Tekken 8’s Season 2 launch was long awaited by fans of the game, with the update getting pushed back multiple times by devs to maintain competitive integrity and make sure the update was polished.
With over 1500 changes, this was meant to be the shot in the arm Tekken 8 needed to get back on track and replicate the success Tekken 7 enjoyed. Most of the prior entry’s success was found not on release, but in the Seasonal updates that gradually made the game better and better over the years.
However, Tekken 8 Season 2 has been a massive misstep in the eyes of the community, with the patch getting almost universally panned.
The game has been review bombed on Steam, Tekken’s biggest creators and pros are unhappy with the changes, and a number of genuinely game-breaking interactions have already been discovered.
Tekken 8 Season 2’s launch panned by players
Tekken 8 was already a divisive game before Season 2’s release. It was much more aggressive than prior entries in the series, giving players more 50/50 options that forced their opponent to guess for their lives. This made defending against many characters’ options a gamble, leading to frustration from both competitive and casual players.
In the leadup to Season 2’s launch, the devs showed promising defensive changes like buffed sidesteps and labelled the update as focused on defense. They even rolled back some changes to throw breaking after the community almost universally pushed back on them, and there was a great deal of excitement around Anna’s return to the series.
Streamer PhiDX sat down to go over every character change, and it took him over 16 hours to get through them all. It’s a huge patch, one that’s filled to the brim with buffs and is intimidating even to those who play Tekken for a living.
Many of the new moves characters were given created even more 50/50 options than before, with many characters also getting new homing moves to counter sidestepping. In essence, Tekken 8’s developers buffed defensive options while simultaneously giving almost every character new ways to nullify them.
On top of that, this patch buffing almost every character gave them new moves and drastically changed everyone’s power level.
There are also some new game-breaking bugs.
For example, Paul has an unblockable string. Deep Dive in general is pretty bugged, allowing him to animation cancel several moves in ways that are much faster than intended.
Players have also discovered several Touch of Death combos or combos that get close to it, not to mention some new strings that are very difficult to defend against.
One of Jack’s new strings is very difficult to defend against, with the last hit being impossible to sidestep out of the string and very difficult to step if he spams it. It’s also a mid, making it impossible to duck unless you’re Xiaoyu or Zafina. Armoring through it is the only reliable option, which results in you taking damage anyways.
There were very few nerfs in the patch in general, with them instead opting to heavily buff every character outside of a select few like Shaheen and Hwoarang. The result has been a biblical level of backlash.
Tekken 8 pros and streamers threaten to quit
Many of the best Tekken players have spoken out against this patch, even those who have made it to the game’s biggest tournaments and made a career out of playing the game.
Tekken legend Arslan Ash said, “After playing season 2, I gotta say we were so ungrateful to season 1.”
Raef, another pro player, believes this may be the worst Tekken patch ever. Speedkicks has already called for an emergency hotfix before the Tekken World Tour starts up, or perhaps even a complete rollback.
Tone, a freshly signed player looking to make his mark in 2025 was very unhappy with the changes despite his main, Bryan, getting some big buffs.
“I’m genuinely wondering what happened to the game I love,” he lamented.
Some pros like Tetsu are asking whether or not they should swap to Fatal Fury or Street Fighter 6 instead, many of which weren’t happy with the transition from Tekken 7 to 8 and are even less happy with the devs doubling down on amping up aggression.
Up-and-coming pro Ty was even looking at job applications on stream.
The Steam reviews don’t look much better, with the game’s recent reviews sinking to Overwhelmingly Negative and the overall reviews dipping into Mixed.
“Season 2 is joke. You guys spent a year pretending to cook when it was already on fire from the start,” read one Steam review.
“I don’t understand what the developers are doing, they have a game with a huge potential that only needed the annoying stuff tuned down and they decided to double down on it, can’t recommend it right now and I have a feeling that it’s not going to get better,” said another.
There’s still time before the first events of the Tekken World Tour start up, so there’s time for devs to patch the game and rebalance a bit before the competitive year starts.
