The Tekken series has been Namco Bandai’s flagship fighting series since its debut in the arcades back in 1994. The franchise has helped establish Namco Bandai as a major force in the industry during the modern era. Sony can attribute their early growth of the Playstation brand to Tekken as well as a few other notable series. As time passed, the gameplay, sound, story, and graphics of the franchise evolved. Now we’re at the point of seeing the next phase of that evolution with Tekken 7. Complete with gameplay tweaks and functions.

Tekken 7 marks the second time the series has an immediate story mode. In most mainline games prior, the story mode was relegated to playing the arcade mode and putting a story together through the various character endings. The story, “The Mishima Saga” picks up after Jin defeats Azazel. It gives great insight into Heihachi’s younger days, his wife, and the reasoning as to why Kazuya and Jin have the devil gene. This marks the first time the story felt like there was effort put behind it. I don’t want to spoil too much for anyone who hasn’t played the game. But there are some very cool things in the story mode of the game. The first being Capcom allowed Namco Bandai to use Akuma in the game and he’s even integrated into the story. Another cool aspect was how they allow you to literally play, well, fight through the introduction of Tekken 5. One thing about story mode that some people will have to come to grips with is the fact that in really don’t have any control over the character you play. In accordance with the story flow, you’re given whichever character has a role to play in the story in any set chapter. So you really have no recourse to get adjusted to any one character if you’re a newcomer. But this is Tekken after all, so it’s not like it takes too much effort to get the basics down at the very least.

Aside from the main story mode, as you progress, other character chapters begin to open up. They open up after each chapter to try to match what is currently happening in the Mishima Saga. They’re pretty short but they do give a bit of extra context compared to the main story. So they’re definitely worth playing through if you’re a completionist. The story mode in its’ entirety is actually pretty short. But that’s not really too much of an issue since these days, story modes in fighting games almost seem like a side dish while the rest of the package is where the money is.

Once you get away from story mode, you get to see just how much was really put into the game. And that’s not even counting the DLC (we’ll get to that later). Ok, let’s start with the arcade mode. Unlike story mode, the entire cast of fighters is at your disposal. Just as in prior games, your opponents and the stages are both chosen at random until you get to the bosses. The bosses start at the fourth opponent, Heihachi. The last opponent is Kazumi normally. Once in a while, they’ll change it up and make the boss Akuma instead. If you’re an even half-decent player, you can get through this in about 7 minutes give or take. And that’s with me counting in the loading times. One thing about arcade mode is that you don’t get any endings for playing it. I guess since they have an ‘actual’ story mode they didn’t feel the need to bother.

Before I talk about this next mode, we need to talk about customizations. When it comes to both of Namco Bandai’s fighting game series (Tekken and Soul Calibur), they don’t skimp when it comes to being able to customize your characters. This game is no different. You can earn them either by using fight money, which is the currency you earn from playing just about every mode in the game with the exception of practice mode. Or, you can get customizations as rewards from Treasure Battle. The rewards are pretty plentiful. Some are for specific characters and others are shared and can be used on any character of your choosing. Namco Bandai was also pretty generous with character save slots too. Each individual character has 10 spaces in which you can save your personalized character creations in. The player profile also gets a degree of customizing too should you choose to use it. Your title, title plate, health bar, and player info panel can all be tweaked to fit your own personal style. You earn more of them the same way you do for character customizations. When you get online or to Treasure battle, you get to see some truly weird, yet cool combinations of characters.

Speaking of Treasure Battle, this is where I spent the bulk of my time playing. The main draw here is exactly as the title says, Treasure. Every battle win gives you something. Of course, the items you get are of random quality. I assumed that the color of the Treasure Chests was an indication of rarity. Every so often, you’re given the chance to win premium items from a doppelganger of your character. The item you receive should you win this fight is specific to the character you’re currently playing. Another way to get premium items is to go on a winning streak. After you’ve built up a set number of victories, you’ll face a special opponent. Usually, this is one of the characters the game feels is a boss character. To try to vary the combat even more, the game randomly hits you with match stipulations. One minute, you’ll be in a match where you can only hurt an opponent by air juggling them. The next minute, you’re in a match where the speed of the gameplay is intentionally sped up. Personally, this is the mode that kept me drawn to the game.

VS Battle is just the usual player vs. player mode. There isn’t much to say here. If you’ve seen it in one fighting game, you’ve seen it in all of them. This goes double for practice mode. Outside of fine-tuning your combos and general skill, there isn’t anything of detail to speak on in regard to the practice mode.

It’s also worth noting that the online and offline titles are kept separate. The online titles pertain to online ranked in particular. The Offline titles are for arcade mode and Treasure mode.

Now for a bit on the gameplay mechanics. For the most part, Tekken’s general gameplay functions stayed the same traditionally. That is, until now. Tekken 7 introduced a few new things that in my honest opinion make the game so much better than any of the series prior. Now we all know how fighting game communities are. People get really good, real fast. Tekken as a function that slightly alleviates that for newcomers, making it easier for them to at least somewhat compete. The function that I’m referring to is the assist button. Holding the assist button while pressing one of the four face buttons allows for the player to perform four set moves rather than doing them the traditional way. As a result, the game is a bit more accessible to the average newcomer. To make it even more player-friendly, there’s also an option to turn basic combos on. This ties a single-button press to a full combo function. This is the kind of thing that pros and experienced players will hate to no end. But from a business perspective, I understand. The only way a fighting game franchise can grow is if you allow new people to feel comfortable coming in. And fighting game communities are known for having pros pop up in a hurry. To be honest, it’s a huge reason why most fighting games lose so many players online as time goes by. The pros dominate and new players feel discouraged so they don’t bother. While on the flip side, the pros may feel like all their practice and training goes by the wayside if anyone can just set their controller to be “assessable”. I can see both sides of the argument. However, if we’re talking about growth, assessability is the way to go.

Another new mechanic to the game is what most fighting games have had for generations at this point, the super move or finishing move. Tekken 7 finally has something of their own in this regard. It’s called a “Rage Art”. Each character has at least two. The cooler one is normally a bit tougher to pull off. In order for these Rage Art moves to be triggered, you have to sustain a certain amount of damage. Once your health bar starts to glow red, that’s the time in which you can perform the Rage Art. These techniques do a pretty good amount of damage. In fact, some players have expressed a hatred for this particular new mechanic because of how drastically the technique can sway who has the advantage in a match.

Then there’s the Power Crush. Power Crush moves are techniques that normally can’t be stopped while still attacking the opponent. However, the player will still take damage if they’re being in while in the process of doing a Power Crush move. If nothing else, these moves are normally there for the sake of breaking an opponent’s momentum in a match.

One final aspect of the fighting mechanics worth noting is when players attack each other at the same time. The game slows down for the moment and you can see which character lands the blow first. I found that to be a nice added touch. This is the kind of thing that most competitive games even beyond fighting could have used. How many times have we seen people complain about “who it who” first? This little feature Tekken 7 has adopted puts all of that to rest.

The Playstation 4 version also has a VR mode for those fortunate enough to have a Playstation VR headset. It’s a nice feature, but it comes off as more of an experiment than anything else. You can’t play the story or arcade modes in this way. Nor can you play with a friend in VR. You simply pick your character as well as your opponent and go from there. This is why I feel it comes off as experimental.

Lastly, we have Ultimate Tekken Bowl. This is an upgraded version of Tekken Bowl from the first Tekken Tag Tournament game. The game has 3 modes. Ten-Pin for 1 player, ten-pin for two players, and striker. Ten-pin is just basic bowling with one or two players respectively. Striker is just a player getting as high of a score as possible with a limited number of balls. If you get strikes, you get more balls. It’s a neat little diversion from the fighting of the other modes. The only bad news for some is that it’s DLC.

Before we end this review, we need to touch on the DLC for a bit. First, as with pretty much any game. If you’re looking to be truly complete in terms of this game’s content, grab the season passes rather than buying individual characters. It’s pretty expensive, as most fighting game DLC is, so be on the lookout for sales. Luckily, the DLC for this game goes on sale routinely. Now, outside of some familiar characters that haven’t made it to the base roster, you have a handful of guest characters that stand out. Geese Howard from Fatal Fury/King of Fighters, Noctis from Final Fantasy 15, and Negan from the Walking Dead all appear and are playable. Geese, just like Akuma comes from a fighting franchise. Also like Akuma, his moves and specials are intact, complete with his super moves. Geese, feels just as out of place as Akuma does as a result.

Overall, the game is very much worth the time and money. It welcomes both new and old players alike. The roster is pretty extensive if you’re a completionist. Unfortunately, that per the norm these days since most fighting game dlc characters are expensive. But as a fan of fighting games, I would recommend this for anyone’s collection.

See our gameplay for Tekken 7 here