WWE Soul Wrestler

WWE Soul Wrestler is a Pro-wrestling simulation crossover game developed by Yuke's, in collaboration with B.B. Studio, Square Enix, Syn Sophia, Visual Concepts 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 the music 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 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, Sam 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
Following its predecessors, Soul Wrestler continues to refine the gameplay of its predecessors, continuing to favour fast-paced of the SmackDown! games and fluidity of the AKI wrestling games rather than the simulation style of 2K installments. 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.

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.