Recent reviews by Chikalin

As a preface to this review, I have been reluctant to get on the negative review bandwagon, but more attention needs to be brought to the shady bait and switch that Bandai-Namco pulled with this game. The tldr; of this review is the following:

Unless Bandai-Namco changes their business tactics, Tekken 8 will likely serve as a blight on both the series and Katsuhiro Harada's legacy. No one will remember this game for being the epitome of what the series could be, they will remember it for shady business practices intended to take advantage of both critical reviewers and the actual players of the game. They will remember it for the DMCA takedowns on Twitter of users posting screenshots that have mods in them. They will remember Tekken 8 for all the negative community backlash because of their poor decisions--not for the game itself. It's an unfortunate situation, but that's what Bandai-Namco has chosen: to tarnish the reputation of a once stellar game series.

As it stands, I feel like Steam, Microsoft, Sony, and all retailers should be offering customers refunds due to Bandai-Namco's bait and switch tactics. At the very least, it should be grounds for a class-action.

With that out of the way, we can get a little granular with both the good stuff and the bad stuff...

+ Solid Gameplay
+ Great Graphics
+ Good Character Designs
+ Acceptable online play

Gameplay and graphics are something Tekken has always excelled at, assuming you like Tekken's style of gameplay. That is to say, Tekken offers a specific variety of fighting that varies significantly from its predecessor, Virtua Fighter, and VF copycats such as Dead or Alive. It's a truly unique experience that you either love or hate. Tekken is ultimately a much simpler game to learn than, say, Street Fighter 6, but you will spend literally hundreds of hours labbing the mechanics to ensure your muscle memory serves you well when you go learn character matchups against other players.

Tekken also stomps on the competition when it comes to the refinement of the character designs (with the exception of Lars, who gradually looks worse or even more stupid every installment). Just about every character is interesting enough to catch some attention in both design and personality, which is more than I can say for some of the competition, with the possible exception of Guilty Gear. The characters look good doing what they're doing, especially as of this installment in the series since Bandai-Namco spares no expenses on post-processing effects this time around. In comparison to Tekken 7, Tekken 8 is a night and day difference in graphical quality.

- Bait and switch tactics for positive review farming
- Grindy FOMO Battle Pass (Now)
- Overpriced shady exchange rate Cash Shop
- Zero way to accomplish the Battle Pass for offline players
- Additional DLC on top of the above
- Monetization of ingame items that would have been free in previous installments
- Lack of game modes
- Unnecessary targeting of the mod community
- Questionable balance, especially with the introduction of the Heat system
- No Eliza
- That's a story, alright

While Tekken 8 is a solid game as far as gameplay and graphics go, there are a lot of negative that are hard to ignore, especially regarding the handling of the Tekken Shop and Fight Pass/Premium.

It is clear what Bandai-Namco's intentions were with the announcement and handling of both the cash shop and battle pass, and I frankly think it should be grounds for invalidation of all of the positive reviews and rewards they tout in their advertising campaigns. They clearly misled both reviewers and customers with shady bait and switch tactics and this is... technically illegal, not to mention scummy on principle. This tactic shows that Bandai-Namco were fully cognizant of the impact these 'features' would have on the game reviews, which is why the intentionally withheld information about these features until after the initial reviews for the game came in.

So, even if we try to give the battle pass on top of the cash shop on top of the season pass, on top of the $80 base game model, there are still severe issues with the battle pass works in comparison to other games. The only way to make any progress on the battle pass is through online matches, predominantly online wins.


For the people that do grind out the battle pass, the grind is real. You can get a total of 600 exp a day from missions and I believe 7,100 a week from weeklies, for a total of 11,300 exp a week if you do dailies and weeklies every day. As far as I know, all levels of the battle pass are 1,000 exp, and there are 60 levels--meaning you need a total of 60,000 exp. Just doing missions alone, you would not be able to achieve the battle pass without either (1) extraneous grinding or (2) buying their SUPER PREMIUM battle pass with a 20 level skip. The math here doesn't consider the base exp you get from each fight, and that's kinda intentional since said gains seem.. somewhat negligible.

Again, the fact that your only method of making battle pass progress, and you have effectively one option to do so, is pretty bad. In comparison to Street Fighter 6, SF has multiple varying missions and a few extra ways to get points other than just straight up winning matches online. It still negatively impacts offline players, but at least there is *some* variety in the missions that Tekken does not have. Street FIghter V did missions in general a lot better since you had both offline and online options, and the offline missions varied weekly with significant variation. None of that exists in Tekken 8; you play online, that's it.

I would have less gripes about the way the battle pass operated if there were legitimate options for offline players, but as it stands--there are none. I would also have one less gripe if the Premium Pass offered an exp boost, which as far as I know, it does not.

Then there's the bigger problem to consider...


For anyone new to this, Tekken has had a customization mode and Treasure Battle since, as I recall, Tekken 5. You got items through playing in Treasure Battle and there were hundreds of items to unlock through offline gameplay even as late as Tekken 7. This allowed players to actually play the game offline to unlock items and it offered more replay value other than playing online. Granted, online-only players *hate* this, but admittedly--statistics show that online-only players are a vast minority compared to casual players.

Harada will tell you "You need to adjust to modern gaming business models." This is code for "Bandai-Namco is in a financial rut, primarily due to Blue Protocol, and wants to get as much money out of you as possible through questionable business practices." A developer adds SIGNIFICANT value to their game by giving the customer more bang for their initial buck.

When I paid $70 for Tekken 7, or $60 for Tekken 6, I felt like I got a good value. Tekken 6, in particular, offered more varied game modes and it gave me something I could do without having to play online all the time. There is not really a concept of a modern gaming business model--there is the business model that a publisher decides upon, and the onus of making a decision that is unfriendly to the end-user is on the publisher. We, as the end-user, don't need to adjust to anything--the publisher needs to give us a reason to give them money and frankly, that's a difficult ask given how they've treated the game after release.