WWE 2K25 Review: Beware The Island of Microtransactions

WWE 2K25 continues to build on the foundation of recent years with upgrades in several different areas, but it's not all good news. Despite quality work in many areas of the game, WWE 2K25 is also embracing the absolute worst aspects of the NBA 2K franchise.

For all the good in it, the latest installment feels like it has the entire franchise on a precipice. WWE 2K25 is teetering on top of Hell in a Cell, and greed is threatening to send all their good work crashing to the ground.

Intergender Wrestling & New Mechanics Highlight Gameplay

Building on the bedrock that started with WWE 2K22 rebooting this franchise, WWE 2K25 adds two new gameplay mechanics to the mix: Trading Blows and Chain Wrestling. The extensive tutorial system in WWE 2K25 does a good job of explaining these as well as anything else players might need a refresher on.

Trading Blows brings the back-and-forth excitement of punch and chop exchanges from real-world wrestling into the game for the first time. Winning these will stun your opponent, leaving them vulnerable and temporarily unable to reverse attacks. Chain Wrestling brings a different aspect of wrestling into WWE 2K25, and the transitions feel reminiscent of switching mount positions in UFC 5. 

Chain Wrestling sequences seem to trigger far less frequently than Trading Blows, but they do deliver an interesting change of pace that cranks up the tension in a match. WWE 2K25 also added the ability to climb and jump off the barricades, hit signatures and finishers off the ladder once again, and introduced several new Paybacks. 

One of the biggest changes in WWE 2K25 is that you can actually create intergender matches now. For years, the WWE 2K franchise kept women and men separate without allowing intergender competition in the game. There were workarounds in previous years like modders uploading men’s division coded women’s wrestlers to Community Creations, but nothing consistent or official.

As intergender wrestling continues to thrive on the independent scene so many years after Chyna broke that barrier in the WWE, this installment finally gives fans what they want. Bayley demolishing The Undertaker with light tubes before throwing a football at his head and putting him through a flaming table with the Bayley to Belly. 

Presentation, Universe Mode, and Creation Suite Still Deliver

WWE 2K25 doesn't feel like a huge step forward in overall presentation or in the creation suite, but the good news is that none of that worsened. The game is still visually stunning, and the camera work during entrances is fantastic.

The Creation Suite lets you customize and fine tune just about every single detail on a created superstar, arena, championship, entrance, and more. The only notable upgrade is that you can now adjust AI settings when customizing a moveset to tweak priority, repetition, and timing on each move. 

Community Creations remains the standard bearer for player created content in gaming, as it was full of quality replicas of wrestlers and iconic pop culture characters within days. Just about every big AEW star was in Community Creations shortly after the game released, and they’re joined by many different legends and alternate attires for existing members of the WWE 2K25 roster. 

All of this folds in well with Universe Mode, which got a few upgrades including a new promo system. The addition of intergender wrestling includes support for an optional intergender division in Universe Mode, and big events like WrestleMania can now be extended as a multi-day show. 

Unfortunately, spending a lot of time customizing superstar attire in the Creation Suite does start to tip off the biggest problem about WWE 2K25. Scroll through a few pages and you'll spot something greyed out with a palm tree logo over it. Welcome to the new era: microtransactions for creation suite items.

The Island of Microtransactions

It's time to address the gigantic elephant in the room: The Island. The canary in the coal mine was MyFACTION, and WWE 2K25 is on track to absolutely decimate all the goodwill every other game mode brings to the head of this table.

MyFACTION already started to push players towards the habit of purchasing VC to get better cards in the mode, and that was worsened when they introduced Persona Cards that gate unlockable characters behind this game mode. Persona Cards are technically unlockable without spending extra money, but you may still feel pressured to buy packs so your MyFACTION lineup is stronger when attempting to unlock Persona Cards. 

Clearly modeled off the MyTEAM card collecting mode in NBA 2K, MyFACTION was just the first step towards bringing the worst parts of that series to this franchise. They've now recreated The City in WWE 2K25 as The Island, and it's basically a less refined wrestling themed version of the same nonsense. You get to create a new superstar for The Island, but it's essentially using the “Diet, Caffeine-free” version of the Creation Suite with the majority of attire locked when you first enter the mode. 

Just like The City, you can complete a handful of quests for Virtual Currency to give yourself the false illusion that the game isn't screaming at you to spend more money on microtransactions for extra VC. If you want to upgrade your superstar's stats on The Island, that also requires VC.

If you'd like to simply buy your way to a 100 OVR character that provides a massive in-game advantage when facing others in The Island, that'll be about 161,050 VC and can be done before ever even entering the game mode. Don't worry, you can cover about two-thirds of that if you spend literally every single bit of the 115,000 VC that is bundled in the $130 Bloodline Edition. 

The Island doesn’t have quite as many branded clothing stores as The City in NBA 2K25, but they made sure to get Nike and Air Jordan stores in with plenty of extremely overpriced attire available for thousands of VC. There are also several face paint designs, masks, and other attire pieces locked behind VC that have to be purchased before they’re usable in the Creation Suite outside of The Island. 

The most complimentary thing I could possibly say about The Island is that it is easier to ignore than The City, as they've not yet reached the egregiously unethical NBA 2K25 stage where the game traps people in the mode before hitting the main menu. The second most complimentary thing I could say about The Island is that it crashes a lot, and that’s probably steered players away from it. 

The Bloodline Showcase, MyRISE, and MyGM Make the Save

For as bad as The Island is, WWE 2K25 still has some excellent game modes that delivered this year. Last year’s 40 Years of WrestleMania Showcase was one of the worst the franchise has seen in years, but The Bloodline Showcase rights that ship with Paul Heyman at the helm. 

A series of interviews with Heyman tie together a Showcase that covers a very large period of time, and that complements a smattering of interviews from many different members of The Bloodline. The matches themselves are more fun than last year’s selection, and they’ve done a better job of blending classic footage in when it works best. 

MyRISE is truly the saving grace of this game, as it continues to be an excellent career mode experience. With the benefit of intergender wrestling now being an option, MyRISE manages to unify and change up how the story feels on each subsequent playthrough. 

A link between your two characters also adds to the narrative drama, as you’ll be able to consider how things go when making new characters to tackle it again. MyRISE was good the first time, but jumping into a second run after grabbing Sting and Elvira off Community Creations really cemented it as something special. 

MyGM has been further refined with each year since its return to the series, and they didn’t make any significant changes to the foundation of this mode. Some new GM and brand options pair well with this year’s expansive WWE 2K25 roster, and the long-requested addition of online multiplayer finally made the cut. 

With so much to enjoy in WWE 2K25, it’s a shame that 2K’s obvious greed with The Island casts a dark cloud over this chapter. WWE 2K25 is still a great game, but that may not be true for WWE 2K26 or WWE 2K27. If they follow in the footsteps of NBA 2K and eliminate MyRISE to leave The Island as their only would-be career mode, that’ll be the death knell for this entire franchise.