How To Play Tekken 8: The Ultimate Beginner Guide 

Yeah, one thing BADLY needed I noticed going in to T8 is newbie guides that are ACTUALLY for newbies. So many of the big Tekken content creators are so experienced and so used to advising experienced players that they throw out high level tech like it's something you need to learn from day 1 and overall just use language and advice that doesn't apply to new players or is hard if not impossible to digest. Guides like this that actually start from the ground level and spell things out are excellent and sorely needed. Even if you technically did go over a higher level concept like frame data you fully explained it from the most basic level quickly and efficiently and didn't spend half the video pushing it as a necessary thing despite that fact it'll totally overwhelm new players, for example.

You can tell this video is actually meant for beginners because it explains 1,2,3,4. Lots of very good advise and cleanly put together.

Tekken 8 is my first real attempt at the fighting game genre. I don't think I can emphasize how well done this video is. I'm 32, big-time gamer, and always wanted to get into at least one of the popular fighting game IPs, but it seemed like a daunting task. This last year has been like a fighting game renaissance. The Tekken 8 hype online caught my attention and I finally had the guts to buy it a week ago. It's been super fun and this video has answered a lot of my questions. Thank you.

"don't be afraid to reach out!" *Video shows Aris* Uh oh...

Ive been a big fan of Tekken since the first game but always a casual level player. The end of Tekken 7 was the first time I'd truly knuckled down to learn the game. Man it's so hard and theres so many bad habits to unlearn. Switching your brain from casual "play by feel" to actually understanding what moves to use and when. And how to appropriately respond to your opponent. Wish Id sort of sought this stuff out back in the day but this stuff just wasnt as prevalent.

Super casual Tekken player, Tekken 8 is the first I’m taking more seriously and trying to learn. Loving the experience and floating in orange ranks. My spacing and punishing is in vast need of improvement. The crazy KBD stuff I will likely never be able to pull off so working round that limitation and just gonna see where I can get to. I’m juggling between Bryan and Paul

Nice guide! The strategy section especially is phenomenal for a beginner and has some great insights.

Thank you Diaphone! Always love your guides.

This video is superb. Easily digestible, informative, and entertaining. The best Tekken guide for a new player by far.

Fantastic guide, Diaphone. It is concise, well edited, and very informative. Much appreciated, brother 👍

Your videos are so down to earth. Great job as always!

I really have to thank you for putting this video together! I've been playing Tekken for fun since Tekken 3, and decided to really give playing 'for real' a try with 8, and to have someone actually laying out the basics like this REALLY helps! I know I still need to look into more general terms like what it means to be 'safe on block' and simple stuff like that, but having the fundamentals like the button numbering, options while down, and the basics of frame data and trading turns actually helped me to sneak into the yellow ranks online for the first time! Being able to actually start playing the game without immediately getting pummeled for only knowing how to button mash is helping me fall in love with this game all over again.

I've been playing Tekken for the longest time, and never knew what the star meant in move lists... Thank you. You earned a like, and sub. c:

Amazing video, the production quality is insane!!

Im going to have to start calling you Sensei Diaphone 💪🏻 your guides have done me wonders on my fighting game journey!! About time I said Thankyou!!

Editing is top tier. Keep it up!!

Excellent video. Super clear and great explanation of each topic at hand

Nice guide! Bring back memories figuring what the hell is the STAR icon lol.

Love the detailed guides. I don’t even play most of the new games you stream but I watch all these just to see if there’s some sauce I’m missing out on.

This is the best fighting game video tutorial I’ve ever seen. Great work!!!

Very informative. And very very nice visuals man!

My god the editing is so good Namco might as well make this the officila tutorial video.

Thank you for this guide, this is awesome!

Love the content as usual!!!

Yea wait until u get to purple ranks its a whole different ball game.. i feel like im playing in evo every match😂

Great video dude, keep it up!! ❤❤

Dude this video is the one I have been looking for. Havent played tekken since 3 so this helps a ton.

Thank you Diaphone. It's a really great beginner guide.

props to the editor man, the editing for this vid is crisppp

Thanks for this, it's really helpful as T8 is really overwhelming! I can feel how good the game is but understand how little I know so I've just been trying to practice moves and learn them then I can move on to combos and a plan. I think I'll need to watch this a few times to get it all to sink in though so thanks for sharing!

Amazing guide for beginners. Thank you.

Thank you very much for this useful and clear guide

Really nice editing

When linking multiple backdashes with crouch blocking, you can hold back after downback, before the neutral frame, and get the next backdash with only one back input. This is the fabled Korean Back Dash (kbd)

Thank you for this video. Ive played tekken since 3 but never played it on a competitive level. Im gonna start playing it the right way

Best guide. Thank you so much.

This is probably the best tekken beginner guide out there. About everything you could ask for, and not too much information either

Fantastic video. Thank you

Great vid! Thx🎉

best guide so far for beginners, straight to the point no extra fat

Super good guide. Will recommend it to friends for sure. Maybe you could do another video with all the stuff you excluded? Something that can be progressed into after this one

This is an amazing guide

this should be the official tekken 8 guide. fantastic work.

I play the avatar mod set for new player in the game. It"s long and there is almost anything axplain except for the heat mechanics... I have play some hours now and I had more infos in two minutes in your video than in 5 hours of gaming. Soooo well done ! And hank you a lot !

Thanks diaphone!

Something that needs to be said are the states characters will be in when hit normally and critically. Some moves put your opponent head first towards you on their back while some staggers them, or put them into a kneeling position, launching them with certain moves may make them spin like a screw etc.

Really good Guide every new Player should watch this 👌

W guide. ain’t played tekken in like 11 years. excited to get into this one. i just hope im not to late and and will be able to enjoy becoming better thru online n not face sweats always. W tho🎉

Best beginner guide out there thx

Honestly best Tekken beginner guide on RU-vid.

Haven’t played tekken since tekken 5 this is a big help

Thank you 👍

every time a new fighting game comes out i know i can count on diaphone to dish out the best 101s on the platform

Thank you for this video, playing this game without any knowledge of it is very difficult. Sad to see my main did not favourite to play character from 7 didn’t make it (Akuma but I’ve heard stories of him being op) as his style was much more familiar to me.

Best video ever. I tried watching other guides and this made so I can understand it. The very little thing like how to get up. Do you have any anti juggling tips?

cant wait to get this game next month

These guide will help a lot of people in the future.

Best Guide, thx a lot

Thanks a lot for the guide, last 3d fighter I played was like DoA 3 i think? so long ago and picking up T8 seemed a little daunting

Thanks so much, I'm buying the game today

Great video 👍

thank you Dphone

The strategy section is great

THANK YOU

Yo! I love you fgc content and was ready to scrap with your Azu. Something happened to the connection tho...maybe next time! I know Hwo is a headache but the best advice i can give that actually helps is always look to step LEFT in NEU and if you block his attack (extremely generalized but it works wonder when trying to find reads). Just start there. Constantly look for the step left in neutral.

Jun main here ! Thanks for the guide. Destoyer rank. Hope i can go to Garyu 🤞

So many overthinking that you pushed out how to teach other people and/or remedial people like me who have not yet bought it. Thank you very much

Coming from soul calibur6 and these are really good advice. Keep it simple, one step at a time, watch the big boys, have fun :)

Just purchased this game.. i always playef tekken 2&3... i honestly feel 2 old for the new one haha so many buttons compared to back then xD but love this video ! Will help alot i hope hihi 🤩

Thanks for the well made guide dude ! However I still have one question which remains unanswered but it is about knowing which steps to be taken once you start the game. Should I start training mode / ghost mode / arcade mode / story mode ? I am kinda paralyzed because I have no route to follow :(😢

The strategy part is what is missing from all beginners guides. Well done.

I struggle playing against aggressive characters like Hwoarang and Devil Jin. I try to block, but they still seem to have the advantage, or get through with mix-ups. Guess I need to use my 1 jab more? Great guide btw! I only came here to find out how to roll on the floor (sideways) 😂 You didn't mention f1+2 on the floor to dive at them? Is that a bad tactic?

amazing vid

Bless you! First Tekken game I've owned and started having a panic attack

Thanks for the tips and stuff, I lose pretty much every online fight, most of it is due to some weird input latency though like 5 seconds or more, not sure how how to resolve it, im on the PC

I find it interesting that the community calls it while standing when I personally prefer while rising cus it sounds more intuitive and makes more sense (in my head atleast)

Great video. Someone send this to Ellum.

yo i need this badly i thank u

Just bought it today after trying the demo, this guide will help with not getting demolished even in the story mode 😂

This my first real tekken experience and i love it... That said im a few days in and my only real complaint is hitting L1(PS) to get simple combos. I hit L1 then triangle 3 times to get a 3 part combo i only know the first 2 parts to w way less inputs... Why is that a thing...

I’m playing ps5 on ps5 controller. I feel like there’s not enough time to complete combos. I mostly play in practice mode on the combo sampler. I use Leroy, Steve, Hwoarang. I was able to do about 3-4 samplers for each of em. But then it gets into the “white arrow” and “black arrow” samplers and I’m running out of time mid combo to input all of it. It doesn’t help that the arrows are also directional. I’ve switched from using the control stick for movement to the D-pad. It’s just frustrating because I always seem to be running out of time. So the characters won’t complete the combo. The “move preview” doesn’t help because they do the move so fast that it doesn’t let me see what each individual step of the combo should look like. I can’t slow it down. In my experience what works best is to just press all the buttons in a combo as fast as possible. Then I can sit back and watch the combo get executed. Rather than one button press at a time which means the character never goes into “combo stringing” mode.

This is my first tekken ever I'm more of an mk player so I know nothing. I just want to ask why I'm not doing special moves instead I'm doing the basic move every time. Am I not pressing the D-pad fast enough in the direction or something along that line?

diaphones the fucking goat TY FOR THE GUIDE

Now that Lidia is coming i just bought the game and shit is overwelming. Thank you for the quick guide.

Which characters do you recommend? The three I’ve been playing, Paul, Reina, and Steve, most say are some of the toughest 😂

Nice

I love how you very casually snuck in an explanation of KBD for newer players

what a great video! Im watching this while the game downloads! great editing too really appreciate you putting this information out there

I’m trying to learn the tempo of the button combos I want to go into devlKazuya and I can’t find the rhythm to input

The part that's definitely making me struggle the most is knowing when and where to punish. I know that there's a punishment guide for each character, but with so many moves for each character, I struggle to keep these in mind and just cant punish correctly

can someone help me? im trying to play pvp locally but i cant select the character for player 2😭 enter and space button doesnt seem to work either

I mean when I am in practice ground than I tried Jin 10 hit combo but I press all the buttons even it is visible in command history but the combo didn't execute 😕 what should I do 😞

I'm Shinryu now and here the game starts. The rank chart shows it exactly.

W guide

5:14 Using Kings Giant Swing isn't the best for visual representation since he's one of the exceptions for the 1 grab, but holy fuck this video is well made! I wish I had this shown to me when I began, the frame data section is fucking lit. 6:10 The back dash only has 2 back inputs the first time you back dash, so it actually looks like ⬅⬅ ⭐ ⬅↙⬅ ⭐⬅↙⬅ ... ect, and also you want to end on a back instead of neutral so it'd be ↙⬅ ⭐ ⬅(delay for 13 frames) into↙⬅ ⭐ ⬅ repeating, because the down back is canceling the backdash. Anakin has told beginners that they can use ⬅⬅⬇⭐⬅⬅⬇⭐(Technically it's more unsafe, but if you hold back when the opponent is approaching, it can be an alternate way that's easier for beginners to move faster) . 7:08 Generally you want to be techrolling, unless you know what you're doing. Randomly mixing gets you killed more often. Staying on the ground tip is very good! 13:33 very underrated concept. Intro, attacks, wake-up options, rage/heat, strategy and general tips was a phenominal way to cover so much ground! Very cool guide 10/10.

I do wish you covered types of knockdown, back turned stance and chain grabs because I’m pretty sure these will confuse players way more if they think they know but don’t know

8:36 Isn't that just recovering grey health by attacking, which every character can do during heat? I thought the healing from Jun's moves during heat was simply due to them no longer costing health.

funny how this is way more informative than the official guide bamco uploaded with tmm lol

I’m definitely going to be using this guide to start with and obviously once I get past Ganryu, I will definitely be starting to learn more about advanced movement and things like that, in fact I may start learning it now so, I hopefully have a good understanding of it by the time I reach the rank past Ganryu or whatever it is called etc.

The problem isn’t that tekken has too many moves. The problem is that too many fighting games are out there right now, especially in the last 6 months alone among other non FGC games that have come out as well and there’s just not enough time to live and breathe through a game for awhile. It’s like Granblue has already moved out of the spotlight it gained. Undernight, while niche, is being overshadowed during the tekken honeymoon phase