Thank you, Tekken 8. Goodbye for now.

Tekken 8 was my first Tekken game. I was super excited watching along with the character reveals, got it on launch night, jumped ship from UNI2 when that game's PC port was a pile of garbage (anyone remember that?) and have played it as my main fighting game ever since. I don't recognise this game anymore and it really saddens me. I'm just basically posting my two cents as a last hurrah before I take a break.

Season 1

Tekken 8 was perfect for me, personally, in season 1. Was it a perfect game? God, no. There was so much bullshit that I wanted removed. But when it hit, it really hit. I felt like the game was just barely contained enough that I could play spacing, baiting and whiff punishing, but I could also really run at the opponent and smother them when I wanted to. That was my whole gameplan - get a whiff punish or counterhit launch, drag them to the wall, then kill them with wall mixups and pressure. Attacking aside, the satisfaction of learning a matchup, and being able to finally duck a high in a string, or low parry a stance low after getting killed by it online over and over was so satisfying. Was season 1 perfect? No. But it was perfect for me.

Season 2

Nowadays? My old playstyle is completely useless. My only route to winning is to faceroll on my controller, doing stance into button into stance into button, until they die. Winning this way doesn't feel fun. Losing this way feels awful. Whereas before, if someone went into stance, I could choose a high coverage option and beat, for example, 3/5 of the possible moves, now it's duck or stand. Choose one and hope for the best. Do I feel cool when I guess correctly. Nope. Do I feel like shit when I guess incorrectly? Absolutely.

Nothing about this game hits anymore. I can't enjoy neutral becuase baiting and whiff punishing is useless. I can't enjoy offense because my opponent is just guessing for their life. I can't enjoy defense for the exact same reason. What is left for me to enjoy anymore? This isn't the same game. This isn't what I fell in love with last January.

So yeah, this was basically just a place for me to put all my thoughts on season 2. Sorry to add to the pile of negativity, but it sucks having something you love turn into something you hate. I'll be joining the list of people taking a break from Tekken 8 until something changes. I'll probably go try to grind out some Street Fighter, or maybe go back to playing Guilty Gear. I tried Tekken 7 again today, and that was actually pretty fun, so maybe I'll play that (I haven't yet run into any of the bs characters from that game, so wish me luck when I do).

Bamco, if for some reason one of your employees reads this, please just revert the changes and take another stab at it. You're destroying the game that the veterans love, and you're just gonna turn off newcomers when they get completely stomped. The community will thank you for it.