➤ Fire Pro Wrestling World, the review 🎮

Waiting for wrestling fans to return to try their hand at WWE 2K19, or with the most glamorous incarnation of contemporary wrestling, Spike Chunsoft never misses an opportunity to reveal its conservative vision of the discipline through the brand of Fire Pro Wrestling. Released on Steam last December, Fire Pro Wrestling World is now also available on PS4, both in physical and digital format, and is ready to project us back into the folds of time again. Well, after having had the opportunity to dissect the contents of the conversion, here is the verdict in our review.

A gameplay based on slaps and lots of timing

Fire Pro Wrestling World if it keeps fedele al gameplay typical of the series. In keeping with tradition, the game offers a type of wrestling of greater substance than the spectacular but not very concrete one we have been used to following the North American scene. For his part, Spike Chunsoft preferred not to overturn his traditionalist approach and has grabbed some official licenses of Japanese professional wrestling, including the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The proposed mechanics are essentially the same that distinguished the old chapters of the series dating back to the eras of PC Engine, of Super Famicom or the SEGA Saturn. If you still have doubts about it, know that the philosophy followed by this production is admittedly "old school". Yes, because in Fire Pro Wrestling the difficulty in approaching the matches also passes from the complete absence of a user interface that can provide precise indications regarding the current status of your fighter. Obviously this also applies to the opponent who finds himself in front of us. In the course of each match you have to do your best in order to identify the correct balance between attack phases and defense situations, or those moments in which it is essential to try to get away from your opponent for a few moments and catch your breath. Neglecting this factor means exposing yourself in a few moments to the vehemence of the enemy on duty, who will not hesitate to take advantage of a moment of fogging to hit hard. To complicate matters is precisely the presence of stamina, and the fact that it cannot be assessed by consulting an on-screen indicator.

It therefore becomes crucial to act on instinct, trying to guess when it is time to take a break and when, vice versa, it is the opponent who is clearly in oxygen debt. Three front buttons are linked to the management of the different ones types of attack (Weak, Medium and Heavy), while the fourth serves to manage the run, which is particularly useful especially when you want to take advantage of the ropes that delimit the ring. With a wide range of holds and submission moves, which also change in relation to the specific qualities of each character, the variety of alternatives made available to the player is particularly wide, but it also requires some practice to be mastered sufficiently. On the other hand, it is appropriate to highlight all the limits revealed by collisions, which oblige the player to optimize as much as possible the quantity of shots and his own strategy in order not to risk losing most of the attacks completely. Difficulties arise already during the brawling phases, and it is precisely in these situations that the dosage of the moves to be performed can make the difference between triumph and defeat. After receiving a fair amount of slaps and a flurry of german suplex, powerbomb and so on and so forth, you begin to enter into the perspective of having to dose your enthusiasm with fewer offensive solutions but more aimed at achieving the final goal. In this sense, timing acquires a fundamental value, especially when it comes to dealing with holds. It is precisely in these situations that the quick press of one of the attack buttons, as soon as the animation has begun, is the only method by which you can land your chosen move. The difference is made above all by the practice - combined with a healthy dose of patience - even if it must be said that the presence of a extensive tutorial, structured in fifty missions, it comes to the rescue to allow the player to refine their style and reduce the margins of error. What Fire Pro Wrestling World does not spare is above all the game modes available, able to guarantee a wide freedom of choice for all true wrestling fans. The inevitable tournaments alternate with the normal performance and even the Battle Royale, where only one participant is destined to get the better of all the others. In each of these categories you can lean towards a wide range of alternatives, from the traditional match to that inside the cage, from the Barbed Wire match with electrified wires instead of the ropes that delimit the ring, to fights in theMMA style octagon, just to name a few.

The news of the new chapter

The lack of the most famous licenses could make some users turn up their noses, also due to the fact that it binds it New Japan Pro Wrestling it is not particularly well known in the West. Nonetheless, the situation is counterbalanced by one of the main innovations foreseen in this new episode of the series, namely thewrestler editor. Thanks to the new tools implemented by the development studio - and incidentally already thoroughly tested by buyers of the PC version - Fire Pro Wrestling World allows you to customize the appearance and characteristics of the roster existing, but above all to shape new protagonists by setting parameters such as the external appearance, the colors of the costumes, the fighting style and more generally all those data necessary to accurately outline the characteristics that that wrestler will have once entered the square. There patch available from day one, it also introduced the "Fire Pro Net" feature, which allows the public to share their extravagant creations with the rest of the community.

The new chapter of Fire Pro Wrestling is also the first ever to propose a mode multiplayer online, making it possible to face other players in one of the many modes that we have listed in the previous paragraph. Participation in random encounters alternates with the option of creating a new room and waiting for new challengers to join the game. Contrary to the PC edition, where the Multiplayer locally provided for up to a maximum of eight players at a time, the conversion to PS4 allows you to take part in a match locally only in the company of three other friends at the same time. During our test we found some annoying flaws in the management of online clashes: in fact, it was often difficult to find other users to challenge, and on the occasions in which we managed to enter a match we had to deal with annoying lag problems. The third novelty implemented by Spike Chunsoft in Fire Pro Wrestling World concerns the addition of the Fighting Road mode, a sort of offline adventure in which you take part in a career as a young athlete, with the ultimate goal of reaching the top and conquering the IWGP league belt. In this case, the meetings alternate with a series of dialogues that draw inspiration from the visual novels, even if on several occasions the screens have proved to be very slow to view, as well as quite superfluous to follow.

Comment

Resources4Gaming.com

6.8

Readers (6)

6.3

Your vote

Sorry that the abundance of material Spike Chunsoft put on the plate with Fire Pro Wrestling World is not supported by an equally convincing game structure. Immediacy has been sacrificed on the altar of strategy and painstaking precision in the execution of the moves, and this certainly represents an obstacle in the eyes of a wider target of players. Added to this is a certainly high price in relation to the proposed contents. Summing up, unless you are a staunch supporter of the genre, it is unlikely that Fire Pro Wrestling will be able to capture you and keep you glued to the screen for very long; vice versa, if you know the series and intend to dive into the past without asking yourself too many questions, you could have bread for your teeth.