WWE 2K25 Review – Solid Game Injured by Bad Management

I have no idea why I torture myself with this game series year after year… Last year, I thought WWE 2K24 was as low as the series could sink, with microtransaction greed replacing actual fun. Man, was I wrong. WWE 2K25 has somehow managed to shove even more nickel-and-dime bullshit into two game modes while also taking a massive step backward in gameplay. The controls are ultra-tight to the point of being frustrating, the AI is horribly spammy, and if you dare to change the difficulty to “Arcade,” “Normal,” or “Easy,” the game gives you a big “fuck you” in return.

Strap yourselves in—I’m ready to burn this motherfucker down and make 2K Games hate me even more than they did after I tore apart last year’s game.

Name: WWE 2K25
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K Games
Game Type: Sports
Mode(s): Single-player, multiplayer
Release Date: March 14, 2025

WWE 2K25: Pay Beyond the Ring (Story/Modes)

Previously, I would look forward to the story modes in WWE games. These were innovative and compelling original stories that gripped you just as much as any storyline happening on WWE TV. Over time, those original stories became legacy content, retelling the history of a person or event. WWE 2K24 focused on WrestleMania, showcasing a very selective event history.

This time around, we go back to the focus on singular characters, and even MyRise—a mode that previously featured two well-done stories—has been compacted down into a single format again. The reasoning for this seems pretty straightforward on the surface: money. Anyone with basic eyesight can see where 2K’s focus is this year, and it’s not on single-player content but on whatever can make them the most money.

The Island

Let’s start things off with where 2K wants you to begin: The Island.

Also called The Island of Relevancy, you play as a newcomer to the wrestling scene who is personally selected by Roman Reigns to prove yourself. From here, you work your way through multiple matches as a storyline unfolds, all while trying to impress The Tribal Chief himself.

Gameplay-wise, you repeatedly cycle through the four sections of the map, completing different match types to earn XP, cosmetic items, and one of the slowest VC flow rates known to man. You do this through quests given to you in the story—otherwise, you’re forced into PvP matches. This presents a twofold problem: the 2K servers are a crash-filled mess, and players have already abandoned The Island in droves since the content only takes about a day to complete.

I played The City in NBA 2K25, and even that game had a better VC flow rate than WWE 2K25. With the usual rate of 150 VC per match win and the most basic item costing 9,000 VC, you need to win 60 matches just to afford a single item. Some items are priced over 100,000 VC, meaning you’d need to grind through 670 matches to afford them. But hey, you can always buy VC through the store, spending thousands of dollars to unlock items—some of which were free last year.

Speaking of wastes of money, let’s talk about the upgrade system. Want to improve any of the 20+ stats your character can upgrade? That’ll cost you VC, and it’s not cheap. A single upgrade can cost over 200 VC, so unless you want to grind endlessly, your other option is to buy VC and speed up the process. What’s a few hundred dollars to upgrade your character’s stats, right?

MyFACTION

I made my feelings about MyFACTION very clear last year… I don’t like it. I hate these card-based modes where you build a team and do the same thing over and over again. However, this time around, it seems that 2K has learned a thing or two from last year’s mistakes.

For example, Persona cards, which unlock alternate costumes or characters for the main game modes. Last year, you could mostly get these through online code giveaways or by buying a metric shit-ton of card packs. But this year, you can unlock a lot of them through the single-player World Tour mode. Sure, plenty of Persona cards will still be locked behind the same methods as last year, but at least there’s some “free” stuff players can earn.

Other than this small improvement, the mode plays pretty much the same way. You’ll do live events, buy card packs, play online matches, and repeat the cycle. It’s repetitive, but it works—and it plays a lot better than The Island.

MyRISE

One of the things I’ve come to enjoy about WWE 2K games is the MyRise mode. These modes are usually full of creative stories that prove the game’s writers can still come up with fresh ideas. But this year feels a little off to me. Sure, the stories in this mode are fun, staying true to the WWE experience while also dabbling in some of the more absurd aspects of wrestling storytelling.

I think what threw me off is the unnecessary amount of create-a-character unlocks tied to this mode, along with a large number of Persona cards. The majority of them are locked until you complete MyRise for the first time, meaning you’ll need to play through the mode two to three times to unlock everything. I’m not a fan of forced repeat playthroughs—it makes the game feel like an obligation rather than something you genuinely want to replay on your own terms.

Showcase: The Bloodline

Showcase mode is another big single-player experience in WWE 2K games, and this year’s installment is a massive one. Showcase mode focuses on The Bloodline Dynasty, or the Anoa’i family—the lineage that includes Roman Reigns, The Usos, Rikishi, and many other Samoan wrestlers in WWE.

Gameplay-wise, you’ll play through 18 matches from the family’s history, covering both modern and legacy bouts. You’ll take control of The Wild Samoans, The Usos, Roman Reigns, The Islanders, and other members, reliving some of their greatest WWE matches along with a few “What if?” fantasy matchups. In-game, the formula remains the same: complete small objectives to recreate iconic moments, just like in previous years. Thankfully, unlike last year, you aren’t constantly interrupted by endless video cutscenes mid-match, allowing you to stay focused on actually playing the game.

The only drawback is the addition of a new objective type: timed objectives. These might require you to hit specific moves within 30 seconds or so. The problem is that these often pop up while you’re already occupied with other objectives, causing you to miss them. Some animations also take up too much time, meaning you might need to hit three of the same move but only have enough time to land two. This becomes frustrating since these objectives are tied to the rewards you unlock for each match… or, of course, you can just buy an unlock pass and play the mode for fun. Another way to pay instead of play.

Universe Mode

Now we come to some very disappointing aspects of WWE 2K25. One of the things that a lot of the community loves is the Universe and MyGM modes. These modes are used to run simulation leagues and other custom experiences, so players naturally want them to be bigger and better each year. Unfortunately, it seems that 2K Games has completely ignored these players once again.

Universe mode is the same as last year, with zero improvements. You can choose to control the career of a single superstar or manage an entire company on your own. It’s the usual sports simulation mode they throw in without much care or effort. It’s a shame because so many people want to see this mode evolve, but since there’s no money in it, 2K doesn’t seem interested in giving the community what it actually wants.

MyGM

Much like Universe mode, MyGM gets the shaft this year as well… kinda. MyGM does get a new option to play online against other players, but since that would require me to deal with 2K’s horrible servers, I didn’t even bother testing it. It might work fine, or it might crash like everything else this game does online—but I don’t care enough to find out.

I’m sorry, MyGM players, but 2K just doesn’t give a crap about you at all.

Create-a-Something: If you can afford it

One of the biggest draws to WWE games has always been the amazing creation suite, allowing you to create everything from wrestlers to arenas, belts, and so much more. There’s a huge creation scene built around the WWE game franchise, to the point where you can find anything from gimmick/costume updates to past wrestlers, wrestlers from other companies, arenas from past, present, and elsewhere, and multiple belts from both fantasy and reality. The online community has been something that 2K both loves and hates at the same time. They love the creativity and the fact that people post anything they can think of online, with some creations being just as good as their own (aka, they can steal this stuff for next year). But at the same time, creators like WhatsTheStatus—a PC modder turned creator who finds in-game files for Persona card wrestlers and publishes them on the Community Creations section for free—are eating away at potential profits. So, what does 2K do?

Anyone playing the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or PC versions of WWE 2K25 is getting the shaft. While 2K claims this is because The Island isn’t available on previous-generation systems, we know that, since this is on PC, the exclusion of The Island is just an excuse to stop creators like WhatsTheStatus from doing what they do best: making paid content free. Add this restriction to 2K’s usual practice of locking a lot of content behind MyRise and now The Island mode, and it becomes clear that 2K doesn’t want to allow the community to create freely without paying or grinding through the same game modes over and over again. Remember, kid, gaming is no longer a hobby—it’s a second job.

The PlayStation 2 Era Looked Better (Graphics)

If there’s one thing I thought was constant in WWE 2K games, it was the high level of character models, especially those scanned from the actual wrestlers. But with WWE 2K25, it really feels like the graphics weren’t prioritized as they should have been. With the push for Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles to become the new standard for this series, you’d think they’d be pushing to get the best out of those consoles. However, many things feel either low-quality or are just reusing scans from WWE 2K24.

If you look at the screenshot above and know how Otis looks in real life, you might be mistaken in thinking this was a modified copy of WWE SmackDown vs RAW on the PlayStation 2. I have no idea what’s going on here, but that model looks horrible, and he’s not the only one. As always, many of the women wrestlers look like create-a-wrestler versions of themselves, with many of them still using the same model as last year. Hell, if you jump into community creations, you’ll find people using the creation suite not only to update outfits but also to use other face scans to create character models that look better than what the official developers have done. When this becomes the norm in these games, the developers really need to step up their efforts.

However, as a positive, there is one new feature added to show off the graphics: a director camera system that allows you to control the camera during entrances and even in gameplay. A lot of this involves being able to move the camera around your selected character and zooming in and out. While this is awesome during entrances, giving you different angles to breathe new life into otherwise recycled entrances, it’s a different story with gameplay. Since it changes the control scheme, I’m not a fan of using this camera during matches.

Wrestling with Asthma (Gameplay)

With wrestling being the main focus in WWE 2K25, you’d think that by now the system would be perfected, right? WRONG! I don’t know if 2K knows the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but somehow they think they need to improve the gameplay every damn year. This year sees the return of the chain wrestling system, which is a series of moves chained together through selection and activation via the left stick. While this is a good return to the game, 2K decided they needed to add complexity for no reason. Rather than selecting from three options like last time, you now have four options to choose from. Then you need to activate it by holding the stick in a specific direction, select the move, hold the stick again, and repeat. Why does this need so many steps?

Another change once again is the pinfall and submission systems. By default, you’re using the new systems. The pinfall system now has a swinging bar that goes back and forth, and you have to flick the right stick upwards at the right moment inside the bar to kick out. It’s annoying when you’re in a desperate situation where the bar is so small that you’ll miss by a pixel, resulting in a loss and making you want to throw the controller through the screen. On the opposite side, the submission system now uses the LT/RT (or L2/R2) buttons to swing those bars back and forth, which actually makes the submission system a lot easier. However, if you don’t like these new systems, you can revert to the button-mashing versions of both systems, which, to be honest, are superior.

One last thing about gameplay… While many games go off without a hitch, there are a LOT of bugs with WWE 2K25. The usual collision issues with the ropes, invisible borders, the elimination chamber, and other things are still present even after four patch updates. While the bugs aren’t as bad as WWE 2K20, they’re pretty close. You can go on YouTube and find videos showing these issues, but as with all bugs, your experience may vary.

If you want to go online and play some matches in WWE 2K25… Good luck. As always, your biggest opponent won’t be the one in the ring, but the 2K servers themselves. Disconnections, input lag, graphic lag, and players just dropping out if you pick specific characters—these are all common issues with this game. My advice: Don’t bother playing online unless you have to for something like MyFACTION or The Island.

Replay? I Barely Want to Play This Once (Replayability)

I don’t know what it is about WWE 2K25, but as soon as I got enough of a feel for the game to write this review, I felt good about letting it sit for a while. This is something I did last year before jumping in and smashing through everything. However, this year, I’m not sure if I’m going to do that. I’m not even really interested in downloading AEW wrestlers and running a company simulation like I did with WWE 2K24. I can’t put my finger on it, but I just feel like I’m being pushed to play WWE 2K25 as an obligation to the game itself, not because I want to play it for myself.

MyFACTION demands a daily login to get items and a little VC or a card pack, but the odds in those packs are so small that it’s not worth it. I’m not rich or a streamer, so I can’t blow thousands of dollars on VC to unlock all the locked content and make this game feel complete. Even the unlockables in MyFACTION, MyRISE, and The Island don’t seem worth it, as a lot of it is just stuff from WWE 2K24 and WWE 2K23. I can sense the laziness of the development team in this game. If they can’t be bothered to put in the effort, why should I?

DLC is usually something that would make me want to stick around. We’re getting a good update with newer signees like Giulia, Stephanie Vacqur, Penta, and the Motor City Machine Guns… and that’s it. We’ll be getting more legends in future packs, including ECW hardcore legend New Jack for the first time, but honestly, I don’t care. One of the best things about New Jack was his music—“Natural Born Killaz” by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. I don’t think WWE or 2K are going to spend money to license that track for one character. Instead, they’ll probably use a cover track or the ECW theme. Not to mention, there are five spots over three packs reserved for two celebrity guest characters and three NBA characters… So, they’ve learned nothing from the backlash to the Pat McAfee and friends pack from last year… Fuck this company.

WWE 2K25 Keeps Going Backwards (Closing)

As always, WWE 2K25 has kept up the 2K tradition over the last few years: a few steps forward and multiple steps backward.

I was told before starting this review that I should keep the whole microtransaction mess out of my review opinions and score and that the developers shouldn’t be punished for the decisions made by the greedy management of 2K… but I can’t do that. Microtransactions are at the center of a lot of core game modes that are needed to unlock things for both the offline and online modes, so much so that I cannot ignore it. I’m not a fan of predatory practices in video games, especially when some players are spending almost 5 to 10 times what the game offers in enjoyment. But as the saying goes, a fool and his money are soon parted.

Outside of that, WWE 2K25 is just an update of WWE 2K24. All the modes are the same, they play the same, and there are some minor tweaks to gameplay to make it feel fresh. But once the freshness wears off, you soon realize that you’ve been ripped off. It’s something I hate to admit since we had to buy a copy of WWE 2K25 for the first time in 7 years, and at $200 Australian Dollars, I walk away feeling like I spent a lot to get nothing worthwhile in return. But we are now in that horrible era of video games where these are nothing more than expensive roster updates with predatory transactions built into them.

WWE 2K25, it’s time for you to hang up the boots.

Review Disclosure Statement: WWE 2K25 was bought by The Outerhaven for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more details.