WWE Soul Wrestler

WWE Soul Wrestler is a Pro-wrestling arcade crossover game developed by Yuke's, in collaboration with B.B. Studio, Square Enix, Syn Sophia and Hawke Gaming Industries, and published by Bandai Namco's Sports division, released worldwide on April 3, 2020 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. The game serves as the professional wrestling counterpart to Project X Zone and other crossovers, featuring characters from various popular video game, television, western animation, anime and manga franchises possesed by the souls of the World Wrestling Entertainment personnel hence the title Soul Wrestler.

Production
In E3 2019, a teaser trailer for the new game rendered on the WWE 2K19 engine and publicly displayed, which showcases Marian Hawke, Aya Brea, Rinoa Heartilly, Siegfried Schtauffen, Sophitia Alexandra, Kirito and Ryuko Matoi (all possesed by the souls of The Rock, Triple H, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker, Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar respectively), all prepared to wrestle with Jerry "The King" Lawler says "OH MY GOD! The whole world going insane and out of control! World Wrestling Entertainment will never be always the same...". The teaser ends with all the aforementioned characters charging each other, followed by a text that reads: "July 28, 2020: A great war has begun… WWE SOUL WRESTLER" and Across The Nation by The Union Underground from the 2002-2006 version of WWE RAW plays in the background.

The trailer sparked hype and excitement for millions of anime, and Pro Wrestling fans and gaming community members worldwide, with Bandai Namco and WWE handling promotion and wrestling matches on various cities across North America, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany and South Korea, and on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, where updates and reveals are posted. This was helped when a game before WWE: Day of Reckoning 3 was succeeding with rising sales in which due to the Guest Wrestlers.

With the game slated for release on July 28 of the following year, Jason posted in his Twitter feed that it will be "the ultimate dream pro wrestling crossover that everybody wanted" and feature characters from various series in all kinds of Media with the gameplay style of No Mercy, classic SmackDown! games (most notably Shut Your Mouth and Here Come The Pain) and 2K series combined.

Gameplay
Unlike to the 2K series, Soul Wrestler departs the simulation style of WWE 2K games and returns to the classic fast-paced arcade-styled gameplay and very simplistic controls of the PlayStation era SmackDown! games notably like Shut Your Mouth and Here Comes The Pain and fluidity and a total freedom of customization of the AKI wrestling games like WWF No Mercy. Players are able to select a variety of characters from numerous media all possesed by the souls of past and present WWE wrestlers known as Soul Wrestlers. Players then choose a wide range of arenas to wrestle on This game also includes many new match types, championships and an updated soundtrack. Unrealistic gameplay elements such as Stealing Finishers and high heights from SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth mades a huge return here. The style, feel and theme of WWE Soul Wrestler's Universe is the mixture of the beloved Attitude Era and Ruthless Aggression era, departing the New Era and bringing back alot of the elements from the Attitude Era.

An all-new feature exclusive for Soul Wrestler is the Ultimate Finisher, which adds a new way of winning the match. The SmackDown! logo flashes black and causes the Soul Wrestler to glow in flames while performing the finisher, knocking out the opponent completely. This costs all five finisher slots to pull off, so you have to make it count

Edit a Soul
This section allows you to, as the name suggests, edit your roster. You can choose which wrestlers appear on your rosters by clicking on their name in order to view their Settings and their Relationships and by clicking on the brand logo underneath their name. Settings show off the wrestlers attributes, abilities, finishers, hit point ratio, crowd reaction and attires (if they have any alternative attires) and can be changed freely without microtransaction roadblocks.

Edit Teams
This section, again, as the name suggests, allows you to edit the teams on your roster. There should already be a few premade teams on your roster unless you have removed them all; you can also add more teams with the limit being seventy teams in total, more than enough to work with. The events of your shows from WWE Universe mode may also lead to teams being created or disbanded as their allies and enemies list changes and the events of your show unfold, this can lead to some extremely strange random pairings. Upon editing or creating a new team you can name your team, choose the announcement name that best describes your team, edit the members of the team, the limit per team being five and you can even edit your teams entrance and tag team move set.

Title Management
This section, simply put; you can choose who is champion. Leaving a title Vacant will make the title defunct and therefore won’t be used for your shows.

Statistics
The Statistics sections allows you to view the statistics of your very own gameplay. In the very first section, Ranking Statistics 1, you can view which soul wrestlers you have played with the most and how many times you have played as that respective wrestler.

In Ranking Statistics 2 you can go a little more into detail with the type of matches you have played with a list of yur top ten most played matches being on display and how often you have played each match type listed. You can also view your Career Highlights which highlight such things like; win ratio for title matches, most opponents defeated in Slobber Knocker, number of wins with all parts at critical, number of ring collapse knockouts, number of finisher reversals and number of Royal Rumble wins.

Finally, you can view your win/loss record via the Match Records And Statistics section. How many times you have won, lost and drawn are disaplyed and the various methods in which you won or lost those matches with such as pinfall, submission, K.O., DQ, count out and other method (referring to matches with specific win conditions, such as climbing over the steel cage). To the right side you can also view how many times you have used a specific ability and you can also view how many times you have caused destruction with a table, a ladder and a chair.

Quick Match
Quick Match mode allows players to start a single match against a random opponent, without the need for setting up rules or choosing the opponent.

The Best of Wrestling Re-Imagined
The Best of Wrestling Re-Imagined is all-new game mode that revolves around the iconic matches, events and milestones of WWE, ECW and WCW's history re-imagined with Soul Wrestlers.
 * Chronicle 1: The Beginning of Wrestlemania
 * Chronicle 2: The Monday Night Wars
 * Chronicle 3: From Federation to Entertainment
 * Chronicle 4: Ruthless Aggression
 * Chronicle 5: 2007 - The Year That Changed
 * Chronicle 6: Enter PG Era
 * Chronicle 7: Reality
 * Chronicle 8: The New Era
 * Chronicle Final: The Tale of Souls

Soul Wrestler Showcases

 * Parasite Eve (Aya Brea Showcase)
 * The Hawk (Marian Hawke)
 * The Galbadian Rattlesnake (Rinoa Heartilly)
 * The Princess Blade (Yumiko Shaku)
 * From Angel to Cop (Sophitia Alexandra)
 * Slow Chemical Lady (Tifa Lockhart)
 * Darscen and RKO (Isara Gunther)
 * PLANT Life (Cagalli Yula Athha)
 * Swiss Chin Music (Noel Vermillion)
 * Neptunia (Neptune and Nepgear)

GM Mode
Main Article: WWE Soul Wrestler/GM Mode

WWE Soul Wrestler Universe
In the WWE Soul Wrestler Universe mode you have complete control over the show, you can book matches, determine who is on which brand, you can create your own tag teams between existing soul wrestler, you can create feuds between your favourite and least favourite soul wrestler, you can control the world within your fingertips.

Play Matches
This section is where you can book your matches, put titles on the line and create your own storylines. The Play Matches section will come with a random, pre-existing card and it is up to you to change it how you wish. You can book any match with any Soul Wrestler you have unlocked, including your own created wrestlers.

You can choose to Simulate the matches so the winners of the match are determined for you or you can Play the match in order to test your might against the other members of the roster and even edit the stipulations of the match booked with the ‘Match Rules' option and the Match Pace option in order to make the match ‘Normal', ‘Quick' or ‘Epic' which will determine how the match is laid out.

It is within the confines of this section that you can achieve the majority of the WWE Soul Wrestler Universe mode unlockables and trophies that need to be achieved.

Calendar
Clicking on Calendar will open up the calendar for the WWE year. It will show which shows are booked and on what days and you can choose to customize the calendar in order to change the day or date of events. If you can't be bothered simulating through all of the booked shows or want to do a certain event straight away, simply click on the event you want to simulate to and allow for the calendar to be simulated all the way up to that certain point.

Rivalries
This section, as the name suggests, allows you to set up specific rivalries for your shows. You can choose to view the current rivalries which will take you to a list of rivalries on your current brands and will also allow you to delete and create rivalries. By selecting to create a rivalry you can choose the type (one on one or two on two) and the duration of the rivalry (short rivalry; four weeks, medium rivalry; eight weeks, or long rivalry; twelve weeks) and, naturally, you can choose who is involved in the rivalry.

You can also choose to play a current rivalry, this option will take you straight to the first Rivalry Match booked on your calendar, whether it is the top rivalry on a specific brand or not. On top of all of thise, you can also view the rivalries that happened in the past and who happened to win a specific rivalry, some interesting rivalries are randomly created.

WWE.com
In this section you will find the news that comes as a result of the past week's shows, events such as a new champion being crowned can be found in the WWE.com section. If you click on Latest News you can open up to a new section which provides you with even more news regarding what is going on with your brands and your shows.

In this section you can also view the current rankings in the WWE. By clicking on the current rankings you can view the current rankings for each championship currently in contention for each current brand and see how the superstars on your roster are faring against the other superstars of the roster. Each wrestler will be placed into title contention for the particular title they are most suited for on your roster and superstars can be added or removed depending on how well they perform on the shows throughout a weekly basis.

You can Edit the ranks how you wish so the wrestler you want on top is on top, however they still need to do well on a weekly basis to maintain the number one contenders position, otherwise you are going to have to Edit the ranks constantly to keep them at the top. This is a good way to make sure certain wrestlers win specific championships.

There is also a Stats section in the WWE.com section which allows you to look at the statistics of your championships, like how many times the current champion has held the championship and how long they have held the championship for currently. Clicking into a specific championship belt will allow you to view the rankings of the championship belt and find out the amount of times a specific superstar has held the belt and how many weeks they have held the belt for.

You can also view the statistics of your shows currently active, you can view things like who were the past champions of your major, minor, tag and divas titles and you can also view historical statistics such as who has held the titles of your specific brand the most times and who has held the titles of your specific brand for the longest period of time.

You can also view things such as the number of opponents eliminated in a single Royal Rumble, the most time spent in a Royal Rumble, the most wins of a Royal Rumble, most opponents eliminated in total and number of appearances in a Royal Rumble. You can also view things such as the most wins at Wrestlemania, the most appearances at Wrestlemania and the most amount of main events at Wrestlemania, number of Money In The Bank wins and number of wins after cashing in the Money In The Bank. All of the default statistics generally reference actual, real-life statistics.

Customising Universe
There are sub-several sections to the WWE Soul Wrestler Universe mode.

Edit Calendar
This section allows you to edit or delete shows currently on the calendar, you can change things like the name of the show, the logo, the roster, the arena the show is held in, the match-up screen, the championships in contention on the show, the amount of matches per card and whether there is a universe draft. On top of all of that, you can even add your own ‘Major' or ‘Minor' created events to the calendar, ‘Major' events allow for a much grander roster with more championships to contest for and greater storylines to be created and ‘Minor' events allow for a smaller roster, no championships can be exclusive to this event but they can be defended on the actual show when you create the match card, it is, as the name suggests, simply a minor show.

Edit Superstars
This section allows you to customize every single superstar in the magnitude way higher that of WWF No Mercy's creation suit, whether they are on your roster or not. This section will list every single Soul Wrestler you have unlocked, created or downloaded and you will be able to edit things like their attributes, their abilities, their finishers, their hit point ratios and even their crowd reaction alignment. You can also edit their Contendership Settings; this is simply another method to pushing your desired superstar up the ranks. You can also edit their Relationships, whether they have Allies, Rivals or whether they are a part of a team (the creation of a team can be done in many ways, this being just one).

You can also look at the superstars Statistics and see how they are faring with their career on your shows. The Statistics section will show things like how many times the particular superstar has won a specific championship, how long they have been active on your roster, how many Royal Rumble wins, appearances, opponents eliminated and time in the Royal Rumble they have managed to accumulate, how many Wrestlemania appearances, main event appearances, wins and win ratio they have managed to accumulate and how many Money In The Bank wins and ratio of wins after cashing in that they have managed to accumulate.

You can also edit their status in this section.

Edit Rosters
This section allows you to edit your roster. You can choose which Soul wrestlers appear on your rosters by adding or removing wrestlers from the roster. You can also rename your brand and change your brand's logo and even choose to add or remove soul wrestlers from your current roster list.

Edit Teams
This section allows you to edit the teams on your roster. There are premade teams unless removed by the player; you can also add more teams with the limit being seventy teams in total, more than enough to work with. The events of your shows may also lead to teams being created or disbanded as their allies and enemies list changes and the events of your show unfold, this can lead to some extremely strange random pairings. Upon editing or creating a new team you can name your team, choose the announcement name that best describes your team, edit the members of the team, the limit per team being five and you can even edit your teams entrance and tag team move set.

Edit Titles
This section, simply put; you can choose who is champion. Leaving a title Vacant will make the title defunct and therefore won't be used for your shows.

Story Options
These are simply the options for the WWE Soul Wrestler Universe mode, this section allows you to choose whether Automatic Rivalries stories, Team Breakups/Creations stories, Crowd Reaction Changing stories or Injury stories are on or off, this allows you to control what type of stories appear on your shows. Toggle the items on this screen On/Off to enable or disable stories occurring within the WWE Universe. You can set all stories to Off, or else toggle the individual story types to disable only stories leading to specific negative outcomes.

Reset WWE Soul Wrestler Universe
This option allows you to reset the WWE Universe mode back to its default settings; this means match progress, stable information, shows, rosters and superstars will be reset to their default settings. You may wish to edit some of the settings after resetting the WWE Universe mode to change them back to the desired settings. This option can help you start all over again without having to go through too much effort to do so.

Towers Mode
Towers Mode

Road to WrestleMania
Road to WrestleMania

MyCareer
Players will take on the role of an CAW created wrestler in the vein of WWE: Day of Reckoning duology and follow the evolution of their WWE career, from the beginning as a jobber (Independent wrestling house shows), entering WWE in the NXT brand to the big three brands (SmackDown!, RAW and ECW) then the main event at WrestleMania where you fight Vince McMahon's cerebral soul Aura and eventually to the WWE Hall of Fame. The mode also features a morality system to allow players to decide whether they want to play as a face (fan favorite) or a heel (rule breaker) with each choice having an effect on the meter. There is also a 1-5 star match rating system that rates matches based on technique, pacing and momentum, with squash matches getting lower ratings and back-and-forth matches getting higher ratings. Wins and losses have little effect on match ratings with the goal being to put on the best match possible. Decisions will affect outcomes in this mode.

Proving Ground
Proving Ground pits players against an overpowered Ryuko Matoi (under Brock Lesnar's Soul). The player will choose one of the Anime NXT Superstars to face Ryuko in a one-on-one match with a 30-minute time limit.

Welcome to the Soul Wrestler
Welcome to the Soul Wrestler pits players against five random Superstars in order of their status (Jobber, Midcard, Upper Midcard, Main Event and Specialty).

Minigames
The minigames makes a big time return for WWE Soul Wrestler after their first and only appearance in the PSP version of WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006. The minigames are:
 * Sailor Moon's Magic Challenge
 * Texas Hold'Em!
 * Peashy's Airplane Game
 * Svetlana's Belly Dance Game
 * Aya's Shooting Range
 * Quiz

Roster
Main Article: WWE Soul Wrestler/Roster

Roster Gallery
Main Article: WWE Soul Wrestler/Roster Gallery

Opening Themes

 * The Union Underground - Across The Nation
 * Marilyn Manson - The Beautiful People
 * Powerman 5000 - Worlds Collide
 * Slam Jam - Thorn In Your Eye (for RAW IS WAR Arena)
 * JAM Project - DESTINY ~Great War~

Entrance Tracks

 * Motorhead - The Game (for Aya Brea)
 * Jim Johnston - Electrifying (for Marian Hawke)
 * Jim Johnston - Sexy Boy (for Noel Vermillion)
 * Jim Johnston - Break The Walls Down! (for Akira Howard)
 * Jim Johnston - Loaded (for the Brights)
 * Saliva - I Walk Alone (for Yumiko Shaku)
 * P.O.D. - Booyaka 619 (for Haruhi Suzumiya)
 * Alter Bridge - Metalingus (for Elie MacDowell)
 * EndeverafteR - No More Words (for Joshua Bright)
 * Lil Kim - Rock and Roll (for Miyuki Sawashiro)
 * Breaking Point - One of a Kind (for Asuka Kazama)
 * Our Lady Peace - Whatever (for Misato Tanaka and Allison Jakes)
 * Killswitch Engage - This Fire Burns (for Eclair "Lightning" Farron)
 * Jim Johnston - I Won't Do What You Tell Me (for Rinoa Heartilly)
 * Jim Johnston & Rich Luzzi [of Rev Theory] - Voices (for Isara Gunther)
 * Limp Bizkit - Rollin' (for Sophitia Alexandra)
 * Gackt and Jim Johnston - NO CHANCE IN HELL ~WWE Soul Wrestler Remix~ (for Aura)
 * Jam Project - Beauty Warrior (original soundtrack) (for Christa Britta Sugimoto)

Soundtracks

 * Billy Ray - Scream at Me
 * Bumpy Knuckles - Bang Bang
 * Bumpy Knuckles - You Don't Want War
 * Dark New Day - Pieces
 * The Dillinger Escape Plan - Unretrofied
 * Fireball Ministry - The Broken
 * Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction (SmackDown vs. RAW 2006 remix)
 * Not Forgotten - Waiting
 * Poet - Crush Kill Destroy (SmackDown remix)
 * Ron J - I Ain't Going Nowhere
 * Static-X - Start a War
 * Vada - King of the Mat
 * Nonpoint - Alive and Kicking
 * Nonpoint - Bullet with a Name
 * Allele - Stitches
 * Godsmack - The Enemy
 * Bullets and Octane - I Ain't Your Saviour
 * Three Days Grace - Animal I Have Become
 * Three Days Grace - Riot
 * Lil Scrappy - Money in the Bank
 * Black Stone Cherry - Lonely Train
 * Ghostface Killah - The Champ
 * Rise Against - Survive
 * Versus the World - Forgive Me

Ending Themes

 * Jam Project - WAR OF THE WORLDS
 * Jam Project and Jim Johnston - HEAVEN'S DOOR ~WWE Remix~

Create-A-Soul Wrestler Movesets

 * Soul 1: Kenny Omega
 * Soul 2: Christopher Daniels
 * Soul 3: Jyushin Liger
 * Soul 4: Adam Page
 * Soul 5: Jay Lethal
 * Soul 6: Riho
 * Soul 7: Hikaru Shida
 * Soul 8: Kip Sabian
 * Soul 9: Mayu Iwatani
 * Soul 10: Chris Sabin
 * Soul 11: Alex Shelley
 * Soul 12: Nick Jackson
 * Soul 13: Matt Jackson
 * Soul 14: Cheerleader Melissa
 * Soul 15: Leva Bates
 * Soul 16: Hana Kimura
 * Soul 17: Dynamite Kid
 * Soul 18: Luther
 * Soul 19: Sammy Guevara
 * Soul 20: Luchasaurus
 * Soul 21: Erik Kimerer
 * Soul 22: Jungle Girl Kyona
 * Soul 23: Kagetsu
 * Soul 24: Shark Boy
 * Soul 25: Rocky Johnson
 * Soul 26: Pac
 * Soul 27: Great Muta
 * Soul 28: Colt Cabana
 * Soul 29: Keiji Muto
 * Soul 30: PCO
 * Soul 31: Brandi Rhodes
 * Soul 32: Scorpio Sky

Trivia

 * Christa Britta Sugimoto, Rianna Summerfield and Svetlana Anne Blanchard are original characters unique to WWE Soul Wrestler created by Jason Hawke.
 * The characters from the Sailor Moon franchise in this game are voiced by the cast of the 2014 Viz Redub.
 * The RAW and SmackDown! arenas are from 2002-2006. As Jason said that those Arenas are his favorites back in the Ruthless Aggression era of WWE alongside the beloved Attitude Era.
 * A lot of shoutouts from the classic SmackDowns! are there including the SmackDown! logo everytime when you performing finishers and the loading screens are reminiscent of SmackDown 2, even you can unlock loading screens that feature fan art.
 * The Box Art is a shout out to WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth.
 * Some of the characters that originated from media that did not dubbed or never localized outside of Japan are given English voice actors
 * The PPV arenas are mixed from all eras.
 * If you completed MyCareer for the tenth time, you unlock the Old School Universe mode, which can be toggle in the WWE Soul Wrestler Universe mode and is a shoutout to the Season Mode of the first SmackDown! Game, which it was criticized back then.
 * The game is filled with various easter eggs, references and CAW movesets to pop culture and rivaling professional wrestling promotions.