DISCLAIMER: I got a reviewer key fo free to play this game earlier.
Tl;dr: It's good, but it could've been great.
Both MyRise campaigns are really good, the best they have ever being in this kind of game (maybe i'm little biased towards Jacob Cass storyline in RTWM WWE '12) but they are fun.
They were written by Drew Gulak himself and as a guy from the business he knows how to make interesting stories. I thought the women MyRise was significantly more well written than the male one though, it legit got me emotional, but both were fun.
Universe Mode is LITERALLY THE SAME THING as last years, including that stupid bug in which someone would cash-in but even if they lost the match in the PLE they would still have a match against you in RAW and Smackdown, it's basically "yeah this MITB contract only expires once you manage to win the title"
MYGM is fun, more of the same.
Showcase Mode needs to be gone, it doesn't even make sense at this point.
The idea of adding save-states to CAW/CAS is really good, and i wish they add that to Create a Moveset in future games as well, i was creating a moveset of one of my CAS and my game crashed (and i live in a third world country where the energy might go out randomly) so i had to do it all over again.
The strikes trading mini-game is fun, but if they managed to do that with chain wrestling at the same time, it would be even better. Speaking of chain wrestling, we now get crawl pins back which are always awesome.
I feel like super finishers should be 2 finishers bars only, you most likely won't have 3 bars of finisher unless you really pad out the match. But they are cool, i just wish we can remove the drunk effect.
Also you can deactivate HUD while spectating AI x AI this year, which it was in overdue time.
For last i'll speak for the DLC, they were announced and they are cool as hell, but man, CM Punk, Dragon Lee, Jade Cargill, but man, i really, really wish we got the Moves Pack DLC back. We are limited to having moves only WWE wrestlers have, so most of the moves that are in the game that aren't from any of them, came from some of these packs back in the Yukes day. The Moves Pack DLC were basically indies/Japan moves pack which were incredibly cool. We still don't have Kevin Owen's avalanche Fisherman Buster - a move he does basically every match - and Kevin Owens has been in this games for like... 6 years already? or more? Also we have 4 burning hammers but only one animation for the Emerald Flowsion that is probably 8 years old at this point. I was expecting a new one for Gunther's Last Symphony.
They apparently made create an arena worse but i guess they will fix it with the time.
It does feel like a DLC to WWE 2K23, but it feels like a huge DLC. Something like Phantom Liberty was to Cyberpunk and i don't really mean this in a bad way.
If you are a wrestling fan, you won't find anything better for sure. But i'm still hoping for that definitive WWE game experience in which we still don't have. We are this close to greatness.
Tl;dr: It's good, but it could've been great.
Both MyRise campaigns are really good, the best they have ever being in this kind of game (maybe i'm little biased towards Jacob Cass storyline in RTWM WWE '12) but they are fun.
They were written by Drew Gulak himself and as a guy from the business he knows how to make interesting stories. I thought the women MyRise was significantly more well written than the male one though, it legit got me emotional, but both were fun.
Universe Mode is LITERALLY THE SAME THING as last years, including that stupid bug in which someone would cash-in but even if they lost the match in the PLE they would still have a match against you in RAW and Smackdown, it's basically "yeah this MITB contract only expires once you manage to win the title"
MYGM is fun, more of the same.
Showcase Mode needs to be gone, it doesn't even make sense at this point.
The idea of adding save-states to CAW/CAS is really good, and i wish they add that to Create a Moveset in future games as well, i was creating a moveset of one of my CAS and my game crashed (and i live in a third world country where the energy might go out randomly) so i had to do it all over again.
The strikes trading mini-game is fun, but if they managed to do that with chain wrestling at the same time, it would be even better. Speaking of chain wrestling, we now get crawl pins back which are always awesome.
I feel like super finishers should be 2 finishers bars only, you most likely won't have 3 bars of finisher unless you really pad out the match. But they are cool, i just wish we can remove the drunk effect.
Also you can deactivate HUD while spectating AI x AI this year, which it was in overdue time.
For last i'll speak for the DLC, they were announced and they are cool as hell, but man, CM Punk, Dragon Lee, Jade Cargill, but man, i really, really wish we got the Moves Pack DLC back. We are limited to having moves only WWE wrestlers have, so most of the moves that are in the game that aren't from any of them, came from some of these packs back in the Yukes day. The Moves Pack DLC were basically indies/Japan moves pack which were incredibly cool. We still don't have Kevin Owen's avalanche Fisherman Buster - a move he does basically every match - and Kevin Owens has been in this games for like... 6 years already? or more? Also we have 4 burning hammers but only one animation for the Emerald Flowsion that is probably 8 years old at this point. I was expecting a new one for Gunther's Last Symphony.
They apparently made create an arena worse but i guess they will fix it with the time.
It does feel like a DLC to WWE 2K23, but it feels like a huge DLC. Something like Phantom Liberty was to Cyberpunk and i don't really mean this in a bad way.
If you are a wrestling fan, you won't find anything better for sure. But i'm still hoping for that definitive WWE game experience in which we still don't have. We are this close to greatness.