Legends of Wrestling II

"It's a shame that this game didn't get it's own commercial!"

Legends of Wrestling 2 is a game that all wrestling fans can enjoy. It features over 70 of the greatest grapplers of all time facing off in a game for Yesterday's, today's, and tommorrow's wrestling fans. This is the greatest Gamecube wrestling game that I have, and now I'll explain exactly what makes it that great.

CONTROLS - 7/10: The controls of this game are kind of difficult. The moves can often get repetative. You have to press about 2 buttons to do a basic grapple move, and it's quite easy for you're opponent to counter or reverse you're moves. Thankfully, this game has the moves that should be in all wrestling games. You have you're strikes, taunts, grapples, and finishing manuvers. Once you've beaten you're opponent up enough, you are able to do a finisher to them. You have to get you're opponent in the right position for a finisher, and then use the control pad to actually do the finisher. You get about 15 seconds to do as many finishers as you can(you can uaslly do about 2 in that time).

SOUND - 10/10: The sound in this game is very good. Each wrestler has their own entrance music(except some Tag Teams which have the smae music for each partner). The entrance songs are either the real thing that the wrestlers actually had a one point in their career, or are very similar. For example, Hulk Hogan has his "American made" music that he had in WCW(although I would have prefered him to have one of his WWF/E themes). Bret Hart's entrance song isn't his exact song, but very similar. This game has no match commentary, but it does have a ring announcer. The ring announcer introduces the match competitors to the ring. The announcer also tells the wrestlers' height and weight. During the match, there is music playing in the backround. They are songs that are actually preformed by various music bands(one of them is "Headstrong" by Trapt). The wrestlers actually moan and groan when they are getting hurt. In conclusion, the sound is a very strong point in this game.

GAMEPLAY - 9/10: The gameplay is without a shadow of a doubt, the best part of Legends of Wrestling 2. You have you're basic wrestling game modes like exhibition, career, Create-a-wrestler, and options. Legends of wrestling 2 has a Theater mode where you can see Career movies, and concept art. The create-a-wrestler mode isn't as good as other wrestling games. They left out quite a bit of stuff. If you make a mistake while creating a wrestler, you will more than likely have to start over form the begining. The Career mode is like a Season mode in other wrestling games. You have to pick a wrestler and take him through a series of matches to become the best ever You randomly pick a storyline to play in. You start off in Little regions facing jobbers. When the promoter is impressed with you're work, you move on to face the good wrestlers. Eventually you'll move on to the World Championship match. When you win the title in 1 region, you move on to another until you've covered all 5 regions. Then you move on to the World region, where you go for the World title. In Exhibition mode, you earn coins to use in the shop. You need to earn greeen coins, and gamble for the red and blue coins. The Gambling system is kind of lame because if you lsoe you're green coins, you just wasted time winning matches. The amount of green coins you get depends on the importance of the match you win. A basic match wll get you 1 coin, a gimmick match liek a Laddr match or Cage match will get you 3 coins, and a Tag Match will get you 11 coins, unless you're defending the Tag Team championship, then it'll get you 8 coins. Overall, the gameplay is great.

BUY OR RENT: You obviously wouldn't want to buy a game and end up hating it, so rent first. If you like it, then buy it. I'm not the kind of person who rents games, so I bought this right away. I personally enjoyed this game. If you're lucky, you will too.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/12/04