Fire Pro Wrestling World - World Wonder Ring Stardom Collaboration DLC

Its a much better looking DLC that the New Japan one. All the character models look like the wrestlers. They got the sounds and the themes in too. The only problem is that there aren't enough wrestlers. Hope they work a little more with Stardom and give out a free DLC. I still really like it though.

A great DLC including some of the stars of the (in my opinion) best female wrestling promotion!

Is it technically worth the $20 for what you get? No. Is this possibly the last ever Fire Pro and I want to chuck some money at them to keep new content coming? Yes. It's probably the least content out of any of their DLC's, but they've took a gamble on a smaller promotion, and I'm happy to support that to keep them trying new things.

As a long time joshi fanatic, the World Wonder Ring Stardom Collaboration is an awesome addition to the much beloved Fire Pro series. While I understand that many may be reluctant about this DLC due to its price tag, I am happy to report that not a minute has gone by where I have regretted my purchase. The inclusion of more female parts and voicelines has already positively impacted my Fire Pro experience, and reignited my interest to revisit my stable of female edits and update all of them accordingly. The voicelines, alone, include long promos that add a ton of personality to edits on top of the diverse attire parts. The new moves and faces also add depth to the overall Fire Pro experience. The actual roster of Stardom talent is also absolutely fantastic. Having a legitimate Hana Kimura or Hazuki edit with entrance themes is worth the price tag alone. Finally, I can bring to life many joshi dream matches with a bit more authenticity due to officially licensed characters. Of course, I most highly recommend this DLC, but if the price tag is a bit too steep, then waiting for a Steam sale isn't a bad choice either. However, just make sure you purchase it sooner than later. Fire Pro devs and the Stardom promotion definitely deserve it.

Historically speaking, the last time the Fire Pro series featured an official endorsement from a Women's Wrestling promotion was 24 years ago (Super Fire Pro Wrestling: Queen's Special for the Super Famicom). Fast forward two decades, one new company and multiple consoles later; Spike has finally released the World Wonder Ring Stardom Collaboration DLC. But was it worth the wait? Short answer: Yes. Even if you aren't a fan of Stardom (or women's Wrestling in general), the 10 new characters, brand new edit pieces, moves, voice clips, Wrestler themes and ring designs continue to inject new life and inspiration into the greatest Wrestling title ever made. Pieces like Kagetsu's eye slash facepaint, Andrias Miyagi's unicorn hairstyle, Hazuki's fishnet top and Hana Kimura's multi-coloured leg warmers are just a few of the new additions that make this DLC add-on worth considering. Another great feature is the newly recorded voice clips. Each Stardom Wrestler contains an average of 53 voice clips; bringing a vast improvement in enthusiasm and intensity to gameplay and character creation over the default American and Japanese Female voice clips. If you thought the generic female voice clips were stale, wait until you hear the Stardom ladies' taunts, yells and battle cries! The only real downside to this bundle is allowing yourself to miss out on what could possibly be one of the very last DLC's released for Fire Pro Wrestling World. Your CAWs will thank you.

I"m probably not going to purchase another DLC for this game if the content to price ratio of this DLC continues in future. I paid this same price as this DLC and received 39 wrestlers, and new game mode, moves, parts etc for NJPW. This DLC only provides 10 new wrestlers, moves, parts. That is a huge disparity in content per dollar.

Let me start off by saying that the more I play it, the more I love this DLC. Before I explain why, let’s get the negatives out of the way (and there are quite a few, be patient!): * The DLC is clearly overpriced; both in gaming industry standards (in other games we get full expansions for that kind of money ) and in the standard that Spike themselves set in previous DLC (no belts, referees, no story & only 10 wrestlers with only 1 attire each – that is the definition of bare bones). * The point system given to the edits seems disconnected from previous Fire Pro entries, making the current edits ‘overpowered’ compared to the rest. Surely, one can say that Spike intended Stardom to be in its own universe, so the ranking system is not related to anything else. I tend to disagree and think that’s just sloppy work. Just like a Football Manager game wouldn’t make the Australian League second division super strong compared to the Premier League (“because they are in completely different leagues and never play with each other”), I would expect Spike to continue its multi year tradition and keep the edit points in the same standard. * The sloppiness continues with the edits themselves – some parts are clearly off (for example – Kagetsu has one of her body parts in a different tone than the rest of her body) and some logic decisions are questionable (going for strong moves early in the match). Although, to be fair, these issues aren’t common and Spike has a history of making bad logic so in a way this does keep the tradition going :) With so many cons, why do I like this DLC so much? Well, one of the things I loved the most about older Fire Pro games was the sense of discovery. I recall playing Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium and asking myself – who is that guy in the green trunks that keeps beating everyone with his elbows? That’s how I discovered Mitsuharu Misawa and that’s how I discovered Puroresu. Playing the game and then watching & discovering the wrestler or promotion in real life was a really fun experience for me and then the other way around, watching someone in real life and then making him in Fire Pro. Playing the game (and by playing I mean editing/creating & simming) and watching wrestling became so synonymous to me that I literally can’t watch a wrestling show if Fire Pro isn’t turned on on another screen and if it’s not, I find myself thinking “how do I make this guy in the game?” or if I already made him, I think “is his moveset accurate?”. I never cared about STARDOM and probably wouldn’t if not for this DLC. I looked into it a short time before the DLC was released and I was hooked. I can gladly say that to me, this DLC provided that same sense of discovery I experienced with the early Fire Pro games and that alone gives me so much more value than all those negatives I talked about at the start of this review. Personally, I recreate all official edits anyway and add my own touch and tweaks to them so having points a little higher than I would like is just another thing for me to mess around with while watching the STARDOM 5* Grand Prix in the background :) This editing & recreation (and later, creation of new stuff) is, in my eyes, as essential and fun part of Fire Pro as the simming itself and I am grateful to Spike for releasing this DLC, giving me that old sense of discovery, inspiration and many hours of fun, while also getting a chance to support my favorite game and women wrestling in the process.

Comparing this to the NJPW DLC is really where it shows it is overpriced, with NJPW you got 39 wrestlers, all edit parts, moves, voicelines, titles and a story mode/campaign. Some had multiple attires and it was clear a ton of effort had been put into that. this expansion however may contain wrestlers, again with all their moves, voicelines and attires but lacks belts, a story mode and the biggest negative is that you only get 10, it's cool to see a 'smaller' company like STARDOM being represented but this is not worth the same price as the story mode DLC that includes 29 more wrestlers than this pack all with an equal amount of effort put into them as this does. Buy this when it is on sale only because for what you're getting the price should be reduced by at least £5 to £10 and not the same price as a significantly larger and more feature rich DLC.

So I'm gonna go ahead and recommend this, but with an important asterisk. I recommend this for people like me, who enjoy making original characters. It adds a fair bit of useful costume parts that'll be useful to anyone making female characters. HOWEVER... The politest way I can put this is that this Stardom DLC is extremely, absurdly expensive by any other video game's standards. You get extraordinarily little for $20, and in direct comparison to previous Fire Pro DLCs the lack of content is striking and pretty pitiful. The NJPW Juniors DLC had far more content for roughly half the price. The new moves in this pack are not particularly impressive or generally useful, so this DLC is almost entirely cosmetic. Considering the pricetag, I feel like this DLC is treading dangerously close to "horse armor" territory, if you catch my drift. So in conclusion, I recommend this for Fire Pro fanatics and people who make original characters by the boatload like I do. Otherwise, the value for money just isn't here in this expensive and honestly a bit disappointing DLC. It feels very much like it was rushed to release.

When compared to the other DLC looking at an additions:cost ratio...this DLC is ridiculously overpriced. It's 5 dollars more than the Jr. DLC which had more wrestlers, more moves, and an additional story. Now that the fact that this just includes less stuff is out of the way, lets break down what IS included. The edits of the Stardom wrestlers sim poorly. They will start large move spam at about 5 minutes into the match. I don't manually control wrestlers as that's not the point of Fire Pro in my opinion, so maybe they perform better in matches where there's human control...but I doubt it. The parts are cool if you plan to make female wrestlers, and there are a few that could work on male wrestlers as well, but most are fairly feminine in nature. The moves are sort of hit or miss. Some are really nice, others are sort of meh in terms of their animations. I also thought that since they did about 4 free move polls that we'd get some of those with the patch that came with the DLC...but nope, only the DLC moves here. The biggest offenders for poor animation are the overhead elbows, the wrestler reaches back...and then the arm just teleports to the side of the head of the opponent...smooth. The Stardom ring is also sort of half-assed. I'm not a regular Stardom watcher or anything, but I'm pretty sure that Stardom doesn't have their apron logos too large to fit correctly...but that's what happened here. You can even see it in some of the promotional shots. Now this is a small complaint, I admit it, but if the assets are the ONLY thing you're charging us for, and your charging the same price as DLCs that bring more to the table, those assets need to be IMPECCABLE...and these are not. My final verdict is that you should definitely wait for a sale if you're interested in this...$20 is far too high of an asking price for what is included.