After two long years, it has finally come to this. While Capcom’s Street Fighter V skips an arcade release, the other big fighting game from Japan remains to its root with an early launch in the arcades. Tekken 7, after countless updates in the arcades (which includes Tekken 7 Fated Retribution), it has finally appear on the PS4, Xbox One and for the first time for the series, on PC.
But has all the wait be worth it? Does it offer something new for those who never touch the arcade version? And is it worth picking up for those who poured a lot of time playing at the arcades? The short answer is yes, the game is even more fun as ever but as a packaged game product it has a few shortcomings.
Graphics & Sound
Tekken 7 marks the series first switch from their in-house Tekken Engine to Unreal 4. Fortunately it looks and feels similar like a Tekken game that you won’t notice the engine switch. The game doesn’t run in 1080p even on the PS4, but resolution sacrifice to maintain a solid 60fps is obviously the right call. I don’t see the textures being a bit blurry as an issue- fights are quick and full of action with tons of particle effects on screen to ever notice the textures. And the particle effects this time are spectacular. It’s not just weird special effects, they are now look even more beautiful, especially character specific particles like the electric sparks from the Mishimas’ Electric Wind God Fist and Claudio’s exorcism powers.
Basically, Tekken looks better than ever, almost reaching similarities to the pre-rendered CG videos. On that note, I find the pre-rendered videos less of a looker this time- some rough looking hair for some scenes in particular made them look less impressive.
There is one slight change to the experience when it comes to presentation: there’s no replay cams. Instead, we now have slow-mo moments. This happens usually when a trade (hits from both fighters connecting) is about to happen. It’s a way to induce hype- imagine both fighters have a sliver of health and both are throwing their last, possibly round winning hit and the slow-mo kicks in. Imagine that to happen in high-stakes tournaments, it’s amazing. It’s such a great addition that I wish other fighting games start to copy this.
On the topic of sound, I love the soundtrack. It’s a bit more influenced with electronica and dubstep, but there are a few standouts that are just worth listening to. The main menu theme Solitude is one big winner here, and the stage theme for Infinite Azure is just relaxing it’s my go-to stage for practice mode (when I don’t need a wall, that is). Also note, the PS4 version has access to the soundtrack of all past Tekken games, which is a huge plus.
Gameplay
Tekken is four button 3D fighting game. There are less aerial movement than the standard 2D plane fighting games, with a focus on sidestepping and using the 3D surroundings like walls. Each button corresponds to a limb- left punch, right kick, and so on with simple combinations required for most of the special moves. What makes Tekken both very accessible for casual players immensely daunting for those who want to really get good can be seen just from the command list. Most characters have a over 100 different moves (compared to say Street Fighter V, where the command lists only goes to handful of unique and special moves). This means that you will need to spend a lot of time figuring out which tools are the most suitable for the occasion, but those who just button mash can guarantee a cool move can happen with relative ease as there are many moves that only require one direction input.
Unfortunately, Tekken 7 as a game isn’t interested in teaching you to get good with its guidance. There’s no tutorials- again the game being really easy to pick and play may be the cause of this, and thankfully there are resources available online or from the strong community of players that can help you teach the ropes, including mechanics you wouldn’t know by just playing the game. Also, good news is for the lab monsters out there is that the practice mode has a lot of features that can help you up your game. Though a built-in frame data list would have been nice.
New to Tekken 7 is the addition of Rage Art and Rage Drive moves. An expansion to the Rage system where fighters in low health gain a damage boost, Rage Art and Rage Drive are special moves that cash in the Rage for one big damage. Think of Rage Art as a Super, with an easy execution (there’s a one button shortcut for it if you don’t want to do the already simple input) but very risky if it whiffs. Rage Drive is a bit more technical. No shortcuts, but safer to perform and can lead up to big combos. Performing either of these will take away the Rage damage bonus, so the moves come at a cost. Tekken never had supers but with the fast-paced rounds the game needed a better comeback mechanic to keep the fights engaging for both sides. It’s a good addition to the game.
Speaking of supers, guest character Akuma from Street Fighter plays like a character from a different game. I think the developers managed to capture the right essence of Akuma, making him feel like a Street Fighter character (with a focus attack and meters for supers and EX moves) while still fit in the Tekken mold. It’s weird seeing a character doing a jump-in in a Tekken game, but so is the ability to negate his fireballs by just sidestepping.
In short, Tekken is still a satisfying game to play across various skill levels.
While the netcode on launch was rough, after the quick update to fix matchmaking online play is pretty much smooth sailing. Another neat thing Tekken 7 introduces is a tournament bracket for online matches. Rather than relying on third-party solutions, you can now setup an online tournament within the game itself with support for both single-elimination and the standard double-elimination brackets. As a bonus, competing in online tournaments this way earns you Fight Money, the in-game currency to unlock customisation options and various unlockables. Other fighting games, take note of this feature and please copy this.
Content & Longevity
In the base game, Tekken 7 offers up to 36 different characters (plus 1 pallete swap and 1 pre-order character, making the official count 38) and 21 different stages. Some of these characters are newly added for the console release. While the characters don’t have much costume variety, you can customise them to your hearts content and create your own wacky costumes. Ranging from unique outfits (some characters have their classic outfits in previous games) to general clothing and accessories, there’s plenty of room to deck out your own personalised fighter.
Tekken 7’s biggest selling point is the new cinematic Story Mode, the Mishima Saga. It is the culmination of the long storyline about the Mishima family feud (and throwing relatives off cliffs) that escalated into corporate warfare and… devil genes. It sounds silly, but the main arc in the story mode is one serious affair. There’s good ideas here, I like the gimmick fights where you fight a number of mooks. But the odd choice of making some of the battles not play by the usual rules (say, enemies using armored moves not seen in their movelist) throw me off as it made the fights cheap rather than interesting. I like the idea of having the rest of the roster not connected to the main plot have their own side stories, but the execution is underwhelming. The fight is fair, but it’s just one fight, a text intro and a short ending cutscene as a reward. I also don’t like the framing device of the unnamed journalist that tries to tie together the story chapters.
Speaking of short endings, there is the arcade mode. But with being exclusively offline you’ll get only five stages to go through. Just five. And there’s no unique ending for each character now as that is moved to the side stories. Don’t bother with the arcade mode, as your time is better spent in Treasure Battles.
The treasure battles are a bit more interesting as a single-player mode. Similar to ghost battles in previous games, you face an onslaught of AI players to keep gaining rank. But this time each fight ends with you getting a treasure- customisation items. Most of these items are only available as random drops from these battles so you are encouraged to grind it out and play various characters to get the silly items you can deck your characters later. One gripe is that you now cannot choose the difficulty of your opponent. If you’re on a losing streak, just hope that the game don’t match you with higher ranking players each time.
There isn’t any other offline modes, with at least two of them will be introduced as DLC later this year. So there is a lack of variety in the single-player modes unfortunately.
For the PS4, Tekken 7 supports Playstation VR. You can use the headset to play, but don’t anything crazy. The VR headset lets you be in place of the fights, watching at the sidelines. You can also ogle at your customised fighters in VR if that’s your thing. Nothing here will entice you to get PSVR, but it’s a nice bonus that current owners might one to try out at least once.
Verdict
If you wait 2 whole years for Tekken 7’s home release, it’s worth it. The gameplay is as solid and fun as ever, the new cast are all good inclusions, the customisation can get you busy designing the silliest of costumes for hours and the online play is now at a decent level of quality. But if you expect a more wholesome package of content like Injustice 2, it falls a bit short. The story mode is interesting but isn’t the best. Other modes of play will only come via DLC later down the line.
It’s arcade perfect, but not home console perfect yet. Still, I would easily recommend anyone who has tried Tekken over the years to give Tekken 7 a go. It remains to be one of the easiest fighting games to get into where the fun of beating someone up and see sparks fly is immediately satisfying.
Review is based on version 1.02 of the game, played on a regular PS4. Review copy purchased by Gamer Malaya.
Supplemental articles leading up to the review: Story Mode | Customisation