It’s no secret that 2025 was a rough year for the Tekken community. With the release of Season 2, the game entered its sophomore year and was sitting in an interesting place. Where the game is now, however, is an entirely different story. With Season 3 right around the corner, it’s time to review the good will losing year that was for Tekken 8. With understanding of where things stand now, we can look to the future and see what the Tekken team can do to repair trust.
The early Tekken 8 days
Before diving into the patch proper, a refresher on the heat resource. New in Tekken 8, heat is a once-a-round power up that gives a substantial power increase. Players could enter this state by pressing the corresponding button –“heat burst” – or through specific strings/specials – “heat engagers.” From the beginning, the game was a very offense-heavy affair that favored looking for heat engagers to power up.
This mechanic was controversial for a lot of reasons. Namely, the ways that heat would seemingly turn the tide of the match on a whim. Plenty of fighting games have comeback mechanics, think Ultra’s in Street Fighter 4, but what makes this resource different was that it was readily available at any point in the match. With the Ultra mechanic, the opponent needed to have been losing prior to getting access to it. Here in Tekken 8, a single button press could immediately put a player on their backfoot and needed to defend.
It was the centerpiece of every match and, as one would expect, whoever was not able to best utilize their heat was at a disadvantage. This led to very one-sided matches. Many veterans lamented Bandai Namco’s leaning so heavily into the aggressive aspect of the game while having stiff, less responsive movement.
Hope was on the horizon, however. Through a series of patches, the game entered a somewhat stable place. Things were far from perfect and heat was still in need of some tuning, but the experience was definitely improving. And new Season 2 promotional material showcased that series producer Katsuhiro Harada and team were very invested in buffing movement. By this point, the team had a whole year of player feedback to review. Things were looking up.
So what happened?
The Good
With any big patch, there’s bound to be balance updates and quality of life improvements. The best parts of this patch lie within the new QoL changes. Adjustments to the fluidity of player control and lateral defense looks to be a big focus for the Tekken team. With the input buffer changes to sidestepping, navigating around opponent attacks feels much better.
Additionally, Tekken 8’s UI saw notable changes too. Now the game plainly tells players when they are counter hit, successfully land a punishment attack, or hit a tornado launcher. Some players pushed back on this, preferring the minimalism of the existing interface and learning by the visual indicators. Many newer players, myself included, found this change incredibly useful. Giving the player an immediate response when they act correctly feels good. It lets them know that they’re moving in the right direction.
Season 2 introduced throw break practice to training mode. This was a long standing request, so it’s a welcome addition. With some characters like King, Armor King, and Nina having multiple chain grabs, this tool became invaluable. Difficulty can be scaled as well, which means players can make the throw break window tighter and the game will not provide the appropriate command until after the throw’s successfully broken. This is an objectively amazing change and one that I hope is the first of many tools for the more beginner/intermediate players.
That’s it for the good, time to get to the nitty gritty. I hope you like forced 50/50’s and looping stance pressure!
The Bad
There’s only one word on how to describe the initial response to the first Season 2 patch: chaos. Pretty much immediately upon folks getting their hands on the new content, an almost immediate wave of negative responses followed. Content creators were posting 100+ damage combos, new over-tuned string extensions, and many, many bugs.
As social media moments go, it’s admittedly pretty funny. The now infamous move-stealing Anna bug where she can inherit her opponents entire array of moves is fairly entertaining. Beside all of the memes, there is genuine concern about the future of the Tekken series. This patch was so fundamentally broken that many players said they were going back to Tekken 7.
So yeah, not exactly what you want for your big Season 2 launch day.
Unbalancing the rebalance
By far the biggest point of confusion from the player base was from the utterly baffling decisions regarding the game’s balance. In an interview with EvoFGC, Tekken 8 game director Nakatsu said “We don’t really intend on changing the aggressive nature of the game where it’s fun to be the aggressor. But on the other hand in Season 1, because it was so constraining for defensive players, and the heat system made it easy to make matches pretty one-sided. In terms of strategy, I feel we weren’t able to balance the defensive aspects that well.” He continued, “That’s why for Season 2, we’d like to focus on defense in terms of the lateral aspects of a 3D fighting game and the ease of defending when being attacked.”
Based on this quote, one could assume that a patch highlighting defense would make lateral movement a bit simpler to execute, while nerfing certain character’s tracking moves for better consistency. And to their credit, movement does feel much better. Side-stepping is (mostly) responsive and the satisfaction that comes with evading an opponent’s move is still unparalleled. There are still issues with extended hurtboxes with relation to tracking, but that’s another story.
However, while movement might have been improved, the new coverage options that were added seemingly contradict this very objective. If the team believed that the issue with Tekken 8 Season 1 was that the game’s offense was too strong, how did they completely go against this philosophy with the patch? New tracking moves, forcing mixups after heat engagers thanks to the new crouch change, more attacks that lead into stance – there’s a disconnect here.
Homogenization vs. Character Identity
Season 2 creates an issue of homogenization. Tekken has always been a fighting game series that is pretty easy to pick up and play. Part of that comes from the solid foundation of the game’s combat systems. When on offense, regardless of who you play, you will have four buttons: two for punches, two for kicks. Each character has strings that extend from those buttons. If the attack sequence begins with a punch, such as Bryan Fury’s “One Two Low Kick”, it will either be a 1 or 2 button press for the player. These strings vary in effectiveness, but functionally act the same.
A similar statement can be made for defense. Doing strings in Tekken is useful but very risky against a good opponent. Referring back to Bryan’s “One Two Low Low Kick,” it is meant to put pressure on a passive opponent. When playing against someone turtling (a defensive tactic where you focus on blocking and playing very slowly), this string sequence is good for checking their reactions. It’s on the defender to respond. If they attack too soon during the string, they will be counter hit, forcing them into another negative position. Instead, the opponent could succeed by ducking the final low kick and retaliating with the appropriate attack. Ducking is just one universal option to deal with lows.These layers exist in every single aspect of Tekken‘s core gameplay.
But what happens when those layers get sanded down? What happens when character weaknesses get removed?
Identity crisis
Loss of character individuality in favor of homogenous gameplay became one of the most common critiques with the new season. Especially for long-time veterans, it’s not difficult to understand why. The identities of numerous characters in the cast began to warp into something completely new. Bryan, for instance, centers his game plan around perfect counter hit placement and pokes. His goal is to dish out big damage playing an almost zoning-style: where he pokes you with small buttons until you make the mistake of attempting to approach aggressively. Traditionally, his weakness was that against patient players it was very difficult to execute, plus his lack of safe get-off-me options made him struggle against quick, timing based characters like Steve.
What did they do in Season 2? This defensively-focused character now has easy to use, incredibly powerful offense tools like a -13 power-crush and a mixup full-crouch low out of his Slither Step stance that wall-splats the opponent on counter hit when he has his Snake Eyes power up. Among other incredibly offense-motivated attacks. That low attack by the way? It was -12 on block meaning your retaliation after successfully defending this scary move is less than ideal. Coupling this with the changes to the heat system where you can instantly enter crouch from a heat-dash creates a recipe for disaster. This is just one example. Most characters in the cast were subject to changes like this.
This makes players ask “Are they going to continue the loop or will he mix in a low that breaks my defense which will leave me back where I started?” This 50/50 chance “casino” style of gameplay is just not enjoyable for either player. And it’s the state of characters like Lidia, Anna Williams, and Alisa as well.
“Why Not” Moves
As a beginner, it can seem intimidating to wrap your head around the seemingly endless number of options afforded in Tekken. Even something basic like moving your character in a position to attack can be difficult. One of the most common criticisms of the series is that the move-lists are bloated, full of unnecessary fluff. I firmly disagree with this statement. A casual player may never even use half the moves in their characters’ respective repertoire, yet they could.
This is what makes learning Tekken such a deeply rewarding experience. All characters, at their foundation, have the same set of tools. But the mark of a great Tekken player is how those tools are utilized in the heat of battle with the restrictions that come with playing a specific character. When you’re attacking your opponent, why use a move that opens you up to greater risk when you have a button that covers all options and can be thrown out safely?
Notable fighting game commentator and content creator Sajam refers to these types of attacks as “why not” moves. These are attacks that are so good, you’d be a fool not to use it in every chance you get. And more than likely, these are moves that cover some aspect of the character’s weakness.
Encouraging bad behavior
For example, Bryan’s “Incinerator” string is one such “why not” move string. It’s a string that mounts pressure on the opponent, has incredibly good homing properties, can be canceled early to make itself safe, and does very solid damage. As such, Bryan players (like myself) pretty much have to use this move because not using it could be seen as throwing the match. The consequence of implementing moves like this is that it encourages stale, repetitive gameplay at all levels.
If you really want to win, chances are you’re going to opt-in to the most powerful parts of your move list, even if they’re cheap. So instead of having a poke and movement-focused bout with both players relying on fundamentals and key attack placement, Tekken’s gameplay now is essentially “which player can activate heat first and do a 15 second, 100 damage combo?” It’s a flattening of the player experience.
Back to Basics?
As Season 2 progressed, emergency patches were sent out, new characters got released, and the community sentiment began to lean slightly positive. Releases of Fahkumrahm, Armor King, and series newcomer Miary Zo were met with praise, namely for their fairly balanced gameplay (compared to Anna and Final Fantasy XVI’s Clive Rosfield) and industry-leading visual presentation. Fast forward to 2026: the Season 3 announcement trailer at Tekken World Tour finals meets was met with a tepid yet mostly enthusiastic response. “Back to Basics” was the key phrase shown in the trailer, but what does that mean exactly?
Will we see a top-to-bottom rework of the heat system? Reducing the length of combos? Perhaps a return to a slower, less aggressive meta? We’ll just have to wait and see. Revealing three characters in one trailer is great for building hype. More importantly, I think those characters provide some context for what might be the Tekken team’s approach this year: Trust and transparency with the hope of engendering some good will. No one knows for sure how this will play out, but one thing is certain, this is make or break for the Tekken team.
Tekken 8 is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC. Season 3 content begins in March 2026.
Images via Bandai Namco Entertainment
