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One of Tekken’s most decorated veteran pros says Tekken 8 is ‘not fun’, sparking debate across fighting game community

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Tekken 8 has been out in the wild for around two and a half months at this point, and the “honeymoon period” for the game seems to be passing with more people taking a closer look at whether or not they enjoy it enough to stick around for the long haul.






One of Tekken’s most decorated and veteran pros Bae “DRX|Knee” Jae-Min is now sharing his thoughts about Tekken 8 after its launch period, and he’s not really having fun.









Knee took to X/Twitter earlier today to share a post and some replies about his thoughts on the new game that’s gotten a lot of attention across the fighting game community as a whole.


“My opinion : Tekken 8 is not fun,” wrote Knee in his initial post. “Aggressive is actually just an absurdity. “I think I don’t adapted to this game. As someone I’ve been doing since Tekken 1 so far, Tekken 8 is a lot of things I can’t understand.”




The three-time Evo champion doesn’t go into much more detail than that initially, but it seems his complaints largely correlate back to the new Heat System and how the mechanics have changed some of the core approaches to the gameplay that players had long grown accustomed to.


He did answer another Tekken pro in GL|Tetsu as to what is bothering the legendary competitor.


“It was Tekken’s skill to block well, avoid well, patience well,” said Knee in response to what he feels is different compared to the past two mainline entries. “But T8 is no reward even if you block well. you will lose health. good movements cannot be rewarded. Aggressive is not possible for all characters. Balance between attack and defense is tilted to one side.”




Tekken 7 triple crown champion RB|Arslan Ash similarly seemed to voice some complaints earlier this month too, so Knee is not the only top player with apparent gripes.



Even before the game was released, some Tekken players were worried about the Heat mechanics for pretty much these exact reasons, and those who did are probably feeling a bit vindicated right now.


It obviously goes quite a bit deeper than just that, however.


Tekken 8 shook up the core gameplay approach for the series that have largely stayed true since Tekken 5 almost 20 years ago (aside from Tag Tournament games), so any big changes made by Bandai Namco would have faced pushback and potential alienation of the previous crowd.


Rage in Tekken 6 and 7 did change things up a decent bit too, but they were limited to the end of rounds and more limited uses as opposed to Heat, which can be engaged at any point in a round and remain active for a decent chunk of the time.



This has once again sparked conversation in the FGC about new games moving too far away from what people feel their established roots are versus how it attempts to establish as its own distinct entity in a wider series.


We’ve seen this plenty of times in recent history with Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and even Guilty Gear, but not so much Tekken as the others.


That will inevitably lead some legacy fans feeling x game has “lost its way” and potentially move on from a series they’ve put hundreds or maybe thousands of hours into though there is more nuance to it than just that.




LU|Alex Valle has been involved with the scene longer than Knee’s 20 years and seen multiple fighting game eras come and pass sharing his perspective that legacy skills are challenged by new ones and don’t always fully carry over.


This leads to doubts and frustrations because what “worked” before no longer does, so adaptations and changes of mindset need to be made to help separate what was from what is.


Not everyone wants to do that, however, and that’s ultimately okay too. We’ve seen pro players and casual fans across basically all series dip out if a title just doesn’t jive with them.




Now, Knee didn’t say anything about quitting Tekken 8, but it’s understandable that someone who’s grinding multiple hours every day and more than almost anyone on Earth would face burnout more rapidly if things aren’t really falling into place for them.


The problem isn’t change itself. Rather, it’s whether those changes are interesting enough to keep many previous fans around and attract more flesh blood to the scene that wants to stick around.



Tekken 8 is still performing well in terms of player numbers, and it’s far too early to draw any wider conclusions.


Unless something super drastic happens, it’s going to likely take until year two or three to really see who sticks around for the long haul.


And even then, Tekken 8 is going to keep getting updated and evolving to where it may end up a lot different than what it is today.


That’s just part of the hard truth in the current fighting game environment.













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