Tekken 8 Season 2 impressions — Boiling point

While battles in Tekken 8 may be heated, they can’t compete with the ongoing clash between the game’s developers and its highly vocal playerbase. Season 2 of Tekken 8 recently kicked off with the new DLC character Anna and a total rebalance of the game’s fighting game mechanics. Tekken 8 inherently emphasizes fiery, aggressive play with its divisive Heat mechanic that powers up its fighters into offensive juggernauts. Many fans were hoping that this new rebalance would cool the game down with a stronger focus on defensive mechanics; this update more or less did the exact opposite. After experiencing this new iteration of the game myself, I have to wonder if Tekken 8’s design philosophy has reached its boiling point. 

In short, Season 2 of Tekken 8 cranks the heat way up. You can now use multiple Heat dashes, which leads to highly exploitable guessing scenarios – if you guess wrong you eat big damage. Most characters received substantial buffs regardless of whether they needed it, leading to more damaging combos and faster rounds. You even take chip damage for successfully breaking throws now, which according to the patch notes is to punish players who can consistently break throws for being too good at the game, I guess. The developers do attempt to throw the hardcore players a few bones in the form of reducing chip damage from Heat moves, increasing throw break windows, and buffing side steps. Really though, the fact that they buffed side steps only to give the cast moves to hard counter them says everything about how the developers really feel about all the feedback to tone the game down. 

The end result is a game that should theoretically have a multitude of playstyles boiling down into one where everyone generally has the same gameplan. You rush down your opponent and try to force them into exploitable guessing scenarios that lead into big damage. Newcomer Anna historically specializes in this kind of playstyle, but her impact gets dulled substantially when that’s just how the game in general seems to work now. 

None of this surprises me (aside from the throw chip damage thing, that’s pretty wacky). When I spoke with members of the Tekken development team last September, I asked them if they ever felt like they were pushing things too far. I meant that in relation to their new iteration of Heihachi, but they answered the question much more broadly. Their answer was essentially “not really”; they defended the more intense direction of the game as a whole and gave me the impression that they were going to be sticking to their guns for some time to come.  

That being the case, I’m not going to “defend” the patch per se, but I am going to offer it some sympathy. The developers clearly have a strong vision for this game. Tekken 8 is supposed to be a highly aggressive, crazy game yet also be simple enough for a broader audience to enjoy. From that point of view, the current state of Tekken 8 makes complete sense. 

I’ll even go as far as to say that it can be fun. I hadn’t played Tekken 8 in a few months, but I was able to jump back in pretty easily. I picked up Anna and even played a little Clive to a surprisingly competent degree, which on some level means that the developers succeeded on their vision.

Perhaps the biggest difference I noticed was the speed at which matches now progressed. It really doesn’t take much at all for a round to totally derail and end in a flash. The deadly situations you can find yourself in combined with the high damage gave me flashes of losing a character in Marvel vs. Capcom. On some level that kind of works for me – Tekken 8 carries itself with a similar flair in some ways. At the same time, I can absolutely see how frustrating it could be frustrating to play a wild game like this over a long period of time. 

From the start, I’ve thought of Tekken 8 as the spectacle Tekken in relation to the rest of the series. It supercharges the visuals and game mechanics in a noticeably distinct way.  I can accept Tekken 8 as being its own thing, and so I don’t have a problem with it doubling down on everything it already was. However, I’m also not the hardcore devotee that would normally be playing this game every day. I may like hanging out with Tekken 8 once in a while, but I don’t have to live with it full-time. 

The true problem lies less in Tekken 8 being what it is as a game and more in what Tekken 8 represents as an ongoing platform for its playerbase. If Tekken 8 were released 15-20 years ago, people would simply consider it to be the crazy one. Some would like it, some wouldn’t, and that would be that. Anyone who disliked it could just write the game off and return for Tekken 9, which would almost certainly be out within the next three years. Things don’t work that way anymore. Games like Tekken 8 now have to be a nearly decade-long endeavor. It’s only natural then that hardcore fans would put up so much resistance to Tekken 8’s core identity: they’re stuck with it for the long haul. Where before there may be room for an experimental or divisive take on Tekken, now every game has to be everything to everyone.

Various business realities of running an “ongoing” game like Tekken 8 will inevitably require the developers to compromise with their playerbase in some form. Dedicated players keep the game alive in between the lulls of DLC characters, both in terms of player numbers and maintaining interest in the game’s competitive circuit. The Tekken team has already acknowledged the disconnect between developer vision and fan desire, indicating that it will be addressed in further patches. Theoretically they will solve peoples’ problems eventually, although I suppose based on how things have gone so far the next patch may turn Heat moves into instant kills. 

Tekken 8 finds itself in a precarious position. While it’s probably for the best that some changes be made, I find this whole situation concerning. The overall feedback people seem to have for Tekken 8 is that they wish it fundamentally wasn’t the game it is. If that feedback translates into a game that erodes its underlying identity to please its audience, you have to wonder what the point of making a new game is at all. Season 2 marks a boiling point for Tekken 8 as we know it, and I’m curious as to what the end result will be.