So I finally got to play Tekken 7 yesterday for somewhere between 6 and 7 hours at the Dave & Buster’s in New York City. I got to kick it with LOC, Liquid, Kingsley, Rampage (Azzee), Xelnaga, and bunch of other NYC people. I want to give my complete rundown and impressions of the game and I have A LOT of impressions.
First we are going to start with some bad. Side Stepping is awful. Like unusable awful. It’s not surprise you don’t see much side stepping in Korean videos because the risk reward on it is just bad now. I think I had maybe 1 or 2 successful sidestep into punish when I was at negative frames in all the games I played. I tried quite a few simple set ups to do a SS launch and every time I would just get hit out of the side step. It’s not even the whole you can’t do anything (block or attack) for a like 5-10 frames out of side step, it’s that SS’s evasion is super ass too now. You barely move, at least for the characters I played. It’s an undeniable loss to the meta game of Tekken which really sucks. Pretty much every player there was in agreement that sidestepping was really bad.
Another universal opinion is that throws are much weaker but that comes as no surprise really.
Something that no a lot of people are mentioning as well is BDC also got nerfed in this game. Not as much as side step but as I pointed out originally when watching videos but was dismissed, your BDC distance is like half of Tag 2. It’s really apparent when you stop the match, stand next to a character and try to BDC away. It’s defiantly the weakest BDC has been since Tekken 4.
The change to oki is super weird and the first time I lost was because the new Oki system just confused the hell out of me. Not only can you not back roll but no one could figure out how to do any kind of spring up attack. Like b+3+4 or b+1+2 on the ground. It just wouldn’t work. Make no mistake though, this oki change is NOT to the benefit of the person who gets KD, it’s to the benefit of the person standing. It’s really easy to create meaty set ups or just brutalize your opponent on Oki due to the lack of options. It’s harder to get up safely than it was before.
The game does lag in local play. It’s really weird. At least 3 times I saw the game just straight up lag randomly in matches. Loading screens sometimes take forever too. There were some clipping graphic issues once in awhile with cloths as well. This is the latest version of the game too with all the balance changes so this stuff hasn’t really been fixed. Also a random thing graphically is that for some characters it really looks like they are floating above the stage floor when they are standing. They don’t look firmly planted.
Comboing in this game at least with the new characters that I played is really easy. I had never played any of the characters I played at the location test but within 1 to 2 games I already had full bnbs figured out and in my muscle memories. Comboing is a breeze in this game and if you have decent fundamentals you can beat people who have been maining characters for years with these new guys piece of cake cause they are so easy to pick up and play.
With ALL of that said the game is still really, really fun. Games are quick and action packed. The graphics ESPECIALLY for the backgrounds are fantastic. As people mentioned some hair is the only part that you feel like doesn’t work but that’s kind because everything else especially the faces of the characters look so good. It’s Tekken but simplified, sometimes needlessly.
Tailspin is a better mechanic than bound. It just works in an overall better. It makes low parries stronger while making wall damage weaker. Not much to say about it other than I enjoy this combo change.
Rage Arts are a legit threat at the end of rounds. You can do them to moves on reaction. In FACT you can do them while getting hit. WTF?! Yeah! Against Kingsley’s Feng I was able to activate Claudio’s rage art WHILE BEING hit. It was crazy to see, the hit spark was on screen because the move had connected but boom Claudio just ignored that shit looked at his hand and shot a soul arrow right in Feng’s asshole. Claudio’s worked really well in combos because you just do launch f+3 immediately into rage art which did good damage and gave you running oki. Super sick…
…But NOT as sick as slow motioned! OMG! I know I’ve said this before but seriously this shit is by far the best thing they added to the game hands down. In my short time there we had like 6+ “OMGWTF!?!” moments. The two sickest being when I u/f+2ed with Claudio over LOC’s Kazuya’s d+3 causing Claudio to have some ridiculous hang time before crashing down on Kazuya. But the best one was with 2 seconds left on the clock I hit a Rage Art against Kingsley(which stops the clock) and put him on the other side of the screen and I ran at him for running oki and slide and he tried to hit me out of it with a hopkick. It was like a god damn movie. Feng’s hopkick just missed Claudio incoming by like 2 pixels and the active frames of the slide caught Feng coming down for a 1% life lead at 7% to 6%. Shit was out of control.
As far as characters I played, I played Claudio, then switched to Kazumi, then switched to playing Katarina. I did very, very well with all of them.
Claudio was almost exactly as I expected. Every single theory fighting idea I had about him worked. He was in my opinion, my best character. Even though I never lost a game with Kazumi I still think my performance was better with Claudio. The one thing that I did not expect was the range on his hopkick is ridiculous. It no joke hits 2 character spaces away…and to think it used to hit FURTHER before they nerfed it. I felt like a scrub hopkicking so much with him but it’s just such a good move for him there is no reason not to. Claudio is super momentum based too. I had a lot of rounds where it was 1 hopkick, get Star Burst, hit them with f+1+2,1+2 round over. Once he gets Star Burst you really need to respect f+1+2 because it will fuck you up if you don’t. He is super strong in range 2. Also b+1 isn’t useless now. It just needs to be spaced properly and it is still safe, still used it a lot less then I would have otherwise. Overall I think Claudio is perfect the way he is. I don’t think he needs to be touched anymore. I like where he is at.
Kazumi was my must “successful” character in terms of win loss ratio and had some people getting pretty pissed. Pretty much she is super basic. I just poked all day. d/f+1(2), 112(hit confirm), d/b+3, d/b+4, f+2, fff+2, bf+21, u/f+343(hit confirm), df+2, u/f+4, and her magic 4. She has some of the easiest combos in the game, launch 1, bf+214 T! ff bf+211+2. It gives super good running oki afterwards. Fff+2 was a lot better than I expected. It’s negative on block but the range it puts you at makes it so that you can easily space out of wiff punish if they try to retaliate and if they overextend with a slow move, they eat magic 4 for 40%. Her f+2 was the best armor move out of everyone’s I saw. It’s fast, KD, and does good damage. She was the only character where I legit was doing set ups involving power crush. Despite the idea that she has “no lows” her d/b+3 and d/b+4 are better than any low Claudio has and are great for poking and pressuring. Her one big weakness is that her launchers are either too slow(d/f+2 and u/f+343) or have no range (u/f+4). I was finding almost all of my damage off of pokes, CHs, and hit confirms with her. I think if they just speed up d/f+2 to maybe like 15 or 16 frames she will be good to go as a character.
Katarina was picked at the end of the night after we got diner and things were winding down. I originally picked her because I wanted to give Azzee a character to practice his combos on but he insisted we play the match out instead. She’s the scrub queens. KD lows that people can’t see yet, u/f+444444 combos, solid d/f+1, jabs, and d/f+2 series is what I used with her pretty much. To be honest I was surprised how long I was on the machine while playing her. I just played her with a lot of simple concepts in mind, trying to take advantage of the changes in oki with her KD lows. Definitely an easy character to pick up and scrub out some wins. I really don’t have much to say about her other than that. I only played her for one sitting for about 7 games.
Also I have to say that it was FANTASTIC to be back in the arcade environment after so many years. I savored every moment of it because I knew it would probably be the last time I will get to experience this feeling again. The game defiantly was drawing eyeballs too. A whole bunch of people would always be walking by but take a second to stand there and watch the group of us play the game.
In closing me and Kingsley were having diner late into the night and we both agree something needs to be changed with sidestep and that is the one thing that is really holding the game back. They need to either remove the delay to guard OR they need to give it increased evasive properties because as is right now it doesn’t work. It’s broken. Side Stepping does not work how it should in Tekken 7. It’s the only real problem I have with the game. Oki, nerfed BDC, whatever, you can make due because those mechanics still work as intended just to a lesser degree but sidestep just doesn’t. It’s not enough to make me not want to play the game and take the fun out but it really feels like a key element of Tekken has gone missing.
PS: I’m not perma-banned I’ll be back after EVO. See you guys then.
