Tekken 8 didn't have a very good year in 2025, and it's with a heavy heart that I must report that it certainly doesn't look like matters have improved any. Back in February, our resident fighting game expert Mollie Taylor wrote: "I'm genuinely excited to see what direction Tekken 8 is going to take with its third season, while also desperately hoping that we're not staring down the barrel of another Season 2 misstep."
Unfortunately, it now looks like we were in fact staring down the barrel of another Season 2 misstep. Just taking a look at responses to the Season 3 balance patch notes on the game's subreddit reveals an avalanche of complaints from players who feel like Bandai Namco hasn't done diddly squat to smooth things out:
"I didn’t think it was possible to release another garbage patch after all the feedback they received and the time they had to make things right. Somebody give me my 'I fell for it again reward'," writes one player.
"It might genuinely be over. I cannot fathom how they spent a whole season with no balance patches only to come out with this garbage f*cking thing," adds another.
Steam reviews tell a similar story, with just 24% of reviews in the past 30 days being positive—leading to a recent "Mostly Negative" rating and an overall "Mixed" rating on the platform.
The negativity's so fierce, in fact, that Bandai Namco's gone ahead and issued both an apology and a promise to do better, again, per a news post on the game's official site: "We recognize that the battle experience we intended to deliver has not fully met your expectations.
"Moving forward," says the developer, "we will continue to pursue a battle experience where offense and defense are balanced around the Heat system, allowing players to engage in meaningful mind games and decision-making against their opponents."
Though the promised timeline seems a little long, given the air I get from players who clearly want an overhaul. An emergency patch is imminent to fix "critical bugs and unintended behaviors". Any major balance tuning, though, will have to wait until mid-April or even late spring:
"Fixes that can be addressed in the short term will be implemented sequentially, while changes with significant impact will be introduced step by step through each update after sufficient verification."
It might just be a case of underpromising and (hoping to) over-deliver, but given the doom and gloom I've seen from even just a cursory glance, I'm not sure this post'd fill anyone with confidence. The phrase "balanced around the Heat system" particularly seems out of touch, given how controversial it's been—Mollie called it "one of the game's most dividing new mechanics"—and might be read as doubling down instead of admitting fault. Either way, things aren't looking good.
