Inclusion: I felt that there wasn't too much fanfare for this one. Tekken is sort of a given to be in it with how much more prominent FG characters are and the fact that Bandai Namco was a mainstay dev for the series. That being said, Tekken rules and it's really cool to see it represented here.

Fighter: Kazuya feels like breaking the limits of what they can do with a smash character. He has a ton of inputs that do various unique attacks and his combo and mixup game is absolutely insane. That and a bunch of small inclusions like the shifting camera angles for throws make him the most fun DLC character as a spectator out of all of them.

Stage: I think the stage is really neat, but it feels like a lesser version of the KoF arena with a much weaker version of the wall mechanic. It slightly mitigates this by not having full-on walkoffs but it just feels a bit less specialized in that way.

Music: Tekken music is legendary, they chose a ton of fantastic picks for the soundtrack. There's some really strong remixes here too, I like Yoko Shimomura's take on Infinite Azure quite a bit. I play tracks from this selection a lot on Battlefield and FD.

The Tekken announcer being there for his victory screen was also a really nice touch.

After playing the game’s DLC on and off for the past year, I’ve had to acknowledge that this might be the best one.
I have to say - there is a sort of intimate trait to the way that you break into a fighting game over the course of months. Slowly filling in the holes in a character’s arsenal, feeling out every aspect of a kit until you can take advantage of every little piece of it… It’s mesmerizing. Yet the cold truth is that, well, I don’t play games for that long at a time anymore. Maybe I hit a point in which my friends have moved on for newer hotness, or I’m no longer getting that satisfaction juice from going online, but I’ll just drop it at some point. I come back a year later and realize in horror that my progress had essentially been reset; I remember a few buttons and a bnb or two, but other than that, I’m out. I certainly don’t see this as a flaw with the genre that should be taped over, it only makes sense that part of the appeal of the genre is climbing the mountain born of your own volition until your legs give out. I just know that despite my genuine love for the genre, I have been and always will be back and forth in how I interact with it.

At the very least, Smash Bros. has offered me an alternative to this that I’ve come to appreciate over time. I can jump into it and remember pretty much everything about it, because the traits that make you good at Smash are so outwardly pronounced. You throw out the big buttons, and you combo off reaction. It’s not a fundamentally better approach, but it saved Smash from falling off entirely for me. My experience with Smash was one of competitive-casualness, I’ve never entered a tourney - I just play with people who use those no items rules. 3 years into my cycle of death and rebirth with Smash, we get Kazuya Mishima, who I wouldn’t play until months after their release. A bit after Sora comes out, I decide to try and see if I can do one of those zero-to-death combos I see on Twitter… It certainly wasn’t the mountain that some fighting games can be, but as someone who never played Mishimas in Tekken, it was a cute little sandcastle.

What I would discover as I played Kazuya, is that in THE WORLD OF KAZUYA MISHIMA, THERE ARE NO RULES, BARRING THAT YOU MUST MASTER THE ELECTRIC GOD WIND FIST. It’s invincible, it combos into almost every move he has, and the best combos are simply most efficiently comboing it into itself. The casualness and intimacy I was so fond of were intertwined together; my entire learning curve with the character would become seeking out as much potential in the god fist as I could. In this way, Smash really compartmentalized the satisfaction of learning a fighting game all into one attack. And how could I forget an attack like that? Kazuya was divinely gifted with the most powerful move in the game from the heavens under the sole condition that he must “Get Silly With It” - and as God’s Silliest Soldier, I knew this was my duty since before I was born. Wrap the bow onto that gift of having a huge moveset that you’ll slowly develop biased favourites from, and those throw camera shots… And it looks like we got a winner here. Nowadays, still only playing Smash in bursts every handful of months, I make a little progress on my god fist every time.


Oh yeah, and I’m not gonna criticize this character’s apparent bad balancing. Smash Bros. is the devil’s game, and I believe that by doing Kazuya infinites online I am sending it to the depths from whence it came from.

I have never played a single Tekken game in my life, but I kinda want to change that someday because Kazuya is dope. I love how he has like two hundred different attacking moves like a traditional fighting game character that's both cool and hilarious. I love the vibe of his stage as well dojos slap so hard I'm glad we finally have one in Smash. this pack is also my first time listening to Tekken music and I should do that more often because whoa this franchise has some solid tracks man.

great character and pack, but I feel like he should drop his enemies off of a cliff and smile to the camera as a victory screen I think that would be very funny