I've only played a few minutes of Arcade mode, but the announcement of fresh, not-just-tekken-tag-2 characters for this game made me give it a look. Lets see if I can give you some "first impression" thoughts...
So, this looks really like a low budget Soul Calibur 5 level rushjob. The word cheap is written all over it.
It doesn't really feel cheap, for what it is. It's an easy to get into entryway for new fans, and series vets alike. It's kind of nice to see 1 on 1 fighting that has some of the graphic updates of Tekken Tag 2 tossed in for good measure.
Giving a free and easier Wang parry to every character cheapen the meta.
The stats on characters cheapen the once great character balance.
That awful music cheapen those great TTT2 stages.
There's already Tekken Tag 2 and Tekken 6 for what you mentioned. This.. isn't that. If anything, it seems like a testbed for ideas going forward for Tekken into the next generation, much like the added content for TTT2 probably was.
And what's up with some of the characters faces?! What the fuck happened to Asuka?! I also don't really like that "drawn" shader applied on the models, it kinda cheapen it all (cheap is really the keyword for that game).
Namco only needed to make a F2P TTT2 with pay for cosmetics like Dota 2. But instead we get that...
Is there any redeeming quality to that game that I somehow missed?
The character faces don't bother me. Though maybe it's because they look more Soul Calibur than Tekken, and I've always preferred Project Soul's modeling to Tekken.
I don't really know what that shader is there, maybe just the presentation of an "outline" helps justify things like the crazy effects and motion blur of the special moves? I'll agree that they are oddly "cheap" ways to make a product that reuses a lot of content, feel like it's new again.
If anything, this really feels like a mid-point for Namco to make some money / get some brand attention, while they spend time and resources on building bigger games, for current gen consoles, and the next. After the Crapload of stuff in TTT2 (which probably wasn't the smartest to make financially?), they can try some unique ways to buff up their coffers, fine by me.
From a pure, tourney-serious perspective, this game seems to have little reason to exist, doesn't even have offline versus! But from a business minded, "the more people know our brand, the more will pay attention to upcoming products!" perspective, I think this is a very interesting experiment, and a nice peek into what might make it's way into future Tekken / Crossover games...
