The score is a percentage and to get close to 100% players will need to have a back and forth battle with plenty of close pinfalls, signature and finishing maneuvers, “high spot” style impact moves, and crowd appreciation.įire Pro takes what Pro Wrestling is at its heart and designs gameplay around it, which is incredibly refreshing compared to the 2K games that seem to still treat the sport as a “shoot”. FPW World leans into this reality heavily and assigns a Match Score to every match completed. The game lives on the knowledge that wrestling is a cooperative sport with planned finishes where the competitors in the match are each trying to make themselves, and their opponent, look good to the crowd in the audience and at home.
I highly recommend doing the tutorial in the game until this timing feels like second nature or players will struggle to produce quality matches (and probably get incredibly frustrated in the process).Īmong the biggest departures for most wrestling fans (aside from the graphic style) is the fact that FPW is a series that admits that Pro Wrestling isn’t exactly on the level as an athletic competition. The two will do a dramatic collar and elbow tie up and there is a very small window of time when players need to press the attack button to pull off a move. Grappling is initiated by walking into the opponent.
This can be frustrating for new players at first as it isn’t very forgiving but players will appreciate the skill necessary to land strikes once they get the hang of it. Strikes will only land if they are the appropriate distance from the opponent and lined up correctly. Gameplay revolves heavily around timing and positioning. So, if you’re one of those players, what can you expect?
Clearly though Spike is counting on the NJPW content as well as the American release on PS4 to add new players to the series who may be disillusioned with the current wrestling game landscape and are looking for something different. You’ll love the additional content and will appreciate the subtle ways the series has grown over the years. The game is a great Fire Pro Wrestling game and is a worthy addition to your collection.
If you’re a veteran of the series, you can probably stop reading now. I found Fighting Road to be a fun trek, although I wish there were some more variety as the mode went on. Along the way they’ll interact with legends and peers in NJPW and they’ll have some dialogue options to choose from as well. In this mode players begin as a hopeful trainee in the NJPW Dojo and work their way up the card in the promotions traditional style.
While the addition of real licensed wrestlers is great, what really puts the use of the license over the top is the visual novel style story mode “Fighting Road”. All of this goes a long way toward making FPWW feel like a legitimate NJPW game and not just some shoehorned content. The game also features that classic NJPW blue mat (complete with Fire Pro Wrestling logo) and even legendary NJPW referee Hiroyuki “Red Shoes” Unno. The game features 39 New Japan wrestlers, from current IWGP Champ Kenny Omega and his fiercest rival Kazuchika Okada to veteran legends like Minoru Suzuki and Yugi Nagata. To have a Fire Pro Wrestling game with actual licensed content is huge and also makes this game the de-facto New Japan Pro Wrestling game. The NJPW license is the biggest addition to a series that has long been built on made up grapplers that just sort of “look” like your favorites. The gameplay between the ropes is the same solid timing-based grappling that the series is known for and wrestler AI is good at making the matches feel “big-time”. The match types you’ve come to expect are all here, from Barbed Wire and Landmine Deathmatches to MMA-style octagon battles. The graphics are the same isometric retro style the franchise is known for with a bit of spit and polish for this generation. Veterans of the series will immediately feel perfectly comfortable here.
With a full visual-novel style story mode, plenty of licensed wrestlers and of course one of the most incredible create-a-wrestler communities on the planet, Fire Pro Wrestling World fills the hole left by the lackadaisical effort of the recent WWE 2k games by giving players a game that looks and feels like the genuine article. The newest entry in the series crashes forward on PS4 with a huge new addition, licensed content from one of the hottest promotions in the world today, New Japan Pro Wrestling. After making its re-debut last year on Steam, the Fire Pro Wrestling series makes its triumphant return to consoles after 11 years with Fire Pro Wrestling World.