The first real Fire Pro game in over a decade. It returns to it's roots with 2D sprites at an isometric angle and the wrestling is reminiscent of the classic games. What puts this game over the top is not only the massive customization options but the ability to share any custom wrestlers, referees, and rings/arenas. For the console version you can go to their website and give them your PSN credentials in order to upload and download custom content, similar to steam's workshop feature for the PC version. The game also has licensed New Japan Pro Wrestling content including an odd adventure game style story mode. Some of the features require an internet connection which is a bummer but even just the core package alone is worth it.

Stuck this on for the first time in aaaages because I'd watched the Bye Bye Muta show and AKIRA was in the main and I love seeing that guy. He used his old NJPW entrance theme and imo this is proof of a great wrestling mind because coming out to Bon Jovi in a huge venue is always going to sound good. It's the environment the music was designed for! It's why Wagner's big show entrances are always great. AKIRA is really cool. Anyway I wanted to play as him after watching so I played this.
I never played any of the story mode DLC or anything for this because they were laughably priced, but at its core this is another version of Returns and Returns is the best wrestling game ever made, so that's good. At release it was more stripped down compared to that game, and to be honest I think Returns had chunkier, more satisfying sound, but the freedom you have in creating characters, the extent to which you can tweak the AI and the core gameplay are as good as ever. I've no idea why more wrestling games haven't taken cues from this series - even something relatively small like the escalating crowd reactions as your match builds. Fire Pro is so cool!! It's like AKIRA that way.

I get the hype. It's tremendous fun with a robust creation system and community that constantly keeps this up to date, but the skill curve is astronomical. Hard to learn from the off, but to master? Patience is a virtue.

I do respect how committed it is to not overloading the gameplay experience with piss easy button inputs and prompts. With more of a focus on learning the animations to time counters. The mainline WWE games ask much less of the player due to a more streamlined control system with prompts that are as predictable as they come. So I do like the challenge that this offers, but you really got to be in it for the long hall to become even remotely capable at this game. The AI can beat your ass to the ground, seriously.

If you watch newLEGACYinc, you know this reaches its full potential, creating the most insane matchups (like their horror movie death match tournament) and watching the AI go to war. So a lot of my enjoyment comes from that. Being a fan of NJPW also helps, right now this is the only game where I can play as Zack Sabre Jr. in all his tekkers glory. So I will take what I can get.

140 hours in, I suppose I have to ask myself the question: is Fire Pro World better than No Mercy? In some ways yes, in some ways no. As a whole, if you are a die-hard wrestling fanatic like me, this is certainly the best overall package you can buy. Thanks to the astounding depth of user-created content - to illustrate, one guy made the entire cast of Def Jam Vendetta to a pretty high degree of accuracy just for the fun of it - you can pretty much set up any dream match you could possibly imagine, and the 2D nature of the game ensures that crafting your own bizarre creations is a lot more straightforward than the array of sliders offered by modern WWE games.

With all that said, however...Fire Pro is definitely an acquired taste on every level. I think every Fire Pro fan has a story about showing this game to their non-smark friends only to be greeted by a chorus of laughter and confusion, and I think that's an understandable response. Even by "retro game" standards, Fire Pro just looks and sounds unimpressive. Its controls also take a lot of time and effort to get used to - you'll likely mess up anything more complicated than a basic grapple or submission hold until you have a few hours into the game. Compared to the pick-up-and-play appeal of the AKI games, it's not exactly approachable. The grappling system actually works really well once you get the timing down, but your first few matches will make for a confusing slog, especially since the input for your finisher varies from wrestler to wrestler. However, Fire Pro has much better AI vs. AI matches than any other wrestling game I've ever played, even allowing you to customize your wrestler's AI logic, so if that's important to you, it's definitely a big plus.

Overall, I think you can determine for yourself if Fire Pro World is a game for you. If you've never followed a wrestling promotion on a week-by-week, PPV-by-PPV basis, the answer is probably no. I think it's analogous to a hobby-grade product like anime figurines, paintball guns, or matchbox cars - there's a big learning curve to get started, but once you get in the groove of it, it's a hyper-specific experience that delivers at a level that no other game can touch. However, it is very much for hopeless smarks only.

This is in my opinion, the greatest wrestling game ever made, I literally have every wrestler I could ever want from the 1930s all the way to February 2023s WWE roster, I have the most obscure wrestlers from mainstream to the indies and former gimmicks and outfits of iconic wrestlers with 4 attire slots for each wrestler all done by the fantastic creators on the steam work shop! Some of which have been fire pro creators for over a decade! Aswell as editing and tweaking existing creations and occasionally making some of my own! I played through the fighting road junior heavyweight season mode and completed it so I could at least say I completed this game in some form, my thing with wrestling games is I won’t log it unless I’ve beaten one of the modes the game offers, so that doesn’t necessarily mean all the games modes just one of them is what qualifies for me personally and since you technically can’t complete wrestling games (kinda can kinda can’t) I count it for myself anyways, fighting road jr heavyweight was pretty bland to be honest, for the last few matches I just got myself disqualified just so I could get to the end credits so ugh to that.

This game has the best gameplay it feels the most like wrestling to me in a wrestling game , best customisation, best gameplay presentation, best customisation (thank you steam community) and best pacing I’ve ever seen in a wrestling game, I’ve played this since 2017, I adore it, it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a wrestling game, I actually prefer playing matches to simming them and have had some classic 100 percent rated matches , this game is endless in my opinion, I can literally have every wrestler who ever lived organised into there respective promotions and eras (which I’ve done mostly) customising your own ring? Custom aprons and ring mats, custom mp3 entrance music, custom animations? Custom entrances? This game has it all, once you learn the controls the game is so addicting and no two matches are the same, you want a challenge? You’ll get it! You want to work a 5 star classic? Go ahead! You can sell and let your opponent do moves to you and kick out for those dramatic near falls! WWE games come and go but this game and fire pro returns I always come back to for its timeless feel and forever addicting and engaging gameplay! Can’t say anything about the other fighting roads and I started skipping through the cutscenes for the junior one I did complete like half way though, it was such a drag! But maybe that’s just me, you don’t need to play them nor does it force you to, I did it to at least be able to say in some capacity I completed this game so I at least feel more qualified to review it (I don’t log games I haven’t completed) anyways that’s my review!

Okay let me be really direct here and just say that what I'm about to write is probably going to be very different to anything else I have written on this website so far. First off, I do not see this as a video game, I never "played" it like one. Don't ask me how the story mode is, or how it controls, because I just DON'T know!

I do not see this as a "video game" and more as a tool to create narrative and really magical moments of pro wrestling.
When I'm not writing for my tabletop games, I am writing show cards and storylines for wrestlers in my very own wrestling promotion!

This is what this "review" is going to be mainly: just me talking about the creation of the wrestling promotion GPW (Global Psychosis Wrestling).

I was initially inspired to do this when one of my best friends shared with me their own wrestling show and I was then curious with how far I can go with this "game's" engine and complexity of wrestler creation. My first wrestler was just this blue entity with a ripped muscular figure with a monkey mask/head that mainly just wrestles similarly to Brock Lesnar. I stared at the blank name bar and my only thought at the moment was to just name it "Trauma." So I did.

After that I made more and more wrestlers. Some are very strange and "supernatural" or just straight up just non human (like Trauma.) Or just really violent, cruel, petty, calculated fighters. I will list a few of them or a lot, mostly out of indulgence.

In the strange/supernatural category you got wrestlers like

Fungai Marshall: Ultra rich sovereign from South Africa that wishes to hold power over GPW with an iron fist with the use of gross submissions and the special talent of controlling peoples nerves. He goes nowhere without his "mysterious" unlimited source of income and puts funding into a lab that attempts to create the "perfect wrestler." The attempt creates the first ever homunculus wrestler named GUNK0.

GUNK0: As mentioned above is the first ever homunculus wrestler. The final stage of physical development had some interesting results, like their height being only 4 '11 because their legs lack development in comparison to the rest of their physique. They still weigh a ton and specialize in raw strength and have a death grip from having crustacean claws. (Yes literal crab claws.) Their moves contain a lot of slams, chokes, and suplexes. Their finisher is called "Hellzone Grenade." (lol)

Hazgard Ruffalo: A literal alien from a different world. They have four arms and all they do is really gross looking suplexes and moonsaults.

So not as crazy as those three but still strange you got wrestlers like - Dr. Psycho Lover who's a giant clown. She's the strongest wrestler in GPW. She's very similar to a Zangief type character, power bombs, piledrivers, brain busters, etc. While doing a lot of hijinks, like fainting punches and grapples and spits silly gas mist. She has my favorite finisher name "Waste Matter Death Spiral."

Okay hold on this one is really strange but it would be a disservice to myself if I didn't mention him.
Leisure Suit Leszek is an 80ish year old polish cyborg that's obsessed with disco music. He may or may not wrestle exactly how you would imagine him to wrestle.

Anyways you should have a clear picture with how ridiculous I let myself be with this promotion. Not every wrestler is like this but I would like to say I try to have every one of them be eccentric and full of life in some way, with how they look, fight, or their personality.

A lot about GPW is chaotic in nature but I really went out of my way to have that be known with ring designs and stage textures. I fucked it all up. At the time I was really inspired by Cruelty Squad and if you saw it, it would really be obvious. I had a really fun time just fucking around and putting face textures on walls and having all the colors be so abrasive with saturation. While the stage I use for Trauma matches is just a void of black with the ring at the center. I have one stage look like they’re wrestling in a fucked up train station from silent hill. I’ve done a lot to make my game look the way it does.

Allow me to share a favorite storyline of mine that happened during two seasons of GPW.

THE MR. PAIN VS MICKEY ANHEDONIA FEUD.

There's a wrestler in GPW named Mr. Pain. He's the most fragile wrestler as he suffered from a treacherous accident that resulted in him being sensitive to pain and tends to bleed easily. He's covered head to toe in bandages, almost mummy-like, with two red domes for hands as his biological hands were utterly destroyed from the accident. He wrestles passively, as he focuses on distancing himself away from his opponents. Lots of ducking/weaving, you know- boxing shit. He got some submissions to slow down the match, counters frequently. Obviously can't take a hit for shit..

Season 1 mainly covered a tournament called "THE DESPERATE STRUGGLE TOURNAMENT." The winner of said tournament is rewarded a match against Trauma. Win against Trauma and you get yourself the "Catharsis belt." and rule GPW.
Mr. Pain found himself to be in the losers bracket and was in a match against GUNK0. One of them will be eliminated from the tournament. In an attempt to help his own creation advance in the tournament- Fungai Marshall tries to bend the match in GUNK0's favor as he lets loose a new wrestler, a wrestler that is revealed to be the supposed perpetrator to Mr. Pain's suffering. Their name is Mickey Anhedonia and their physical features are a complete mystery! They are a walking void of identity as they are paper white with ambiguous black shapes covering their body, with a pixelated abyss for a head. Mr. Pain has never seen this person before and all he knows is that this person has hurt them before and they will do it again.
Mr. Pain ends up winning the match against GUNK0 and Mickey just barely after throwing Mickey out of the ring then putting GUNK0 into a roll up.

The Feud continues throughout all of Season 2 and it resumes AGGRESSIVELY! Mr. Pain and Mickey are at each other’s throats, Mr. Pain’s fighting style gradually becomes more aggressive and excursion is really on display here. Mickey’s nasty submissions are revealed throughout this season as well, with his submission finish “Witness Protection” causing plenty of wrestlers in GPW to tap out.

The feud reaches its climax by the last episode of season 2 with a Identity VS Identity match, whoever loses must reveal their true face/real name. Of course this match is in a cage too, to top it all off. This match is where the magic really happens here. I didn’t change anything with their logic, no mods I had influenced this. This match turned into a fucked up endurance test between the two, with the longest submissions and mounted punches I have EVER seen in a match! I was on the edge of my damn seat, watching a simulated wrestling match like it was a real thing being taped. It really looked like Mr. Pain was facing head on into the jaws of pain! It’s moments like these where I really get engrossed in it all, forgetting that these wrestlers are CPUs with just bunch of percent changes in your logic, and how I spent oh so many hours tweaking every single one of them to behave in a way of my liking. It becomes real pro wrestling, a real story between real wrestlers and that’s fucking beautiful. It’s matches like these is why I even do this whole show!

I think that’s all I can really say about my show without just outright showing you it. I can see myself writing more about it in the future. Maybe I’ll journal it. Still don’t really know how that works.. This website is weird, man.