battle between The Inner Circle and The Pinnacle, groups that were relevant in early 2022 but feel like ancient history in mid 2023.

Nonetheless, AEW Fight Forever is a blast to play, more fun than WWE 2K22 or any other recent pro wrestling game. But limited modes, options, and creative content make the experience feel rather shallow. The idea appears to be that new match types, modes, and playable wrestlers will be rolled out over time. If the development team can follow through with that, then Fight Forever has lots of potential as the core gameplay is solid. The spiritual sequel to No Mercy is finally here. I just wish there was more to do!

AEW Fight Forever will be released on June 29 for Xbox One & Series X, PlayStation 4 & 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. A PlayStation 5 code was provided for this review.