WrestleQuest review: A flawed (but fun) experience

Whoever thought that pro wrestling and 1990s role playing games meshed so well? WrestleQuest, which is out on August 22, is a real cool concept that manages to work very well. If you like role playing games, this is an effective one that harkens back to the days of 2D Final Fantasy games. For wrestling fans, there’s enough tongue-in-cheek references and real-life cameos to stick around. It’s too bad that some aspects of the game drag the overall experience down.

The best way to describe WrestleQuest is if you put Final Fantasy VI and WWF WrestleFest into a blender and let it rip. It’s a full-on RPG that requires defeating enemies in turn-based battles. There’s even equipment and accessories that can be equipped that boost character’s stats.

You start off with the not-too-subtle Muchacho Man, but the game’s cast eventually turns into an ensemble affair where you switch between multiple different parties throughout most of the game. Without spoiling the storyline too much, it centers around a megalomaniacal toy elephant who is hellbent on crushing his competition, including stomping out all the territories across the toybox universe the game takes place in. I’m sure there’s no real world illusions there. It turns into a solid story with plenty of empathic (and slightly odd) characters that Muchacho Man and the other toys meet along the way.

There’s plenty of real-world cameos seen throughout the game. Some appear just as easter eggs, some also appear in statue areas that can be found across the world map. There are also others that can serve as managers, which you can equip and will help you in battle through various methods. If you play long enough, you may even encounter some familiar faces from this very website (not me).

Gameplay mechanics are rock-solid and probably the best part of WrestleQuest. Aside from the normal striking, there’s also gimmick (or special) moves that can be used, and each character is given a multitude of them as they level up, including unleashing tag team or triple team moves. It was very fun to mix and match gimmicks to discover new ways of defeating villains.

The main drawback were the dungeon areas. To put it bluntly, they were not particularly fun and grew to be a chore. The idea probably was to put in a bunch of puzzles as there are no random encounters, but I would have taken more enemy fights over some of these areas that dragged the game down, both in terms of fun and pace. I would have much rather focused on using the fun battle mechanics then running around to light candles in under ten seconds or using the right colored sheet on a lightbulb to open a new pathway, it felt like busy work just to get through to the next area. I also experienced longer load times as I progressed further in the game, which was odd.

One more thing I didn’t like was the mandatory “dramatic moments” for some of the boss fights, where you need to follow a checklist to a tee or else it’s game over. These reminded me heavily of the requirements in Showcase Mode in the WWE 2K series. I didn’t like being given rules to advance in that mode and I didn’t particularly like it here. It never feels that fun to follow a mandatory checklist in a video game.

WrestleQuest is solid enough that it’s worth recommending. If you can get through some tedious puzzle solving, there’s a fun game here, and the story is engrossing enough to stick with. It’s out August 22 on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, and Xbox One & Series X.

A Steam code was given for this review.