Tekken 8 launched with 32 characters and, as per the usual practice these days, Bandai Namco is regularly adding more as DLC. Fans of the long-running franchise have been taking to social media to inquire about who might be coming down the pike in the future, and in a few instances, director Katsuhiro Harada has been gracious enough to respond.
One X user recently asked about Eliza, a vampiric character first made playable back in 2017 via Tekken 7 DLC. Harada deems her a personal favorite, but didn’t have very promising things to say for those hoping to see her again soon.
“She is a slightly unusual character among those I have created so far,” he starts. “She was my favorite character too, but the battle tuning staff had a lot of trouble with her in Tekken 7. Changing her stats even a little bit would make her too strong or too weak, so she was very difficult to tune, and she was also disliked by some tournament players, so she was a character that was hard to make worthwhile,” said Harada.
Indeed, Eliza proved to be a very unique avatar for players accustomed to Tekken otherwise. On top of requiring relatively high execution to use effectively, she also had the rare ability of mid-battle flight, and could strategize around regaining health a la sucking foes’ blood.
While many loved playing as the seductive fighter, perhaps even more hated fighting against her. Developers gave her slightly smaller hurtboxes than most of her roster mates, meaning certain combos and sequences would not work on her despite working on the rest of the cast.
She was also part of the “2D menace” triad, as guest fighters from two-dimensional fighting games (namely Akuma from Street Fighter and Geese Howard from Fatal Fury) brought with them unique mechanics and abilities that gave them clear advantages over their 3D-native counterparts.
Eliza had a special meter and was capable of unique cancels in Tekken 7, and the fact that she was put in a group with the extremely polarizing Akuma did her no favors.
At the end of the day, though, what Harada is saying is understandable. Characters who differ too greatly from the rest of the pack are almost always destined to start playing their own game, in a sense, and can quite easily either float directly to the top or sink directly to the bottom of the pack.
Unlike Geese and Akuma, Eliza is a Tekken native. It’s one thing for a guest from another property to make a single appearance, but will Eliza have to take another 600 year nap before we see her again?
Below you can read the full X post from Harada, and we’d love to hear your opinion on whether you’d like to see Eliza return to Tekken or not. Was she too difficult to play and too different from the rest of the pack, or does the sleepy vampire just need a few tweaks to play nice?
She is a slightly unusual character among those I have created so far.
She was my favorite character too, but the battle tuning staff had a lot of trouble with her in TEKKEN 7.
Changing her stats even a little bit would make her too strong or too weak, so she was very difficult… https://t.co/XfUR57MZ0u— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) November 19, 2024