The best game in the series is the easiest and most fun yet | Review - Tekken 8
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✨Overview
Tekken 8 is the eighth installment in the renowned Tekken fighting game series, developed and produced by Bandai Namco Entertainment. Released as a successor to Tekken 7, the game introduces several notable features and enhancements, marking a significant evolution in the franchise. The game is now available on all major platforms; PC, Xbox, and PS, and will feature crossplay support so everyone on any platform can play against each other.
It has been an exceptional six-month period for fighting game enthusiasts. Following the releases of Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1, six and three months ago, we are now greeted with the launch of Tekken 8. Now we got three phenomenal modern gen fighting games in just under a year. Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 6 were solid titles, and Tekken 8 looks to be equally as solid if not the best in the genre.
🟩Pros
+Faithful to Tekken’s fighting mechanics
+New gameplay mechanics that evolves the series in exciting new ways
+Solid main storyline plus mini-campaigns for each character
+A variety of game modes for everyone; campaign, local, online, and more
+New specialty style designed for casual play
+Crossplay Support
🟥Cons
-Too much moves with ‘cutscenes’ during combat that slows the gameplay down
⭐️Score: 10/10
📖Story and Premise
Set in the aftermath of Heihachi Mishima's disappearance, the story begins with Jin Kazama, Lars Alexandersson, and Lee Chaolan attempting to thwart the plans of Kazuya Mishima. The emergence of Kazuya's devil form triggers a catastrophic event, leading to the announcement of a new King of Iron Fist Tournament, where representatives of various nations engage in intense combat. The stakes are exceptionally high, as the winning nation receives reprimands, while the losing nation faces destruction.
The main campaign will take you around four to five hours to fully complete and features an action-packed experience that’s hard to put down that you can finish it in one sitting (I did). The campaign is a compact experience that features predominantly traditional 1v1 tekken fights with occassional simple quicktime events.
The Tekken Force or beat 'em up mode is still present in small portions of the game, but the focus is predominantly on the 1v1 fighting format most of the time. It's nice to see the traditional format take center stage in the main campaign — It primarily centers on Jin Kazama but also rotates control among the other characters over the course of the campaign.
The story amusingly incorporates references and callbacks familiar to longtime fans, delivering them in either epic or humorous tones, while introducing new elements along the way. However, a minor peeve is that the characters have leveled up significantly now, and the power levels are ridiculously high, reaching Dragon Ball Z/Superhero levels with ultimate destruction leaving in the wake of battles, I find this aspect ridiculous when comparing the scale to the more conservative classic titles. Fortunately, Tekken 8 has done something clever to remedy this problem that you’re better off discovering on your own.
🎨Visuals and Art
Tekken 8 boasts stunning in-game graphics and as usual — impressive CGI cutscenes that are always worth watching. The game's art style captures the essence of the Tekken universe, blending traditional fighting arenas with dynamic, destructible environments.
The graphics have improved significantly since Tekken 7, evident in the beautiful lighting, highly detailed character models, and super vibrant and electrifying special effects. I've encountered a lot of sentiment suggesting that it looks like Tekken 7, and that was my initial thought as well. However, after directly comparing both games side by side, the differences are actually generations apart like it should be. The bottom line is: visual memory is not always reliable, nostalgia is a powerful thing.
The CGI cutscenes range from being exceptionally next-gen looking to appearing weirdly worse than the in-engine graphics. In some shots, they looked phenomenal, while in others, the in-game graphics looked even better. Nevertheless, the overall visual quality is just a solid eye pleasing experience.
There is no localization in this game and everybody speaks in their own Native language. Its weird at first to see everyone understanding every language ever, but its nonetheless a nice refreshing experience instead of hearing everyone's dubbed voices all in plain English.
🎮Gameplay
The core gameplay centers around traditional 1v1 fighting mechanics, just good ol' classic Tekken gameplay. Combatants on both sides of the screen, taking turns duking it out with combos and moves unique to each character. The game introduces many new elements in its mechanics, especially a new system called “Specialty Move” designed for new players, making it easier to perform combos with simple button presses and thus making the game accessible to a new audience.
👥Characters
Tekken 8 presents a compelling roster that combines returning favorites with three newcomers. Longtime fans will appreciate the return of many iconic characters, each with their unique fighting styles and personal story arcs. This includes, but is not limited to, the central protagonist Jin Kazama, his fearsome father Kazuya, the female fatale Nina Williams, the powerful Paul Phoenix, and the martial artist Hwoarang.
Meanwhile, there are three new fresh faces; the carefree Azucena, the stoic Victor Chevalier, and the mysterious Reina. Azucena, the first Peruvian character, brings an MMA approach, while Victor, the leader of the Raven Unit, combines sophisticated espionage with close-quarters combat. Reina offers an acrobatic fusion of Mishima-style Karate and Taido and comes with a mysterious backstory.
⚔️Combat, Special Style, and Heat system
As the trend for modern game titles, accessibility is a big thing, like Street Fighter 6’s Dynamic control scheme and Mortal Kombat 1’s Easy Fatalities (although sadly, one that's paywalled), Tekken 8 introduces Specialty move — designed for casual play. Less ‘git gud’, More ‘have fun’
This innovative addition brings a new layer of accessibility to each character's moveset, allowing players to easily perform combos without mastering intricate combinations. Players can choose between executing an aggressive specialty move, a defensive/counter power crush, low-focused attacks, or Air Combos.
What's great is that you can switch in and out of it on the fly with a press of a button, enabling you to seamlessly integrate it with some of the combos you've learned if you want to. The moves themselves are distinct for every character although the moves do get quite repetitive if you just opt to exclusively use this style.
You also lose the ability to perform the more simple moves while in this mode, a non-issue though, as it’s just one button to switch back and forth, without any animation or delays. Even for seasoned veterans, I believe it can be useful tool, especially if you want to try out other characters whose moves you haven't really practiced yet.
The Heat system on the other hand introduces a dynamic element to the traditional fighting game format. Designed to reward proactive and aggressive playstyles, as while in this Heat state, characters not only inflict chip damage and gain additional movesets but also witness changes in the properties of some of their existing moves, such as a heavy guard break. It makes the game more favored towards aggressive players over defensive ones. Heat state is activated by performing a characters’ Heat engager move.
Tekken 8 introduces a health recovery system, a gameplay mechanic reminiscent of Tekken Tag Tournament. A separate white gauge is left during attacks, and represents damage incurred from combos or blocking significant moves, and this white gauge can be recovered back. Unlike traditional health recovery systems, the white gauge does not diminish over time, requiring active engagement and aggressiveness to regain health.
Overall, the combat is solid and remains faithful to Tekken's combat mechanics while introducing new elements and freshness just like a sequel should do. Although, despite these advances on promoting aggressiveness, the game have indeed slowed down over the years by its consistent introduction of animated cutscenes for just about every special move; Numerous new animations, such as burst, rage arts, and heat smashes, function as cutscenes, disrupting the flow of the gameplay at frequent intervals and most of the time in the heat of the moment, and these animations get repetitive overtime.
📜Game Modes
The game features a plethora of game modes to keep players of all kinds busy. Story mode for those looking for a narrative experience, Versus mode for groups of people looking for a shared screen party game, or Online for those competitive enough to challenge like-minded people around the world — Players can engage in ranked matches or more casual quick matches, challenging opponents from around the world even across other platforms with cross-play support — a first time in the series.
The game also features additional game modes, again for players of all variety. Aside from the main story mode, Tekken 8 also has a side-story mode available for each character featuring the “older” format of Tekken storytelling, where a character progress through 5 stages of match each with their own CGI ending. This way we are really getting the best of both worlds. A central main story line and a separate ‘mini-campaign’ for each character.
Among other modes in Tekken 8 is the ‘Arcade Battle’, where players select their fighter and face a series of opponents until reaching the final boss. "Arcade Quest", a single-player journey where players create avatars and participate in local tournaments. A "Ghost Battle" that introduces a unique practice mode, allowing players to hone their skills against Ghosts that mimic their own fighting styles. And my favorite game mode returning from Tekken 3 — Tekken Ball — The objective is simple: either score points by hitting the ball into the opponent's court or, alternatively, achieve victory by striking the opponent with the ball.
📊Technical Performance
I played the PS5 version of the game, and immediately I noticed the biggest quality-of-life improvement Tekken 8 has over other games in the series: loading speeds. The game simply has ultra fast loading speeds — taking only around a second or two to load matches, although the main bottleneck now is whenever the game is dependent on connecting to the servers.
This improvement is a result of the gaming hardware generation's emphasis on utilizing SSDs. As for visual fidelity, it's crisp, running at 4K with some minor upscaling for taxing scenes, and maintains a locked 60fps. For comparison, when running Tekken 7, a last-gen game, on my 4K TV, the visuals appeared slightly blurry with a lot of jagged edges. As for the sounds, I did find the Dialogue volume way too low compared to the overall SFXs with the default settings so I had to tweak the sound levels to my liking.
⚖️Conclusion
Tekken 8 stands out as the best game in the series by seamlessly blending ease of play with maximum enjoyment. There is just about everything for everyone here: a compelling, focused main campaign; mini-campaigns for each characters with their own endings; a fun local versus mode plus the return of the beloved Tekken Ball; competitive online matches with full crossplay support; and lastly, new elements and freshness that evolve the series in an exciting direction. It’s just easily the best game in the series and is the easiest and most fun yet.
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