For those who like wrestling games, but aren't familiar with Fire Pro Wrestling, you are in for a treat. Even though this game looks very simplistic, it has a very deep creation system for created wrestlers. Not so fast. While this game is fun, you'll have to get used to the playstyle. If you play this game like an arcade button masher, you're going to get your butt handed to you every time. The game revolves more around timing your button presses at the right moments. There are three attacks: weak, medium, & strong. You have to start by weakening your opponent(s) & gradually working you way up to using the strong attacks.
There are many different match types & variations of match types. Unfortunately, You won't find ladder, hell in a cell, or special referee matches. This is one of the few games that includes an exploding ring death match. One of my favorite chaotic matches is the endless battle royal. 8-men are in the ring. Even as contestants are eliminated, they are still allowed to be in the ring to wreak as much havoc as possible. It makes for fun & challenging gameplay.
As stated before, it has a very deep creative suite. You can craft parts to add to created wrestlers to make them look more like wrestlers from WWE, WWF, WCW, ECW, TNA, ROH, CMLL, WOW, NJPW, etc. You can also create promotions & stables. My one gripe is that you have to create a stable within a promotion to add characters to it. You can also create championships, wrestling rings, & referees. You can also customize moves.
If you like management modes, this game has you covered with Fire Promoter. In this mode, you start out as a fledgling wrestling promotion, with only 6 wrestlers on your roster, & have to make it into a much larger promotion. You manage every aspect from the gym, the roster, inviting guests to your events, merchandising, sponsorships, TV contracts, & can even work with or even poach talent from rival promotions. You can run cross promotion events & take that opposing brand's championships away from them.
While this game is great, I do have a few issues with it:
1. When adding characters from the Steam Workshop, when you subscribe to adding a character, sometimes there might be other parts missing. This will result in you adding an incomplete character to your roster, only to find out you can't play as them. Some will tell you that you have to subscribe to other created parts before being able to play, but I've encountered quite a few when even after doing that, they were unplayable.
2. You can't just remove characters from your roster. You can transfer them to the retired section, but not completely remove them. (If someone know how to do this, please let me know.)
3. In Fire Promoter, you can't have varied matches at an event. You can select to have all normal matches, all cage death matches, all exploding barbed wire matches, or all barbed wire matches, but you can't individually select just one cage match.
4. After adding bunches of created content, organizing everything can be tedious. When you add new content, it initially appears under the teamless or retired section. You have to create the promotions, create the factions, & then move every character to where you want them. This can be time consuming.
Again, this game is fun, once you have learned how to play it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this game an 8.25.
