I am not qualified to talk about Tekken in any academic capacity - but I can tell you how it made me feel. And while I am going to be talking about Tekken 8 specifically, I've played 7 too and I know most of my thoughts will apply to that game too. If you want a deep mechanical analysis, look elsewhere!
The story this time around flounders, to put it bluntly. This game serves as a Jin character study, and if you enjoy playing as Jin or his devil counterpart, you're bound to have a good time! If you play as almost anyone else, you may struggle to find much to enjoy here. The campaign is short, and feels pretty rushed too. There's little in the way of unique set pieces, though one chapter experiments with the formula greatly, evoking an old mode(?) called Tekken Force, if my sources are to be believed; this chapter kinda sucks. I won't drill into it too much more, it's not what I came for and while it was a fun romp (the final fights were a wonderful spectacle), this misses the mark.
Tekken 8 is stupendously pretty, and as always, is a fantastic spectator experience for anyone. Pulling off combos feels good because the amount of effort put into the hit effects (both visual and sound) is absurd, and most rage arts and heat smashes embellish fights percectly. The music is also top notch - Tekken music rarely misses but I truly feel they outdid themselves here, with almost every stage having a heart-pounding track accompanying it. The arenas themselves amp up the hype, just one glance at Descent into Subconscious or Fallen Destiny will have impress, but the fights are accentuated by punchy stage interactions such as wall splats or floor breaks. It's all sublimely put together.
When things come to blows, I'm a Raven player. Finding a character in Tekken is a little weird; from an outsider's perspective, it's hard to differentiate most of the roster. I look at Kimberly in SF6 and I see a ninja character with setplay elements and incredible mix. I look at Jack-O in Strive and I see a minion character that focuses on snowballing with difficult setup. When I look at Tekken, I see a lot of characters just punching or kicking each other. Almost no projectiles exist, and due to the expansive kit of each character, moves tend to have some visual overlap. Instead of going off gameplay, I had to look at designs, which is when characters like Victor and Yoshimitsu stuck out to me. Raven too, but he seemed too hard. I eventually came back to him, tried him out for a while and had fun, so Raven it was!
It's tricky for me to go into training mode and press a few buttons to test out what a character does. There's about a 50:50 chance that a certain move is actually any good, and you'll spend a lot of time scrawling through menus or wikis to figure out what you should actually be pressing. Ultimately, I think this is what lead me to dropping Tekken when I did. The barrier to entry is pretty brutal, especially when your friends' interest is starting to dwindle too. What surprises me is just how intuitive the combos are, though. It takes almost no time from your first boot up to landing a string that carries your opponent to the wall. The issue then becomes finding an opportunity to hit your launchers, sidestepping or ducking your opponents pressure or figuring out what on earth a tornado is. It's all just a tad overwhelming, especially given the roster's size.
I had a great time here, and maybe I'll dip my toes back in every now and then, but watching as they add shitty feature and terrible patch notes into each subsequent update, I'm incredibly frustrated by the state of modern fighting games. If you're charging that much for a game, don't monetize it! The fact that SF6 and T8, both fantastic packages with big price tags, feel the need to dilute their content with this nonsense is disheartening.
The story this time around flounders, to put it bluntly. This game serves as a Jin character study, and if you enjoy playing as Jin or his devil counterpart, you're bound to have a good time! If you play as almost anyone else, you may struggle to find much to enjoy here. The campaign is short, and feels pretty rushed too. There's little in the way of unique set pieces, though one chapter experiments with the formula greatly, evoking an old mode(?) called Tekken Force, if my sources are to be believed; this chapter kinda sucks. I won't drill into it too much more, it's not what I came for and while it was a fun romp (the final fights were a wonderful spectacle), this misses the mark.
Tekken 8 is stupendously pretty, and as always, is a fantastic spectator experience for anyone. Pulling off combos feels good because the amount of effort put into the hit effects (both visual and sound) is absurd, and most rage arts and heat smashes embellish fights percectly. The music is also top notch - Tekken music rarely misses but I truly feel they outdid themselves here, with almost every stage having a heart-pounding track accompanying it. The arenas themselves amp up the hype, just one glance at Descent into Subconscious or Fallen Destiny will have impress, but the fights are accentuated by punchy stage interactions such as wall splats or floor breaks. It's all sublimely put together.
When things come to blows, I'm a Raven player. Finding a character in Tekken is a little weird; from an outsider's perspective, it's hard to differentiate most of the roster. I look at Kimberly in SF6 and I see a ninja character with setplay elements and incredible mix. I look at Jack-O in Strive and I see a minion character that focuses on snowballing with difficult setup. When I look at Tekken, I see a lot of characters just punching or kicking each other. Almost no projectiles exist, and due to the expansive kit of each character, moves tend to have some visual overlap. Instead of going off gameplay, I had to look at designs, which is when characters like Victor and Yoshimitsu stuck out to me. Raven too, but he seemed too hard. I eventually came back to him, tried him out for a while and had fun, so Raven it was!
It's tricky for me to go into training mode and press a few buttons to test out what a character does. There's about a 50:50 chance that a certain move is actually any good, and you'll spend a lot of time scrawling through menus or wikis to figure out what you should actually be pressing. Ultimately, I think this is what lead me to dropping Tekken when I did. The barrier to entry is pretty brutal, especially when your friends' interest is starting to dwindle too. What surprises me is just how intuitive the combos are, though. It takes almost no time from your first boot up to landing a string that carries your opponent to the wall. The issue then becomes finding an opportunity to hit your launchers, sidestepping or ducking your opponents pressure or figuring out what on earth a tornado is. It's all just a tad overwhelming, especially given the roster's size.
I had a great time here, and maybe I'll dip my toes back in every now and then, but watching as they add shitty feature and terrible patch notes into each subsequent update, I'm incredibly frustrated by the state of modern fighting games. If you're charging that much for a game, don't monetize it! The fact that SF6 and T8, both fantastic packages with big price tags, feel the need to dilute their content with this nonsense is disheartening.