I love Tekken. I remember randomly getting Tekken 6 around my birthday as a kid and my friend came over and we would play it and just button mash but have a great time. I skipped Tekken 7 but there was always a slight interest, I would keep my ear to the scene just a bit, but fighting games that weren’t NRS games just didn’t interest me. Tekken 7 was free on PSN late last year and me and that same friend checked it out and played a little bit to reminisce, then earlier this year Tekken 8 just kind of came out without me noticing until I saw that same friend playing it. I was at a point where I didn’t have anything to play, so I decided to take my first real jump into this series. Keep in mind as I write this I’m just a hard stuck low purple player. Which is about average, and I don’t have as much of a deep understanding of the game as someone higher may have but I’m only speaking from my experience as someone who has put well over 100 hours of my life into the game and way more outside of it consuming content. I love this game, that is undeniable, but as I write this, I’m kind of just done for the time being due to a lot of issues.
As of now, Street Fighter 6 has become my main fighting game with some Mortal Kombat on the side. For months on months I pretty much only played Tekken, I only consumed Tekken content. I went through the highs and lows of ranking up and figuring out a character, then figuring out that character isn’t for me, then finding another until I finally settled on my main Nina. When this game is fun, it is an absolute blast win or lose. Honestly, the most fun matches are friendly long sets without worrying about the awful ranking system. But when this game is bad and frustrating, it is amongst the worst of the worst.
First, net code. I’ve played on wired and Wi-Fi. It seems like the net code is just progressively getting worse and worse with every patch. Especially compared to the top dog fighting game right now, Street Fighter 6. The net code for that game is amazing. This game is a chore to play sometimes with horrible lag, delay and awful implementation of roll back net code. The matchmaking is so so bad. It wasn’t good to begin with, then they made it worse with prowess based matchmaking and now so many months later they’re finally fixing it with the upcoming patch but lord knows how many people they’ve turned off from the game already. There’s a severe lack of compelling game modes. The battle pass sucks and not because of its existence, but because 90% of the items are useless filler for what seems like most of the player base, me included. Some borders are cool so that’s fine but all the avatar stuff I could do without. Then the actual outfit stuff is so few and far between and not that great. Tekken’s customization is a pillar of the genre and it’s still pretty good here but lacking compared to its predecessors. Why can’t I mix and match preset costume pieces? Why are the recent costume dropping just one piece instead of multiple like before? Why does it take so long for anything new to drop in the store? It’s just very jarring. And leaves much to be desired.
The story just sucks. Like actually one of the worst stories I’ve ever consumed in any form of media. I don’t even want to talk about it at length. It was just bad. Sometimes it was laughably bad. Most of the time, I just wanted it to be over with. I will say, I will always love the vast representation in fighting games and how the big three (SF, MK, Tekken) have always strived for worldwide representation in some way, especially the Tekken series. With there being so many people from so many places, I just love how everyone speaks their native language but they can all understand each other. Very cute.
Now, gameplay. A lot of things have been patched since release and that’s nice. Like for months side stepping sucked, and they had a patch for that. They nerfed and buffed some characters which is nice, yet some get nothing when they really need it. While I love how many moves each character has and the combo system in this game I do feel there is a lack of visually clarity when it comes to certain moves and their hit properties. Look, with a cast this big with move sets this large, there are going to be a lot of knowledge checks both ways which is whatever, but some of these characters (Mainly Dragunov and Yoshimitsu) are completely busted. In a game where what separates the very good characters from the bad are what little weaknesses they have, there are characters with virtually none and I hope that gets addressed but it’s hard to see light at the end of the tunnel when to really bring these bad characters up to par you’d have to get rid of their weaknesses that make them unique which I think is a bad philosophy for a competitive game. But that also seems to be close to what their design philosophy actually is with the systems they’ve introduced. Like I would love to really play Lidia, but compared to my main Nina, she is just so flawed and apparent with what she can’t do. It can be rough. This game is going to have a long life though. As I write this, Heihachi is coming out soon and with him a patch and there’s plenty more to come so we’ll see where the gameplay settles at.
So yeah, I was a bit more negative here but I really do love this game. Outside of the issues, this is not only one of my favorite fighting game to play but one of my favorite games to play, period. It feels so good actually playing and learning matchups and getting better. I wish the customization was better, but I still see so many cool outfits and cosplays. I’ve spent so much time making outfits not only for my main but for characters that I don’t even play. I think the cast is great and well varied and I’ve loved the choices that they’ve had for dlc characters. Just like its competitors, this game is visually amazing in-game and during cutscenes. I will come back to this game. I love it too much and hopefully when I do comeback these issues are fixed and it’s a better experience, because there’s is really nothing like Tekken.
Tekken 8 – 8/10
