YMMV / Rumble Roses

• Americans Hate Tingle: Queens Match isn't a character, but the reaction was exactly the same. Western fans found it creepy and did not like it.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Anesthesia. In most of the storylines, while she's the main antagonist, she's not the final boss and is really only slightly more difficult than the rest of the wrestlers. This is justified, however, in that she sometimes loses fights for ulterior motives, and her master plan revolves around "Lady X" anyway, who is usually the final boss.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The series features a cast of extremely attractive females in varying degrees of skimpy outfits wrestling with each other.
• Broken Base:
  • When Rumble Roses was in development, it attracted the attention of anime fans and Professional Wrestling fans. They had very different ideas of what should be included. As it became clear the game was going to cater to the anime fans, most pro wrestling fans lost their enthusiasm if they didn't give up on it entirely.
  • After the release of the first game, the fanbase was basically split into two camps. Some wanted them to take the game in a more serious direction and put some focus on the wrestling. Others liked the over all simple goofiness of the storyline and wanted more like that. The sequel, however, went further towards the Denser and Wackier than even many of those who preferred the lighthearted goofiness wanted.
• Designated Villain: Sort of. Bloody Shadow/Benikage's default persona is heel, but all that seems to mean is her hair and costume are darker, since she's no more villainous as a heel than she is as a face.
• Fetish Retardant:
  • Some believe that the series contains so much unashamedly fanservice that it comes off as a little bit creepy or off-putting.
  • The Queens Match is this for the Western market.
  • Sebastian the Gimp is bad news to anyone looking for non-female fanservice, as he's showing off way more clown than anybody needed to see.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Considering the Girl on Girl Is Hot appeal of the game, virtually all of the game’s characters are hit by this, especially Dixie and Aisha (who go the extra mile of both Dixie and Aisha saving the other from Lady-X in the other’s endings of the first game, before having a Designated Girl Fight). The other notable couples are "Candy Cane"/"Becky"/Miss(tress) Spencer, and Makoto/Aigle, along with a sizable Reiko/Dixie base due to how heavily their Friendly Rivalry is invoked in the series.
• Game-Breaker: The atomic drop attack some wrestlers such as Reiko and Dixie have access to is usually used as a free damage attack as it leaves the victim holding her tailbone area stunned momentarily. Due to how the game's reversal system works, victims of the atomic drop can't reverse attacks until they regain control of their character. Most girls can't abuse this as the game treats being behind an opponent and stunned opponent differently in terms of what can be performed on them. Miss Spencer on the other hand has this attack set for both normal and stunned opponents, meaning she can perform the attack infinitely on her opponent for as long as she wishes.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Lady X and her upgrades, on account of her being a deliberate SNK Boss who's also playable. Miss Spencer, for her infinite atomic drop chain. To a much lesser extent, Anesthesia has a lot of moves that fill her opponent's h-meters, giving her much easier access to her H-move than anyone else.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Becky in Rumble Roses. A lot of her holds are incomplete - see the explanation at Obvious Beta on the main page. Her H-move is an armlock, and her only other attack to the arm is an unfinished flying armbar, meaning that either she spams it all match and risks getting countered, or can't even finish a match with her H-move on the first try because their arm will be at full health.
  • Non Non in Rumble Roses XX due to him being slow and having a limited moveset.
• Narm: More than you can shake a set of boob tassels at.
• Narm Charm: Where else could you find a Funny Moment that doubles as a Moral Event Horizon? It's hard to take the game seriously, but it's also hard to believe players were meant to, with kayfabe often invoked and outright lampshaded by characters like Dixie and Miss Spencer.
• Obvious Beta:
  • In the North American version of the game, some "submission holds" aren't completed, and simply end rather than go into the usual submission hold minigame. This is a holdover from early games in the WWF SmackDown! series, where submission holds were just a "will they tap yes/no?" situation instead of having a minigame to escape them. Holds that had been in the SmackDown! series longer were less likely to have been updated into actual submission holds, while the newer ones and the ones programmed specifically for Rumble Roses worked properly.
  • Rumble Roses had a couple of really blatant flaws in the AI ("ignore the running opponent", "continually go for pins in submission-only matches" and the usual "just doesn't work right outside the ring"), one completely finished ring that just wasn't included in the final version along with a couple partly-finished ones, a match type that wasn't actually selectable (although you could configure the rules to get the same thing).
  • Dixie's swimsuit character model had a glaring mesh error on her right hand.
  • Rumble Roses XX's labyrinthine unlocking system is believed to be the result of inadequate playtesting.
  • Some girls didn't receive a partner and official teams have unique tag moves. Two such girls who didn't get an official partner are Becky and Yasha, while they are not a real team they have a double X attack but using them together makes one of the turnbuckles make the victim act oddly when thrown into it for some reason.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Heel/Face system in Rumble Roses seems like a neat way of unlocking different character alignments. Unfortunately, switching sides disabled the previous character, so only half the roster was ever available to use at any given time. Vexingly enough, Mirror Matches are allowed, so it was impossible (without hacking) for, say, Reiko Hinomoto to fight Rowdy Reiko, but she could fight a copy of herself all she wanted. This was ultimately "fixed" via an official save file download in an issue of OPM, in one of the few instances of "patching" a PS2 game.^note As the stock PS2 lacks a hard drive, deleting this file off your memory card will "un-patch" the game back to its original Scrappy Mechanic state, obviously.
• So Bad, It's Good: Story mode. "Cowgirl has teats more magnificent than my sheep!".
• Special Effect Failure: The Bunny outfit in Rumble Roses XX uses a single light, pinkish skin tone underneath the fishnets for the legs, regardless of who's wearing them. This is very noticeable should you put the dark-skinned Aisha or Anesthesia in the costume.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Quite a few, actually. The opening song, which is also Dixie's theme as a face, is a cover of David Lee Roth's "Yankee Rose", while Ms. Spencer's theme sounds very similar to Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." Also, Reiko's theme as a face is one of many official remixes of Konami's rather popular DanceDanceRevolution song "Look to the Sky"^note Which was itself backported to pop'n music, and due to featuring different lyrics, is the only version never to have been Screwed by the Lawyers and removed; and Makoto's theme as a face sounds very much like "Cha La Head Cha La". Evil Rose's theme "Pluck the Roses!" may very well have been inspired by Disturbed's "Down with the Sickness".
• That One Attack: Lady X has several of these:
  • Rumble Roses:
    • She has an attack where she repeatedly spins her top half in a spinning punch attack, traveling around the ring. She can't be hit or grabbed in the middle of this attack, and if you get hit by it you'll be knocked up into the air by a mile and take a lot of damage. It also travels around the entire ring, so in order to escape it you need to briefly duck out of the ring or time where you move to dodge it. The worst part is, it's not a "move" at all, it's one of her taunts, so she can do it whenever she wants and it's completely unblockable. You can't even reach into the ring to trip her while she does it - do that and the game acts as though you got hit with it and sends you flying up in the air for massive damage.
  • Rumble Roses XX:
    • Her side dodge literally makes her invincible for a short time even to the Killer, Lethal, and H-Moves of the girls.
    • She has an attack where she sets her opponent into a seated position then proceeds to place her drill-like fingers into the ears of her opponent and starts turning them at high speed inside the ear of her victim. This attack does major damage to the "head" area of her opponent and also causes an absurdly high amount of humiliation. The damage is higher than any lethal or killer move in the game.
    • Lastly, her lethal move sees her grab her opponent by putting her arms around the waist of the victim. Lady X Subsistance proceeds to use her ability to fly while still holding the girl she is performing the attack on. Then in mid air she does a German suplex motion but doesn't release. When the victims forced into position Lady X separates her legs from her upper body. Then still in the air Lady X locks her legs with the legs of her victim who is now in a German Suplex bridge position being held by Lady X's upper body and legs being held by Lady X's robotic legs. Then Lady X goes down full force dropping her victim on the back of her neck. Then while still being held on the mat the game counts the followup as a pinfall.
• Values Dissonance: Queens Match mode in Rumble Roses XX, a match type where the losing girl suffered a penalty. For example, having to sweep around a swimming pool with a push broom. And then the girls would react to these penalties in various ways, like getting embarrassed and blushing. Japan considered this erotica. Westerns in general considered this creepy Fan Disservice to the point that it is believed it actually did significant damage to the game's sales.

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