WrestleQuest Was The Biggest Surprise Of PAX East 2022

thegamer.com:

Tucked away in a dark corner of the PAX East convention floor is a little turn-based RPG called WrestleQuest, which turned out to be my favorite game at the show. The Megacat Studios and Skybound Games indie was announced last month and said to feature wrestling legends like “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Booker T, Andre The Giant, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Diamond Dallas Page, and Jeff Jarrett. I have only a basic familiarity with professional wrestlers, so I didn’t expect to connect with WrestleQuest much at all. By the time I finished my one-hour session with the game, I was in love. WrestleQuest is a classic turn-based RPG with deep mechanics, innovative gameplay, and an expansive story about up-and-coming wrestlers in a fantasy toybox world that serves as the ultimate celebration of the heroes of professional wrestling. It may look like a gag game at first blush, but Megacat Studios has taken a clever premise and gone further with it than you can even imagine.

When I sat down for my appointment, the developers told me that professional wrestling and turn-based RPGs actually have a lot in common. It sounded like a dubious claim, but it really is a perfect pairing. WrestleQuest feels like a game that should have been made a long time ago.

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The combat has a foundation in old-school JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and Final Fantasy 6, but the developers of WrestleQuest have found new ways to update the formula and blend it with wrestling conventions at every possible opportunity. Every battle is a wrestling match, in a ring, in front of an audience. While choosing attacks and special abilities (called gimmicks) to weaken and eventually pin your opponent,