While I was growing up, I was never a big wrestling fan. You can't grow up in the '90s without being aware of wrestling to some degree. "Macho Man" Randy Savage, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Brett Hart, the Undertaker and more were so omnipresent that they transcended their ring performances. I can't speak for everyone, but even as a non-fan, I had more than my share of action figures and bulky semi-articulated avatars of exaggerated over-the-top personalities. They were darn good action figures and often took part in my toy adventures. Why do I mention all of this? Because WrestleQuest is the video game embodiment of that exact concept. It's wrestling as seen through the imagination of a young kid who made his toy Jurassic Park raptor fight some of the WWF's finest.

The entire game is set in a kid's playroom and focuses on sentient toys. Think "Toy Story" but with more body slams. Players control of Randy "Muchacho Man" Santos, a toy (seemingly a bootleg of the man himself) determined to become the best damn wrestler. A talented up-and-coming rookie, he sets out on a quest to prove himself to the biggest toy federation. Unfortunately for him, there's a whole lot getting in the way, including crooked promotions, egotistical rivals, and a lot of angry toys.

WrestleQuest's story is basically a mix of a tale of a down-home wrestler who makes it big and a giant homage to a '90s-era toybox. A good chunk of the game's humor revolves around recognizing cheap and silly toys from two decades ago well enough to get the references, and the rest is humor is seen through the lens of a very specific era of wrestling. I have a hard time judging how it will fly outside of the niche audience to whom it appeals. It's still a largely goofy story about a toy-based wrestling league, so it's not impenetrable, but a lot of the jokes that made me smile were tinged with nostalgia.

As you might gather, the combat focuses on a wrestling ring. Both sides can bring in up to three fighters at once. From there, it uses a standard turn-based combat system. You take turns attacking or using special moves. Combat has a timed button press element, where certain special moves or attacks trigger randomized button-pressing quick time events (QTEs). Success can increase damage, while failure can lower damage or prevent the attack from occurring. You can even have the wrestlers team up to perform double or triple techniques for absurd amounts of damage.

The wrestling element comes into play in a few ways. Perhaps the biggest is the hype meter. Hype is a measure of how excited the crowd is for you. As you build hype, you begin to gain bonuses, such as improved attack and defense, regenerating MP or extra money. Certain moves also require a minimum level of hype to be performed. Enemy attacks, screwing up button prompts, and other elements can cause you to lose hype, and once it falls below a certain level, you weaken or gain penalties. You can't just win a wrestling match; you need to win it with style.

Hype can be built in a few different ways. Most actions build at least a little hype, but each character can be customized with a specific "showmanship" style that determines how they build hype best. One style builds up hype quickly by performing standard attacks and knocking out enemies. Another does better with debuffs and timed button presses. There's even an underdog style that excels at building up hype when you're losing. In addition, you can also choose to taunt instead of taking an action. Taunting builds hype quickly but causes the taunter to take more damage. (You can eventually find items and skills to lessen the negative effects of taunting or turn them into boons.)

Also important is that you can't defeat every enemy. There are standard enemies who can be beaten up until they go down, but most humanoid enemies are classified as wrestlers. When a wrestler (friendly or not) goes down, they only stay down if they're pinned. You have to complete a quick QTE to pin an enemy or button-mash to break free of an enemy's pin. Failure to escape from a pin means you are removed from the match, while escape restores a sliver of health, giving you another chance to turn it around. However, each successive pin attempt becomes tougher to escape from. For enemies, this makes it easier to finish the minigame, while for allies, you'll eventually not be able to escape the pin.

Hype and the pinning mechanic also play into the scripted battles mechanic. As you may know, wrestling is scripted. I know, please, take some time to recover from the shock. This plays out by certain scheduled wrestling matches having a script that you're encouraged to play out. This can be anything from using certain moves on opponents to letting one of your team take a fall before you turn around the fight. Completing these objectives not only earns special rewards but often a huge advantage. One early fight encourages you to let the enemies get off a special move, and if you do (after stealing it from them first), you take control of their giant wrecking ball and use it to instantly win the fight.

There's also a nice variety of playable characters split among the various crew. The game might be called WrestleQuest, but there's a variety of non-wrestling characters, such as a teacher doll who attacks by using various lessons and classes, such as a chemistry class being a fire spell. Another is a soldier action figure whose idea of wrestling involves high explosives and machine guns. Each character has a shockingly long list of skills and abilities and multiple combo attacks with every other character in the game. There is even a morality "face" and "heel" mechanic where characters gain special bonuses and moves based on whether you're making choices based on being a good guy or a jerk. Heck, there are even summon attacks that let you call in real-life wrestlers like Andre the Giant to do huge (and costly) super-attacks.

Overall, the combat system is a lot of fun. It suffers from some minor problems, such as the fact that some moves are so much better than others that there's little encouragement to use the weaker moves, but it makes up for it with an enthusiasm and sense of style that successfully evokes the feeling of a "kid playing with wrestling figures." It can also be surprisingly punishing at times, and if you go too long without improving gear or don't consider hype, you can easily lose.

Unfortunately, WrestleQuest has one significant issue that really drags it down: The game is slow. It's extremely slow. In particular, the combat animations can be glacial. They look great the first time you see them, but beyond a certain point, I was desperate for a "skip animation" or fast-forward button. There's one character whose entire gimmick is built around taunting with an agonizingly slow animation where they toddle over to the ropes, climb them, do a pose, climb down, and toddle back; it takes longer than a full fight in some other games. Likewise, the QTEs tend to make combat drag a bit, to the point where I actually defaulted to weaker moves that don't involve QTEs so they would finish faster. Even the cool gimmick where you complete certain scripted objectives can sometimes drag things out because you have to wait for one of your characters to get downed.

I'm usually not opposed to slow combat, but it's incredibly easy to see players getting bored because battles take so much longer than they need to. There are some ways to alleviate this as the game progresses, but the pace needs to be snappier or save the long animations for the special moves. The game lets you turn on various accessibility cheats (such as always doing maximum damage, always succeeding pins, or immortality), but they're more of a patch than a solution.

It's a shame the slowness works against it because WrestleQuest looks fantastic. The character animations and models are wonderful. They do a great job of capturing the feel of different toys, including the bulbously proportioned wrestling toys of the '90s, There are a lot of cute touches to the various attack animations and an immensely delightful variety of things to see. Even the environments are full of little touches that make it feel like a kid's playroom. (My favorite is a "war zone" that is clearly set on someone's tabletop wargame set, something I remember doing as a kid.) The music is also quite nice and fits the tone well. There's no real voice acting, but a lot of voice clips, including some from famous wrestlers, fit the tone.

WrestleQuest is a charming, cute and heartfelt game that is laser-targeted at a very specific group. It's not even so much wrestling fans as those who grew up playing with wrestling toys in some fashion. That isn't to say it's inaccessible outside of that demographic, but it's dedicated in its purpose and does it well. It's far too slow for its own good, and a lot of the charm and fun can wear out their welcome after you watch the same lengthy animation for the umpteenth time. If you're a '90s kid or a fan of wrestling or unique RPGs, WrestleQuest is probably worth a look.

Score: 8.0/10