Fire Pro Wrestling 2 features detailed action and more than 200 wrestlers from which to choose, as well as the ability to create and store wrestlers of your own. It also allows you to connect up to four Game Boy Advances and take on, team up, or trade wrestlers. You can customize every detail of a wrestler's appearance and use more than 1,200 fighting techniques in several modes, including Normal, Deathmatch, Gruesome, and Battle Royal. The game also includes a practice dojo in which you can practice your standing move, grab move, running move, and your move against a downed opponent.
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Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
If, while playing this game (Final Fire Pro Wrestling), it all looks familiar to you, it’s because it was released stateside as Fire ProWrestling 2. Except, whoever released it over here took out the story mode. Why? So now you’ve got exactly the same game as the first one, with a few new moves and even fewer new players. Wowee.
So yeah, this game has a story mode, where you have control over your own wrestling federation. Sounds pretty awesome.
If, while playing this game (Final Fire Pro Wrestling), it all looks familiar to you, it’s because it was released stateside as Fire ProWrestling 2. Except, whoever released it over here took out the story mode. Why? So now you’ve got exactly the same game as the first one, with a few new moves and even fewer new players. Wowee.
So yeah, this game has a story mode, where you have control over your own wrestling federation. Sounds pretty awesome.
I am aspiring not to write reviews of Fire Pro Wrestling because frankly I have spent over 15,000 hours of my life on this series using it as my primary creative outlet, and I don't know what I'm supposed to say about that or if I give a shit about what anyone thinks of it. Here, here's my brief review of Fire Pro Wrestling: one day I will give up every game but Fire Pro Wrestling and I will be happy.
This, instead, is a review about one of the few times I have actually used Fire Pro Wrestling like it was a video game, and that is for the Management of the Ring mode in Final Fire Pro Wrestling, the Japanese release of this game.
I can't speak to a broad familiarity with management sims of sports teams, because frankly one of the key factors in learning how to play some management sim is feeling strongly enough about a sport to internalize having control of and interest in a microcosmic world of that one sport, above all else. I'm spread too thin for that, except for professional wrestling.
Management of the Ring is a quick and dirty promotion simulator, in which you are given five years to become the #1 promotion on the planet through nothing more than running good shows and double crossing other promoters on combination shows so you can steal their belts. You're only putting five matches per card, and you don't have to watch them. What matters is the seats getting filled, and the crowd buying into the product. Around the periphery is merchandising, TV rights, and talent scouting. This is an ingenious way to unlock wrestlers in a wrestling video game, of learning the tendencies of your scouts and the territories they know best in order to turn up talents for your company.
It's quality is such that when a version of it launched alongside Fire Pro Wrestling World (which was btw one of the most requested DLC for that game), it could not hold a candle to the razorsharp edge of that product. In a game with a bigger budget, the scouting process would tie into the Steam Workshop and pull in wrestlers from the downloads into your game. Alas, the primary focus of the single player design is the weird visual novel make-a-wrestler mode, so there remains one good version of Management of the Ring and it's here, in the Japanese version of Fire Pro Wrestling 2, which is the only thing I am reviewing about Fire Pro Wrestling 2 and hopefully the only thing I ever review on this website about a Fire Pro game, because if I ever get started thinking about writing about Fire Pro again it's going to be a book.
This, instead, is a review about one of the few times I have actually used Fire Pro Wrestling like it was a video game, and that is for the Management of the Ring mode in Final Fire Pro Wrestling, the Japanese release of this game.
I can't speak to a broad familiarity with management sims of sports teams, because frankly one of the key factors in learning how to play some management sim is feeling strongly enough about a sport to internalize having control of and interest in a microcosmic world of that one sport, above all else. I'm spread too thin for that, except for professional wrestling.
Management of the Ring is a quick and dirty promotion simulator, in which you are given five years to become the #1 promotion on the planet through nothing more than running good shows and double crossing other promoters on combination shows so you can steal their belts. You're only putting five matches per card, and you don't have to watch them. What matters is the seats getting filled, and the crowd buying into the product. Around the periphery is merchandising, TV rights, and talent scouting. This is an ingenious way to unlock wrestlers in a wrestling video game, of learning the tendencies of your scouts and the territories they know best in order to turn up talents for your company.
It's quality is such that when a version of it launched alongside Fire Pro Wrestling World (which was btw one of the most requested DLC for that game), it could not hold a candle to the razorsharp edge of that product. In a game with a bigger budget, the scouting process would tie into the Steam Workshop and pull in wrestlers from the downloads into your game. Alas, the primary focus of the single player design is the weird visual novel make-a-wrestler mode, so there remains one good version of Management of the Ring and it's here, in the Japanese version of Fire Pro Wrestling 2, which is the only thing I am reviewing about Fire Pro Wrestling 2 and hopefully the only thing I ever review on this website about a Fire Pro game, because if I ever get started thinking about writing about Fire Pro again it's going to be a book.