It hurts me to write a negative review for Tekken 8, it truly does. It was probably my most antecipated game of 2024 and when the honeymoon phase ended, what I ended up with is a mix of bad decisions taken without most players best interests in mind.

First the pros, to take it outta the way quickly. The graphics are the best ever. The soundtrack still isn't stellar as Tekken 5's and/or Tag 2, but still a good step away from Tekken 7's WUBWUBWUWBWUB. It's the best Tekken for beginners. This is as much of a pro than it's a con, but more on that later. The netplay and load times are much better than Tekken 7's weird wifi netcode and massive load times.

Now the cons. Tekken 8 took a turn for the worse when it decided to be more aggressive in order to create matches more exciting to watch in tournaments. It used to be a fairly balanced game but now it's a mashing festival where every character lost what it made them special in the first place. It feels like everyone has absurd plus frames, 50/50s, stances and shiny secondary special gimmicks. The game has no longer that tension, that spark that made it so special. I feel like I've played Dead or Alive matches slower paced than Tekken 8 ranked matches, and if you've played DoA before you know what I mean, that game is crazy fast.

All of this because Harada knew he wouldn't be able to luck it out the way he did with Tekken 7's competition when it launched. At the time there were basically no competition, since Street Fighter 5 had a bumpy launch and the other games didn't really matter. So he gambled his way making Tekken 8 the cocaine addict it is. The problem is that instead of being FUN to play, and it is somewhat fun, it doesn't feel like you're playing a true TEKKEN game. It feels like you're playing a spin off made for crazy kids mashing buttons. If you're still reading this (and I thank you for that), remember when I told you that this is the best Tekken for beginners? It's easy to get into the game loop because the game feels more approachable than before, despite having no real tutorial or useful beginner friendly tools, just like before. It does have a simplified attack setup but that won't help beginners in the long run. The problem is that all these beginners will most likely drop the game when the next Tekken comes out and realise that boy, last night was crazy, gotta get up and go to work now . When Tekken becomes TEKKEN again, player retention will go rock bottom because Tekken 8 is not the way this franchise is supposed to play.

Or I can be really, really wrong and this is what Tekken has become. Then I guess I'll just go ♥♥♥♥ myself.

Anyway, this review is already long and I haven't even started about the Heat system yet. This MISTAKE replaced Tekken 7's Rage Drives and is basically half of the reason this game sucks so much right now. Every character takes all I've mentioned so far and cranks it up to 11 when Heat is activated. Characters like King will put you in a 50/50 every damn round using Heat, Reina won't let you press buttons until Heat is over (Reina main here, best goth gf ever, SUBMIT TO ME yes mommy). Not to mention how much Heat harms the flow of the battle with lenghty animations and camera movements. It's just bad. Visually, the game is getting more and more over the top and I think that's fun, since Tekken is no longer about martial arts and we even have a walking weapons safe John Wick silver daddy frenchman now, but honestly some animations are just annoying when you're being forced to watch it every damn round.

I won't say anything about the story mode because I don't care about this bad anime ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

And of course, to wrap it up, we have all the microtransactions all over again, yayyy... Extra characters that should've been in the launch roster but you have to pay extra to play with. I hate Eddy with a passion but locking him up behind a paywall? Not to mention Heihachi, but he was supposed to be COMPRETERY DED, right Harada? I never wanted to punch Harada in the face so hard before. Then they launch the character but charges extra for his stage! And how they address this joke? "Here players, have 500 coins to spend on completely useless and stupid ♥♥♥♥". It's all gone to hell, guys. We're so ♥♥♥♥♥♥ now.

Thank you so much for making this mess of a game, Harada. You decided to cater to everyone but the former playerbase of this game. Former veterans hated it, the pros you fondle so much hated it, and all the new players will go away once you realize how much of a mistake this game is and makes things right again next time, because they'll be completely destroyed when they're forced to play TEKKEN how it's supposed to be. Dead or Alive 6 was a failure because of the same mistakes, essentially: forgetting what makes you so special. We've all seen it happen before.

See you in Tekken Tag 3, Tekken 9 or Tekken REBOOT-tentative-name, guys.

Worst ♥♥♥♥ game i've ever played, mashing is too rewarded in this brainless game. Got to bushin and no one is playing with their brains.

Ranked and quick play are always like 5m+ of matchmaking to play 3~ matches.
Battle lounge is just a glorified matchmaking lobby, but you match with only one player (that can fail to connect).
Players rooms are either afk players or the highest ranks of the game (the player count of the room is also confusing, you can't tell who's playing or waiting for a match).

Most of my playtime is waiting in the training room.