My opinion has shifted on Tekken 8 since it made a splash back in January. What started as a global event and a celebration of Tekken and the FGC as a whole has turned into perhaps the most tilting, dishonest fighting games ever created. I’m not writing this all pissed-off after a lackluster night on ranked. I’ve stopped playing for a few days and I feel no reason to go back.

Tekken 8 is miserable.

The first obvious issue is the heat system. It’s horrible. With a press of a button you get an attack that is fully tracking, plus on block, fast, armored, and launches if opponent is airborne. Once in heat, many characters get insanely powerful moves that do everything. Launch, plus on block, infinite range, you name it. Not only are these moves incredibly unbalanced and braindead, but they rip much on the integrity of Tekken straight out. Tekken has always been a knowledge check type of fighting game. There has always been bullshit moves that you need to lab. However, that’s not the case with these heat attacks. There’s absolutely nothing you can do. There shouldn’t be moves in fighting games with no counter play. They feel cheap to go up against and they feel dirty to use. It’s so disingenuous and braindead.

Heat is not the only problem however. Everything is just so over-tuned. Defense is a guessing game. It seams like every attack clips you if you try to sidestep, even with plus frames.
So many strings jail on block so you can’t duck and punish. Neutral is gutted by insanely powerful WR moves that are nearly homing and grant plus 7 if not more. Low parry was nerfed significantly making defense much worse. Many of the best characters in the game have heat smashes that fully track and grant plus frames, leaving you a sitting duck in neutral.

Defense has been gutted. Neutral has been gutted. Offense has been simplified with braindead moves. Pluggers are still a problem. Rank boosters quit after one lose. Feng still isn’t nerfed. Dragunov is still doing 70% on one launch. Devil Jin still has his heat smash. Xiayou still has a mid-mid-mid string that’s plus and a non-launch punishable unseeable snake edge. Counter-hit and homing throws are still a problem.

With all these factors, I find myself wondering: “is this even better than Tekken 7?” I hold out hope that with some balance patches and some key nerfs that Tekken 8 can still be the greatest Tekken. But as of now? It’s probably the worst Tekken of my lifetime.

This title has managed to hook people again like Tekken3 hooked it at the time.

The problem with this is that now they have added microtransactions, and from what it seems they want to add a Battle pass to it.

Aside from that, having AMD is a problem since one of the maps crashes on its own unless you lower the graphics until it looks like you're playing the first Tekken on a CRT monitor.

$2000 for PC and the Deluxe version of the game to have the possibility of crashing several times and ending up banned. I can't play until they fix that specific problem since they are also banning people who used mods, and the only mod I have is to lower the graphics of that specific map.

If you plan to buy some Tekken and you don't care about all this, buy Tekken 8. However, if you like modding games and don't want to support the abusive practice of microtransactions and the destruction of an entire community, don't waste your money.

I am so deeply conflicted about this game. I want to love this game. It has the potential to be much better than vermintide 2 which has become one of my favorite games of all time but it just has some very shoddy design choices that bring it down.


The core gameplay goes hard and feels like mostly an improvement over vermintide 2. weapons feel better to use, they have more of an impact, ranged weapons are more fun and weapons have more varied movesets. Combine that with the music and that makes the game feel perfect in some moments.
I like the map layouts. They've def gotten better at that with time.
They also captured the atmosphere of 40k perfectly through the environments, dialogue and music.The class system is good tho rn I haven't messed around too much with it.


The mission board is not good design. Instead of a clear cohesive campaign or even just being able to select any mission after unlocking them you just depend on RNG. My early game experience was repeating one or two missions because that is all people in quickplay were doing.

Grims and Scriptures being randomized is a very bizarre move. Was this some misguided attempt to dissuade grinding or something? because it just dissuades people from going for grims and tomes in general.

Toughness is likely the second worst thing about Darktide for me. Its the opposite of THP in vermintide 2 and ends up rewarding playing safe instead of aggressive and the punishment for losing teammates is much harsher than in vermintide 2.

The worst thing tho is the progression system. Getting weapons is somehow more randomized than vermintide 2.

In v2 you get one chest every mission with the item rarities depending on factors you have a direct control over and each chest had three random items. You would likely not get exactly what you want but you could just scrap it and craft the weapon you wanted easily.

Here there's like two currencies for a randomized shop with very stupid requirements for upgrading them based on more resources that you get in missions. One of the currencies you use to get weapons is the same currency for the non-premium cosmetics. The last one feels extremely stupid.

I'll come back to this game after an year or so. Maybe it won't be a game held back by stupid progression paths then