World Championship Boxing Manager has returned from Mega Cat Studios, do you have what it takes to take your gym to the top?
Mega Cat Studios have come back with the sequel to what is called “THE G.O.A.T. BOXING MANAGEMENT SIM RETURNS” with World Championship Boxing Manager 2. The game follows as you take on the role of Jake, a gym owner and promoter who is trying to make a name for himself. The game starts with the opening of his gym that is below the standards of most boxers.
Having never played the original and not being a fan of boxing I went into this game with low expectations. The game very much feels like a SIM game where you are micromanaging the actions and training of your fighters. This leads you to your scheduled fight nights. Each month you have matches that you must have at least one fighter participate in. This is where you earn money for your gym. You can even schedule additional fights any day of the month you would like. If you so choose you could even push your fighter to the breaking point by never allowing them to rest.
Using downtime between the matches you can assign different trainings and designated resting periods for the fighter. The game becomes a balance between training your fighter quickly to improve skills and stats and keeping them fighting to keep that money coming in. As the game progresses you add additional fighters to your roster and the balance becomes both easier and harder. Easier in that you can keep someone fighting every day but harder because you are having to balance their training on top of it.
The game far exceeded my expectations with how well the management and scheduling systems are built. Simply put the mechanics were interesting and engaging but where it really shines is the fights themselves. At the start of each round you give the fighter some basic instructions like choosing their fight style. One round you can choose to be defensive and the next can be wildly aggressive. There are about six choices from the start and each has their uses. More often than not I had my fighters choose the aggressive option with the water bottle. The water bottle adds stamina where the bandage recovers health.
During the fights the game was focused on tactics from the side of the ring where most other boxing games focuses on the speed and combos used by the players as the fighter. In small doses the game was enjoyable but in a longer stretch it became repetitive and dull.
