It’s 2024 and another King of the Iron Fist tournament is underway. Bandai Namco returns with the next major installment in their long-running, beloved fighting game franchise, and Tekken 8 comes right out of the colosseum door swinging.
Tekken 8 is the final of the big three AAA fighting games to see its release for the latest console generation, and as a result there are a lot of eyes on this title and a lot of expectations for it to deliver. The newest entry in the Tekken series doesn’t do a lot in the way of revolutionizing industry standards, but it sticks very true to its roots and that goes a long way in the current climate where some fighting game practices have been magnets for controversy.
The first thing that will catch your eye as far as Tekken 8 goes is its visuals. The game impressed fans everywhere with its initial reveal trailer back in September 2022, a cross between cinematics and actual gameplay, and it’s no surprise that this title still looks fantastic here with the final product.
Lighting is dynamic and sets the scene for every battle, character models are rich and highly-detailed, stages look amazing, and features like the slow down when two moves are about to clash for a KO keep you engaged and on your toes. Things can get a little odd looking when it comes to certain customization items, but it is to be expected that additional bits of clothing aren’t going to look as detailed and polished as, say, a character’s default costume.
Attacks sound weighty and deep when a bigger hit is fired off, and character voices and dialogue is also great here. Each fighter speaks the language of the country they hail from, and though it can be a little jarring to see that play out in the cinematic story (as everyone just seems to understand each other perfectly), it is such a beautiful added detail that shows just how much love and attention Bandai Namco put into the game.
Tekken 8’s musical score is also top notch here. The game’s new tracks are full, seemingly orchestrated pieces with influences of drum and bass and techno music injected throughout. The majority of the themes are upbeat, dynamic, and make you feel like you’re fighting on a grand stage, which compliments the blockbuster feel of the visuals and the action.
If you’re not a fan of Tekken 8’s soundtrack, though, Bandai Namco has also implemented a feature in the game that allows you to change things up. We’ll get to that later, though.
Tekken 8 delivers on all of the foundational presentation aspects of a video game that fans would want, and for us fighting gamers, there is also an added bonus that doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal, but actually goes a long way here in 2024. Bandai Namco designed their menus and UI to be very clear and straight forward, and that is incredibly refreshing coming off of Street Fighter 6’s menus that have so many options scattered everywhere that it’s often difficult to find what you’re looking for.
Here in Tekken 8, all of the options you need are very clearly labeled and easy to find, and the first section you see on the main menu is actually one that gathers together some of the more important options in the game so that you have easy access to them. What’s even better is that you can change these options by setting “Favorites,” so if you want nothing but practice and online modes to be the first thing you see when boot up the game, you can make it so for a speedy selection.
On top of the top notch graphics, music, sound design, and overall presentation, Tekken 8 also injects a ton of references to its storied history throughout the game. From interactions between longtime partners in crime to avatar shirts with old school artwork plastered over top of it, veterans of the series will be incredibly pleased with how many nods to older titles in the franchise can be found within Tekken 8.
Bandai Namco has been hyping up Tekken 8’s story for a good while now. With the Tekken 8 Demo, they even gave players the opportunity to get just a small taste of what the story has to offer by allowing fans to play through the first chapter.
The end result turned out to be quite the rollercoaster. There are certainly some really good moments in the story, but there are also a few low points as well as scenes that drag on for too long that really stick with you after the fact.
As many have already been able to deduce, Tekken 8’s main story is primarily about the conflict between Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima. Throughout the whole thing, Jin is hailed as the savior of humanity while Kazuya is the main antagonist, though there will also be a few surprises along the way.
The player will primarily be tasked with playing as Jin. There will be a few times where other characters will be controllable, though I estimate that the player controls Jin over 50% of the time.
As such, it really feels like the rest of the characters don’t get enough time to shine as most of them just feel like they’re here to pad out the story or to fulfill a supporting role for Jin. In fact, some of the characters that you’d think would be important to the overall narrative. considering who they are, barely do anything of note.
For some characters, you’ll want to play through their Character Episodes. While these feel like they aren’t canon, they do reveal some interesting details about characters and elements. True to Tekken tradition, there are plenty of funny endings to be seen.
It should also be mentioned that there are plenty of throwbacks and references that veterans of the series will certainly enjoy. While most of these throwbacks may go over the heads of newcomers to the series, there are scenes and gameplay elements that I think everyone will be able to appreciate.
The story also just becomes absolutely over the top at times, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. You’d swear that some of the events that happen in the story were ripped straight out of Dragon Ball Z — you’ll know the scenes I’m talking about upon playing through it all.
It’s easy enough to tell that Bandai Namco put a lot of effort into the story this time, and even addressed many issues from previous games’ narratives. Overall, it’s probably one of the better stories for a fighting game, though it’s probably fair to say that it isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to revolutionize fighting game story telling.
Arcade Quest is essentially a glorified tutorial to play Tekken 8. This is the ideal mode for newcomers to start with.
New players just jumping into training room will most certainly feel overwhelmed by the massive movesets. As such, I’d say that Arcade Quest actually does a splendid job of drip feeding the player information on how to play while encouraging them as they learn.
There’s also another story present here that’s completely separate from the game’s main story mode, but it’s monotonous and somewhat cringey. Some players may be slightly entertained by the events of the narrative even though it’s incredibly basic.
In a lot of ways, Arcade Quest feels very similar to Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode, though it’s much more watered down by comparison. This also means the avatar customization options feel a lot more limited compared to Street Fighter 6’s avatar system.
Regardless, this is a good mode for newcomers to jump into, but veterans might be better off skipping this mode altogether if they’re feeling confident enough about understanding Tekken 8’s new mechanics on their own.
In Tekken 8, Bandai Namco brings back its trademark customization mode for playable characters in the game. There are also options to create and change up your own personal avatar, as well as the ability to set up your personal player profile to be more unique.
When it comes to playable character customization, the same set of robust options to alter your favorite fighters that you’d expect to be there are included, and it’s easy to get lost in coming up with the best looking creations that you can. There are options to change hair styles, wear hats or glasses, equip elaborate getups that change your fighter’s look from head to toe in one fell swoop, and even the ability to equip accessories like a small ghost that floats around you while you fight (or give your fighter a shotgun like that one Tekken 7 Akuma meme).
What’s interesting about Tekken 8’s character customization mode is that here in 2024, it doesn’t really do all that much to expand upon what we’ve seen in past games. There’s nothing really… new here, but even with all of that having been said, Tekken 8’s character customization is one of its best standout features.
You see, looking at the kinds of cosmetic options (or lack thereof) that we find in the game’s peers — Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1 — the customization options Tekken 8 actually provides players are leaps and bounds above the competition thanks to how many there are and how you acquire them. What’s more interesting, is that Bandai Namco achieved this by simply staying true to their roots, and instead of adopting the now fighting game industry standards of releasing less cosmetic content with higher price tags, Harada flipped it and said, “Ask me for s***! You can have it all!”
During my time with Tekken 8, I couldn’t seem to find even a whiff of micro-transactions anywhere — and I’m fairly sure that it’s because there are none. Short of the Year 1 DLC Pass that will get you the first set of DLC characters down the line, I couldn’t find anything that I was being encouraged to spend real money on.
In-game items are purchased through the game’s currency, Fight Money (gold), and there’s nothing I could find in Tekken 8 that said I need to put down my hard-earned real life money to acquire it. In fact, simply beating the game’s main Story Mode and running a first-to-five set with one of my EventHubs compatriots left me sitting on a Scrooge McDuck-level mountain of gold.
For simply playing the game — and playing the modes I actually wanted to play — I was able to score 6,000,000 Fight Money and didn’t even realize it had happened. Bandai Namco has essentially gone against the grain here and made a bold statement in 2024, and unless things take a major change down the road, it looks as though Tekken 8 is the king of cosmetics and customization in AAA fighting games.
Another customization option that is absolutely godlike comes in the form of Tekken 8’s Jukebox Mode. To put it plainly, Bandai Namco gives you the entire music library of main-series Tekken games, and it is all accessible right out of the box.
If you aren’t feeling Tekken 8’s soundtrack and loved, say, Tekken 4’s, you can literally select the entirety of Tekken 4’s musical catalog and set it to play throughout your time with Tekken 8. This will change all of the tracks from stages to the main menu and character select screen, setting these themes to ones found in Tekken 4.
You can also create your own playlists and individually choose what song from which Tekken game you want to play for any given section of Tekken 8. I love Tekken 6’s Mystical Forest theme and Tekken 8’s Yakushima stage kind of gives me flashbacks to the backdrop this song comes from, so guess what? Now I hear the Mystical Forest track any time I fight on Yakushima.
The only drawback I could find with Jukebox Mode is that there doesn’t seem to be a standard media player within it, so I couldn’t really select a game’s music and just let it play in the background while I worked or surfed the internet. If it doesn’t exist at all right now, I can’t imagine it would be that tough of an implementation on the developer’s part, though.
Tekken 8’s customization options don’t leave players with the feeling that they’re being nickeled and dimed, and don’t seem to push the game’s fans to play game modes that they don’t want to play in order to score some slick unlockable content. Whether you want to enjoy the single player experience or get right into hitting your friends with Rolling Death Cradles, your path to gaining in-game currency and using that money to buy cosmetics and other additional content is always just a stone’s throw away, and you probably already have enough Fight Money right now to fully deck out your favorite character.
Before its release, there were a lot of concerns voiced about how Tekken 8 might be dumbing down or taking distance from its classic gameplay, but after spending a considerable amount of time with the game, we feel confident saying that’s most definitely not the case. While backdashes have definitely been nerfed in how fast they operate, so it’ll be harder to avoid moves by using them while pressured, movement is still the absolute key to mastering the game.
Maintaining your presence on the screen via positioning feels like the core of gameplay and while backdashes may have suffered in pressure situations, the distance covered by them still seems similar to before for most characters, just with slower initial momentum. The other type of movement, namely sidestepping, also seems stronger than it used to be, and many moves that used to track very well have been toned down, meaning that lateral movement may have become more important than ever.
The biggest new feature in Tekken 8’s gameplay is definitely the Heat system, which in many ways feels like a natural and more varied progression of Tekken 7’s Rage Drives. It’s hard to say just how much of an impact Heat will have on the game at the moment, but it’s definitely an ever-present tool and something that every player will have to get used to using offensively as well as dealing with defensively.
What’s more, a raw Heat activation acts as a Power Crush, which provides super armor that can be used blow through oncoming attacks. This is a nice countermeasure for players who are newer to the game, allowing them to fight against more advanced offensive pressure, but not completely turn the tides with a simple button press.
Even with Heat in the mix, though, Tekken 8 is very much in line with Tekken’s traditional gameplay and the series’ reputation of favoring legacy skill definitely still holds true. Experienced players will definitely feel right at home once they sit down with the game, while also having a ton of new things to explore with the Heat system and all of its ramifications.
Speaking of legacy, one thing of note is that a lot of moves that felt like they gave too much reward for too little risk feel like they have been notably toned down in Tekken 8, in particular several moves that used to be low-risk counter hit launchers now no longer give you a proper combo when they connect. Despite the marketing of Tekken 8 being very aggression heavy, the downturn of these “just do it” moves make it feel like the game is definitely also aiming to reduce the “robbery factor” one might feel when opponents just throw things out.
Time will tell how true this remains, but as of right now it feels like a conscious effort to keep the more ridiculous stuff limited to Heat and have the game be much more calm and grounded outside of this state. The chip damage with Heat activated is definitely not something that Tekken players will be used to, and while it seems overwhelmingly oppressive at the moment from some characters, it’s also a fact that Heat gives you a variety of different options to explore. It’s entirely possible that these strategies that seem very unfair at the moment aren’t how Heat will end up being used, and that there will be more calculated play involved for this system as well.
Tekken 8 features a robust training mode with all of the intricacies audiences have come to expect from a modern fighting game, even things that were lacking in Tekken 7’s initial release, such as full frame data for all moves.
Although it might seem that fighting game training modes already have everything they’ll need at this point, Tekken 8 still goes the extra mile to help out. If you’re a newcomer trying to get into the series, there’s a “Help” section that gives explanations on various concepts and how to use the different tools in the training mode in case you aren’t familiar with all of the systems yet.
For seasoned players, everything you’ll need is pretty much in place, including some nifty extras such as a built-in punishment training, where the game will show some of the most common strings from your opposing character and give you tips on your basic punishment tools. Given that Tekken is very reliant on having specific frame punishers at the ready, this is immensely helpful in familiarizing yourself with your chosen character.
Another massively helpful tool that isn’t part of the training mode itself but is definitely related is the replay takeover feature, where you can check out your replays and, in situations you felt helpless, choose to take over with your own controls and try to find answers to what happened in that fateful match that’s still haunting your nightmares.
In short, Tekken 8 gives you all the tools to improve your game, but largely leaves it up to you to decide how much you want to engage with them. If you’re new, there are plenty of tutorials and help menus to steer you in the right direction, but if you want to just treat training mode as your own playground you’re free to do that as well. If you want to practice specific things, there are lots of options to do so as well including some basic combo challenges for each character, but it’s all up to your own initiative. The training mode gives you results directly correlated to the engagement you yourself put into it.
During the review process, we managed to get in some time with Tekken 8’s online play. Time was limited, however, and it is very common for the experience to change when servers are fully loaded with players from all around the world after launch.
That being said, we did manage to test a fairly extreme connection, and everything held up very well. Playing several sets of matches on a connection between the west coast of the United States and Sweden produced surprisingly playable results, where there wasn’t any real noticeable lag.
The on-screen details about the connection did show a handful of rollback frames, as you might expect from a connection stemming that far, but there honestly was no real noticeable lag to speak of. This boasts very well for Tekken 8’s online netcode, and we hope that connections remain this strong when everyone jumps into the fight on January 26.
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the return of Tekken Ball here in this review. Bandai Namco brought back the highly requested mode, and it’s just as fun as we’d hoped.
There isn’t too much to say about it other than it’s a great time all around and something that you should definitely check out.
Tekken 8’s Super Ghost Battle Mode is also a promising new feature that we can’t wait to explore further. It won’t be until we get a chance to take on pro player ghosts and other ghosts from around the globe that we can fully see what this mode has to offer, but early tests against our own ghosts showed positive signs and swift learning of combos and maneuvers — though there were definitely some situations where it seemed like the ghost got stuck and couldn’t finish some basic bread and butter combos.
• Graphics, music, and overall presentation are top notch.
• Excellent gameplay that stays true to the franchise’s traditional combat.
• New Heat system provides several interesting new options for battle and gives newcomers a fighting chance without being a win button.
• Customization modes are robust while avoiding micro-transactions and being extremely generous to the player.
• Training mode has all the tools veterans could ever want, as well as new features that are extremely helpful to newcomers.
• Early online tests between the US and Sweden felt fantastic with no noticeable lag.
• Tons of references and nods to Tekken’s storied history injected throughout the game.
• Story mode doesn’t revolutionize fighting game stories in any tangible way, some chapters drag on.
• Arcade Quest is fairly simplistic and bare bones, though it is a great tool for newcomers trying to learn Tekken.
We reviewed Tekken 8 on PC (Steam). Contributions to this review made by Steven “Dream King” Chavez, Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor, Justin “Adaptive Trigger” Gordon, and Jon “Catalyst” Grey.
