Why I Still Love Tekken 8, Despite It All... 

Do you guys still believe the developers can fix this game or have you given up already?

New to Tekken here, and I have to say that I LOVE this series just from this one entry. It has been way easier to learn and play now that there is a new game out. Not to mention the great additions that make it easier to pick up

After evo big balance patch and more MTX next month : "I have no more faith in Tekken 8"

Thanks for this fresh breath of positivity. People get so worked up about issues they forget to have fun playing the damn game. Don’t focus on what u don’t like, just have fun and improve - good advice both in tekken and life in general

Well said its still early i think all the issues will be fixed

This is my first 'serious' Tekken, last I played was Tekken 3 but totally casual, and I'm loving it. Just got to purple ranks this weekend, having tons of fun (a bit salty here and there but it is what it is heheh). It's already one of my favorite games, and it's all I've been playing since launch.

Another thing to point out is that I wholeheartedly agree with your point that the heat system forces you to play better defense as well. If not more too. Might be why I like it as well lol

Thanks for championing T8 depsite the hate. Im loving this more than i ever had playing 7. I feel like i learn new tech everytime i play!

This game is still one of the best despite what is going on. I just hope that they fix these issues and set things right. Thats the only wish I hope that can be fulfilled.

Ur smart, because just like Max Dood said, It’s still early. The game came out in January! We still got a few years to go for true perfection.

Lol, SF6 almost killed? Dude c'mon i'm not trying to shit on Tekken, but SF6 since release has constantly been in a better shape than Tekken is right now, continously getting in new people and still has a very active playerbase, while it's allready declining in T8. And with what little ballance patches it had it still in no way or form is ballanced worse than T8 after 3 patches, not including the latest one because the last one was a giant fuckup. Let's never forget how Bamco has buffed a move they wanted to nerve, SF6 so far didn't need much ballancing because they have competent playtesters.

Commenting to boost you in the algorithm. Tekken is great, and it's going to get better! Hang in there, everybody!

I agree but can’t shit on sf6 The game is and still is super polished and cooked a lot before it was released Tekken 8 is getting shat on a lot because it wasn’t ready to come out the oven. Things simply weren’t checked or tested and post launch updates have been sloppy. Balancing patch notes aren’t always the best being regular and I think fighting games probably thrive on infrequent balancing. Sf6 just needed more skins and stages with faster character releases, Either way both games r really fun.

Completely agree, well made video!

Sf6 balance issues was nothing like T8. T8 is fun, but SF6 is just a more refined game.

Thanks for keeping the faith.

Taking down RU-vid channels was the step too far for me

had an off run the other night, I was already on a losing streak on orange ranks then for some reason I got paired up with a beginner spamming everything and I even lost that one as well.

I honestly love this game but sometimes playing Online can be scary because of the aggression that comes with it. But i learn to not hold back and go all out and realize that this gameplay fits my gameplay style. I like the idea of using my Tekken 7 fundamentals in this game while also adapting to the Tekken 8 mechanics which somewhat works. I'm a Lee main and while many people used Lee in a Defensive gameplay, I've always been an aggressive Lee player and Tekken 8 only made Lee (in my opinion) one of the strongest characters to use if used efficiently. So yeah i love this game.. I'll continue to adapt to my mistakes and keep on trucking.

I can understand the criticism of the costs of extras in the game i.e., Battle Pass, etc...but I love how the game plays, looks, and feels. Good work Namco.

Never forget tekken 7s first year (the arcade year I mean) was horrible at launch tons of errors and it kept getting fixed and ended beloved I think tekken 8 can be the same way it’s gonna be ok that’s not even cope I mean the game isn’t exactly doing bad now far from it it’s still insanely active at all hours but there are issues that need to be addressed and harada do be stumbling so it’s important to point it out

Thx for the great Video

Personally I kinda like that grabs are tracking; I believe the intent was to further push players away from playing overly defensive but I can understand why people might not like it. Also, thank you for making this video, I've been getting so tired of seeing all the tekken hate lately. It absolutely has its flaws, but it's nothing the devs aren't already aware of. New/interested players are getting scared away by all of the doomposting...

I agree that the Heat system does encourage defense, if you give two people knives instead of boxing gloves both of them have deadlier offense but because offense is deadlier they both have to be more careful to not make a mistake

I've been a fan of Tekken since 3 and played every game from then on, and I really want to like Tekken 8 like how i like the older Tekkens... The problem is theres so much wrong with the game despite its upsides that its hard to have faith. I can only hope it makes a massive turn around in the right direction, but honestly Harada's direction for the game doesnt seem like its on the same trajectory to take the game where it needs to go.

No doubt the game looks insane But can we pretend like theyre doing us a favour by releasing tekken 8? As if its charity work. I did love this game but damn the desicion making feels money hungry or rushed and braindead

I've absolutely given up. Repetitive DLC like Lidia, spammy gameplay design, more and more shameless microtransactions, not nerfing braindead characters like Feng for some reason and planning on buffing Jun after nerfing her already for some reason?

Bro from yesterday matchmaking is not working for ranked match 😢properly

Ngl my life got way better after putting down T8 for a while

4:14 eww who the hell made that list

I still love playing tekken 8 as well i been playing the game everyday after work i don't know maybe im addicted and need help 😅

You stroke the right balance on every issue - i honestly, while i agree with the strong sentiment against shop and gamepass and some others - but they are working on it and yes you can mess up during development sometimes (as a software developer i know a bit about that). It's called a bug if you shouldn't one know. It's pretty much impossible to get everything right in one go but pretty easy to expect perfection... but as you said have faith and don't threat every issue like the end of the world. Would they have hotfixed everything the fans get upset about since release we would have tekken7 with prettier graphics by now - you have to filter that and look how this affects your vision of the game / what are obvious bugs before you can go to work and that already takes a lot of effort. And i doubt you can playtest or automate all that testing and/even if it would take long hours - then we would maybe talk an update every 6 month to a year - maybe we are even seeing that sort of approach with street fighter

nice video!

Chip damage is the smartest addition imo. I remember in T7 playing against people who did nothing but *back dash cancel* from the beginning of the match till the end. All i was left with was trying to hit them low but they could see and anticipate my lows somehow so they either blocked and punished or low parried it. Chip damage is now punishing those turtling players for having that trolling playstyle. That said, i still can't come to grips with the FT2 ranked system, a game so volatile needs infinite rematches back.

Im ready to buy more skins and battlepasses. Love it.

Keeping the faith here too, but I'm taking a break for now. Game really needs more time to iron out the annoying imbalances, especially when it comes to the heat system... like why is Azucena's heat engager the best in the game by far? Why did she need that too? Why does King's heat smash deal 40% of your max hp? etc. etc. Anyway, see you fighters in a few months.

Honestly, i have a love hate relationship with this game. I love playing it, but how aggressive this game. Some characters feel downright unfair to fight against. Every round i feel like im fighting for my life if I don't play aggressive.

I still like the game too, but they need to fix the ue polaris crash, its unplayable for me online, since I"m always at risk to crash. I have a good pc, its the game fault why it crashes and the poor optimisation, no patches brought any solution to this problem.

I even bought the $20 and $40 upgrades.

The game is still new give it time. But it's better than mk1 by far

I agree with this video. We can expect perfection right off the bat. Rome wasnt build in just a day

The game is fantastic, but it needs to be less dice rolly. I can only handle so much gambling. It's like when im on a roll, i fr gotta take a break bc i know its just a luck streak half the time

Finally some positivity

It kinda hard to improve defense if the game forces us to guess so much more in situations tekken 7 didnt have. + frames up the wa zoo so many more situation where you can't mash or step, or backdash to get out. They really gotta tone that down or not even tekken anymore at that point it fucking guilty gear.

I play regularly Tekken since the 7 but I play casually Tekken since Tekken 1 on arcade and PS (believe me or not yes I'm old enough). However it's not because some RU-vidr or people on twitter try to have some visibility by saying how the game is "broken" that it will make stop to play T8 ... The fighting pass is sure not great but it is just cosmetics. As a Zafina player I still have fun but after trying other characters it's clear that some are OP comparing her. I have to "work" twice more or be twice better with Zafina than with Jun or Azucena... 🙄 With the last patch her Azazel's hand have been buffed but her punishes are still mediocre at best... She even don't have the frames to punish correctly a RA ! I hope the game will have some balance done after the Evo Japan.

The Tekken team needs to address the mod takedowns and the microtransaction flood. Unfortunately both of those things seem like Namco mandates, so I don't know how much they could say. It sucks for bamco that blue protocol flopped, but bleeding tekken out for that mistake is not the way.

I love this game no matter what twitter losers say

Damn, this video aged like milk.

Issue with the game Toning down creativity Making mashing easy Tracking of moves too much Grabs track And some characters are just too good with their damage How ranks work Pros Amazing graphics and gameplay. Heat machenics Amazing soundtrack Stepping is buffed Amazing animation A thing to mishima star Kazuya is too inconsistent with his moves so please fix him

Why do people keep saying grabs tracking is a bad thing? They should of always tracked just like in vitura fighter. The whole point of a grab is too beat defensive moves like blocking and stepping.

I love the gameplay... Not a big fan of 3x heat smash + 3x rage art (at least) per game, I wish they would reduce that "free" damage.. T7 is more down to earth and I still play it for that, but 8's gameplay is so impactful, I don't feel like that in any other fighter... I love fighting games, I've got a setup on my steam deck with pretty much the top 150 fighting games of all time (emulation) but Tekken somehow takes the cake at the end of the day. Hopefully they keep it balanced and won't introduce some outrageous weird mechanics in DLC (like the T7 DLC characters did). They can have their silly store and MTX, as long as they don't make it pay2win. Don't care about cosmetics that much anyway.

Tekken 8 is great. It allows beginners a chance to beat slightly more advanced players and more aggressive gameplay to show. I really don't like the old "poke, poke, Korean back dash, poke, poke" meta. The gameplay was very awkward.

idk it's my first tekken and i love it. sure there's some things... but i mean, just dont buy the battle pass and wait for balance (which is still ok i guess? you see every character in god ranks no?). i enjoy it a lot :)

The character balance is honestly a secondary issue to the systems at the moment imo. Heat, rage art, throws all need to be looked in to and i just dont believe that the vision harada and co have for 8 will ever do that. Sure they are gonna nerf drag azu king most likely but then the next 3 S tiers emerge and its an endless loop. I think if they show they are atleast willing to look in to the systems it would boost mine and atleast a few others confidence. Overall its a great game to me and about to be the first tekken i will be hitting the highest rank on but i can definitely understand some gripes ive heard all the way from beginner intermediate to advanced players.

same

Yeah... no. I built a well ventilated cabinet instead with a PS3 and Xbox One inside to play the older games. Tekken 8 just won't cut it because of it's direction its heading.

with all the bullshit this game is having right now, I genuinely still think this is the best fighting game ever. I don’t think I have constantly want to play more of a fighting game online other than Tekken 8, sure I’m in the Low ranks having a hard time but even with the loses the game is fun asf. Usually I would stop playing online for a fighting game after major loss streaks like 2 weeks or more but this game I just come back every week

Zero faith left. They ruined tekken to the point where i don't even want to see this game succeed anymore. Any charitable hope in the company is lost when they cranked out the MTX and they completely lost me when they started striking down channels that were showcasing harmless mods that only serve to increase the game's longevitiy. I'll never forgive them for this. I could care less if patches fix the game, its too late for me. I sincerely hope the game completely fails, season 1 doesn't even finish, and bamco goes bankrupt for this. It will never happen, but I can't look at this game in any form of positive light anymore.

One thing i dont like. Is people using sf6 to crap on tekken. as if its some shining example of first version perfection when it really wasn't/ isn't guess it takes a guy that plays both to say it. Not to mention. They are two totally different fighting games. I'll just say, if you truly have history with tekken. You will understand. Also understanding that different devs handle things differently. Games fresh af. Sf6 had its issues. Sooooolowly fixed over the course of its existence...and still has plenty more. It's okay to have gripes and moans. But if a person is that quick to drop something. in most cases over things that. At there level don't even consern them...well they prolly weren't much of fan in the first place.

I could care less about the mtx stuff. I love this game, 300 hours in and still having as much fun as i did day one. Sure there are balancing issues, but what fighting comes out with perfect balance from day one. At least they will be balancing the game periodically unlike only once a year in streetfighter. I dont even play sf anymore. Tekken is all i need.

3:55 bro WTF are you smoking? because those monsters in S tier need some serious leroy nerf treatment.

I disagree about the gameplay part. Sure, it's the most intuitive Tekken to date, but Heat, instead of encouraging offense stops the game to a grinding halt and forces you to guess on your opponent's offense. There's no counter play, you just have to sit there and guess, which is just not what Tekken was built around. Also, SF6 almost killed? You mean the fighting game with the most concurrent players on Steam over Tekken 8? Biggest tournaments, better online, dead? Yeah, I don't know what you're yapping about there. SF6 has had the right idea on waiting for balance changes, as now, just one small balance change made the game so much more balanced on just the first season, and unlike Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6 hasn't suffered the same PR nightmare in record time. I can say as someone who plays both, it's been much rosier on the SF side.

I already gave up 🤦🏽‍♂️

Played Tekken for 27 years. Never touching Tekken again, they burned my bridge. Happy for the people who likes it tho.

"let's not forget about this game's amazing music" i think the game's got a few bangers but most sound very anonymous to me, Tekken 7 had a way better ost

I just want my paid costumes that namco stole from me or my money back. Also better online and less wonky hitbox issues.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree that the main systems are balanced. Heat, rage arts, throws, sidestepping is all really out of wack and the underlying system can't be patched out. Heat is just unbalanced as a concept and I would much prefer it was removed. Same with rage arts. Tracking throws are busted as hell. I don't have confidence that they will fix those issues, so the game will continue to feel bad. All that said, but I'll still play it. I just won't be buying any dlc.

The game is good but playing online is bad. And that won't be good until a few years from now.

I like this game but they are making dumb decisions with this

I think alot of people either don't know or don't remember how insanely mashy T7 was in low ranks, so most people just assume that T8 is really bad. Don't get me wrong T7 was defensive at higher levels of play compared to T8 by far. Yet the vast majority of players complaining really don't know what they are looking at because they don't understand tekkens in-depth defense and thus only attack.

You are completely deluded about this game being the best in everything. Tekken is my favourite fighting game franchise but even I wouldn't say it's the best in all aspects. One thing which it is surpassed is definitely animations. I for one was very happy when they implemented new animation from Tekken Revolution for walk backwards. Why couldn't they reanimate them walking forwards, which still has that crabwalk animation from two decades ago. I've always loved Tekken for throws. And starting from 7, all new characters post season 1 & guest characters got generic throw animations as their side throw animations! Same with newcomers in Tekken 8. Thank God Eddy got new throw animations & even crouch throw. Sound effects are another debate in the Tekken community & I'm sure majority believe Tekken 7 had better sound effects. I personally am fine with 8's. Graphics were one of Tekken's iconic trademarks, & I for one find graphics from Tekken 3 to DR (& even 6 BR Arcade Version) ahead of their time & superior to their counterparts. But 7 was the first game where I think some characters just got worse treatment. Fahkumram's character model is detailed yet it looks alien in Tekken 7. Negan's face is another issue. Tag 2 was the last game where all the character models looked like they belonged to the same game. In Tekken 8, somehow, Leroy & Kazuya's faces are the most detailed, female faces look like DOA models, & let's not talk about Steve's face. Oh yeah animations! And since the PS4 era, Arc Sys is killing it in animations! Tekken 3 is still dear to me, & for 1998, those animations will be timeless. The elaborate throw escape animations in DR; so elegant. And even in Tekken 8, they couldn't add throw escape animations for side throws! Oh yeah, that was my rant. As for balance & bugs, I think this game would be in a good state by the end of 2026, coz history has shown that it takes two years for Tekken games to reach a good state. Looking forward to more videos in future.

Its crazy yall complaining about a battle pass lmfaooo

Imo there’s way too much crying it has more than 95% of fighting games it’ll probably get better overtime

To be honest, Namco is more problematic than Tekken. Namco is ruining most of the old IPs. Classic Tales on PSN are disappearing for no reason, and New Ridge Racer, New .hack is still not out. Ridge Racer's rival, Cruis'n, Hot Wheels racing game, LEGO racing game, F-Zero, Top Gear (Top Racer in Japan), Crazy Taxi, and even Atari's Sprint, Burnin' Rubber is back, but Ridge Racer is still not back. Outrun and Shutokou Battle may return. There was OutRun 2 at British Racing Greats 2023, and Lizardcube tweeted about OutRun, Rumors are spreading in Japan that Genki is making a new Shutokou Battle. If I had told 25 years ago that Atari's Sprint would survive and Ridge Racer would die, people would have accused me of lying. Namco seems to have become like Konami after the Blue Protocol failure.

I already gave up on tekken 8. they didnt know what they were doing adding Dlc into tekken 7. And they still have no clue how to even make tekken 8. Triple A budget meant Triple A problems. I do not like the direction they've been going, it is not possible for them to turn around.

Almost no one who enjoys this franchise is giving up. The kids (or adults who have been conditioned by mtx) whining about battlepass this and that are still going to play the game. Sure, there will be exceptions to the rule, but that does not invalidate the rule. The outrage is among the minority of people who actual play the game and even those who disparage the game for frivolous things are still online.

Oh yeah I'm bored of it man, I don't have the online subscription even though I bought Tekken for $70.

All fake hate lol just gotta balance characters.

People seem to forget that Tekken 7 was also busted on release for 2 years in the arcades so it's not fair to say that Tekken 8 is broken when this is essentially a first year drop of the game

Nah that sf6 shade is unwarranted. Yes the lack of balance patches really fucking sucked but at the very least the other good characters can stand a bit of a chance against the top tiers In tekken 8 the top tiers literally freaking suffocate you with their heat bs, plus frames, stupid dmg & unfair 50\50s Dragunov, yoshi, feng, Jun, Azucena xioayu etc I still love the game too but the balance is horrendous BUT I do genuinely believe in them to fix this just cuz their attitude has been good about this issue

Raging, salty and complaining but I love playing the game, it's much more fun than tekken 7

4:13 victor and reina being in A+ tier and not S is cap, sorry. reina is easily S tier. i'll grant that her potential is locked behind good execution though

Nobody tells you to stop whining because you give fair criticism, it is because you are whining.

King Should be removed from this game fkn Grabber Pure Torture

I DONT, ITS FOR SCRUBS! 6-7 HIT COMBOS WITH 1BUTTON. HEAT, POWER CRUSH AND RAGE ARTS!? AND EVERYTHING LAUNCHES FOR NO REASON.... IM GOOD, I NEED MORE OF A SKILL BASE GAME TO PLAY.

Damn, man, i disagree with almost eveything :(

This is the most low-ball video ever. This game is broken and needs to be fixed immediately.

Why this tabloid level bullshitting towards SF? very strange my dude