The Toy Boxes' various promotions are realized through the lens of role-playing games and a toy store in the same creative and charming way that Paper Mario is for RPGs and a craft store, except here that’s layered with wrestling Easter eggs in a way that is more than just simple decoration.

It feels way more organically engaging than some other little storylines, like having to rescue a rival wrestler because they know a shortcut to your destination.Īs is tradition with the 2D RPG of yesteryear, your party of misfits travels the world through towns and dungeons, some of which look pretty great visually thanks to the iron claw it has on the Saturday Morning cartoon style and dazzling use of color. Among my favorites is a small side arc where a lucha libre legend is forced to choose between his family and his role as the region’s champion. The small bright spots of genuinely touching story and character play pop up consistently enough to pull through over the almost 40-hour tale, though. The flaws stick out most when control switches back and forth between these two groups of heroes, often abruptly stopping the flow of one story to make incremental progress in another. Sadly, the flimsy plot fails its attempt to hide the “go here, fight this” nature of WrestleQuest’s design under narrative face paint. This is in contrast with Muchacho Man’s less compelling quest to be the Toy Box’s best wrestler, and slowly finding out the hard way why that’s unlikely to happen. The story of the Honest Bucks tag team slowly growing apart on their quest to achieve stardom and honor their family lineage is a strong thread that runs through much of the adventure, even if it drags you through diversions that feel more like busywork than meaningful plot developments or twists. Even so, this sort of “everything is wrestling” approach hits more than it misses.

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