Almost everything about this greedy, Battle-Pass-infested, Microtransaction-infested product is either bad or no better than it was in the previous games in the series.


The "My Rise" story mode (the main reason I bought it) starts out OK but the combination of writing so bad that it is actually reminiscent of late-stage corpo, Ari Emanuel era WWE (face-heel turns that literally come out of nowhere, completely irrational grudges that appear out of nowhere, etc.) and TERRIBLE gameplay design really dragged it down. (I lost track of how many times I failed and had to start a stage over BECAUSE I won a match without doing some stupid arbitrary task like "execute a running kick while your opponent is stunned in the top right corner" first.)

In fact, the way they made every other story battle a long checklist of arbitrary tasks meant I was just glad I finally got these out of the way as opposed to enjoying them.

That being said, the final match WAS just a regular match without any weird objectives other than winning and it DID feel really good to defeat the hateful, dishonest, scheming corpo manager at the end. I don't regret playing the story... I just wish it were better. If the rest of the story had been as good as the beginning and end, I would have liked it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3772662602


This abomination is one of the worst things ever made by a human but you have to finish it if you want to unlock characters like AJ Lee, JBL, etc. Several of the matches are completely bogus 3-way matches that are almost impossible to win via skill because no matter how well you play, one of the TWO NPCs will break up your pin or submission attempt before you can finish.

"Winning" this mode is literally just a matter of playing it over an over again until you get lucky and stun both NPCs at once which is literally the only way to win... and that's not a matter of skill; it's just rolling the dice OVER AND OVER AGAIN until you get lucky.

Oh, and these terrible 3-way matches can also LITERALLY take all day because there is no time limit to how long they can go on with both NPCs taking turns disrupting your pins over and over until you either get lucky and somehow stun them both at the same time or have to quit the game to do something in real life.

I hope whoever decided to lock popular characters behind this garbage-fire of a mode works in another industry now... and the same goes for the person who decided to obscure the screen with secondary objectives that often block your view of the action ESPECIALLY in the heinous 3-way matches.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3771228424

As usual, the worst part of the game is the "My Faction" mode which literally only exists to sell lootboxes and is in every way a terrible experience. Worse, they delete it every couple years (the "My Faction" mode for WWE 2K 24 is already inoperable) so if you are GULLIBLE enough to play My Faction, you will lose everything no more than two years later. This wouldn't be so bad if it were just a bonus mode but unfortunately, they lock some characters, cosmetics, etc. behind "My Faction" to punish you for not playing it.


The best thing about this game, and the series in general, is that you can sort of play coop matches by starting a Tag match and putting your friends on one team and the computer on the other. (Tornado Tag is the best for this purpose because it allows multiple players to be in the ring at the same time.)

HOWEVER, this only works via couch coop or Remote Play Together because if you try to play coop in the lobbies, it FORCES you to play against the other human player even in a Tag match. I don't know why they disabled coop in online lobbies but I assume it has to do with some toxic corpo whose AI assistant told him that people spend more money on PVP games so he should remove PVE for online play.


There is a LOT of good in this game including the character creator and other customization features and the sheer size of the roster but unfortunately, almost all of that was already in WWE 2K 25 which had less live service BS than this one.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3772508073


One thing I really love about recent WWE 2K games is that the "Jukebox" section allows you to choose what music you will hear in the game when you are in menus or whatever... and some of it is pretty good. Some of the intro tracks, such as the one for AJ Styles, are quite good and the game also features legitimate songs that exist entirely outside of the WWE ecosystem such as CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE by Ecca Vandal.

Of course, your taste may be different than mine but the great thing about the jukebox feature is that you can adjust which songs show up in the game to suit YOUR taste. (This is also present in 2k 25 and 2K 24.)


One thing I DO unambiguously like about this game is that they put a lot of CM Punk into it (the showcase mode is all about him and it has some video cutscenes of the real guy talking and providing instructions where he really comes off well. Before this game, I liked CM Punk in a theoretical sense but after playing it, I almost feel like CM Punk is a cool big brother whom I respect. (I don't often have any respect for celebrities.)


If this were a standalone game, I'd give it a clear recommendation but as a slightly altered version of WWE 2K 25 which is almost identical in all the good ways it's simply not worth the money if you already have WWE 2K 24 or 25.

It's not worth getting to play online thanks to their disabling coop in online matches. Remote Play Together, which still works with WWE 2K 24 (which is no longer online and has been removed from sale) is actually a better experience than the PVP-only online multiplayer.

Really the only good reasons to buy this, if you already have [ii]2K 25,[/i] are to get the few additions to the roster (AJ Lee and Goldberg for instance) or to play the new stories in the "Showcase" mode or the latest "My Rise" story mode, the latter of which came just close enough to being good to make me really mad at how annoying it became at times. (I still liked the ending though.)

As a game in its own right, I'd give it a 7/10 but as an follow on to 2K 25, it's a 2/10 because nearly everything in this that is good was already in the previous ones and the changes they made (like adding a Battle Pass) make it worse.


If you don't already have a recent WWE 2K game, this is an impressive product if you don't waste your time on the "live-service" BS. On the other hand, if you have 2K 24 or 25 as I do, you can probably skip this one unless you are willing to buy it for the new story content.

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Got this on 50% discount and honestly its not even worth that. I have player 2k15, 2k23, 2k24, 2k25 & this and i can say this is the worst as far as gameplay is concerned. True they improved visuals buts that's just it.
They got new features but destroyed the old and good ones. Introduced season pass, a tactic gain more money trying to mimic Street Fighter and other simiilar games but, 2K's that plan just backfired. If you got the money and feeling magnanimous you can buy full game or else look for 75% or more discount since, this game is not worth more than that.