Ok, let's start with the positives.
As others have said, this is Tekken 7 but better. Combat feels great, with every hit carrying a ton of impact. I don't know how the super high level players feel about the new mechanic(Heat), but as a midcore player, I found it pretty damn fun to use. I wouldn't mind if Rage Arts were replaced entirely by it; it's a snappy mechanic that doesn't interrupt the flow of matches and is fairly easy to pick up.
It obviously looks a whole lot better than its predecessor. Stages, characters and effects all look really good. The story mode cutscenes are GORGEOUS, Yakushima being one of my favorite areas because of them. Character customization also got an upgrade: Custom attires no longer look like they're all made of satin, though customization options are a little barebones right now, but considering the leap in graphical fidelity, I guess that's to be expected. I'm pretty sure more items will be added in the future, so let's keep an eye out for that.
Tekken 7's OST had REALLY high highs, but some agonizing lows(Helicorp - Night being the worst offender there). Here, the soundtrack is pretty good across the board, even though none of the tracks really jumped out at me like Infinite Azure did.
But hey, even if the soundtrack sucked ass, Tekken 8 brings back the Jukebox feature! And this time, PC players can use it too! Rejoice, it's time to play Yodeling in Meadow Hill on EVERY stage!
Guess what else is great? Rollback right from the get go, AND cross-play! This is how you do it. I heard some players experienced crashing when trying to play online, but I hopped on a few online matches and had no issues playing.
I like the new characters, chuunibyou queen Reina being my favorite, but Azucena probably managed to break the record for fastest instance of flanderization ever recorded. (I don't think she has a single non-coffee related line? Like, I get it, it's a cute character trait, but come on.)
Didn't play a ton of Arcade Quest yet, but avatar customization was super cute. Chibi not-Kazuya had me laughing a lot lmao
Character episode endings are still around and just as entertaining. Really makes up for the actual story.
Speaking of which...
As I mentioned earlier, the cutscenes look incredible. It's crazy to think we got to the point where pre-rendered cutscenes look better than the actual CG movie that came out years ago. But that's as far as my praise for the story mode goes.
This is a worthless story. Irredeemable, much like its protagonist.
It genuinely feels like whoever was in charge of writing for Tekken 8 had a MASSIVE crush on Jin. Like, stalker levels of obsession. I swear, 90% of the time, you're looking at characters saying shit like "Jin, you're the hope of mankind." "You're the only one who can save the world." "Everyone knows that your will is strong.". The other 10%, you're watching Jin go "I can't save anyone!" "I won't reject my past... I need to atone."
This entire story revolves around Jin's quest for redemption. A.K.A, a continuation of the writers realizing how they MASSIVELY fucked up his characterization in Tekken 6, and wanting to fix it.
The messages they're trying to communicate with this narrative aren't bad. There are times in life we fuck up, but we can't chain ourselves to those mistakes; we need to move forward, and create something better from it. Our blood or turbulent family relations isn't what makes us who we are, we can become whatever we want in spite of the cards we were given. And of course, the usual shonen trope of "You're not alone, as long as you have people you can count on you'll be ok".
The problem is, these messages are being transmitted from the perspective of the guy who LITERALLY, ACTUALLY STARTED WORLD WAR III IN THIS UNIVERSE. LIKE, NOT A JOKE.
"Oh but he did it to purge the Devil Gene from the world and defeat Azazel before it could awaken." I won't even get into how dumb that whole setup is. Leaving that for an eventual T6 review because holy shit.
Regardless of his reasons, all out war is too high of a price to pay. From T6 onwards, we get to see the destruction wrought by his decision, the people who suffered by virtue of it. Shit, Miguel's ENTIRE motivation for living is avenging his sister's death after Jin's planes bombed the church she was getting married in.
There is no redemption for Jin. He ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and faced 0 consequences for it. If only it ended there.
Tekken 8 decides that, not only should JIn face no consequences for his actions, he should also be elevated by his peers at every possible moment. Jin is the star of hope for mankind! Jin is the only one who can put an end to Kazuya's reign of tyranny! He's not like his father, his oopsie poopsie-- COUNTLESS LIVES SACRIFICED FOR A PLAN PURELY BASED ON SPECULATION THAT DIDN'T EVEN WORK IN THE END-- isn't what defines him.
No, Jin is an angel. A symbol of hope. Fully realized when Jin literally gets an angel form in the final chapter of the story.
No interesting character interactions between the rest of the cast, no other arcs or conflicts to resolve, nothing. This story campaign serves only to provide the player with a fantasy where they get to stroke Jin's hot topic branded [REDACTED] for 2 hours, nothing else. Aggressively incompetent and tone deaf, a baffling waste of resources that could be spent elsewhere in the game. After evolving into this embarrassing amalgamation of conflicting ideas, and now that some characters have been reduced to nothing more than caricatures of themselves(Paul and Law STILL arguing about splitting the prize money in the middle of an actual war), this series desperately needs a reboot, more than ever. Which won't happen, considering that last cutscene.
Gameplay peak of the series, absolute embarrassment in terms of story and characterization. A shame, since I considered pre-T6 Tekken to be my favorite fighting game series in terms of story.
With all that said, the story hardly matters. I'll be playing this game for hundreds of hours, and it certainly won't be because of this piss poor excuse of a narrative. You should, too. hop on tekken
EDIT: Forgot to mention, dedicated Kazuya Mishima tits button on the title screen. 10/10
EDIT 2: KAZUYA'S SNEAKER COLLECTION IS FULLY FEATURED IN HIS CHARACTER EPISODE ENDING. ACTUALLY MADE ME UPDATE THE RATING TO 10/10
As others have said, this is Tekken 7 but better. Combat feels great, with every hit carrying a ton of impact. I don't know how the super high level players feel about the new mechanic(Heat), but as a midcore player, I found it pretty damn fun to use. I wouldn't mind if Rage Arts were replaced entirely by it; it's a snappy mechanic that doesn't interrupt the flow of matches and is fairly easy to pick up.
It obviously looks a whole lot better than its predecessor. Stages, characters and effects all look really good. The story mode cutscenes are GORGEOUS, Yakushima being one of my favorite areas because of them. Character customization also got an upgrade: Custom attires no longer look like they're all made of satin, though customization options are a little barebones right now, but considering the leap in graphical fidelity, I guess that's to be expected. I'm pretty sure more items will be added in the future, so let's keep an eye out for that.
Tekken 7's OST had REALLY high highs, but some agonizing lows(Helicorp - Night being the worst offender there). Here, the soundtrack is pretty good across the board, even though none of the tracks really jumped out at me like Infinite Azure did.
But hey, even if the soundtrack sucked ass, Tekken 8 brings back the Jukebox feature! And this time, PC players can use it too! Rejoice, it's time to play Yodeling in Meadow Hill on EVERY stage!
Guess what else is great? Rollback right from the get go, AND cross-play! This is how you do it. I heard some players experienced crashing when trying to play online, but I hopped on a few online matches and had no issues playing.
I like the new characters, chuunibyou queen Reina being my favorite, but Azucena probably managed to break the record for fastest instance of flanderization ever recorded. (I don't think she has a single non-coffee related line? Like, I get it, it's a cute character trait, but come on.)
Didn't play a ton of Arcade Quest yet, but avatar customization was super cute. Chibi not-Kazuya had me laughing a lot lmao
Character episode endings are still around and just as entertaining. Really makes up for the actual story.
Speaking of which...
As I mentioned earlier, the cutscenes look incredible. It's crazy to think we got to the point where pre-rendered cutscenes look better than the actual CG movie that came out years ago. But that's as far as my praise for the story mode goes.
This is a worthless story. Irredeemable, much like its protagonist.
It genuinely feels like whoever was in charge of writing for Tekken 8 had a MASSIVE crush on Jin. Like, stalker levels of obsession. I swear, 90% of the time, you're looking at characters saying shit like "Jin, you're the hope of mankind." "You're the only one who can save the world." "Everyone knows that your will is strong.". The other 10%, you're watching Jin go "I can't save anyone!" "I won't reject my past... I need to atone."
This entire story revolves around Jin's quest for redemption. A.K.A, a continuation of the writers realizing how they MASSIVELY fucked up his characterization in Tekken 6, and wanting to fix it.
The messages they're trying to communicate with this narrative aren't bad. There are times in life we fuck up, but we can't chain ourselves to those mistakes; we need to move forward, and create something better from it. Our blood or turbulent family relations isn't what makes us who we are, we can become whatever we want in spite of the cards we were given. And of course, the usual shonen trope of "You're not alone, as long as you have people you can count on you'll be ok".
The problem is, these messages are being transmitted from the perspective of the guy who LITERALLY, ACTUALLY STARTED WORLD WAR III IN THIS UNIVERSE. LIKE, NOT A JOKE.
"Oh but he did it to purge the Devil Gene from the world and defeat Azazel before it could awaken." I won't even get into how dumb that whole setup is. Leaving that for an eventual T6 review because holy shit.
Regardless of his reasons, all out war is too high of a price to pay. From T6 onwards, we get to see the destruction wrought by his decision, the people who suffered by virtue of it. Shit, Miguel's ENTIRE motivation for living is avenging his sister's death after Jin's planes bombed the church she was getting married in.
There is no redemption for Jin. He ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and faced 0 consequences for it. If only it ended there.
Tekken 8 decides that, not only should JIn face no consequences for his actions, he should also be elevated by his peers at every possible moment. Jin is the star of hope for mankind! Jin is the only one who can put an end to Kazuya's reign of tyranny! He's not like his father, his oopsie poopsie-- COUNTLESS LIVES SACRIFICED FOR A PLAN PURELY BASED ON SPECULATION THAT DIDN'T EVEN WORK IN THE END-- isn't what defines him.
No, Jin is an angel. A symbol of hope. Fully realized when Jin literally gets an angel form in the final chapter of the story.
No interesting character interactions between the rest of the cast, no other arcs or conflicts to resolve, nothing. This story campaign serves only to provide the player with a fantasy where they get to stroke Jin's hot topic branded [REDACTED] for 2 hours, nothing else. Aggressively incompetent and tone deaf, a baffling waste of resources that could be spent elsewhere in the game. After evolving into this embarrassing amalgamation of conflicting ideas, and now that some characters have been reduced to nothing more than caricatures of themselves(Paul and Law STILL arguing about splitting the prize money in the middle of an actual war), this series desperately needs a reboot, more than ever. Which won't happen, considering that last cutscene.
Gameplay peak of the series, absolute embarrassment in terms of story and characterization. A shame, since I considered pre-T6 Tekken to be my favorite fighting game series in terms of story.
With all that said, the story hardly matters. I'll be playing this game for hundreds of hours, and it certainly won't be because of this piss poor excuse of a narrative. You should, too. hop on tekken
EDIT: Forgot to mention, dedicated Kazuya Mishima tits button on the title screen. 10/10
EDIT 2: KAZUYA'S SNEAKER COLLECTION IS FULLY FEATURED IN HIS CHARACTER EPISODE ENDING. ACTUALLY MADE ME UPDATE THE RATING TO 10/10