Beast Wrestler sucks, but I think you already know that. Telenet's isometric kaiju brawler has exactly one thing going for it, and that's the monster designs by Yasushi Nirasawa. Beyond that, all players have to look forward to is one of the worst fighting engines to ever appear in a 1v1 game. Maybe it's intentionally bad because mankind shouldn't be subjecting dragons to genetic experiments. Instead of powerful warriors, they become horrifying abominations that spend every waking moment in constant agonizing pain. Unable to live or die, these once beautiful creatures are forced to fight other members of their brood. The arena they're trapped in is lined with invisible wires that deliver 100-million-volt shocks to anything that tries to escape. Damn. Now I want a game where mutant dragons turn against their human masters and wipe them all out.
The basic idea is that combatants wear each other down with strikes and grabs, then go for the special attack. When this ultra-powerful move lands, the opponent is knocked down and loses one of their three lives. Winners are decided by whomever is the first to erase their opposition's lives. Makes sense, right? Special attacks are finishers in all but name, and this is (presumably) a wrestling game. To keep bouts paced appropriately, a special attack is only available after 20 or so seconds have passed. Once used, then the wrestler must wait another 20 seconds before they can get another. There is something of a strategy to knowing the opponent's finisher and then baiting them into wasting it.
Fights are complete shit. Each beast tends to have inexplicable hitboxes, making strikes either impossible to land or overpowered. There are at least a couple mutants that crawl on all fours, and they have a tail attack that's completely useless. I'm not sure if the winner of a grapple is determined by a timed button-press or mashing, but it never seems to matter when fighting the CPU. There's one workable strategy and it involves staying just out of their attack range and landing repeat strikes. Beyond that, all you can do is hope that your monster has a special attack that isn't total garbage. Where this gets hilarious is that if you're playing Tournament mode, the starting beast has Magnum Dash, one of the best special attacks in the entire game. Eventually, you'll have to combine Dragon DNA to get a fused beast, which means giving up Magnum Dash for something else. That something else is always going to be worse. By the end of the game, you're likely to be some bipedal slime dragon with a special attack that's almost impossible to land.
I can't even begin to describe how idiotic this move is. It's some sort of flying slime bite, but it only hits opponents that are lying down. The angle and timing have to be perfect, or else the fucking thing whiffs and you have to wait 20+ seconds for another try. I can also say with 99.999% certainty that the move won't work if the beast is running north in either direction. Either the dev-team was playing a prank, or they were actually serious about the "genetically modified dragons are bad" nonsense I literally just made up. Otherwise, I can't see how anyone would make something this bad on purpose. There are countless fighting games with awful moves, but it's not like I have to use them to win a match. In Beast Wrestler, either I learn the most ridiculous move ever, or I don't get to see the lousy ending and justify my wasted time with a semblance of closure.
All I have left to say about this mess is that it deserves whatever Bottom 25 Mega Drive Games list it might find itself in. There isn't any hidden depth that the "casual" gaming audience is failing to understand. Matches are nothing more than dysfunctional drek. It's not even dumb fun. It's just dumb.
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