Tekken 8

(Final battle spoilers)

Yeah I’m full on early-stage hype mode with this now lol Can’t stop playing it; so fucking good.

It’s like the polar opposite of my MK1 experience, where I immediately rinsed the story (and loved every moment of it), then pretty much dropped off entirely when there was only the grind to do, as Invasions massively fell flat for me.

Getting not only the volume but the variety of launch content right, in addition to excellent practice/learning functionality, is so important. Feels like they’ve really nailed it with T8.

No, its weirdly comprehensive and weirdly not beginner friendly. It front loads tutorials for the new stuff like heat for returning players but heat isn't literally the first thing you'd want to learn as a brand new player. Im sure arcade quest eventually comes up with decent tutorials for things like 3d movement, dashing, jumping and all that but I don't think they should be drip fed, they should be in practice or practice adjacent, too.

I've found the best way to try characters is to go through their combo trials in practice. Seems like it gives a decent overview of what the player can do and a starter for 10 for easy combos to do in matches. Everyone has a billion moves, so it barely scratches the surface. Like some only use one of a characters two or three stances. It probably could use a Strive-esque user combo cookbook mode. SF6 probably has the edge here with character guides, for sure.

It also, wrt new players *still* doesn't have proper notation. If you can't do a combo, you will need a dash. Watch the demo, you usually launch, hit on the way down, DASH, hit on the ground. It never notes the dash. It also still uses 'while standing' and 'while crouching'. 'While standing' is the transition animation between crouch and stand, letting go of down and doing the move while standing up. 'While crouching' is literally while you're holding down in the crouch state. Its so dumb and inconsistent.

I'm a proper legacy player. I still have vague muscle memory from when I used to play it religiously 20 odd years ago but dropped off it almost completely in the 2010s and even I'm find it overwhelming trying to get back into it.

This was why I think SF6 did such a good job. I don't *think* you would have needed to go to YouTube to learn anything. I think it did a decent job of tutorialising the basics. Im not sure this does unless it does and has made it weirdly oblique.

In other news, these just dropped this morning and I scored the King one.

www.uniqlo.com/uk/en/men/featured/ut-graphic-print-collections

Virtually every character has, to a greater or lesser extent, got at least one stance, yeah. More often than not, its just a modifier to launch other moves rather than an actual change in the way you're playing, though. There aren't that many snake stances.

Yeah, I find it much easier to tell when its your turn and when you can or can't blow something up/get blown up in SF. Again, its definitely something that should be front and centre in a tutorial.

I imagine new players tend to go for the big bonk moves all the time and just keep getting jabbed to death.

Stances, for me, are just something a combo or move sometimes transitions you to automatically, that informs your follow up moves. My main has stances but I almost never deliberately change my stance, I'm just dimly aware when what I'm doing changes up my moveset and I have a sort of mental repertoire of how things flow.

I'm really liking the arcade quest at the moment. Even if it is just a fancy frontend to a series of disconnected matches, it's a really fun way of presenting it. It's kind of weird hearing characters talk about it as a game within the game itself and use IRL terminology and stuff I skipped the basic tutorials that it offers, but the advanced tutorials explained the new rage meter and some other things quite nicely and the suggested move thing has genuinely taught me some moves I didn't use. I think it's probably where I'd recommend newcomers go outside of the straight practice mode.

I've been playing since Tekken 3 and I'm still overwhelmed when I look at a full move list. When I try a new character I find it better to just play against an easy CPU opponent/mode and just try stuff out. Most of the game is learning to react to an opponent rather than memorising big combos

Does it still work the same in terms of using pokes to get stuns and frame advantage to get guaranteed combos? It sounds very complex.

I'm expecting this to drop through the door either today or tomorrow so have been messing about in Tekken 7. It's very good (in fact I'm absolutely loving it) but also very unlike other fighting games I'm used to. I'm almost exclusively a Mortal Kombat player so it's a whole new kettle of eggs.

Any characters that are quite newbie friendly in T7 that also appear in 8 that anyone could recommend for me to try and get my heard around the combat a bit? Been spending a bit of time learning Bryan and Feng's moveset so far. I'm liking Feng a lot. Not sure if there's maybe someone a bit easier that I could be trying first though.

I'd give Leroy a shout as he's one of the best for a reason but, what? Hang on...WTF IS A KETTLE OF EGGS?!

As someone who got noticeably better at VF when I started paying attention to that, it actually added a new fun challenge to the game - identifying what I’d blocked and working out what I can safely throw back. Seeing something come at you that you know you can block and hit a launcher for a big combo is extremely satisfying.

The new training mode identifying those opportunities for you is like playing alongside someone who knows a lot more about the game than you, and as you talk through it you just absorb a lot of knowledge. Since Tekken is much less systematic than VF and as a result is more about knowing both characters, that’s a massive positive.

Can't argue with that logic.

Yeah understanding what can be punished is a good fundamental skill to have in Tekken. Especially what you can do when blocking lows.

I do think it needs a “system tutorial”. The VF4 one is to this day probably the best FG tutorial there has ever been and has formed the basis of my understanding for that game and Tekken as well.

When you consider all the different ways you can get up or recover on tekken - even the different positions of your body on the floor and the different risks of recovery options - there are a lot of mechanics that every character shares. And then you can consider how high-mid-low attacks work, along with relevant crushes etc. While some bits like side stepping are somewhat fuzzier, there is still a lot of scope to go over the basics.

For example, a big change in this version is that moves which require a QCF motion can be buffered from crouch. This is not mentioned anywhere in the game itself!

So I played a bit more of arcade mode and....all that might be coming, maybe? I played for like an hour or something and it finally deigned to give me a tutorial on how to punish unsafe moves on block....

I get what they are going for but these tutorials should absolutely be front and centre and not locked behind hours of fucking around with gimpy little chibi goons. At this rate its going to take a day before they teach you how to dash.

And while Im complaining... you still can't set your health to not regenerate in training which is kind of dumb ordinarily but Jun has a slightly annoying mechanic where here 'soul power' moves drain her life outside of heat and she has a stance to partially recover that health. You literally can't test any of that in training. Or gray life regen.

Like I said in the other thread, this really needed going over by someone who has never played the game before. You can't be locking tutorials behind hours of content or introducing mechanics you can't practice with in practice mode.