#Katshuhiro Harada | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gaymer-hag-stan · 1 year

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Ok so, with the Tekken 8 Closed Network Test now concluded, I'd like to share a few thoughts.

The game looks great, I love the new redesigns, I love the new animations and the fact that they got the entire cast to rerecord their battle grunts and win / pre battle quotes, it was especially weird to have certain characters use voice lines from different actors, some of whom weren't even speaking the same language 🤣

The redesigns are almost exclusively great so far, but I do hope we get alternate costumes. Yeah customization is there but I don't really care to have Nina in jeans and cowboy boots or Jin in platinum blond pigtails like... A lot of fighting games just have a palette swap as the second costume and call it a day, but from the very beginning all the way up to Tekken 6, Tekken had an alternate outfit for every single character. Not only that, but it was usually a more "casual" outfit too like, Kazuya's Tekken 1 1P was his karate gi pants but his 2P was a tank top and jeans. Asuka's Tekken 5 1P was her Aikido uniform and her 2P was her trademark shorts and tank top and so on. Tekken 7 originally went for the 2P palette swap, but at some point they added extra costumes, including classic looks, via an update, and I hope they are there from the start this time.

I played almost exclusively as Nina because she's been my main since 2005, with a little Jun, a little Xiaoyu and a little Jin thrown in. I also tried Lili's, Hwoarang's and Asuka's combo trials (nice that they FINALLY added combo trials, I don't know what took them so long lol) I gotta say it's extremely satisfying to see Harada CONSTANTLY shading Street Fighter on Twitter by saying that the base roster will feature a lot more fighters than our competitors an also Mortal Kombat by saying that they are focusing on legacy fighters before they even start considering guests. Like. That's a ball move and a huge reassurance for the fans. I also know it's in good faith and no harm is meant towards Capcom or Netherrealm but he's right and he should say it!

If there's one thing I hope they copy off of Capcom is Word Tour mode. Yeah NetherRealm Studios' cinematic story mode is fine... I guess... But World Tour mode is the best single player mode ever featured in a fighting game and Namco even have their own blueprint in the form of Tekken Force. We're probably still getting a cinematic-style story but there's still hope for Tekken 9, or maybe even a smaller-scale Tekken Force return, in the style of Tekken 4 or sth.

Arcade Mode needs a proper reintroduction as well, in Tekken 6 you only got 4 battles and you were done and in Tekken 7 you straight up got nothing at all out of Arcade mode and character endings were instead for the base game characters who weren't prominently featured in the cinematic story and you got them after a single battle... Very underwhelming.

Also hoping other "missing" modes like Team Battle return and maybe Tekken Bowl will be included from the get go this time? I've also had this request forever but I'd love to see 1P Vs. Com or Com Vs. Com fights be included in offline versus. Literally every other fighting game has it except Tekken and Virtua Fighter and I can't tell why. It shouldn't be hard to implement and honestly sometimes it's just fun to pick characters, costumes and stage and just fight it out with the computer, as a break from online grinding and whatnot.

Now, as for the battle system itself... It's lots of fun! There's tons of stuff going on at all times but it feels great to experience and it's not really overwhelming or anything. It's cute that they have included an "easy mode" for new players to ease themselves in the fun. I'm not a master player by any means but I've had almost two decades of experience in Tekken and legacy skill does play a big role in the Tekken meta so it's an interesting way to even out the playing field. Interestingly, they also seem to have simplified some of the more complicated commands like, I can pull off all of Nina's combo throws now with a total of like, four button presses at most? Crazy! The heat system feels a bit weird at first but it's a huge asset once you get into it which doesn't take all that long anyway.

Overall I am very satisfied with what I got to play and I feel like Tekken 8 is gonna be another huge chapter in Tekken's history as well as the FGC's as a whole and I honestly cannot wait! Hopefully I will have moved out of Greece by the time it's out because my internet connection was killing me 😭🤣

I also better see miss Anna and Christie in the game or else I'm rioting.

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