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rumble roses is a relic of another time, a game that you really can't make anymore, for better and worse, it's a game mocked by people just finding about it without looking into it much and held up as everything wrong with games of this era or with a rare few weirdos who will champion it as THE BEST GAME THE WOKE LEFT IS KEEPING FROM YOU, THE GAME WOKENAMI IS KEEPING DOWN and both sides are a little silly really, it's neither, what it is is a dumb wrestling game with fun mechanics and the funniest cutscenes you may ever see in a game, a dumb fun game wholley non derogatory and one that really shouldn't be taken seriously, though i do think its overt hornyness does make it a game that's difficult to reccomend to people who don't have a high tolerance for these kinds of games

so the elephant in the room with this game is weather or not it's misogynistic, it's not, it's sexist, kind of, and the coverage of it at the time most certainly was, but i also don't think the game itself is anywhere nearly as bad as it's made out to be. it's undeniably pervy and horny, it's got the skimpiest design's you'll probably see outside of a hentai game, even uppers and oneechanbara aren't this bad for it, especially characters like noble rose or mistress spencer, it even has things like mud matches (that have some really impressive looking mud and shiny texturework) it's a little bit exploititve, but it's not really even because of the game itself, the sport is at fault here, the game is just a tribute to that. The game is a heartfelt tribute to josei wrestling, it even thanks you for playing it and for caring about the sport when you beat the campaign, it's cute. this is why i don't think its misogynistic, it doesn't think lesser of women and the people working on it clearly loved the sport and the wrestlers in it, it's a "girls rock" kind of game, hetero (non derogatory) kind of game and those are okay sometimes, hell, it's even the kind of game i can see having a queer reclaimation of sometime, it's campy and silly enough to. when it comes to misogyny in the games sphere i take the mentality that we need to pick out battles right and rumble roses is just not the hill i want to die on when there are much worse games and platforms (like the steam forums!) that do hate women and that are genuinely damaging, no one will have their perception of women warped by rumble roses because it's too silly and dumb, but they could with a few hours on the steam forums, engaging with the communities of games like counter strike or by binging something like a later GTA.

the main draw of rumble roses, really, isn't the crass stuff or the gameplay, it's the story, it's not a good story but it's so entertaining that it had me wanting to do every route just to see how its cutscenes went, it has one of the wildest, most nonsensical stories in the medium, it has an evil lesbian nurse making war crime robots out of wrestlers to try and take over the world, brainwashed dominatrix's with amnesia, a random BDSM plotline, the two most 2000's women in existance (a not-Beyonce pop star and tina from dead or alive but not) in one of the funniest rivalries I have ever seen and maybe offensive Mongolian steriotypes trying to win the tournament because she hates people with bigger boobs than her, it's so crazy that I couldn't believe half of what is happening, there are robots and maybe belmonts and ninjas in here and it's all played very straight for the most part (but it knows its silly and it's just having fun with it), the cutscenes have some very bad voice acting too but in a b-movie way, it's all very charming. the one sad part is that not every campaign has full cutscenes, while your basic vers of the characters have at least one cutscene between rounds, sometimes two, the varients usually only have two or three, which is a shame because some of them are super fun! especially noble rose who is styled heavily on a Belmont and wields a lightning sword and some of these could make for super interesting storylines, especially the evil corrupted versions. it's hard to deny how much of the game is just flagrant fetishbait though, like, it's really eggregious, the corruption storylines, almost all of anesthesias dialogue is horny in some way down to some borderline petplay dialogue lol and it can be a lot to get over, though i don't fully mind it, it feels on the sillier end of horny rather than lecherous even still (and honestly anesthesia is still a less offensive depiction of a lesbian than most yuri manga so it could be much worse)

the music is a lil weird, it's very much "Japanese composers trying to make popular American music" so you get some DOA as heck American wrestling music and some slightly off sounding but really good RNB pop kind of stuff and some akira Yamaoka rock tracks that are all really solid, it does get repetitive. there is some very good intro themes though here, with each character and even their alternate versions having ones and they are the standout tracks, so many catchy and varied themes, some songs have FFX string sounds, you got some classic japanese stuff, some of the really fun pop stuff is here and they all suit the characters perfectly, it's just a shame they don't play in the matches to vary them up since the match songs do get repetitive super fast and aren't as good as those tracks, some of them like reiko's theme or candy canes theme (which may be the most 2000s rock in existance) would make perfect match songs. the composer list is stacked though, with songs from the likes of akira yamaoka ( of silent hill, lolipop chainsaw, shadows of the damned and kensei sacred fist) , Mugio Awano (of nightcry, many castlevanias, skullgirls, mgs4, tokimeki memorial and sword of etheria), Yuka Watanabe ( of castlevania curse of darkness, azuras wrath, time hollow and elebits) and a ton more, every theme practically has a different composer, it's wild how much talent this game has. visually it's also really good, the animations are really well done and the arenas can look really nice, especially the beach one which has some real DOA extreme vibes, though there isn't much variety in them, you only have maybe 4 arenas total and 3 look the same. the characters do make up for it though, tons of variety in designs and vibes and styles, i'd even go as far as to say it's one of the best looking games of its era, it's really impressive, the look and sound give it the vibes of the most early 2000's game possible, G4-core you know, blockbuster rental game, it's poorly aged aspects just make it feel more quaint than offensive, it's honestly really endearing.

the gameplay is salso really great, i'm not an expert in wrestling games, in fact the only one I've played was legends of wrestlemania with my roommate a long time ago(I even covered it!) and that game was maybe not a good example of the genre, though it was very funny. this one seems a lot deeper, where that game was more of a series of QTE's as rock paper scissors, this was more of an actual combat system, with tons of attacks and variations in how everyone plays, kicks and punches all mapped to the analog stick direction you do while you press attack, same with grabs also, you have a very easy to use counter system based on either strike counters or grab counters (and you can even chain it almost endlessly which leads to some very funny matches of mindgames and lucky guessing) and things like submission holds and blocks and pins, you even have a really deep body damage system that works with the submission holds and a taunt you can do with the right stick to up your meter, that meter even leads to two different kinds of contextual specials, there's a ton of depth! the characters are varied enough that, although the core combat is always very similar, they all play differently enough, some more based on strikes, some on holds, some on kicks and some on weapons. I stuck to the belmonty noble rose who had some really cool flying kick attacks and mistress spencer who was a dominatrix who starts each round with a riding crop and has some really useful submission attacks and I liked. it's not a difficult game to get into or learn, the systems mostly seem obvious but you have tons of moves to access and different playstyles, most of the story mode is also pretty easy up until a difficulty spike at the end of most campaigns when you have to fight the final boss, lady x substance, she can gain half a super meter with one attack and if she uses any of her specials its basically a one-shot, she also has a ton of health, it almost feels like you're meant to cheese her (which you can do by luring her out of the ring and hitting her until you have enough specials to spam them inside the ring) it can super ruin some characters campaigns if they arent equipped to deal with her. outside of the combat you do have a few other small systems, like the vow's, pacts you make before the match that if you can complete them will give you bonus's, it's a cool system and they're fun to pull off but it's only available in the exhibition mode and you also have things like interviews with the characters and a gallery if you want to do those.

the game is pretty long too if you want to unlock everything, each storyline will run you about 30-40 mins depending on how much trouble you have with the final boss and there's a good 20 of them you need to do if you want to unlock every fighter, so even as a solo player there's a lot to do here and its a fun game to dip in and out of, my final playtime was in the 30+ hours. it also had a sequel a few years later, but no ports so you'll be playing this one on ps2. rumble roses XX was later released for the 360 a few years later and this game seems to be the better one from what i've seen, cooler UI and it has some nice 360-isms like shiny textures and it lets you make your own character. yukes stuck to normal wrestling games for the most part, this is a konami IP but it is a yukes joint almost wholley ( the famed creators of eve of extinction, dog island, some EDF games and some other wrestling) with Hiromi Furuta as it's executive director, she's been involved in tons of yukes games like those aformentioned EDF, wrestling and dog island games, she's even the companies COO, the games other director Mugio Awano seemingly just made this though, which feels fitting. it's a very of its time game like i said before, but it's one that i do think is worth tracking down if you think you can deal with it, it's not too expensive or rare, i only paid about £20 for it though the sequel is one of the harder to find 360 games now, which is a shame, neither game are likely to get a port either, and not because of the woke mob like i've seen grifters say about this, it's just that no one is really asking for it, so if you want to play it i'd say just grab a copy now rather than wait for a port that won't happen.