A little less than seven years ago, back in the earlier days of this website, a younger me stated that Tekken 7 was, at the time, the best fighting game of its console generation, and possibly the best fighting game to have been release over the past decade or so up until that point. Ever since that game came out, I don’t think we’ve had something that was able to topple it. Street Fighter 6? Mortal Kombat 11? The King of Fighters XV? Guilty Gear Strive? All fantastic games, but not particularly fantastic enough to kick Tekken 7 off the throne. We needed a new Tekken to set the standard. We needed Tekken 8.

Bandai Namco did the impossible, and improved upon its predecessor in such a way that I legitimately struggled with finding issues to complain about. The first fighting game to run on Unreal Engine 5, Tekken 8 sets a new standard for the genre in terms of visuals and performance, but also two other elements that are often forgotten in some major franchises: accessibility and single-player content. The first two are pretty self-explanatory, if you have functioning eyes. Tekken 8 looks stunning, with a ludicrous degree of detail, all coupled with some of the most solid framerate stability I have ever seen in a fighting game. The input lag is basically nonexistent. The only issue I could find was Bandai Namco’s insistence on setting AMD’s FSR 1.0 upscaler as a default, which makes the game look a bit uglier. Nothing that diving into the settings menu can’t fix.

The nonexistent input lag is important, but making it accessible to newcomers to the series is equally as fundamental. The beauty of Tekken is that you can either be incredibly immersed into its combat system, or you can bash buttons like a lunatic, and have equal amounts of fun with each approach. Of course, the latter won’t take you very far when you venture through the game’s many online offerings, but if you’re a newcomer, that won’t be an issue. There is more than enough single-player content to keep you busy.

For starters, there is a very lengthy story mode that is not unlike the kind of stuff seen in modern Mortal Kombat games, with the main difference being consistency and the quality of writing, as well as knowing what you want to be. Let’s use Mortal Kombat 1 as a direct point of comparison. Don’t worry, the fact we reviewed an atrocious Nintendo Switch port for this website won’t make a difference, as its plot is bad no matter where you decide to play it. Mortal Kombat wants to be a superhero story which takes itself too seriously, despite the overly amateurish writing and poor dialogue. Tekken 8, on the other hand, is an anime. Ridiculous, over-the-top, loud as all hell, but self-aware. It knows it’s insane.

Furthermore, it still manages to maintain a cohesive storyline, which has been going since the first Tekken. Mortal Kombat has had to reboot itself like three times at this point, with Ed Boon’s team constantly running out of ideas, resorting to the dumbest clichés in storytelling, such as “a younger generation soft reboot”, time traveling, multiverses, and so on. Always an excuse to revert back to square one. Tekken 8 is a full canonical sequel to Tekken 7, and if this is your first foray into the series, there is a gigantic theater mode which explains the plot of every single predecessor. No need to reboot itself in order to appeal to a new audience.

It’s extremely silly, but in a good way. Mind you, this is a franchise centered around utter daddy (and grandaddy) issues, people speaking different languages to each other whilst still being able to understand what they are, a Russian called Dragunov, a masked samurai with mystical abilities just randomly sparring with a German teenager who knows kung-fu, and not one, but TWO playable bears. The fact Tekken 8 manages to tell a consistence and engaging story in this utterly ridiculous and bombastic setting is one hell of an achievement. The incredible visuals are just the icing on the cake, all thanks to some impressive visual set pieces.

Story mode aside, there is an entire separate campaign in which you play as a normal kid trying to become the world’s Tekken 8 arcade champion. It’s a cute diversion of a mode, one which didn’t particular click with me right away, but lengthy and varied enough to add a substantial amount of meat to the package. Despite its odd name, this is not Tekken 8‘s only available Arcade mode. The classic style of going through a series of fights, culminating at a boss battle and a specific ending for each character, is still featured. So is Tekken Ball. You know, the volleyball mode from older Tekken games? Still here. Love it.

After everything I have talked about Tekken 8, I am still scraping for complaints. Maybe there were a handful of crappy voice acting performances that felt out of place, a slight stain on what was, otherwise, a pristine sound department, full of amazing bangers, not to mention the entirety of all previous Tekken soundtracks included in the disc. Some upscalers resulted in occasionally smudgy visuals. There were one or two framerate issues, but never in a gameplay-related area (I would notice dips on the character select screen… who cares?). A few staple characters were removed from the base roster, but then again, that is a matter of taste. So yeah, we’re digging for needles in this otherwise well-put haystack.

I don’t remember the last time I had this much fun with a fighting game. Tekken 8 wowed me in basically every aspect. It basically set a monstrously high, borderline impossible standard for any future Unreal Engine 5 fighting games, not only with its outstanding visuals, but also tight performance, near-nonexistent input lag, and sheer amount of content. It is a clear improvement upon its predecessor in terms of modes and day-one fighters, something you can’t actually say from all of its competitors (looking at you, Ed Boon). In short, Tekken 7 was arguably the best fighting game of the past generation, and it seems like Tekken 8 will retain the crown for this current batch of consoles. Long live the king of the iron fist.

 

Graphics: 9.5 Tekken 8 sets an extremely high bar for upcoming fighting games using Unreal 5. It looks great and runs incredibly smoothly. I could only notice framerate drops during irrelevant sections, such as a character select screen. Just make sure to pick an upscaler other than the default FSR in order to get better results.	Gameplay: 10 Near nonexistent input lag, tons of accessibility options, additional moves for each character… yeah, no complaints here, it’s tight as a fighting game control scheme and gameplay loop could ever be.
Sound: 9.5 Just some very, very occasional crappy voice acting from a few characters tarnishes what’s otherwise a sound department full of absolute bangers and heart-pounding sound effects.	Fun Factor: 9.5 Over-the-top, incredibly well-made, with a nonsensical amount of modes to select (some are obviously more fun than others)… Tekken 8 is the real deal.
Final Verdict: 9.5

Tekken 8 is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Tekken 8 was provided by the publisher.