Recent reviews by LesterTheFlaccid

If you're like me and don't like consulting guides/walkthroughs then this should be a hard pass.
Progression is almost always obscure and inconspicuous.

When I realized one of the characters was only being referred to as "they/them" I was relieved, no longer would I feel guilty about glazing over the dry and tedious writing.

I betrayed my principles.
I tanked the economy.
I made deals with greedy dictators.
I flip flopped on my election promises.
I started projects that went way past the deadline.
I made millions of people hate me.
A very accurate representation of politicking.

The first hour or so is great.
You think, oh cool, this will be like Papers Please. Will I be an obedient servant of the ministry? Or will I help the resistance to overthrow them? What kind of people am I going to be loyal to? Oh wow so much replay value. Turns out it doesn't matter, after an hour the game says "You need to make a ridiculous amount of money, fast, or your daughter will die." So you have to forget whatever playstyle you wanted to adopt, and focus exclusively on cheesing its systems as fast and sweaty as you can. Being forced into this rigid method of uniformly screwing over everyone you meet for cash really sucks the fun.
The game's only begun and I already have what feels like an insurmountable task. Then the game's actually obnoxious enough to keep asking for large sums to completely overwhelm you. All the while asking for bill payments.
I've tried 3 times now and I cannot make the amount of money the game wants from me. You can continue beyond failed objectives, but it's hard not to feel like I've already lost once my daughter dies. It's extremely demoralizing and feels more like a final objective. I shudder to think how much worse the game gets.
There is an easy mode but I've heard it's not much better. The menu also tells you that one is the intended difficulty so they may as well be calling you a lil ♥♥♥♥♥ for playing the other mode.

tl;dr A cool concept with one of the worst difficulty curves I've ever seen

I bought this in hopes of playing a career mode that sprawled into organic stories but there's no story telling to be found. There's a lot of RNG and moving parts but it's all very shallow.
Characters are constantly saying things that make no sense or talking about things that never happened. For example, I won a tag match, after which the opponent says I could never have won without that baseball bat (???).
Sometimes other characters interfere with your match apropos of nothing only for it to never be followed up on or explained.
Your regional manager will request you change gimmicks every 3 weeks.
The game may book you with the same tag partner for several weeks and then tell you some character you never met is your best friend.
The game might ask you to special referee for a match between AI that will never try a pinfall... seriously.
I also played a First Blood match 20 minutes past the first bloodshed, so that's also broken.
You can go talk to anyone on the roster backstage between matches to challenge or team up with them but good luck with that cause in 8 hours I didn't find a single character susceptible to either suggestion despite being as, if not more statistically popular than them.
I finally threw my hands up in the air when the title shot I earned for the next PPV event magically disappeared when I got to it and I suddenly became very bored because I realized nothing really matters in this career mode (outside of random death).
You won't go more than a couple in-game weeks without noticing something illogical. I'm not exaggerating when I say I could make a list of hundreds of engagement breaking scenarios throughout My Career mode.
So far this feels like Ludonarrative Dissonance The Game.
If you want an N64 throwback the actual wrestling itself is satisfying and ridiculous although it's janky and a little confusing even with a (slow) tutorial.
*I had to change my recommendation because despite all this I keep coming back. It's frustrating that everything is so rng based and nonsensical but it's still full of way more surprises than any wrestling game I've played. Keep your expectations tempered on the backstage AI and you'll have a good time.

For those of you looking for a good successor to the Zoo Tycoon gameplay loop, this ain't it.

If you just want to start having fun making habitats you need to hold your horses because there is literally 5 maintenance buildings you need to erect first before you can think about it. That is the essence of the games main problem, everything takes too long to do. Before my first exhibits even finished the game struggles to keep my attention. This game feels much more like a creativity tool then a management sim. You have to be very committed to building your zoo because a single exhibit could take an inexperienced player upwards of an hour to finish.

If you want to make a run of the mill gated exhibit, easy enough but it won't be long until you want to do more. The game's pre-made zoo's and promotional material are constantly prodding your imagination, encouraging you to get more creative, yet the game will fight you at every opportunity. Once I wanted to do more than the bare minimum the terrain, gates and pathways never quite synced up the way I wanted them to and one solution usually caused another problem that would keep me working on exhibits endlessly. I've made several attempts at making parks and they all ended with me pulling my hair out.

I'm sure most of the games building systems can be mastered but for my money it feels way too unintuitive and had me yearning for the reliable grid markers and snap and lock building of the Tycoon games.